Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:06:56PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Martin, Branden and myself have all been trying to address the original issue as DPL So it's taking three mandates, three years, and it can't be done? Why not? How can the DPL not get something done by his delegates? What purpose does our constitution serve if we can have people ignoring it for years with no penalty whatsoever?! messages like the one beginning this thread don't help, Perhaps I agree with the *concrete* example, where one intricate problem was cited as the sole reason for a change. However, if there is also any implication that that complaints in general don't help, and I infer that from the whole context, then I'll have to repeat what I wrote before: that is a defeatist attitude, and the *wrong* attitude in the organization that has a thousand members. It's just untenable! It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise, acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in return. If that's you please mail me privately, probably at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Doing anything in private conversations kills any transparency that we might have hoped to have, and will ultimately not fix the problem. -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
Bill Allombert wrote: I could add to Aurelien list that I really miss the hability to use madison for my release work since the end of November and I still wait for a DSA answer on that issue. `Status of GNOME in Debian`[1] is in no way critical but has been an useful tool to inform users of progress. It depends on madison. I didn't nag DSA about it but I am interested in answers nevertheless. Frederic [1] http://www.0d.be/debian/debian-gnome-2.16-status.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
Andreas Schuldei [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: bill, this idea was investigated in detail and disregarded, as This looks like a personal message sent to a list in error. that person would basicly have the job to nag the people doing the job without being able to do any productive work. Why? The DSA communications assistant could have the job of checking the mail archive and/or activity logs and replying to the enquirer with the current status of whatever task they're interested in. They need not have the job of nagging current DSA. It seems like the main complaint is not being able to tell whether a mail to DSA arrives and never getting useful replies. If one considers appointing a DSA nagging assistant instead, then of course it's not worth doing! It seems to be miss the point, though. The problem is insufficient communication, not insufficient nagging. Regards, -- MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Somerset, England. Work/Laborejo: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ IRC/Jabber/SIP: on request/peteble. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If one considers appointing a DSA nagging assistant instead, then of course it's not worth doing! It seems to be miss the point, though. The problem is insufficient communication, not insufficient nagging. How, exactly, will that help the fact that new buildds are not integrated in a timely manner (though this is not as much a DSA task as one of the wanna-build admin)? Saying Nothing has happened yet is not really fixing the problem. Marc -- Fachbegriffe der Informatik - Einfach erklärt 276: SMP Fehlfunktion bei mehr als einer CPU. (nach Holger Veit) pgpcFIF0BxVQY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:58:50PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Technically, fixing security vulnerabilities in packages used by on d.o machines is an answer to your question. There's been some discussion recently about help potentially being wanted on that score for etch backports. And I'll repeat it here :) http://blog.halon.org.uk/2006/12/16#etch_fixtit Neil -- moray hm, maybe wearing a black t-shirt while dusting my bedroom for the first time in years wasn't such a good idea signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Fri, Dec 22, 2006, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If one considers appointing a DSA nagging assistant instead, then of course it's not worth doing! It seems to be miss the point, though. The problem is insufficient communication, not insufficient nagging. How, exactly, will that help the fact that new buildds are not integrated in a timely manner (though this is not as much a DSA task as one of the wanna-build admin)? Saying Nothing has happened yet is not really fixing the problem. Seems pretty obvious to me. If the progress is public, people are made aware of the progress. If people are aware of the progress, people don't feel the urge to ask DSA what is going on. If DSA is not nagged by foolish peons, more work gets done. Sam. -- echo 'Nina Reiser 180133' | md5sum | tr -d cf0-9 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:06:56PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: I would greatly appreciate it if people would help the process by supporting the efforts of the DSA team consistently rather than heaping praise on them when they fix compromises and scorn on them the rest of the time. It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise, acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in return. If that's you please mail me privately, probably at [EMAIL PROTECTED] As I suggested in my DPL platform, having someone reading debian-admin who has no DSA priviledge but handle communication issues could help (by providing status and ETA, answering already asked questions, etc.) without interfering with the current DSA work. Cheers, -- Bill. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
