[H-GEN] The first LCA Bid discussion: where do we have it?

Russell Stuart russell-humbug at stuart.id.au
Mon Jun 1 21:14:33 EDT 2009


On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 02:38 +1000, Mark Ellem wrote:
> I'm assuming you are talking about caliburn going offline?

Yes, I was.

> Otherwise, please let me know what you mean and I can fill you in
> publicly on this list.

The members were made aware of what actions had happened - after the
fact.  My point was I would be nice for the members to know what actions
the committee proses to take BEFORE they take action.

> We were planning on changes to our infrastructure 
> before the incident, and we would have got to the point of calling for 
> help here.

Yes, the minutes now show that the a message was supposed to be sent to
general.  But that was my suggestion.  Up until I made that suggestion,
my understanding is the committee decided the infrastructure needed
updating, and had appointed people to do something about it.  There were
no plans to do any further asking.  Are you saying that is not so?  If
so, please post the minutes showing this.

Notice I am not really commenting on these were good or bad decisions.
In fact I agree the infrastructure did need updating, and the committee
has done the right thing by moving in that direction.  It perhaps should
have been done a long time ago, and this committee is to be
congratulated in finally starting down the road.

My point was about the Exec keeping the club at large informed about
what it is doing, which they clearly did not do.  I am not suggesting
this was some huge conspiracy or something - but it was a mistake.  And
I was trying to say if whatever communications happened on the Exec list
about this has instead happened on general, then I would have nothing to
whinge about.  Problem solved.  Separate, hidden, private mailing lists
are almost always a bad idea.

> That said, you and anybody else who's interested is more than welcome
> to help us out in system admin tasks, please contact me off-list. Your
> contribution already to helping us configure the wiki is appreciated 
> Russell.

Well, yes.  But having more than one requires some method in place for
coordinating the activities.

As it happens in the absence of a response from Stephen, I have been
thinking about how the LCA wiki might be moved.  To me, a nice method
is:

a) Someone write a method for getting a current copy of the VM, sans 
   any keys, passwords and so on.  This would be I presume by hitting 
   a URL.  This could be sophisticated if you like by having a "clean
   skin" copy of the VM available at Humbug, and having caliburn send
   an xdelta (binary diff) between the clean skin and what is on there
   now.

b) Then I (or anybody who proposes to do work on the VM), does the
   maintenance work with the VM at their leisure, on this local copy.

c) Once they have it working, they prepare a "diff" of what they have
   done.  This "diff" would consist of a changeset from whatever 
   source code control system we are using, plus any binary blobs
   required - possibly all wrapped up in a nice format that can be
   applied automatically.

d) The diff is reviewed by whatever sysadmin committee is place, and
   applied.

I would be happy to write whatever infrastructure is requires to make
this all work.  Needless to say, the first step in doing this would
be to get a copy of the VM.




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