Devuan meet Wed Jan 24, 2018 @20:30 UTC 🔼

Pad is here: https://pad.dyne.org/code/#/1/view/AURkpJH4YW8sNB1UtGQ81A/oFfFQLn32QTpTx51VYERYKeI6V79fsJ5CUUpQj04MIg/

Meet here: https://vdc.dyne.org/devuan

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Present: blinkdog, Centurion_Dan, fsmithred, golinux, jaromil, KatolaZ, msi, parazyd

Agenda 🔼

Old Business 🔼

  • Postmortem on the server failure.
  • (jaromil) it was a temporary deactivation by digital ocean due to credit card expiration I did pay back the debt via paypal upon notification and its now back up meanwhile katolaz and rrq and daniel rotated the domain to the new hosting so we now sync the mirrors and check the sums and then destroy the droplet this will also save us some money and complete the migration to new infra

Old Actions 🔼

New Business 🔼

New Actions: 🔼

  • [ASCII] add pkgmaster to buildhosts (ascii)
  • [ASCII] test mini.iso as much as possible and report issues (ascii)
  • [ASCII] rebuild
  • xfce4-panel,
  • xfce4-session,
  • desktop-base
  • ascii-theme
  • policykit-1 (retry binding to another node?)
  • align configs for all build-hosts (ascii)
  • [website]@Evilham add to the the mirror list script:
  • mirror merlin.fit.vutbr.cz supports HTTP,HTTPS,RSYNC (update
  • mirror tochlab.net supports HTTP,HTTPS,FTP (check webpage)
  • next-task: work at proper Devuan installer images (with parazyd,
  • next-task: solve the issue with policykit to allow elogind testing
  • implemented suite-dependent pkg search at info.devuan.mine.nu (alpha, unofficial, still to be polished)
  • its all templated and ready for stylesheet customisation (volunteers: welcome to skin it)

roundrobin 🔼

  • we may want to move files also on a rr thing
  • but in principle we need to automate the rr on the mirrors with checks and to do that we assessed with nextime is easy with a cname on a domain that we control with gitzone in place of OVH dns servers, so we can automate and maintain over git this is a TODO of relatively low priority now but we do have a plan

good news: d-i [ASCII] 🔼

https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan/dists/ascii/main/installer-amd64/20180124%2Bdevuan1/images/

* the installer works on mini.iso right now: packages were fixed enough to have it running this is a great achievement getting closer to the ascii release what needs to be fixed now is tasksel for the desktop installation if choosing xfce or any other desktop the installer fails only without any tasksel it runs succesfully

msi 🔼

  • Wiki platform
  • Switch from DokuWiki on friendsofdevuan.org to MediaWiki on Devuan's own infrastructure (proposed location: wiki.devuan.org)
    • coordinate with Devuan infra maintainers (jaromil, dan, rrq)
    • maybe put it on the same server as the d1g forum
  *-> dan can do that
    * find a reasonable migration path (blinkdog)
      * Need to migrate Wiki content; possibly preserving structure (and authoring history)
      * Need to migrate discussion content
  • Sort out the current wiki before migrating?
  • Questionable content can be moved to a User: page subspace
  • (chillfan) Will repost any content that came from my wiki rather than versions on fod. Update some parts of FOD, repost newer versions of pages from my wiki, improve what is there already. Work mostly on docs useful for the new platform.
  • Documentation formats
  • Official documentation that is ready for use should be made available in the following formats:
    • PDF
    • HTML (for online reading)
    • HTML (zip-ed, single file(?) -- for downloading and offline
    • plain text (single file -- for offline reading in non-graphical
  • Getting rid of HTML e-mail on Devuan mailing lists (Proposal)
  • Put notices on the list info pages
      1. like: "Please do not send HTML-formatted messages (to this list). They will be rejected/not be forwarded (to the list) (if they can't be reformatted to plain text)."
  • If HTML e-mail gets sent to a Devuan list, try to reformat it to plain text and if that doesn't work, reject it. (This is how OpenBSD does it: https://www.openbsd.org/mail.html)
  • Configure a rejection message for that case.
decisions to be solved / debated from the documentation meeting 🔼