* Bill Allombert ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [061221 15:12]: As I suggested in my DPL platform, having someone reading debian-admin who has no DSA priviledge but handle communication issues could help (by providing status and ETA, answering already asked questions, etc.) without interfering with the current DSA work. ironyoh, that is a new thought!/irony bill, this idea was investigated in detail and disregarded, as that person would basicly have the job to nag the people doing the job without being able to do any productive work. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:01:47PM +0100, Andreas Schuldei wrote: * Bill Allombert ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [061221 15:12]: As I suggested in my DPL platform, having someone reading debian-admin who has no DSA priviledge but handle communication issues could help (by providing status and ETA, answering already asked questions, etc.) without interfering with the current DSA work. ironyoh, that is a new thought!/irony I did claim the opposite. bill, this idea was investigated in detail and disregarded, as I was not aware of that. Maybe the forum were that discussion occured also need someone to handle communication issues ? that person would basicly have the job to nag the people doing the job without being able to do any productive work. Only if you do not regard communicating as productive work. If three people ask the same thing and one DSA answer the first time, this person will be able to answer the two next time. Maybe this person will reach a higher level of clue than the average developer and be able to answer some other times without nagging the DSA. Anyway it would be better than doing nothing. Cheers, Bill. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:06:56PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 08:38:33PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Would you, as DPL, please try to address the original issue? Martin, Branden and myself have all been trying to address the original issue as DPL; messages like the one beginning this thread don't help, and setting up unofficial autobuilders when you can't work out how to get an official one accepted are seriously counterproductive. There's not much to work out, really. The procedure is set the host up, send mail with SSH key, IP address, and similar information to the right person, cross fingers, and hopefully it'll be accepted sometime, otherwise don't expect a reply. While this works, I cannot say that it's never been frustrating to me either, and at times I myself have also been _very_ tempted to just bypass the official procedure and install some hack so that the box would at least build packages. Especially at times when we're backlogged---and, surprise, I don't often set up a box when we're _not_ backlogged. Occasionally, this type of frustration was also at the root of Ingo's Serious problems with mr Troup mail[1]. There has been an offer for an arm buildd host that outspeeds all four current arm buildd machines together since a few _months_. This has been told to a number of people involved with the arm autobuilders, including James; yet nothing has been done with them so far, and there are outstanding problems with arm as a result. I don't think such delays, with no explanation whatsoever, are acceptable behaviour (they _would_ be acceptable behaviour if there was an explanation; but so far I've seen none). I can honestly understand that Aurelien gets frustrated when nothing happens. I would greatly appreciate it if people would help the process by supporting the efforts of the DSA team consistently rather than heaping praise on them when they fix compromises and scorn on them the rest of the time. I would greatly appreciate it if people in the DSA team would understand that communication is 75% of their job. I think they would buy themselves a whole lot of goodwill if they would just let people know why there are delays sometimes. It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise, acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in return. It would also be helpful if people would get the ability to do more stuff themselves. I'm not saying you should give everyone root everywhere, but, e.g., if most of the work I do for Debian involves m68k buildd maintenance (check), it's strange that I don't get to have access to P-a-s or wanna-build.debian.org[2]. If that's you please mail me privately, probably at [EMAIL PROTECTED] It might be me, but before I say so I'd appreciate a bit more details on what, exactly, these 'significant but boring' tasks are. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/02/msg8.html [2] I've been literally told by Ryan that that won't happen (when I asked for the latter, not the former) -- Lo-lan-do Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Sun, Dec 17, 2006 at 09:06:01PM +0100, Aurelien Jarno wrote: It is known among debian developers that the Debian System Administration Team (aka DSA or [EMAIL PROTECTED]) is not really responsive. So apparently this complaint was immediately followed up by setting up an emulated autobuilder not synced in with the regular buildd.debian.org stuff [0]. This resulted in James and Ryan adding a quick hack to disable arm uploads, which have remained disabled over the past few days, apparently with some of the deferred uploads from the official autobuilder getting overwritten by later uploads by Aurelian's autobuilder. This was brought to my attention as a result of the release team trying to get a fixed version of attr into unstable; for the time being, I've re-enabled arm uploads signed by James Troup, Ryan Murray, and Martin Michlmayr, as well as (hopefully) security uploads. Everyone else will get a REJECT saying not signed by authorised uploader. That means contrib and non-free builds for arm will probably all be REJECTed. This will stay this way until someone in ftpmaster is confident arm builds signed by other people are likely to be reliable and the check is removed. