infrastructure
LOGS
16:01:40 <petebuffon[m]> #startmeeting Infrastructure (2021-07-29)
16:01:40 <zodbot> Meeting started Thu Jul 29 16:01:40 2021 UTC.
16:01:40 <zodbot> This meeting is logged and archived in a public location.
16:01:40 <zodbot> The chair is petebuffon[m]. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
16:01:40 <zodbot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic.
16:01:40 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'infrastructure_(2021-07-29)'
16:01:42 <petebuffon[m]> #meetingname infrastructure
16:01:42 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'infrastructure'
16:01:56 <petebuffon[m]> #chair nirik siddharthvipul mobrien zlopez pingou bodanel dtometzki jnsamyak computerkid
16:01:56 <zodbot> Current chairs: bodanel computerkid dtometzki jnsamyak mobrien nirik petebuffon[m] pingou siddharthvipul zlopez
16:02:00 <petebuffon[m]> #info Agenda is at: https://board.net/p/fedora-infra
16:02:07 <petebuffon[m]> #info About our team: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/cpe/
16:02:07 <nirik> morning everyone!
16:02:10 <petebuffon[m]> #topic greetings!
16:02:12 <eddiejennings> o/
16:02:13 <eddiejennings> .hi
16:02:14 <zodbot> eddiejennings: eddiejennings 'Eddie Jennings, Jr.' <eddie@eddiejennings.net>
16:02:19 <darknao> \o
16:02:24 <bcapper> hey
16:02:24 <petebuffon[m]> How's everybody doing today?
16:02:26 <darknao> .hi
16:02:27 <zodbot> darknao: darknao 'Francois Andrieu' <naolwen@gmail.com>
16:02:40 <eddiejennings> Busy, but well.
16:02:41 <petebuffon[m]> .hi petebuffon
16:02:42 <ekidney> o/
16:02:42 <zodbot> petebuffon[m]: Sorry, but you don't exist
16:02:48 <jnsamyak> .hi jnsamyak
16:02:49 <zodbot> jnsamyak: jnsamyak 'Samyak Jain' <samyak.jn11@gmail.com>
16:02:49 <mkonecny> .hello zlopez
16:02:51 <zodbot> mkonecny: zlopez 'Michal Konečný' <michal.konecny@psmail.xyz>
16:02:58 <petebuffon[m]> .hello petebuffon
16:02:59 <zodbot> petebuffon[m]: petebuffon 'Peter Buffon' <pabuffon@gmail.com>
16:03:00 <eddiejennings> I want the work day to end so I can get back to exam prep :P
16:03:26 <lenkaseg> .hello lenkaseg
16:03:27 <zodbot> lenkaseg: lenkaseg 'Lenka Segura' <lenka@sepu.cz>
16:03:44 <sysoplab> .hi
16:03:45 <zodbot> sysoplab: sysoplab 'Sean Zipperer' <sysop+fedora@sysoplab.com>
16:03:54 <sysoplab> Sorry missed last week.  Am here this one though.
16:04:14 <petebuffon[m]> #topic New folks introductions
16:04:23 <petebuffon[m]> #info This is a place where people who are interested in Fedora Infrastructure can introduce themselves
16:04:26 <petebuffon[m]> #info Getting Started Guide: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/GettingStarted
16:04:43 <mobrien> .hi
16:04:44 <zodbot> mobrien: mobrien 'Mark O'Brien' <markobri@redhat.com>
16:04:54 <mobrien> not a new folk, just late :)
16:05:16 <pqp> so I haven't introduced myself on the mailing list, but I thought I'd say hi here. :) really interested in learning more about Fedora's infrastructure!
16:05:19 <petebuffon[m]> no worries, :-) Anyone new here?
16:05:54 <mkonecny> pqp: Welcome
16:06:03 <nirik> welcome pqp
16:06:11 <eddiejennings> pqp: Welcome aboard!
16:06:27 <petebuffon[m]> pqp: Welcome
16:06:36 <pqp> (also interested in joining the fi-apprentice group!)
16:07:28 <jnsamyak> pqp: Hey welcome o/
16:07:44 <sysoplab> hi pqp
16:08:11 <lenkaseg> Hi pqp!
16:08:19 <pqp> .hi
16:08:20 <zodbot> pqp: pqp 'Patrick Pace' <pqp@pondero.org>
16:08:29 <ekidney> hi pqp!