documentation versioning scheme

  • Don't entangle the version numbers of release-specific manuals with Devuan's release version
  • (golinux) I think they should align to prevent confusion which release is applicable
  • (msi) I disagree. They should be kept strictly seperate exactly to avoid confusion. The release they refer to would always be stated in the Manual's name. See point 2.1 in my notes below for more on
    1. Short version: The development process and releases of the Devuan Manual and the system itself cannot be forced to happen in
    2. Thus, entaglement of their version numbers is not advisable. (Keep it simple, stupid.)
  • fsmithred suggests calling versions of the Manual "revisions" to avoid confusion
*-> keeping Devuan release versions and Manual revisions seperate
  • Devuan's official docs should be presented at doc.devuan.org, with devuan.org/doc(umentation) as an alias to that
  • devuan.org/os/documentation exists, but maybe should be moved (Ask golinux.)
    • (golinux) Basic essential documentation should stay on devuan.org/os/documentation but content could be expanded or tweaked and have a prominent reference to the wiki once it is fleshed out a bit more
    • (msi) I don't see the point of keeping it around. It's content could be integrated into the doc.devuan.org landing page. Also, I wasn't able to find a way to get there from devuan.org's navigation bar. Plus: The exact same content is also on devuan.org/os. But if you really want to keep it, so be it. (Structure of the website is another discussion.)
*-> not discussed
  • Licensing
  • (blinkdog) As a possible alternative, the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license would allow us to do a GNU-like documentation share-and-share-alike. You have to maintain contributor history (which the wiki does automatically), but anybody is free to fork and remix the documentation, so long as they let others do the same. It may be a good alternative to the GFDL that preserves the goals, but in a more understandable and straightforward manner.
  • (msi) However, we shouldn't enforce a particular license, but let the authors choose, as long as things are compatible -- at least they should provide one (identical) version of the document under a license compatible with the main documentation license Devuan uses (which is the one being used for the manual).
  • (msi) Devuan's main doc license should be recommended, though.
*-> * Going with CC-BY-SA 4.0 as the sole license for the Devuan Manual
      * Copyright holder of the Manual shall be Dyne.org Foundation
      * List authors with year(s) of contribution
    * There shall be one license per individual document (Manual, Guide, Howto)
    * Authors of guides and howtos may freely choose a license different from but compatible to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license for their contribution.
      * Devuan will, however, recommend CC-BY-SA 4.0 and possibly also make recommendations for authors who want to or have to use another license.
      * (msi) Apply CC-BY-SA 4.0 to all wiki content by default or not?
    * Try to limit the number of individual documents to a managable amount (for pepole using Devuan's docs)

Examples of inspiring handbooks

blinkdog 🔼

  • Will be late to the meeting; work meeting scheduling conflict
  • devuan-dev notes - will take care as "Meet Secretary"

rrq 🔼

  • might be unable to attend
  • made some progress on automated iso install tester
  * (jaromil) is it made with packer? I have some scripts from the first SDK write with it
    * rrq: no; I'm not looking at the building of isos but testing them. I want a test rig that allows unattended regression like tests of installation media, running through a selection of scenarios (eg with network, without network, with DE, without DE etc. etc.) I'm thinking this test rig has screen capture as well as allowing direct view/review, and it allows envirnment variations (esp dhcp or not, caching proxy or not, etc.) as well as hardware variations as well "personal choice" scenarios. So far I'm relying on Xvfb, ffmpeg, dnsmasq, apt-cacher-ng, qemu, xdotool and xwd plus of course standard commands. I've been focussing on the general process control, to start a test scenario with its selected bits and pieces within a general framework, and then to have it terminate nicely without leaving residue other than the test logs and screen capture (plus the installed disk image[s]). There is also the issue of determining success or perhaps level of success for a test run. I suppose the first is that it exhausts its storyline, which should end in a graceful termination, but then there might be additional analysis required to verify that the installed system is as good as is intended.

KatolaZ 🔼

  • updated all the d-i components to stretch versions
  • worked on installer images with parazyd --> preliminary (bare, incomplete, basic, crude) mini.iso install images are available and "work for me!(TM)" (i.e., they can be used to install un-themed versions of ascii)
  • with rrq and Centurion_Dan, moved files.devuan.org to a ganeti
  1. All good. Documentation added to infra-doc.
  • helped out with the elogind+consolekit+policykit clusterfuck. Hope it leads somewhere nice. We have the packages in experimental. Irrwhan has put together a document + test image (We still need to align policykit there)
  • implemented other consistency checks for mirrors in deb.devuan.org
  • amended experimental priority
  • implemented suite-dependent pkg search at info.devuan.mine.nu (alpha, unofficial, still to be polished) its all templated and ready for stylesheet customisation (volunteers: welcome to skin it)
  • setup temporary backups for dak-db
  • next-task: work at proper Devuan installer images (with parazyd,
  • next-task: solve the issue with policykit to allow elogind testing

golinux 🔼

  • Evilham and I will be restructing devuan.org in the coming weeks.