Meeting started at 2026-09-09 17:00:06 UTC

The Meeting name is 'fedora-server '

!group members server-wg

Members of server-wg: Alexander Bokovoy, Adam Williamson, Paul Maconi, Brett Weir, Emmanuel Seyman, Rowan Puttergill, jwhimpel, Kevin Fenzi, korora (@korora:fedora.im, @korora1981:matrix.org), mowest, ngompa (@conan_kudo:matrix.org, @ngompa:fedora.im, @pharaoh_atem:opensuse.org, @ngompa:kde.org, @ngompa:almalinux.im), Peter Boy, Stephen Gallagher

Welcome to our weekly Server WG meeting.

As usual, let's wait a moment for everybody to show up.

!hi

John Himpel: John Himpel (jwhimpel)

!hi

!hi

The three minutes are up; we’ve reached our quorum. Let’s get started.

We talked about the agenda in advance in our Matrix room. Nevertheless, something to comment here?

OK Let's start.

Regarding the action, see the list in our

meetings overview:

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/server-working-group/wg-minutes-2026/

Current status of actions:

Unfortunately, we have a lot of 'ongoings'

And a lot of open tickets. We should take actions to get some of them closed.

To be fair a lot of tickets are related to the F45 testing

No announcements from me. Someone here with announcement(s)?

I have finished work on Software Management/DNF and it is in review - thanks @brett for the first bit of feedback. We can discuss this in the PR.

Yeah, time to get rid of testing it (by releasing. )

Well, let's start.

Looks like 1.3 is out an is an RC

First thing is: status of installatiopn tests.

I will update tickets

Yeah, I updated some tickets when I tested the corresponding installation path.

I did all the local interactive installations – no issue so far.

The remaining items are: remote installation, VM installation and aarch64 SBC installation.

Not expecting any regressions on my tickets, but will check

I’m particularly curious about trying out the aarch64 SBC. As far as I can tell, none of us has had a go at it yet.

not me... I don't have the hardware for this

The other 2 items didn't made any issues in rawhide and branch

Haven't been able to source a Rock Pi ITX with all the fixings yet

I wish you could just buy one at the store. 😆

That's an incredible fine item!! I have the plain SBC alternatives.

Oh, which ones are those? Do we maintain a list of recommended hardware anywhere?

Yeah, in the stg branch on pagure. When I test the F45 aarch hardware I have, I'll bring that into our docs. Probably this week.

And we have a list with our home server spin-off

Testing Rpi5. A couple of error messages flash by on console then are covered up by login screen too fast for msgs to be read. Then login doesn't work. I think it's some sort of SELINUX problem. Hope to work with Peter Robinson soon to resolve. Then Server booting with SD card should work.

Well, let's wrap this up.

Any news about the new feature / changes part?

I plan to do my obligations this week. So, next week we know more

Nothing from me... there are quite a few tickets waiting for review... I will see if I can pick up another one on Friday

OK, let's go on.

Tracking issue: https://forge.fedoraproject.org/server/tickets/issues/262

We already discussed this for more or less every release. The problem is: we are highly backwards compatible and pick all the new capabilities of application software into a reliably working entitiy. And so make all the new things really usable in everyday operations.

There is probably not much to praise here.

At least, untio now we had no idea.

Hmmm I am not sure exactly what we call out... I guess not the features that we have tested?

until we are complete with some of our other projects, it is hard to call anything out

I feel like even if we don't personally change much from release to release, it evolves by virtue of being attached to the Fedora base.

No. That goes without saying

I got excited about Fedora this year because I found out about podman, and I've been enjoying the very up-to-date versions of OpenTofu and other stuff. I didn't know abou systemd's TPM stuff either until recently.

We will probably have something next release. Currently, our homeserver/home lab spin is not ready yet, probvably for next release. An all the other things as update process improvement and LocalKDC are still in working, too.

Right. It is a pity we aren't further along with our ansible post-install role... it is so close to usable

Do you see a prossibility, that we have it ready until release date?

Maybe, we can say something about our work to improve web services.

At least we have some files and a procedure.

I can't say anything without @eseyman on that really

Do we have an Ansible Galaxy namespace we can use? I noticed a `fedora` namespace that publishes `linux-system-roles`. Or we could claim `fedoraserver`.

whoah my client seems to be duplicating messages for some reason

Currently we still have to decide, how we want to distribute it.