16:08:52 <petebuffon[m]> #topic Next chair
16:08:56 <petebuffon[m]> #topic Next chair
16:08:57 <petebuffon[m]> #info magic eight ball says:
16:08:57 <petebuffon[m]> #info chair 2021-08-05 - jnsamyak
16:08:57 <petebuffon[m]> #info chair 2021-08-12 -
16:09:18 <petebuffon[m]> whoops double topic
16:10:31 <nirik> I can do the 12th... haven't taken a turn in a while. ;)
16:11:11 <petebuffon[m]> Great
16:11:12 <eddiejennings> I'm willing to try my first hand at it on the 19th. :D
16:11:51 <petebuffon[m]> #info chair 2021-08-12 - nirik
16:11:51 <petebuffon[m]> #info chair 2021-08-19 - eddiejennings
16:12:38 * petebuffon[m] < https://libera.ems.host/_matrix/media/r0/download/libera.chat/18fb5448c55ffd9c940bb36c5aaa665ddb909c60/message.txt >
16:13:30 <nirik> those didn't turn out right on irc. ;) You may have to enter them a line at a time and pause a sec between
16:14:16 <petebuffon[m]> Okay gotcha, I am using the matrix bridge
16:14:35 <petebuffon[m]> #topic announcements and information
16:14:35 <mkonecny> Are the CFP for Nest still opened?
16:14:44 <petebuffon[m]> #info CPE Infra&Releng EU-hours team has a Monday through Thursday 30 minute meeting going through tickets at 1030 Europe/paris in #centos-meeting
16:14:50 <petebuffon[m]> #info CPE Infra&Releng NA-hours team has a Monday through Thursday 30 minute meeting going through tickets at 1800 UTC in #fedora-meeting-3
16:14:54 <petebuffon[m]> #info If your team wants support from the Fedora Program Management Team, file an isssue: https://pagure.io/fedora-pgm/pgm_team/issues?template=support_request
16:15:00 <petebuffon[m]> #info nest with Fedora CFP is open for one day! https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/announcing-dates-cfp-for-nest-with-fedora/ (Aug 5th-8th)
16:15:07 <petebuffon[m]> #info Nest with Fedora registration is open: https://hopin.com/events/nest-with-fedora-2021
16:15:17 <mkonecny> The CFP were closed on 16th July
16:15:55 <petebuffon[m]> Right, I'll take that off
16:16:33 <petebuffon[m]> #topic Oncall
16:16:40 <petebuffon[m]> #info https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Oncall
16:16:43 <petebuffon[m]> #info mobrien is on call for 29-07-29 to 2021-08-05
16:16:54 <petebuffon[m]> #info darknao is on call for 2021-08-05 to 2021-08-12
16:17:29 <petebuffon[m]> Do we need another oncall volunteer?
16:17:45 <nirik> we can wait and get one next week if we like
16:18:02 <mkonecny> Who has oncall right now?
16:18:28 <nirik> .oncall
16:18:28 <zodbot> siddharthvipul is oncall. My normal hours are 0700 UTC to 1600 UTC Monday through Friday. If I do not answer or it is outside those hours, please file a ticket (https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issues)
16:19:01 <petebuffon[m]> #info Summary of last week: (from current oncall )
16:19:12 <mobrien> I think he is offline, I saw 2 pings he got this week
16:19:21 <mobrien> .oncalltakeeu
16:19:21 <zodbot> mobrien: Error: You don't have the alias.add capability. If you think that you should have this capability, be sure that you are identified before trying again. The 'whoami' command can tell you if you're identified.
16:19:30 <petebuffon[m]> #topic Monitoring discussion
16:19:37 <nirik> lets see...
16:19:45 <petebuffon[m]> #info https://nagios.fedoraproject.org/nagios
16:19:55 <petebuffon[m]> #info Go over existing out items and fix
16:20:25 <nirik> there's some more hosts showing down, but they are the ocp cluster that Saffronique is standing up... so we can ignore those for now.
16:21:05 <nirik> I did clean up a bunch of the 'swap-is-low' things by disabling that check on bare metal servers.
16:21:45 <nirik> but there's still some from time to time on vm's...
16:22:23 <mkonecny> Isn't it dangerous to disable the check on bare-metal?
16:22:35 <nirik> nope. the problem is this:
16:22:59 <nirik> Newer kernels prefer to swap out things and fill swap space when they are under pressure. There's tons of memory left however...
16:23:17 <nirik> so it just isn't a valid check anymore...
16:23:47 <mkonecny> What about swapping to RAM?
16:24:18 <nirik> thats not supported on rhel I don't think... on recent fedora its the default.
16:24:43 <mkonecny> Oh, those are RHEL machines
16:25:14 <nirik> yeah.
16:25:17 <mkonecny> On Fedora I don't have swap anymore, it's not even good to have it on the SSD
16:25:28 <nirik> ideally this check would be total memory (memory + swap) getting full.
16:25:38 <nirik> but nagios doesn't have a check like that.
16:26:17 <mkonecny> Do we want to leave nagios for bare metal in the future?
16:26:51 <nirik> I think we want to replace nagios entirely sometime... :)
16:27:21 <mkonecny> Nice
16:27:33 <nirik> but probibly thats an iniative.
