server December 2020

server@lists.fedoraproject.org

22 participants
13 discussions

The well known BIOSboot partition issue - Fedora does not install flawlessly on HDs larger 2 TB in Raid 1
by Peter Boy 10 Jan '21

10 Jan '21

I am doing some test installations to contribute some of our internal documentation for Fedora Server documentation. Thereby a problem with the BiOSboot partition occurred again. To set up the system with RAID 1, manual partitioning must be performed during installation. I have created in the Anaconda GUI: - BIOSboot Partition - /boot as default partition and changed to raid 1 - /ROOT as LVM changed to raid 1 as well (and some additional LVs in that VG) The installation aborted with the error message: "The following error occurred while installing the boot loader. The system will not be bootable. Do you want to ignore this and continue with the installation? Boot loader install failed" Anaconda creates BIOSboot only on the first hard disk, but then tries to install grub also on the 2nd hard disk and fails because of the missing BIOSboot partition there. This was already discussed a long time ago and considered to create a BIOSboot partition automatically when creating a GPT even without user action. However, concerns were raised about this and the proposal was obviously not implemented. I have not found a way in the current Anaconda manual partition GUI to install BIOSboot on the 2nd disk as well. My simple workaround was to boot a live system, set up GPT and BIOSboot, shutdown, and then boot the Fedora Server installation image. The installation then went without a fuss. But is this the intended way? I suspect it isn’t. I probably missed something. Any hint appreciated. Peter

3 8

PRD update - let's start get it done
by Peter Boy 02 Jan '21

02 Jan '21

At the recent Fedora Server Reboot meeting, an editorial group was set up to update our PRD: m3xboy (Eduard Lucena), langdon (Langdon White), and pboy (Peter Boy, it's me). We should start to put the work in motion. The next IRC meeting is planned for January. We should then have a first proposal. Looking back on the discussion, the first thing we have to decide upon is the tool to use. One idea was hackMD (https://hackmd.io/pricing#), a commercial online platform and markdown editor, free for individuals and public groups. Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned but I'd rather prefer a Fedora project resource if it exists and is available, maybe something like laverna (https://laverna.cc/)? A real OSS markdown editor available as on premise installable online tool as well as local installable (Linux, Max, Win) with online synchronization. However, I would much rather use a tool with some professional writing functionality. For our purpose, even LibreOffice would suffice. It provides a tracking of changes within text lines, a comment and discussion function on selectable text passages directly in the margin of the page, a merging of different editing statuses, and some more. Although the final version would have to be downgraded to Markdown, thanks to pandoc it is quite feasible. We would then have to upload and download the file. Would we have a place in the Fedora infrastructure to do this? In the next step, we should decide on a targeted table of contents, a heading and a very short abstract of the intended "message" and its content, so that we have a focus for the text. In the discussion, the prevailing opinion was to essentially keep the structure. The sections "Vision" and "Mission" have so far been mentioned as needing discussion (I would argue for keeping them). The section "Featured Server Roles" was described by Stephen Gallagher as completely outdated. Who can contribute detailed information on this? That's my ideas so far. @m3xboy and @langdon should we arrange an IRC meeting at short notice? Or do we want to continue discussing here?

3 13

recommended time synchronisation for Fedora Server edition
by Peter Boy 31 Dec '20

31 Dec '20

In the log of several of my Fedora servers I just found a "complaint“ about a missing time synchronization. Obviously there are 3 options: ntpd - not installed by default - documented in the installation guide chronyd - not installed by default (I guess, not sure) - not activated by default - documented in the installation guide systemd-timesyncd - installed by default - not activated by default - not documented in the installation guide In the documentation crony ist recommended for workstations („frequently suspended…“) For systems „.. normally kept permanently on“ ntpd is recommended. What want we recommend for Fedora Server? Isn't it desirable for Server to enable time synchronization by default? Shouldn't we use systemd-timesyncd, which is installed anyway (and some sources consider ntpd to be somewhat outdated)? Peter

7 6

resource control for server/cloud
by Chris Murphy 30 Dec '20

30 Dec '20

Hi, GNOME and KDE developers are working on resource control to help improve interactivity and system responsiveness when under pressure. This is done by isolating three resources: cpu, memory, and io, and setting either limits, or more typical is to set minimum resources on the high priority processes. Resource control demo, this is a bit more desktop oriented https://github.com/facebookexperimental/resctl-demo Resource Control (2019) Dan Schatzberg, this is a bit more server oriented https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30i7SamZxRU Also related to this effort is having a user space oom killer. The kernel's built-in oomkiller is primarily concerned about keeping the kernel itself safely running. It's not concerned about user space responding predictably or optimally. Much of the above work is predicated on oomd2 There's been significant work lately integrating portions of it into systemd as systemd-oomd. The idea is to intelligently determine what processes are taking up way more resources than is reasonable (i.e. they're likely misbehaving) and kill them off so that other processes survive and the system doesn't completely faceplant, which would require either human intervention or worse case, force reboot. What things are high priority for a server or cloud use cases, aren't the same as for desktops. So while all the concepts are the same, I expect Server WG folks will want to take a look at optimizing for typical server workloads. -- Chris Murphy

