Ubuntu Wiki

Open Week -- Server Q+A -- Server Team -- Thu, May 6

EDT -5

(12:01:08 PM) jcastro: zul, ok, introduce yourself and take it away!
(12:01:40 PM) zul: Hi, Im Chuck Short from the Canonical server team, and today we will be doing a server q+a
(12:02:15 PM) zul: and im here with other members of the team who are going to help out
(12:02:17 PM) zul: like smoser
(12:02:22 PM) smoser: hello
(12:02:40 PM) zul: so if you want to ask questions please fire away
(12:03:14 PM) zul: so smoser why dont you explain what you do
(12:03:21 PM) smoser: OK.
(12:03:41 PM) smoser: My biggest reponsibility is the ubuntu enterprise cloud images (UEC)
(12:03:59 PM) smoser: We create 'ready-to-run' images for UEC or for EC2.
(12:04:22 PM) smoser: other than that, I generally help out with server bugs, features and the ubuntu platform.
(12:04:41 PM) smoser: I apologize if that was too exciting a description
(12:05:07 PM) zul: as smoser I generally help out with server bugs, features, and the ubuntu platofrm as well
(12:05:16 PM) zul: so does anyone have any questions?
(12:06:03 PM) zul: well to get the ball rolling
(12:06:08 PM) ClassBot: zul asked: what are your plans for maverick?
(12:06:28 PM) smoser: That was directed at me ? i presume ?
(12:06:35 PM) zul: both of us
(12:06:41 PM) smoser: you first
(12:07:03 PM) smoser: OK.  I'll go.
(12:07:27 PM) smoser: This week and last we've been working on putting together plans (blueprints) for what we'd like to work on for Maverick
(12:07:32 PM) smoser: That list of things can be seen at https://blueprints.launchpad.net/~jib/+specs?role=approver
(12:07:54 PM) smoser: Next week, at UDS we'll discuss these with other members of the Ubuntu Server team and the larger Ubuntu community in general.
(12:08:11 PM) smoser: many of the sessions are brainstorm centric while others will have more concrete discussions ready to go
(12:08:38 PM) smoser: This is a better link: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/~jib/+specs?searchtext=server-maverick-
(12:08:53 PM) zul: i hope you get involved with us next week as well
(12:08:59 PM) ClassBot: leonel asked: any plans to include a light webserver for VPS ? like  www.cherokee-project.org
(12:09:09 PM) smoser: if you're unfamiliar with UDS, please read up.  At this point if you weren't already planning on going, you're probably not going to be there physically
(12:09:34 PM) smoser: however, the IS team does an *outstanding* job of making remote-attendence via IRC with streaming audio possible.
(12:09:38 PM) zul: leonel: yes we will be discussing at UDS a more lightweigh webserver
(12:09:59 PM) ClassBot: leonel asked: I mean in main
(12:11:09 PM) ClassBot: nealmcb asked: Do you have some demos that anyone with an Amazon or Eucalyptus cloud account could run to demonstrate the cool cloud features in Lucid?
(12:11:53 PM) smoser: nealmcb, I don't have an explicit demo at all.
(12:11:59 PM) yofel_ is now known as yofel
(12:12:02 PM) smoser: Maybe thats something I should try to put together.
(12:12:17 PM) smoser: zul authored most of https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EC2StartersGuide
(12:12:28 PM) smoser: which walks you through getting an instance booted on EC2.
(12:12:50 PM) smoser: Once you're there and in, I have to say there isn't much terribly exciting about the "base image".
(12:13:11 PM) smoser: Everything that you can do with it revolves around it being basically Ubuntu server.
(12:13:23 PM) smoser: whatever you can imagine for ubuntu server, you can do on EC2 or UEC in an instance.
(12:13:51 PM) smoser: One interesting thing that differs between "standard server" and EC2/UEC images is cloud-init
(12:14:17 PM) smoser: at http://ubuntu-smoser.blogspot.com/ i wrote a blog entry about what you can do with cloud-init
(12:14:30 PM) smoser: Theres more to document there, but that might get you started.
(12:14:42 PM) smoser: next question ?
(12:14:54 PM) ClassBot: zul asked: whats the difference between EC2 and UEC?
(12:15:53 PM) zul: thanks zul would you like to take this one smoser?
(12:16:06 PM) smoser: UEC is "Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud".  This is a cloud offering from Ubuntu based on Eucalyptus.
(12:16:30 PM) smoser: It allows you to run a "private cloud" inside your lab (on your own hardware) that is API compatible with EC2's public cloud.
(12:17:06 PM) smoser: This might be desireable for development, or places where data is highly sensitive.
(12:17:30 PM) smoser: oh, one other thing, the UEC installation is present right in the ubuntu server CDs.
(12:18:02 PM) smoser: so it is *very* trivial to set up a UEC cloud if you have 2 or more hardware systems (with VT extensions) systems to play with.
(12:18:07 PM) smoser: next question.