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 02:22:43AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Sun, Dec 17, 2006 at 09:06:01PM +0100, Aurelien Jarno wrote: It is known among debian developers that the Debian System Administration Team (aka DSA or [EMAIL PROTECTED]) is not really responsive. So apparently this complaint was immediately followed up by setting up an emulated autobuilder not synced in with the regular buildd.debian.org stuff [0]. This resulted in James and Ryan adding a quick hack to disable arm uploads, which have remained disabled over the past few days, apparently with some of the deferred uploads from the official autobuilder getting overwritten by later uploads by Aurelian's autobuilder. [..] This will stay this way until someone in ftpmaster is confident arm builds signed by other people are likely to be reliable and the check is removed. Was there something technically wrong with the arm debs that Aurelien uploaded? Simon. PS you're missing your footnote. -- [ Life... Don't talk to me about life... - Marvin] signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 04:27:41PM +, Simon Huggins wrote: So apparently this complaint was immediately followed up by setting up an emulated autobuilder not synced in with the regular buildd.debian.org stuff [0]. [...] PS you're missing your footnote. [0] http://blog.aurel32.net/?p=33 Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 02:22:43AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: On Sun, Dec 17, 2006 at 09:06:01PM +0100, Aurelien Jarno wrote: It is known among debian developers that the Debian System Administration Team (aka DSA or [EMAIL PROTECTED]) is not really responsive. So apparently this complaint was immediately followed up by setting up an emulated autobuilder not synced in with the regular buildd.debian.org stuff [0]. This is an ad hominem attack to avoid dealing with the real issues. I could add to Aurelien list that I really miss the hability to use madison for my release work since the end of November and I still wait for a DSA answer on that issue. Cheers, -- Bill. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
Anthony Towns wrote: On Sun, Dec 17, 2006 at 09:06:01PM +0100, Aurelien Jarno wrote: It is known among debian developers that the Debian System Administration Team (aka DSA or [EMAIL PROTECTED]) is not really responsive. So apparently this complaint was immediately followed up by setting up an Red herring. Please deal with the stated problem rather than changing the subject, not that I expect you to. -- Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bush admitted to violating FISA and said he was proud of it. So why isn't he in prison yet?... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: On Sun, Dec 17, 2006 at 09:06:01PM +0100, Aurelien Jarno wrote: It is known among debian developers that the Debian System Administration Team (aka DSA or [EMAIL PROTECTED]) is not really responsive. So apparently this complaint was immediately followed up by setting up an emulated autobuilder not synced in with the regular buildd.debian.org stuff [0]. This resulted in James and Ryan adding a quick hack to disable arm uploads, which have remained disabled over the past few days, apparently with some of the deferred uploads from the official autobuilder getting overwritten by later uploads by Aurelian's autobuilder. It's unfortunate that this has escalated in that way, all the way around. ARM support in Debian will suffer because of it, good will will suffer because of it, and the whole project will be worse off. It seems like this escalation is the direct result of a lack of communication leading to frustrating from people trying to get work done whose work was being blocked. Would you, as DPL, please try to address the original issue? I don't care if that's done via changes to DSA or not (and certainly any such changes should be only done after discussion with the DSA team), but this is a serious problem and it needs to be fixed, and it needed to be fixed *before* frustration resulted in this unfortunate escalation of tensions between people who are all trying to do the right thing for the project. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 08:38:33PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Would you, as DPL, please try to address the original issue? Martin, Branden and myself have all been trying to address the original issue as DPL; messages like the one beginning this thread don't help, and setting up unofficial autobuilders when you can't work out how to get an official one accepted are seriously counterproductive. I would greatly appreciate it if people would help the process by supporting the efforts of the DSA team consistently rather than heaping praise on them when they fix compromises and scorn on them the rest of the time. It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise, acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in return. If that's you please mail me privately, probably at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Wednesday 20 December 2006 22:06, Anthony Towns wrote: It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise, acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in return. If that's you please mail me privately, probably at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anthony, I spend part of my time maintaining a few dozen Linux systems in a variety of flavors. I see that Debian also maintains a few dozen Linux systems[1]. There are people around who maintain hundreds or even thousands of Linux systems. 1) Approximately how many person hours per month are commited to Debian System Administration by the current team? 2) Approximately how many additional person hours per month are required? 3) What kind of useful non-automated admin tasks can be accomplished without privileges? 4) What kind of Debian Project unprivileged admin tasks are so secret that discussion thereof must occur in private? Thanks for your time, --Mike Bird [1] http://db.debian.org/machines.cgi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