16:27:38 <petebuffon[m]> Do you have an idea what you want to replace it with?
16:28:00 <nirik> zabbix has been talked about...
16:28:07 <sysoplab> I'm with mkonecny swap isn't really useful for much...Other than maybe hibernate which a server shouldn't do anyway and any relatively recent system that's not a server boots fast whether or not you use suspend/hibernate.
16:28:27 <mkonecny> I'm not sure if the current Monitoring & Metrics initiative will work on bare metal
16:29:06 <nirik> sysoplab: yeah, but also rhel suggests keeping some small amount of swap currently I think...
16:29:21 <nirik> mkonecny: it's not, the current iniative is just openshift.
16:29:26 <mkonecny> sysoplab: It had it's use in the past, but it's not really useful now
16:29:43 <mkonecny> nirik: Thanks for info
16:30:32 <petebuffon[m]> Alright are we ready to move onto the learning topic?
16:30:48 <eddiejennings> No :P
16:30:57 <mkonecny> There is one ready for today :-)
16:30:59 <petebuffon[m]> #topic Learning topic
16:31:15 <petebuffon[m]> #info 2021-07-29- eddiejennings, How to Get Into Scripting (bash / powershell)
16:31:15 <petebuffon[m]> eddiejennings take it away!
16:31:41 <nirik> nice!
16:32:41 <eddiejennings> Good afternoon, all :D  So this isn't intended to be technical talk of scripting languages, but more of a philosophical talk on how to get started.
16:32:56 <eddiejennings> Feel free to jump in with questions as I go along.
16:33:54 <petebuffon[m]> great
16:34:48 <eddiejennings> Being as this is a chatroom about IT infrastructure, one might assume that everyone here has dealt with scripting, but in the real world (at least in the Windows administration world), not everyone who manages infrastructure develops scripting skills.
16:35:36 <eddiejennings> When I've met folks who are resistant to scripting, one of the most common questions I'm asked is "Why script, when I can $describe_what_I_do_with_a_gui ?"
16:36:25 <eddiejennings> Usually the answer to this is because a script is usually faster and more easily repeatable.
16:36:36 <Southern_Gentlem> thus ansible
16:37:07 <eddiejennings> Southern_Gentlem: Exactly.
16:37:44 <eddiejennings> And in environments where there isn't full on automation tools like Ansible -- like every Windows enviornment I've been in, PowerShell is usually the answer.
16:38:24 <eddiejennings> So if you have a person who has decided "ok, you've convinced me that scripting's a good idea, what do I do next" here is where I suggest they start:
16:39:06 <eddiejennings> First, they must understand that all a script is a list of list of commands you'd otherwise run, bundled into a nice little sequential list.
16:39:43 <eddiejennings> Now of course there's more to it than that, but for beginners, they need not understand functions, modules (PowerShell), etc.
16:40:34 <eddiejennings> In my experience trying to learn too much about the scope of what can be done with scripting is a common mistake for beginners.  It's overwhelming and leads to you giving up.
16:41:01 <eddiejennings> Instead, to learn to script.  Pick a common task you do using a GUI tool (or just a task you want to do if no GUI's available).
16:41:20 <jnsamyak> yes +1 to last point it helps!
16:41:43 <eddiejennings> And learn to translate that task into whatever scripting environment you have.
16:42:16 <eddiejennings> Example:  I'm in a Windows environment, and I want to make a user in Active Directory.
16:42:49 <eddiejennings> If you have zero idea where to start, a quick consult with Dr. Google will lead you to a PowerShell cmdlet (command-let) named New-ADUser.
16:43:26 <eddiejennings> From where you would poke around some documentation to find out about parameters associated with that cmdlets -displayname -surname -enabled, etc.
16:44:14 <eddiejennings> You take what you've found, and try to run it yourself within your terminal, and see if it works.
16:44:22 <eddiejennings> It it fails, note the error message(s)
16:44:41 <eddiejennings> They will often give you a clue as to what's wrong with your command and its parameters.
16:45:42 <eddiejennings> Notice I've said nothing about how PowerShell cmdlets are named with a verb-object format.  I've said nothing about how PowerShell cmdlets return objects, and that objects have properties.  And you can use these properties later to do other things with your script.
16:46:00 <eddiejennings> None of that is meaningful to the beginner; however, getting a task done IS meaningful.
16:46:50 <eddiejennings> In my experience, focusing on completing a task is much more effective for getting a new user familiar with commands and syntax for whatever environment they're working.
16:47:24 <sysoplab> thats true for programming in general.  once you know what loops, variables, types, and functions are the rest is pretty easy to figure out when you need to use it.
