[NCUC E-team] Linux admin stuff

[William Drake]

Hi

Many thanks David for stepping up to help with this.  I don’t mean to keep harping on it but I really think a distributed and coordinated approach is the way to go here.

It’d be good to fold Tapani’s various emails listing functions to be performed into one doc on the website and nail down the division of labor, who’s responsible for which pieces.  

It’d also be good to have an e-team coordinator for 2014…

I had dinner the other night with Olivier and he was really surprised when I explained to him that these and other administrative functions are all being performed by member volunteers rather than staff (At Large has five staffers, although he grumbled not all are full time).  And I do think it is really crazy….in the past when NCUC small people didn’t want staff touching anything, but that doesn’t make sense to me now, I can’t see how staff doing stuff like this would compromise our political independence and turn us into poodles.  Rob H. has said ICANN is now prepared to provide a part-time staffer for admin support (other SGs and constituencies asking for it, and more budget available) and I really think we should take them up on it in the new year.  To start though we need to list all the bits we’d be asking them to do, and to think about the model of “oversight” we’d want to ensure that it works without friction.  

Let’s try to free ourselves up from the time consuming hassle junk so we can focus on more interesting matters, i.e. policy…

Bill


On Dec 18, 2013, at 4:28 AM, David Cake <davecake at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> On 17 Dec 2013, at 8:40 pm, Tapani Tarvainen <ncuc at TAPANI.TARVAINEN.INFO> wrote:
> 
>> To complete the series, a few words about Linux system administration.
>> 
>> Once the system is up and running there is not much that
>> needs to be done regularly.
>> 
>> At the very least, however, someone should read root's email and
>> react to problems. It is redirected simply by /root/.forward
>> and now comes to me - I want someone to take this over ASAP.
>> (Bill, sorry, but if nobody volunteers I'll direct it to you
>> and let you find someone else to take over at your leisure.)
> 
> 	I'd prefer some with more time to focus on this takes over, but if no one can be found it would probably be better to bounce this to me than Bill (or perhaps both). 
> 
>> Splitting this among several people would also be possible
>> (as long as they don't both assume the other(s) will take care
>> of everything...)
>> 
>> In particular disk space is likely to run out sometime soon(ish).
>> Also, RAM is fairly low and some services (especially etherpad)
>> tend to die when they run out of memory (and need to be restarted).
> 	
> 	better to upgrade them now than wait until forced to do so - much cheaper in time spent to simply add space to a working system. 
> 
>> System software updates don't need much attention, security
>> patches are installed automatically, other updates can be
>> installed easily enough (apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade)
>> but generally aren't urgent (a couple of times a year is enough).
> 
> 	Id be happy to take on doing this when I do my own systems, but someone doing more regular system admin work than me would be better. 
> 
>> Wordpress needs to be upgraded separately, as it has been
>> manually installed (system-supplied version being too old)
>> and fairly heavily customized. Skipping a version or two
>> is generally no big deal, but running old version for years
>> would probably not be a good idea.
> 
> 	Wordpress really needs someone with some expertise who uses it regularly - there are periodic security problems etc. 
> 
>> Upgrading the operating system (Ubuntu LTS) to new release
>> should be done every two years on the average, but it is
>> generally not urgent (old versions are supported several years
>> anyway). The process is nowadays usually very easy, especially
>> on servers, but of course it's recommended to start by checking
>> that backups are up to date (including databases).
> 
> 	Tapani maybe makes it sound a little easier than I have found it to be - there are usually a few things that get quite fiddly, but it certainly isn't super difficult. 
>> 
>> Backups are now taken to two locations, in the 2nd disk
>> at Gandi and in my personal backup server. I may leave
>> the latter running for the time being, as it costs me
>> basically nothing, and it's only for real emergencies
>> (including a failure of the Gandi backup).
>> The only care and feeding the former generally needs is making
>> sure it doesn't run out of disk space, and it will start sending
>> emails to root when that happens (easiest solution is
>> purchasing more disk space from Gandi, although some could
>> be saved by reducing backup frequency).
>> Backups are done with rsnapshot and can be restored
>> by simply copying from /backup/...
> 
> 	I know rsnapshot fairly well. If it ever becomes an issue I'll be able to help. I'm inclined to, as Tapani says, just leave it alone and get more disk if we need it. 
> 
> 	Thanks for all your work, Tapani. 
> 
> 	Cheers
> 
> 		Tapani
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**********************************************************
William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
  Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
  University of Zurich, Switzerland
Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, 
  ICANN, www.ncuc.org
william.drake at uzh.ch (w), wjdrake at gmail.com (h),
  www.williamdrake.org
***********************************************************

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