CentOS - Dec 2015 - wifi on servers and fedora [was Re: 7.2 kernel panic on boot]

On Tue, December 8, 2015 11:05, Matthew Miller wrote:
>
>> I have been bitten by things done in Fedora that only have any use
>> on
>> a laptop and that should never have been allowed into a server
>> distribution.  But I cannot see how I would have been aware of them
>> until they manifested themselves on equipment under my care.  By
>> which
>
> ^ right, this.
>
>> time it is rather too late to influence the decision to include
>> them.
>
> Well, not if you get involved early. That's the point.
>
> If you don't *want* to, that's fine, but there's only so much
> complainy cake that you can have and eat at the same time.
>
So, the implication of your suggestion, if I understand it aright, is
that I should audit all of the communication forums in use by Fedora
developers and then point out whenever any of the many dozens or
hundreds of contributors introduces something that in my opinion may
impact a server installation.  To do this I am required to obtain such
intimate personal knowledge of the internal workings of the
distribution as to be able to identify these items as soon as they are
introduced.  naturally, I am also supposed to be able to immediately
identify the negative impact of these things and prepare and present a
cogent argument against their adoption or propose patches to correct
the deficiencies that I believe that I have detected.

I am to do this whilst running a CentOS installation that will not
allow Fedora onto the premises.  SO, no doubt, the intent is that I
should run Fedora on my home systems and work diligently in my off
hours to protect any future version of CentOS from that vantage.  And
of course, if I miss something then it is my fault for not having paid
enough attention to that item.

Am I correct?

-- 
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On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 08:54:56AM -0500, James B. Byrne
wrote:
> So, the implication of your suggestion, if I understand it aright, is
> that I should audit all of the communication forums in use by Fedora
> developers and then point out whenever any of the many dozens or
> hundreds of contributors introduces something that in my opinion may
> impact a server installation.  To do this I am required to obtain such
> intimate personal knowledge of the internal workings of the
> distribution as to be able to identify these items as soon as they are
> introduced.  naturally, I am also supposed to be able to immediately
> identify the negative impact of these things and prepare and present a
> cogent argument against their adoption or propose patches to correct
> the deficiencies that I believe that I have detected.
Yes, that's basically how it works ? but you don't actually have to go
to that elaborate scale to make a difference. That's why I suggested
getting involved with Fedora Server, not "auditing all of the
communication forums". We (Fedora) also work hard on making sure that
proposed and planned changes are communicated. Following the Devel
Announce list
 
   https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel-announce/

is a relatively low-traffic, low-effort way to stay informed of major
things.

Focus on something you're interested in. When enough people do that, it
adds up.
> I am to do this whilst running a CentOS installation that will not
> allow Fedora onto the premises.  SO, no doubt, the intent is that I
> should run Fedora on my home systems and work diligently in my off
> hours to protect any future version of CentOS from that vantage.  
Working with your employer to fix the "will not allow Fedora into the
premises" part seems like a good start.

Of course, if you don't like all of this ? and from your tone, it
sounds very much like you don't ? there's another obvious path where
you can have an impact. That's to pay for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and
to submit feedback and problems through the official channels that
provides.

>                                                                    And
> of course, if I miss something then it is my fault for not having paid
> enough attention to that item.
I don't think _fault_ comes into it. It's not about blame; it's just
that when no one does something, that something doesn't happen.

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader

Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 08:54:56AM -0500, James B. Byrne wrote:
<snip>
> Working with your employer to fix the "will not allow Fedora into the
> premises" part seems like a good start.
<snip>
Why? Fedora is a development, rapid change distro. I just bugged one of my
users yesterday that I'm *GOING* to update and reboot his system, since it
hasn't been rebooted in about a year and a third. And we've got cluster
members that they won't *let* us update, because it might break the
software that's running on them. Around 6.3, I think, one user found an
issue with the results from an updated system, and reran a completed job,
and the update did *not* give the correct results. We had to downgrade - I
forget what packages.