For now, I was going to target a git clone install to document.

This sees fair until we have something better

I stand behind an "all of the above" approach, publishing it wherever people expect to find these things.

We also need a GitHub presence to be on Ansible Galaxy, FYI, so we'd want a read-only mirror there.

Unless things have changed since I last did this.

There's only three ways that I can think of to distribute that are relevant to Fedora Server users. RPM package, Ansible Galaxy, and git clone.

Hm, I'm not sure we need something there.

At least not for development.

git clone is probably the easiest starting point... so let's get that functional and make sure that the post-install role is adequately tested and documented... then we have *something* as a first start. It can evolve after that

I guess, git clone is the least favourable and is unusual for Fedora.

My personal philosophy is "deployment first". I like to package things for release as soon as possible so that I can cut releases even during early development, and so the application can respect the constraints of its vehicle as it develops.

I agree that packaging is the neatest, because it avoids someone having to install other tooling to get the software

We can package a compliant Ansible role without ever shipping it anywhere, but the namespace needs to be claimed.

But anyway, these considerations have nothing to do with our F45 announcements.

:)

Because users will consume as `fedoraserver.postinstall` or whatever.

Right good point Peter Boy (ServerWG, Docs)

Hahaha

Right... just not sure what we can announce until we have finished some of the projects that are currently burning

Well, let's see next week regarding postinstallation.

Maybe some doc improvements :D

Let's wrap up:

proposed. !info For an F45 announcement, we might be able to make use of our web service improvements, or perhaps even post-installation.

I have a bunch of thoughts about Ansible, but they are too long for discussion here. Perhaps we can setup a meeting on #FedoraServer along with Emmanuel and discuss proper workflow for our Ansible stuff along with distrubution.

Yeah, good idea !!!!!!!

F45 Server docfumentation is improving style and standardization. New topic areas of interest for Fedora Server users are gradually being added as they become ready.

Often Friday was a good date for those discussions.

bit of a lame addition, but it is true and new docs do help people along.

I’m afraid that doesn’t really fit in the Fedora release notes

I'm available almost every Friday (with a bit of notice) for Ansible discussion

OK, as a wrap uo:

Next topic

Tracking issue: https://forge.fedoraproject.org/server/tickets/issues/263

'm OK with that. Nevertheless, we should explicitely discuss and deciode it here. AI is a bit of controversal.

'm OK with that. Nevertheless, we should explicitely discuss and decide it here. AI is a bit of controversal.

I have mixed feelings about this. I can see it be valuable to someone, but I don't know anything about the stack being implemented, how the LLM is run, where I can go to request changes to what it publishes etc.

And yeah, the channels *are* public but you still require a login to access.

I am generally okay with this, but it does seem that really it should be pulling info from this room rather than from everywhere we hang out... it is nice to have AI free places - I guess everything we say is public, but it is kind of nice to feel slightly less monitored

Yeah, agree with Ro I don't like the feeling that the Fedora Server is an extended meeting channel, lol

I really don't want it randomly picking me up saying: dolt! I am an idiot. and then publishing that Ro is an idiot somewhere on the web

Yeah, agree with Ro I don't like the feeling that the Fedora Server channel is an extended meeting channel, lol

The developer is abompard, a Red Hat employee. He also developed the bot which summerizes our meetings for a long time now.

too late, you're already in a monitored channel. 😆

And that summeries ar very good, in my view.

Right... but meeting summaries should surely cover most requirements... I am less convinced of the value of publishing everything that we chat about

Isn't someone already publishing our meetings (on Fedora Meeting) on the Fedora Planet on a weekly basis?

then again, I am not quite so uptight about it that I would fight it if it got implemented... it might have utility

As far as I know, the AI summaries are published after our meeting here, and in the meetbot event calender, where the log and minutes are published per meeting date.

Nowadays... it seems rare that I can do a zoom call or a google call without someone using AI... and opt out seems awkward now.

I think it could be helpful to provede some overview. Would be great, it these reports were direct linkable for easy finding at a later time.

I didn't object previously but I wasn't super excited abou it either.

Primary feeling is resignation.

It is hard to keep an oversight with a Matrix shat channel.

The planet seems to be down right now, but I'm sure there's an excellent summary published each weekend.

