[WBEL-users] More yum mirrors?

[Mark Reynolds]

Quoting John Morris <jmorris@beau.org>:

> Owwww, that would be a really evil thing to do to the folks who have
> pointed it to internal mirrors or added in a bunch of third party yum/apt
> repos.

Yes. But as some very smart people on this list have pointed out, the
people who have left the default yum config as per dist, are the
ones causing the problem. They have also not followed documented
requests, and are probably unlikely to in the future anyway.

The people who are using external and internal mirrors, (ie not
causing issues) are on this list, watch the website, and are 
concerned about security issues.

The whole sorry saga just illustrates that you have to design 
systems for the lowest common denominator. In this case, a yum
config for people who don't read instructions, and don't pay much
attention.

> Might have to do it though, guess the peeps who do that sort of thing 
> would likely be the ones who actually read announcements and such and 
> would be ready for it if I give a long enough head's up.

In my experience closing down a RBL blacklist, if you're thinking
that way now, pick some arbitrary date in the future _now_, 
and announce it on website and list. If you decide to change the
date or the plan itself, people can't say they weren't given
enough notice. 

If you decide to not procede, you can do that too, as the 
status quo would prevail. But announce, for example, that 
yum default config changes _will_ be occuring on this date, 
not that they might be, or that you might change your mind. 
People pay attention to definitive plans, but will filter
out and ignore ambiguous statements of changes that might 
take place.

The other thought that came to mind this morning about the
us.whiteboxlinux.org and au. and eu. domain name system,
is that when mirrors get changed to add or subtract a
mirror, for whatever reasons, you can simply change the
A record the dns zone file for whiteboxlinux.org. If you
put the current real host names in the yum config file
now, then when they change in a year or two (remember,
RHEL and therefore WBEL have a 5 year update available
cycle) you have to do the whole yum config change thing
again. Say is the .au mirror closed, you would simply
change the A record to point to us. mirror, until another
au. mirror popped up, or someone made one available.

Then also consider that in a years time (or so) WHEL
will probably have a version 4.0, and a year or so after
that, a 5.0 version. So there might be the need to have
multiple mirrors, for each WBEL version.

If we're into this for the long haul, then we need
to have systems, processes and plans in train now.

And one thing that concerns me, is to have more people 
assisting, so that it doesn't all fall onto the shoulders
of one person. ie if John wants to focus on builds and
updates, (a huge task in itself) then why not appoint 
someone else to look after DNS, and another person to 
look after mirrors and distribution management. 
Perhaps another to look after newbie list questions, 
and another to look after PR requests. Perhaps another 
to look after web site. Sure, some people will come and 
go, and some will do a good job, and others not so good,
but managing a small bunch of people will be way easier
than having all that done by one person.

thanks again.

mark reynolds




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