And some of these users have jobs that on bare metal (forget VMs, we can't
spare the cycles) run one to two *weeks*... and that's on clusters with
512 or over 1100 cores, or the boxes with *two* Tesla cards. Yes, we are
talking very serious scientific computing.

Absolute stability is what matters. For production machines, I worked out
a once a month maintenance window, to update and reboot.

In an environment like this, why would we want to do fedora, with its
how-many-updates in the last two days? This is why we're on CentOS, which
is *stable*.

         mark

On 12/09/2015 05:54 AM, James B. Byrne wrote:
> So, the implication of your suggestion, if I understand it aright, is
> that I should audit all of the communication forums in use by Fedora
> developers and then point out whenever any of the many dozens or
> hundreds of contributors introduces something that in my opinion may
> impact a server installation.
I would offer that you could visit the Fedora ChangeSet page once every 
six months and see what's coming.  For the release of 24 (changes not 
yet final):
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/24/ChangeSet

But generally, Free Software is a participation culture, where "Free" 
refers to liberty, not commerce.  You don't get to consume the goods for 
free, and also dictate your needs to the developers. If your employer 
needs features that the developers aren't currently working on, it needs 
to participate in development.  Maybe that means paying a developer.

On 12/09/2015 11:45 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> I'm sure it's *far* too much work for, say, the fedora development
team to
> put out once a quarter a notice to upstream, and maybe CentOS, Scientific
> Linux, and whatever other main user groups to inform them of major
> changes, and see the feedback....
Someone just needs to spend the time to do it.  So who is that someone?  
The Fedora team already has their hands full; or is the Fedora team 
supposed to allocate already scarce volunteer resources to handle the 
needs of CentOS users?  (Red Hat likely already has one or more liaisons 
of this sort with the needs of Red Hat's customers in mind).

No, it seems to me that a suitably motivated CentOS user needs to 
scratch this itch; and, no, I am not volunteering, as I've followed 
Fedora before......and just simply cannot give the time to it at this 
point in time in my life.

So I shouldn't really complain, either, when a feature I use was removed 
way back then or a feature I would never use was added way back then, 
when I am getting many thousands of man-hours worth of work for free.  
If I want the right to complain, I need to ante up, either with money 
(and I did purchase and do annually renew my RHEL subscription) or with 
time (and I have done that, too, both as a Red Hat beta tester (prior to 
the Enterprise Linux / Fedora Core 'split') and by maintaining the 
PostgreSQL RPMs as a volunteer for five years, which is a far costlier 
thing to do!).  IMHO, of course.

So who wants to be the CentOS-Users to Fedora liaison, likely to be one 
of the most thankless jobs on the planet?

On 9 Dec 2015 9:07 p.m., "Lamar Owen" <lowen at pari.edu>
wrote:
>
> No, it seems to me that a suitably motivated CentOS user needs to scratch
this itch; and, no, I am not volunteering, as I've followed Fedora
before......and just simply cannot give the time to it at this point in
time in my life.
>
<snip>
>
> So who wants to be the CentOS-Users to Fedora liaison, likely to be one
of the most thankless jobs on the planet?
>
>
I'm an active Fedora packager and yet I dare say Mark would hate me as
liaison for I find the changes in EL7 most refreshing and look forward to
bring able to make better use of them in due course ;)

But I really do question whether someone in this industry is really not
able to spend 30 minutes or so every six months checking changes for
anything interesting.

And frankly if one isn't willing to get either get a subscription and
feedback as a paying customer or to get involved with the upstream sources
then no one does not have say in direction and one shouldn't be surprised
by that.

If it was a democracy with a vote on every possible choice then we'd never
get anywhere given the time to carry out such a survey and the vast
differences in opinions.

No, as the Debian folks say it is a meritocracy instead and those who get
stuck in and actively discuss at the right time provide the influence on
what happens next.