[SAC] admin help offer

[Frank Warmerdam]

Karim Malhas wrote:
> Dear SAC,
> 
> Just as a followup because I haven't received a reply:
> 
> This was and is a genunie offer.
> Maybe someone will find something for me to do or the time to tell me
> "no" or maybe "please be patient, we could use a hand later".
...
 > I have a little experience with debian based systems (I admin a
 > mail/web/xmpp server for me and some friends) and I wanted to offer
 > helping transition to the new hardware or try finding out what's
 > wrong with the existing system.

Karim,

In theory much of the transition work is already assigned to particular
individuals, though I'm not always sure when they will get to it.  Some of
them might value assistance.

There is the issue of what to do about the mapbender.telescience.org
services.  There is some hesitancy to have too many "project VMs", yet
it seems there is a need for a home for the mapbender services which extend
beyond a simple static html site.

I have the ticket requesting a project VM for mapbender:

   http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/568

But it does not seem clear to me what sort of services are planned and what
their requirements are.  I'm wondering if it would be reasonable to deploy
them on the existing VM "webextra".  I'm not entirely clear on the intention
for this VM.  I see it listed as a home for planet.osgeo.org and I've assumed
it might also be used for other relatively static web sites (like
www.gdal.org for instance).

But I don't see any immediately obvious problem with also having it as a home
to heavier services, as perhaps the mapbender services would be.

Could you start by describing the service(s) that the mapbender wants to
host?   This could be done in the above ticket for now.

What I'd like to suggest, if it makes sense, is that we name you as a
member of SAC, add you to the SAC shell admin group, and let you start
by deploying the Mapbender services on the WebExtra VM.

If there is a strong need for a distinct Mapbender VM, then having the
services listed will help us size the VM and get it "built".

Assuming the mapbender deployment goes well, then we can look at other
tasks you might be interested in taking on.  How extensive is your
experience with email deployment?   Any experience with Mailman?   One
thing that needs to be done at some point is moving the mailman (and
perhaps some other email services) off osgeo1 to an email VM.  That
will need to be done quite carefully, but I'm not off hand aware of
anyone who is expected to take on that task.

You might also be interested in working with Martin with regard to
deploying Bacula as a backup solution on the VMs.  I believe we already
have wiki.osgeo.org moved to a VM, but there is (to the best of my
knowledge) not yet any backup support for the new wiki.  This isn't a
good situation to stay in for very long!

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent