On Mon, 24 Dec 2001, Omer Zak wrote: > > great. so nowi'll have to: > > > > 1. explain to people who to do stuff. > > 2. fix their mistakes. > > 3. run after them, checking what they did and that it's ok. > > 4. go to actcom's offices every time someone breaks the system. > > > > sorry, i veto that, unless you do all the mentoring work, and find > > someone else to go fix the machine after it breaks (and it will). i'm > > willing to go fix the machine after it breaks only in 2 cases: > > Guy, sorry, I can't buy this rant anymore. > On one hand you are ranting that people are not helping. > On the other hand, you are erecting high barriers of entry for people who > may justify spending time on helping.
then why don't you offer some of your time in actually doing things? the system is open. you need an account on iglu? say so - and you've got it, with my blessings. the only reason for barriers is because lack of them will increase workload, rather then decrease it. you may argue against the balance of barriers and getting help - legitimate. just don't dismiss what i said. if there was someone else who'd vulanteer to jump to actcom to fix those messups - you won't hear any objections from me. contrariwise. i know it won't you, since you are quite away from haifa, but there are other members in this area. > In any good organization based upon volunteer work, it is known that one > of the benefits people get from volunteer work is the experience they get > in the process.IGLU is not an organization, but the same principle > applies. > > > 1. i broke it. > > 2. i trust the person who broke it, and thus assume this breaking was > >a possible (yet rare) accident. > > 3. it was broken due to hardware problems. > > I suggested that the source code and scripts of the www.iglu.org.il be > made available for read-only access.One of the things that people may > volunteer to do (including me) is to make small improvements, which will > eventually make the system more friendly to newbie sysadmins. so then other people will have to commit the code for them, and test it on behalf of them. i've been doing it on my sourceforge project for a while - and i didn't like it in one bit. i did it, since for that project, i _am_ willing to take the time to do that. i'm not interested in doing that for iglu. on the other hand - i'm not stopping anyone else from doing it. > > we have a mixed situation here - on one hand, this machine is supposed to > > give a service, and people expect it to work. on the other hand - its a > > sever for the community, and part of this is allowing the community to > > learn about system administration. you're combining the worst of both > > worlds :) > > I hope that adding one more goal will improve the situation: > Develop tools which will make the serer easier to administer by newbie > sysadmins - such as tools which will grep the logfiles and recognize > 90% of the possible problems. this won't be helpfull if the machine is locked up, crashed, or just cannot be connected to, due to those misshups. and these tools need to be done in a very careful manner, or they will themselves cause the system to be useles (you don't just 'grep' the logs - you must not repeat previous messages, so you need to keep count of where you last scanned the log file - but log files get recycled, in which case you need to scan from the beginning again. i have enough pain with big-brother at work, that re-scans the log file from the beginning every time - if i had a problem on sunday, i'll keep getting email until the end of saterday, when log files are rotated). ok - who's for the task of writing such a scanner? not for saying how it should work - but for actually _writing_ it? > > > How feasible is to keep a backup of the scripts and config files to be > > > able to recover from newbie's screwups (except for the mirror disks, of > > > course)? > > > > its feasible only if you're in a workplace, and cleaning up after newbies > > is part of yourjob. its not feasible for remote administration on one's > > spare time, unless one realy wants to do this cleaning up. > > One important part of oldtime volunteers' mission is to assist in getting > new volunteers trained.Consider the above to be part of this mission. _whose_ mission? you cannot assume missions for others. missions are accepted, not given. ok, are there any 'volanteer mentors' here? come out, come out, whever you are... > > so what this all comes to: > > > > 1. root password should only be given to people with experience, or those > >that have proved useful and donated enough of their time, that others > >will feel ok with cleaning up after them. > > No problems with that.Newbie sysadmins can still be useful if they > routinely monitor system logs and the like - things which need only > read-only access.The experienced sysadmin will then actualy do the > fix-up work based upon information from the newbies. ok. any vulanteer to scan log files? actually - it better be 2-3 volanteers, since it will get tedious if one person has to scan all log files all the time. the price for doing this is a free copy of the linux kernel sources. > > 2. less-experienced users could be given a responsibility of maintaining > >something that does NOT require root password, and that is rather > >secluded. in this case, they still need to have experience as linux > >users, and to be dependable. > > If you (or even the newbie) can tuck away a backup of the subsystem, then > this won't be as critical.If it is not something that a simple tar xvf > cannot restore, then let the community improve the subsystem until it > becomes something that tar xvf can restore. someone need to write a backups script (no, not just 'tar things up', but also store older backups, erase even older backups, check that the backup does not fill the disk on which it resides). backups need be done automatically, or else they are never done when realy needed. who is vulanteering for this task? > > so i repeat- are there volunteers, or aren't there? so far all i see is > > talking and general talking. behdad offered to write the run-rsync shell > > script, and thus i'll forward the description of the script to him. this > > still doesn't resolve the issue of actually maintaining the mirror itself > > (and i'm reluctant to open accounts for people whose sysadmining abilities > > i've never experienced - source code i can still read before installing). > > Why not make the run-rsync script made available for all of us to read and > comment?(Since now it has an "owner", I am now speaking about other > scripts and configuration files). because the script _was lost_. and because there is no place on iglu's web site to put it on, and because the requirements that Ilya wrote weren't complete - when i sent them to behdad, i had to add more comments on top of it, and even that wasn't complete. and its not written in a manner i'm willing to place on a web site - only on a mailing list. and i'm not hiding anything - its an "opt-in" system - you want to do it, you write email, and then i spend the time to write down all the details. when its private email, i don't feel i have to work too much on editing content, as i would if i had to post it on a web site. > Either you keep things in secret from the general community and accept the > price of not having many volunteers, or you open up and only then rant if > enough volunteers don't come up. well, there are about 5 calls to vulanteers in this letter. none is secret, not is hidden. lets see how many vulanteers we get out of it. > As I remember, when there were Linux booths in exhibitions, there were > several volunteers.And those projects were as open to the community as > possible. as i remember, these exhibitions are no longer, because people stopped wanting to help, lost their appetite, and no new blood came in. linux-il, as a isreali organization, turned virtual due to lack of enthusiams, and only local groups are active now (bar-ilan, haifux). and this mailing list turned into a 'talkers temple', rather then a 'doers shrine'. -- guy "For world domination - press 1, or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
