Debian

Mocking Debian

• Posted by Rob (#1) on August 12, 2006 04:42 CEST

Taking from an instant messaging conversation with Neil:

Neil: did debian come to a decison on that
Rob; they will when linux 3.0, gcc 5, kde 7 and X99 are out

I know, only funny if you know a bit about Debian release schedules.

• PermaLink: Mocking Debian
• Tags: Debian, instant messaging, Linux
• Post comment

Jani Taskinen Wrap-up

• Posted by Rob (#1) on July 31, 2006 02:15 CEST

The Baheyeldin Dynasty has a nice wrap up of Jani Taskinen's departure from PHP over Israel, although not providing much more new information than my initial reaction.

It does however offer some open source and geopolitics musings, including Herbert Xu's Debian departure over the Taiwanese flag. Another good example, although not noted, would be Neil Steven's KDE departure over anti-Americanism. I maintain that Jani's case is the most interesting because he's also known for his UN peacekeeping activies, although so far the repercussions of the drama appear limited to the open source community.

• PermaLink: Jani Taskinen Wrap-up (1 comment)
• Tags: Israel, Debian, PHP, anti-Americanism, Jani Taskinen, Herbert Xu, Taiwan, Neil Stevens, KDE Desktop Environment
• Post comment

How to convince management of necessities?

• Posted by Rob (#1) on February 24, 2006 15:47 CET

Today I have been installing Debian on a dozen servers at work, in pairs of two identical machines at the time. So far so good: every single server is shiny, clean and consistent with its counterpart. But therein lies the problem: how to ensure that these servers stay in sync when it comes to code updates to our own software, as well as configuration settings? I once wrote a script called cvssync which did just that, but I am afraid I won't get the resources to reimplement such as system.

The alternative would be a custom-made automated system (but if a proper one would exist then I doubt I ever had to write cvssync in the first place) or something I would definitely hate: procedures. Not that I have a dislike of procedures in general, but I can already guarantee that when we enact procedures at some point:

• dependencies for our own Perl code come from CPAN, not Debian packages
• our own scripts will simply be copied onto the servers without any kind of version control made possible by either packaging them or using cvssync
• configuration settings will not have a proper backup, version control and in the end will be in all sorts of states except for synchronisation
• undocumented hacks will enter the system without anyone documenting changes
• and so on..

In other words, if I don't get to reimplement any sort of automated synchronisation system for code and configuration settings.. my job as a system administrator will be hell.

Any tips on how I should convince management that this is vital for our operations?

• PermaLink: How to convince management of necessities?
• Tags: Perl, Debian, cvssync, CPAN
• Post comment