(12:18:19 PM) ClassBot: Softwareexplorer asked: I once tried to get a postfix/ dovecott email server working on jaunty. When I finally got it, I had no clue what I did right. Part of the problem was that none of the ubuntu wiki pages said how to use the postfix-dovecot package and just told how to set it up the old way. When I wanted to set up an email server on 10.04, I had no idea how to do it again. Is there the possibility of someone writing a wik
(12:18:42 PM) zul: Softwareexplorer: there should be some documentation in the ubuntu server guide at https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/C/index.html
(12:19:24 PM) zul: its written by the community by adam sommer so if there is a feature missing it please file a bug in launchpad
(12:19:26 PM) zul: next question
(12:19:39 PM) ClassBot: Softwareexplorer asked: What kind of hardware requirements are there to run UEC just to try it out? How hard is it to set up?
(12:20:03 PM) zul: i think this one up your alley smoser
(12:20:26 PM) smoser: Softwareexplorer, hardware requirements are 2 physical systems. Each probably needs 2G of ram, and 1 of which must have VT extensions
(12:20:47 PM) smoser: vt extensions are present in just about any hardware desktop or server created in the past 3 years or so.
(12:21:11 PM) smoser: if you've got amd64 hardware, most likely you have them especially if its amd, not intel.
(12:21:22 PM) smoser: you can check to ake sure with the 'kvm-ok' command.
(12:21:37 PM) smoser: Once you've got the hardware, the software setup is quite trivial
(12:21:49 PM) smoser: the CD install (or from USB) has an option to "install UEC cloud"
(12:22:03 PM) smoser: and you simply select one system as the Cloud Controller, and one as a Node.
(12:22:14 PM) smoser: after installation of both systems the cloud will be ready to go.
(12:22:25 PM) ***smoser is searching for link
(12:23:02 PM) smoser: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEC/CDInstall .should get you started.
(12:23:13 PM) smoser: that covers 9.10, but mostly the same.
(12:23:27 PM) smoser: Softwareexplorer, is that a reasonable answer?
(12:24:17 PM) ClassBot: zul asked: How can I get the UEC and EC2 images?
(12:25:23 PM) smoser: zul, the UEC is available as part of the ubuntu server.
(12:25:45 PM) smoser: the easiest way to install it is definitely to do a fresh install from an ISO or USB key and select the "Install UEC".
(12:26:15 PM) smoser: The EC2 Images can be run on EC2 or on UEC.
(12:26:29 PM) smoser: more information is available at http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/release/
(12:26:40 PM) smoser: That will give you EC2 commands to launch the instances as well as their AMI ids.
(12:27:03 PM) smoser: For UEC, you can download the ".tar.gz" files there and register them with "uec-publish-tarball" on your installed cloud.
(12:27:24 PM) smoser: next question
(12:27:33 PM) ClassBot: nealmcb asked: Our server blog at http://ubuntuserver.wordpress.com/ can help get our messages out - how can we encourage more posts there, or are there other venues?
(12:28:20 PM) zul: good question i would ask you to contact mathiaz on #ubuntu-server.
(12:28:38 PM) zul: most of the ubuntu server developers obviously hang out on #ubuntu-server
(12:28:42 PM) zul: next question
(12:29:33 PM) zul: we have weekly meetings as well on #ubuntu-meeting where users and developers can raise issues that they find.
(12:29:44 PM) zul: they are on tuesdays now
(12:30:17 PM) zul: we also do a lot of backporting to LTS releases such as hardy because alot of our userbase still use the LTS on their servers
(12:30:32 PM) zul: any other question?
(12:31:02 PM) ClassBot: mdeslaur asked: Any plans on integrating enterprise groupware software?
(12:31:34 PM) zul: mdeslaur: yes we do have a session next week at UDS to include into universe packages such as sogo and zafara
(12:32:03 PM) zul: sogo being a calendar groupware server and zafara is a microsoft exchange like product
(12:32:21 PM) zul: next question
(12:32:35 PM) ClassBot: nealmcb asked: Will there be a session at UDS on how to better market the great server offerings and how to stimulate more community involvement on the server side?
(12:33:01 PM) zul: nealmcb: yes there should be a session at UDS for getting more people involved
(12:33:38 PM) zul: alot of our users are sys admins so we need a way to draw in our users to the community
(12:33:41 PM) zul: next question
(12:33:55 PM) ClassBot: JanC__ asked: I thought Postfix was supposed to be the default mailserver on Ubuntu, but I hear from several people that they got Exim installed (probably through some dependencies?) -- what's the current policy about this?
(12:34:50 PM) zul: postfix is the default mail server in main, but yes you can use other mail servers such as exim since they are packaged in universe
(12:34:53 PM) zul: next question
(12:35:54 PM) zul: so a couple of sessions we are having at UDS are things like how we can integrate things like puppet in a configuration management system
(12:36:19 PM) zul: another session would be how we can get better support for Alfresco in ubuntu
(12:37:24 PM) zul: we also to get better integration with software such as nagios and munin as well but these sessions will all be discussed at UDS next week with the community's participation
(12:38:11 PM) zul: an interesting project we had last release in lucid was server-papercuts
(12:38:58 PM) zul: the idea behind this is that the users can nominate small things that they find annoiying in ubuntu-server and have them nominated to be fixed in lucid.