Yep... I definitely get lost in the amount of activity on the Docs channel... it takes me too long to work through scrollback

I've been reading through the channel history. I don't trust that summaries have the same opinions about what's important that I do.

But it takes awhile hah

So I can't follow too many channels

I think, we should take some time to discuss this further and don't make any hasty decision.

this is true... but I guess it at least gives an indication of what was discussed

Let's wrap up so we have some time left for documentation.

there definitely seems to be some reticence about it... I don't think anyone actively objects, and we can see that there might be utility... but do we really want it?

Yeah, I kind of wanted to let it run and see how the summaries look after a couple weeks.

oh this is the topic

hello 😆

since im here, might aswell voice that i have concern about plugging messages into LLMs

Emma [it/its]: You are invited to join our discussion about this in our room !!!!!

particularly the LLM part, to be clear, i'd prefer if there wasnt, but if it must, then i'd like to opt my messages out of any LLM inferencing in any capacity whatsoever :)

#server:fedoraproject.org is the place to be!

The coolest place online

sounds like i have a room to join :)

definitely a proposal... like something you can tell the bot (!exclude or something)

Folks, for now let's move on. Our time is nearly up

Tracking issue: https://forge.fedoraproject.org/server/tickets/issues/261

Current status:

(a)

We create a new sections about postinstallation and name it "postinstallation customizations".

Ticket: 228

(b)

We leave the main navigation bar as it is now, after some modifications discussed and made earlier. The ticket will be closed.

Ticket: 224

Let's start with a proposal that picks up decisions we made last meeting.

proposed: !agreed To set things in motion, WG agreees to create a new postinstallation section as decided and relocate the current article in into this section as is. We then start to split out the intended articles step by step.

With that we have at least a start.

I want to say for the record that I feel "Postinstallation customizations" is too long and hard to spell since I wasn't here last week, but if the URL stays `/postinstallation/` or even `/postinstall/` then I can live with it. I care very strongly about the lengths of URLs we produce.

If we are to move the existing content under this new section, I propose names that capture the actions being completed, e.g. "Set the hostname", "Add an SSH key", "Disable root login", etc.

Yes, the url would we postinstallation. We have this at various spots, a slightly longer navigation title and a short url. I think, thats a good combenation

As i sait in the ticket, I'm in favour of this. It is a kind of best of both.

I agree about 'Posintallation customizations' - I find it a mouthful, but if the URL is short that's a good start.

Appreciate it! I saw your response, just wanted to comment here too.

Postinstallation steps, might be a fair alternative... I don't like it, but at least it is one syllable - Peter is German so he is used to long words!

OK, so we agree so far. I think we should get started and create that new section and fill it procinionally with the existing article.

I have no cultural context to agree or disagree! 😆

Yes, let's do it!

diplomatic

yeah, and a sociologist by mayor

A math PD my be 5 pages, a sociologists 500. 😀😀

Back to the topic. Any objection to start the splitting now?

Im currently working on the last sentences about storage. So that one would have a room.

Nope, hack away, I say!

Go ahead... if you need a hand... let me know and I will be happy to help

By the way, we can change the navigation title later at any time if we like – as long as we keep the (short) URL.

Semi-related, it probably makes sense to put the Ansible section I'm working on under Administration, what do you think? Or somewhere else?

Hm, administration seems adaquate.

Or maybe, it's own section?

Sure, but we should link to it from the post-install section

Ansible section might be good for when this grows

I'll play with it and see, and I guess we can go back and forth on it. It definitely feels like it'll become a section, but won't start as one.

Depends, wheather we describe the Ansible tast along with the service docs - that what we currently are planing.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Currently we are planning: web service. a) manual installation. b) Ansible installation

The scope right now is explaining how to get started, but I feel like other pages like Services pages will have sprinkles of Ansible discussion.

Yeah, like what Peter Boy (ServerWG, Docs) said

I imagine Services and Applications will all have broken ou manual + Ansible processes.

Folks, we are nearly 10 mins overdue. We should really close now!

I imagine Services and Applications will all have broken out manual + Ansible processes.

Sounds good

Let's continue in our room, probably Friday, that was a good date

I should be available on Friday

Same time as this?

Could do... would be nice to be earlier but not sure what that is like for you

Yes, same time as this 17:00 UTC and then without any time restrictions or agenda.

okay... will try make sure I am around

See you later