16:47:38 <eddiejennings> The next logical step (which often can come quickly) is showing the beginner that this mythical script, as I said before, is just a listing of these one-off comands that you're using.
16:48:09 * nirik notes that many env's have verbose/debugging modes... like 'bash -x' or similar also to help you see what exactly is being executed.
16:48:13 <eddiejennings> sysoplab: correct.  And in my opinion, the gateway to learning those structures is by discovering that they're the best solution to whatever problem you face.
16:49:11 <eddiejennings> There's are a couple of "gotchas" with following my general method of learning scripting.
16:49:48 <eddiejennings> 1.  Newbies will discover that moving from GUI to script often involves more than one command.  Since GUIs often abstract away much of what's actually going on.
16:50:04 <eddiejennings> But this is an opportunity to discover and learn new commands; thus, expanding your vocabular.
16:50:25 <eddiejennings> 2.  The task-first method can leave you with an improper vocabulary for whatever environment you're in.
16:51:32 <eddiejennings> As you encourage your beginner to discover commands and such through experiementaion and documentation, have them be mindful of the terms they run across.  "cmdlet" in the world of PowerShell, as "command" can be ambiguous:  do you mean PowerShell cmdlet or Command Prompt command?
16:52:10 <eddiejennings> For PowerShell if your beginning is starting to learn to use the pipe, that's when it's time to introduce them to what an object is and properties.
16:53:07 <eddiejennings> Now some beginners work better with learning the "theory" of their scripting environment first.  Learning what makes a cmdlet a cmdlet.  Learning about objects.  Learning about logical tests.  THEN trying to apply it.
16:53:44 <eddiejennings> That's perfectly fine, but my experience has taught me that trying to deliver too much of that theory before having beginners get their hands dirty with DOING stuff tends to develop frustration.
16:54:33 <eddiejennings> So the tl;dr of all of that is scripting in any form is, in my opinion, best learned by DOING.  Especially making mistakes, reading errors, and once something finally works, then see if you can (with the best vocubulary you can) explain why it now works.
16:55:35 <eddiejennings> Much of this comes form a couple of videos I made about the subject:  (shameless plug) feel free to check them out:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5PlrQQRg0k
16:55:37 <eddiejennings> and
16:55:45 <eddiejennings> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8-MwDAJm1w
16:56:03 <eddiejennings> also have links to Odysee, if you don't like Youtube, just ask. :D
16:56:14 <eddiejennings> Any questions, comments, thoughts?
16:56:46 <nirik> Learning by doing is how I learn best too. ;)
16:57:15 <petebuffon[m]> Agreed, I like a little bit of both, theory and hands-on
16:57:20 <bcapper_> Thanks for linking the youtube videos, as an intern im sure they'll help get started!
16:57:24 <sysoplab> eddiejenningsi've been watching your videos for a bit now.  I'll say don't get stuck in tutorial hell (actually I usually get stuck there when entering new things so kettle pointing out not to be one) make something don't just follow tutorials.
16:57:39 <eddiejennings> I was the odd kid in undergrad who enjoyed my lecture classes, but that was because listening to the lecture gave me a chance to think about what I was hear.  Then when I got to touch whatever was being lectured on, it "clicked" all the more.
16:58:04 <jnsamyak> this is good stuff :D
16:58:07 <lenkaseg> Thanks eddiejennings
16:58:15 <jnsamyak> eddiejennings++
16:58:15 <zodbot> jnsamyak: Karma for eddiejennings changed to 5 (for the current release cycle):  https://badges.fedoraproject.org/tags/cookie/any
16:58:17 <nirik> everyone learns their own way. There's no wrong way. :)
16:58:17 <eddiejennings> You're welcome, all! :D
16:58:18 <pqp> yeah, this is sound advice
16:58:24 <petebuffon[m]> thanks eddiejennings!
16:58:26 <petebuffon[m]> eddiejennings++
16:58:27 <sysoplab> eddiejennings++
16:58:27 <zodbot> sysoplab: Karma for eddiejennings changed to 6 (for the current release cycle):  https://badges.fedoraproject.org/tags/cookie/any
16:58:50 <eddiejennings> sysoplab: Yeah, the teacher in me drives me toward tutorials and explaning.  Once RHCE is done, there will be a bit more "doing"
16:59:04 <lenkaseg> eddiejennings++
16:59:42 <sysoplab> eddiejennings no worries.  Programming/scripting is just one of those hobbies/jobs/study materials that has tons of tutorials so you can spend a lifetime just doing those and not trying to actually use the information.
17:00:14 <petebuffon[m]> Alright I see little point in having an openfloor for 1 minute, shall we say any unresolved topics can be discussed in Fedora Infrastructure Team?
17:00:22 <petebuffon[m]> Thanks everyone for attending :-)
17:00:36 <petebuffon[m]> #endmeeting