(12:39:09 PM) zul: we are going to be continuing this in maverick as well
(12:39:48 PM) ClassBot: JanC__ asked: what I meant is that "by default" apparently some packages pull in Exim instead of Postfix?  shouldn't they pull in postfix if they need an MTA and no other one was installed by the admin?
(12:40:13 PM) zul: JanC_: well yes obviously that is a bug in my opinon and it should be fixed
(12:40:25 PM) zul: next question
(12:40:28 PM) zul: if any :)
(12:40:52 PM) zul: another feature we are lookig at for maverick is web 2.0 workloads
(12:41:21 PM) zul: sites like facebook and linkedin are pretty big at the momment and we would like to get better support for them in ubuntu
(12:41:44 PM) zul: so we are also having a session on that at UDS next week as well
(12:42:13 PM) ClassBot: nealmcb asked: I heard about some performance issues with some server loads on ext4.  Are there times ext3 would be better?d
(12:42:40 PM) zul: nealmcb: i heard that as well bug I havent seen any benchmarks myself, I do believe there is a bug open about it launchpad
(12:43:05 PM) smoser: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dpkg/+bug/570805
(12:43:40 PM) smoser: i'm not completely suited to answer this question. but, as I understand it, basically fsync is much more expensive for ext4.
(12:44:03 PM) smoser: workloads that made extensive use of that call would see performance loss
(12:44:22 PM) smoser: but i'm very much glossing over that.
(12:44:27 PM) smoser: sorry i couldn't be more help.
(12:44:32 PM) smoser: next question?
(12:45:20 PM) zul: smoser: so what plans do you have for cloud-init
(12:46:07 PM) smoser: to make it better :)
(12:46:31 PM) smoser: the overall goal of cloud-init
(12:46:47 PM) smoser: and other utilities that we put into the cloud images is to make them very friendly to use in the cloud
(12:47:21 PM) smoser: last cycle focused on getting hooks in early  in the boot cycle, so that, via "user-data", you can control much of the initial boot of the instance, and make it do your bidding.
(12:47:40 PM) smoser: we will probably continue refining that, but will be adding other function to make the instances "cloud friendly"
(12:47:54 PM) smoser: one thing that has been brought up is "ebs-mount" from the turnkey images folks.
(12:48:10 PM) smoser: this will allow you to take automated action on connection of an ebs volume (if so configured).
(12:49:08 PM) smoser: next question
(12:49:15 PM) ClassBot: nealmcb asked: Often we advise folks to wait to upgrade their existing servers until the .1 release.  When might 10.04.1 come out?
(12:49:36 PM) zul: nealmcb: according to the maverick release schedule (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaverickReleaseSchedule) july 29th
(12:50:32 PM) zul: alot of the SRU (stable release updates) that we are working on right now will be included in the point release
(12:50:50 PM) zul: so yes for server we usually recomend and wait for the point release
(12:51:53 PM) zul: SRU is the process where we backport bugs that are already fixed in the development release, in this case maverick to the stable release, in this case either hardy or lucid
(12:52:40 PM) zul: so if you find a bug with for example PHP we try to get it fixed in maverick first and depending how hard it is to get it fixed for lucid we usually backport the patch
(12:53:26 PM) ClassBot: nealmcb asked: What's new in the Java world for Ubuntu?  In Lucid or coming up in Maverick?
(12:54:15 PM) zul: for java we are looking at better integration with things like maven and possibly jboss, you'll have to be at UDS next week to find out since we will have a session about that as well
(12:54:21 PM) zul: next question
(12:55:21 PM) zul: i guess we have like 6 minutes until the next session does anyone else want to ask a question?
(12:55:31 PM) zul: ill give you a cookie if you do ;)
(12:56:04 PM) zul: well if you dont smoser and I can be usually found on irc
(12:56:25 PM) ClassBot: nealmcb asked: How can people help test server stuff on different hardware?
(12:56:25 PM) smoser: indeed.
(12:57:11 PM) zul: nealmcb: it depends on how much help we get at the release time, you can help test ISO when they are released at the iso tracker at http://qa.iso.ubuntu.com
(12:57:54 PM) ***zul gives nealmcb a cookie!
(12:58:53 PM) zul: on real hardware I dont know off the top of my head, most of the testing is done on qemu-kvm
(12:59:17 PM) zul: any more questions?
(01:00:09 PM) ClassBot: nealmcb asked: Can I get two cookies served up with cloud-like frosting integration? :)
(01:00:17 PM) zul: only if you file a blueprint
(01:00:20 PM) zul: :)
(01:00:37 PM) zul: well thanks everyone for coming
(01:00:44 PM) smoser: there will be plenty of cookies at UDS.
(01:00:50 PM) zul: and beer
(01:00:56 PM) smoser: Please, for anyone interested in participating, please do.