Overview

The knowledge base contains development, test, and operational resources specific to the Ubuntu Server team. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact other ServerTeam members.

Bug Triage

Goal: To successfully review every bug filed against Ubuntu Server related packages

A review involves analyzing a bug to determine if the bug is valid and if sufficient information was provided. If the bug is both valid and provided with sufficient information, the bug is marked as triaged and will be worked to closure by a member of the server team. Otherwise, the bug will be responded to and marked as 'Incomplete' for more details, 'Invalid' for not a real bug, or 'Won't Fix'.

Here is the list of recently modified bugs in packages used for triage by the server team.

Daily bug triaging

Bug triage is completed for all bugs last updated on a particular day. An assigned member of the server team will look at all bugs that were updated on the previous day. For example, the member with responsibility on Friday will review all the bugs updated on Thursday. For the weekend, the member with responsibility on Monday will review all the bugs updated on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

This process is expected to take less than 30 minutes per day. This is not meant to be a full root cause analysis (RCA) investigative time, instead only determining if further attention is warranted and sufficient information has been provided.

Current members of Ubuntu Server bug triage:

• cpaelzer
• nacc
• powersj
• robie

Assignment

Assignment of daily bug triage is completed as an agenda item of the server team's IRC meeting.

Additional resources

Helpful Guides and Definitions:

• Bug Triage Workflow

• Definitions for bug importance levels

• Defintions for bug status settings

• Predefined response templates

Developer/Packager resources

For packaging information, head to the MOTUs, the Master Of The Universe.

• There is the PackagingGuide.

• PackagingGuide/Lists/DocumentationResources and MOTU/School have information related to packaging.

• UbuntuDevelopers explains how to become an official packager.

• ubuntu-motu mailing list and #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.org are good places to ask for help.

We're focusing on server related packages in main and universe.

• Developers can use the Triaged Ubuntu Server bugs list to prioritize their work.

Ubuntu Server Daily Builds

In order for our users latest testing software of various server software we have the Ubuntu Server Dailies PPA. To get software added one has to do the following:

1. Add yourself to the Ubuntu Server Edgers Launchpad group here.

2. If the project that you wish to add is not apart of launchpad, register the project and import the code into a launchpad branch.

3. Follow the instructions on how to build a daily package here.

4. Create a PPA in the Ubuntu Server Edgers group, the format for the PPA is the following:

5. Display Name: <project> Edgers Archive

6. Description: Fill with relevant informaion

7. PPA Name: server-edgers-<project>

8. Create your recipe
9. Publish to a blog post that the ppa is available to users.

Stack package names policy

Integration work on specific server stacks (Mail stack, cluster stack, etc...) sometimes result in specific integration binary packages. In order to provide a coherent user experience, those binary packages should follow the following naming rule:

stackname-stack-function

As an example, mail stack packages could be named "mail-stack-delivery", "mail-stack-relay"...

Decision from 20100525 team meeting.

Server support resources

The server team offers support for server-related questions in #ubuntu-server.

• The ubottu irc bot makes it easy to share an extensive set of factoids to others in an irc channel. E.g. typing !ask | noobie will cause ubottu to tell noobie that folks should just go ahead and ask their questions. Ubottu can also conveniently show the channel information on bugs and packages. See ubottu for more details.

Tester resources

We coordinate our testing plans in the Server testing section of the Testing project.

New test plans should be defined as new pages below Testing/Server. Example: Testing/Server/MyTestPlan.

ISO testing

Ubuntu Server iso testing follows the process described in Testing/ISO. We focus on testing the ubuntu-server isos following the Server installation test cases. The Iso testing tracker is used to track test results.

You can register with the iso testing tracker and subscribe to the ubuntu server testcases so that you'll be notified whenever a new ubuntu-server iso needs to be tested.

UTAH

The Ubuntu Test Automation Harness introduces new way of creating end-to-end automated test cases without having to worry about the provisioning side of things. This tool is an attempt to unify the current automated testing for Ubuntu Jenkins.

• UTAH Server Testing

Documentation resources

This area is involved with updating and creating new content for the Ubuntu Server Guide and the community help website. We're working with the DocumentationTeam and focus on server related topics.

Ubuntu Server Guide

The current development version of the Ubuntu Server Guide is located in a bazaar branch (lp:ubuntu-docs) hosted on Launchpad. There is also an html version available online.

Here are the steps to modify the Ubuntu Server Guide and ask the DocumentationTeam to review your changes:

• Create a directory where you'll put your local working version of the Ubuntu Server Guide:

$ bzr init-repo ubuntu-docs
$ cd ubuntu-docs

• Get the ubuntu-docs files that have the latest version of the Ubuntu Server Guide:

$ bzr branch lp:ubuntu-docs
$ cd ubuntu-docs

NB: that command can take some time as the whole history of the branch has to be downloaded from Launchpad.

• Update the Ubuntu Server Guide files using your favorite editor. They can be found in the serverguide/C/ directory.

• Once your changes are complete, commit them:

$ bzr commit

And send them to the ubuntu-doc mailing lists with the bzr send command:

$ bzr send --mail-to=ubuntu-doc@lists.ubuntu.com

Alternatively you can attach a diff of your changes to the associated bug report (do this before you commit your changes).

$ bzr diff > doc-change.patch

There is alot of useful information about making changes to system documentation in the DocumentationTeam/SystemDocumentation wiki page.

Community wiki

• The WikiGuide has guidelines for contributing to the help website.

• If help is needed, the ubuntu-doc mailing list and #ubuntu-doc on irc.freenode.net are good places to ask around.

The Ubuntu Team wiki, at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/, is focused on documentation for Ubuntu community contributors rather than for end users

Developer resources

The Ubuntu Team wiki is the central location where Ubuntu developers exchange ideas and track their progress.

• UbuntuDevelopment gives an overview of the development processes.

• The ubuntu-devel mailing list and #ubuntu-devel on irc.freenode.net are the places where ubuntu developers can be found.

Team policy

Membership

The Membership policy is described in Membership.

Reporting

The ServerTeam has a section in the monthly report. We try to get status reports on a weekly basis on the day preceding the IRC meeting. The ReportingPage is used to gather the outcome of the tasks done by the ServerTeam members during the week.

The montly report is a subpage under ServerTeam/ReportingPage. It's a summary from the Meeting minutes and the "a Month in the archive" post.

The subpage is automatically included in the monthly team report with a macro as defined in the ServerTeam wiki page.

IRC meeting

We hold IRC meeting regularly to report about current tasks and define new ones. The Meeting page presents the Agenda for the next meeting.

MootBot can be used to record the meeting.

irclogs are available on http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/.

Publishing the minutes

Once the meeting is over, minutes are prepared to summarized the outcome of the meeting.

1. Create a new entry in MeetingLogs/Server/YYYYMMDD with the ServerTeamMeetingLogTemplate.

   1. Move the agenda from ServerTeam/Meeting to agenda section.

   2. Copy the irc logs to the Irc log section.

   3. Update ServerTeam/Header to announce the next meeting date.

   4. Write the minutes.

   5. Update the Agenda for the next meeting at ServerTeam/Meeting

      1. In particular, remove completed ACTIONS, add new ones
   6. Update the list of Chair/Scribes
      1. move yourself to the back
      2. send an email to the person who will chair next week
2. Publish the minutes:
   • on ubuntu-server and ubuntu-devel mailing lists

   • on the ubuntuserver blog (or another blog syndicated on Planet Ubuntu).

     • When publishing on the ubuntu server blog, please put it in category "Ubuntu Server meeting minutes"

   A script has been written to automate this step.

CategoryServerTeam