[Labs-l] open grid on bots

Mon Mar 11 16:59:30 UTC 2013

But I still fail to see why you believe that cluster operated and
maintained by volunteer sysadmins should be less stable than cluster
maintained by paid wmf staff. Not all volunteers are that dumb to
randomly break everything.

I would myself rather host my bots on a cluster where I can easily set
it up and have constant support anytime I need, rather than some
cluster which is mostly only "self-maintained" in the means that users
can't change anything but the tool itself, and for anything which
requires sysadmin attention (there will be lot of needs for that) will
have to wait for ages - just as they have to on tool server now.

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 5:46 PM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc at uberbox.org> wrote:
> On 03/11/2013 11:40 AM, Petr Bena wrote:
>>
>> who is there to
>> help me out huh?
>
>
> Me?  Other users?
>
> For most cases, a sysadmin will be of no more use than anyone else who has
> had success in running their tools.
>
> As for installing packages, you are correct.  This requires a sysadmin, but
> not because of the needed bit to do the actual install (it would be fairly
> simple to provide some interface by which Ubuntu-provided packages, at
> least, could be installed self-serve) but because you need someone who is
> going to be able to evaluate the *impact* of the installation.  To ascertain
> whether that will affect other running tools, and possibly to adapt or tweak
> depending on global constraints.
>
> It would not be the first time that a project root installs something in the
> labs that has security impacts that required the ops team to completely
> disable the instance, or that break other services.  Some packages have
> alternatives or require switching some virtual package to satisfy in a way
> that could break /other/ tools.
>
> Tool Labs needs proper change management, and deliberate administration to
> ensure reliability.  The setup you speak of is very nice for prototype and
> proof-of-concept work, but if you have projects that /rely/ on a tool
> working, then the environment needs to be stable.
>
>
> -- Marc
>
>
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