4 3

Hey existing Fedora Server working group members!
by Matthew Miller 24 Dec '20

24 Dec '20

See the thread about a reboot meeting. If you'd like to stay involved, let us know. If you're busy with other things, that's cool too. It'd be nice to let me know about that too. Technically by the charter (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Server/Governance_Charter) you hold a seat until your resign, and new members need three +1 votes from existing members. If there are enough existing members to kick of a new round of WG contributors under the existing charter, awesome. Otherwise we'll formalize any outcome of tomorrow's meeting at the Council level. -- Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org> Fedora Project Leader

5 7

Fedora Server Product Requirement Document (PRD) Update
by Peter Boy 19 Dec '20

19 Dec '20

Today there was an IRC discussion about the next tasks Fedora Server WG has to work on. I would like to give here a short overview in the hope that many may contribute their ideas here. The wording is unimportant, short sketches of ideas are sufficient. A editorial group has been established to edit a proposal for a revised draft. But we need input from the server community! Our current PRD is here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Server/Product_Requirements_Document , general considerations on the structure of such a document are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_requirements_document The current PRD is from 2014. Urgently needs to be revised along the following general objectives: - We want the target audience and server edition goals to keep up to date as the computing world changes - But there are also big changes in how servers are used and deployed. Fedora should be at the forefront. This leads to at least 4 questions: - What are the high level goals? - What is our *market*? - how server relate to curent developments, coreos cloud, etc.? - merging in the Cloud Base image so it's basically just an alternate deploy of server? Please, contribute your ideas! Some detailed opinions were thrown in: - Server should forcus on mostly headless services - single node deployments, and multi node deployments - A goal might also be pushing for text-only mechanisms for all relevant administrative functions (cf. the gpg-agent discussion) - focus on soho rather than enterprise at this point. - strong container support in "my basement" and in "soho".. including things like openshift - are server roles still a thing? (The Server Roles in PRD were abandoned?) - are tools/app included supporting industry change (e.g. IPMI is deprecated, Redfish is the future) Any inout greatly appreciated. Peter (One of those to draft an updated proposal)

7 14

Fedora Server Reboot Meeting!
by Matthew Miller 16 Dec '20

16 Dec '20

There's a lot of open source server something something noise this week :) so I'd like to schedule this for next week. That'll give me time to put together a specific agenda. Use this to indicate your availability: http://whenisgood.net/9fbjxrx I'm planning to make this an IRC meeting (or possibly matrix if we have our test server up by then, which is within the realm of possibility). We can do a video meeting too if that higher-bandwidth conversation would be useful. I know it's getting to the holidays, so I think we'll probably want to do a second meeting in January, too. -- Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org> Fedora Project Leader

5 8

ticket for new slate (existing wg members please +1)
by Matthew Miller 16 Dec '20

16 Dec '20

https://pagure.io/fedora-server/issue/6 -- Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org> Fedora Project Leader

1 0

[Fedocal] Reminder meeting : Fedora Server Reboot
by mattdm＠fedoraproject.org 15 Dec '20

15 Dec '20

Dear all, You are kindly invited to the meeting: Fedora Server Reboot on 2020-12-16 from 13:00:00 to 14:00:00 US/Eastern At fedora-meeting(a)irc.freenode.net The meeting will be about: Join us to discuss the reboot of the Fedora Server Working Group and the continuation of Fedora Server edition. More information available at: [https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/server@lists.fedoraproject.or… ssage/M7Q5FVPFITBDRN77KIZUIMMKFTLPLESM/](https://lists.fedoraproject.org/ar… ssage/M7Q5FVPFITBDRN77KIZUIMMKFTLPLESM/) Source: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/calendar/meeting/9873/

1 0

Fedora Server contributors -- do you need ARM hardware?
by Matthew Miller 10 Dec '20

10 Dec '20

Hey all. We have a program to help get Fedora OS more broadly tested on ARM hardware. While Fedora IoT is the main focus, we also have some budget to supply small devices directly to project contributors who are working on Fedora Server. If this would help you, let me know (off-list). I'll need your shipping address and which device (or possibly devices) you could use from this list: Jetson NX Jetson Nano Pinebook Pro RockPro64 The Raspberry Pi 400 is also an option, but be aware that this is not going to be magic and smooth and probably doesn't even work right now, so I'd prefer to reserve those for people with experience in hardware enablement. -- Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org> Fedora Project Leader

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server December 2020