[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] ***SPAM*** Re: Should we have a systems administrators list?

[Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley]

-1

I want to show a little solidarity with Ben on this issue, admitting up 
front that I'm not in practice the sysadmin of any Evergreen site.

It's absolutely great for the sysadmin community to communicate and 
share more; that will be only a win for the project in general whether 
you do it in your own mailing list or on the general one.

It's the siloing of our community that I worry about.  Dan Scott and I 
seemed to be successful in talking the Acq group out of starting a new 
list the conference, and there are a few other folks (including non 
developers) who spoke about intracommunity communications.  I can't 
recall who right now (but thank you!).

I think the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing in our 
community is a problem sometimes, but it's one we should be able to fix. 
  I'll be making more of an effort on my part to ensure that development 
isn't going on in the dark.

This isn't a bitter -1, and if you do create a new sysadmin list, more 
power to all of you.  Sharing information and ideas is what's most 
important here.

Lebbeous

On 05/01/2012 12:14 PM, Ben Shum wrote:
> I'm -1 to this proposal.
>
> For many years, I've mused with other Evergreen system administrators on
> the issues facing our particular role and areas for discussion. The idea
> of making our own mailing list seemed like a good idea at many points in
> those discussions, and if you asked me a few years ago, I would have
> said yes.
>
> But here are some potential concerns I have now:
>
> While our role within our organizations may be to find the best
> practices for implementing/running an Evergreen system (and all the
> related areas of interest noted), we can also have a key role to play in
> Evergreen's overall development. As system administrators, we are often
> at the cutting edge of testing, bug reporting, and troubleshooting how
> Evergreen performs in the field. We can provide invaluable feedback to
> the Evergreen developers when we discuss our sys-admin issues in the
> existing lists / IRC.
>
> Creating a separate list introduces the possibility that more
> information can become lost between groups if people do not subscribe to
> every list. While of course, many of us would likely be signed up to
> these multiple lists and potentially act as representatives between
> groups, I do not like to see the burden of communication between various
> lists/groups to become a necessary conscious act on behalf of those
> subscribed to several lists.
>
> Like say for example:
>
> John Smith has an installation problem and mentions it only on the sys
> admin list. But it turns out to be an actual issue with the Evergreen
> code itself and we have to involve developers to get it fixed for
> everyone in the community. Do we then have to take the originally
> reported issue from the sys admin list and forward it to the dev list
> and discuss solutions? The extra time and potential for lost
> information/facts gives me concerns that having that extra layer of
> communication may prove unwieldy.
>
> Alternatively, what if someone posted a question to both mailing lists
> (sys admin and dev) and different people respond on each thread (based
> on whichever list they were subscribed) and the conversation becomes
> fractured between two lists? How does everything get put back together
> in a nice ordered way for the next generation of users searching for
> information / learning.
>
> To summarize, in my opinion, the system administrators while definitely
> having their own set of issues and topics of discussion are still a core
> part of the overall Evergreen development community and we should
> participate using the same areas for discussion such as the dev mailing
> list and IRC so that we don't miss anything or leave anything out of the
> mainstream Evergreen community. The main thing I would want to change at
> this point in time is perhaps the wording used to describe the dev
> mailing list to expand beyond just technical code/patches, but to be a
> broader description and reinforce the "technical discussion list" title.
> Unless of course, the developers tell us that they'd prefer to keep that
> list to talking only about real development only... ;)
>
> -- Ben
>
> On 4/30/2012 8:11 PM, Justin Hopkins wrote:
>> We just wrapped up the post-conference systems administrator training,
>> which was awesome. Afterwards we were talking about the utility of a
>> new discussion list focused on Evergreen systems administration.
>>
>> I think the topic is deep enough to warrant a list, and if this group
>> is any indication there is also sufficient interest. Systems
>> administration (troubleshooting server config issues,
>> installing/setting up Evergreen, using git, performance tuning,
>> network issues, cluster configuration, security, etc) seems to be an
>> area that deserves it's own forum. I've received plenty of great help
>> on those topics in IRC, which I'm very appreciative of, but let's face
>> it - IRC is and probably always will be the domain of developers.
>>
>> I'm hoping that if enough people on this list express an interest that
>> someone (Chris Sharp?) could create such a list. So let's hear it
>> sysads - should we create the "missing list"?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Justin Hopkins
>> Coordinator, IT& Web Services
>> MOBIUS Consortium Office
>> c: 573-808-2309
>>
>> --sent from a mobile device--
>>
>


-- 
Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley
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