Mike Bird [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wednesday 20 December 2006 22:06, Anthony Towns wrote: It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise, acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in return. If that's you please mail me privately, probably at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anthony, I spend part of my time maintaining a few dozen Linux systems in a variety of flavors. I see that Debian also maintains a few dozen Linux systems[1]. There are people around who maintain hundreds or even thousands of Linux systems. [questions snipped] I'm not sure this helps. The difficulty of administering sytsems depends mostly on the complexity and frequency of tasks needed rather than the number of systems. It can *easily* take longer to maintain a half-dozen machines than 500 depending on what the systems are used for. And a lot of public discussion of just what has to be done, very unfortunately, tends to devolve into debates about whether this or that should be done by people who aren't in a position to help one way or the other. Bikeshed painting is a very common phenomenon on public mailing lists. I'm grateful for Anthony posting a direct call for volunteers (and debian-devel-announce might be an even better place for such a call). I can't respond to it personally since I just picked up a Debian Policy delegation and don't yet know how much time I will have free. If you can, please do. Everyone involved in this has the best interests of Debian at heart. I firmly believe that. Everyone is trying to move the project forward as best they can, the best way to help is to share the load of the work that needs to be done, and the more people are involved in doing the work, the better the communication will get *naturally*. I don't think it serves any more purpose to get angry at people being frustrated than it does to be angry at the existing DSA team. What we need is to get more people involved, spread the load, and reduce the stress, tension, and lack of good will. Anthony's earlier messages on this thread didn't, to me, seem to be directly helping that. His most recent message was, again in my opinion, better. It provides some direction forward that isn't just rebuking people for being understandably frustrated and trying to break roadblocks by force of will. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 10:43:48PM -0800, Mike Bird wrote: 4) What kind of Debian Project unprivileged admin tasks are so secret that discussion thereof must occur in private? The issue isn't that secrecy is required; just that discussing these things in public on Debian fora turns into a grandstanding exercise or a lot of bikeshedding, neither of which help resolve the initial concern. Technically, fixing security vulnerabilities in packages used by on d.o machines is an answer to your question. There's been some discussion recently about help potentially being wanted on that score for etch backports. Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:06:56PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: I would greatly appreciate it if people would help the process by supporting the efforts of the DSA team consistently rather than heaping praise on them when they fix compromises and scorn on them the rest of the time. It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise, acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in return. This is once again _THE_ _ONE_ classical Debian problem: The people in key positions don't communiate. I have never seen DSA say that they need help. They do not say in which fields they need help, they do not say what they're doing. Nobody wants to submit random patches to a black hole to have a tiny fraction of the patches applied. Delegates, communicate. Say what you need, say what hurts you. People are going to help then. Greetings Marc -- - Marc Haber | I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | lose things.Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 621 72739834 Nordisch by Nature | How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 621 72739835 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team
On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:06:56PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: I would greatly appreciate it if people would help the process by supporting the efforts of the DSA team consistently rather than heaping praise on them when they fix compromises and scorn on them the rest of the time. It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise, acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in return. If that's you please mail me privately, probably at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Oh, given the no rights/priveleges part, that's probably applicable to non-DDs too, if there are any reading who are interested. If that's you, please also provide a gpg key id, and some evidence that you're a real person, not a pseudonymous committee of AIs at Microsoft Labs or whatever, if possible. :) Cheers, aj signature.asc Description: Digital signature
