[okfn-help] Setting up a formal infrastructure working group

Mon Jul 13 16:32:17 BST 2009

James, Martin and I plan to co-initiate a formal "infrastructure
working group" (anyone who'd like to volunteer to be involved let me
know!).

James asked the following, generally relevant, questions:

2009/7/9 James Casbon <casbon at gmail.com>:
> 2009/7/8 Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>:
[..]

>> I see the infrastructure working as managing two distinct aspects of our work:
>>
>> 1. the core OKF infrastructure (servers + websites etc)
>> 2. Development and associated services for our main open knowledge
>> infrastructure "tools": KnowledgeForge, CKAN and the Open Data Grid.
>>
>
> I'm agreed on this.  I'm keen to get my teeth into (1) and I can get
> my hand in by installing CiviCRM for an evaluation.  I am looking
> around trac which seems to have some info there. But I want to know:
>  * who is currently helping with the sysadmin?

No-one other than Martin.

>  * do we have any monitoring (I can see log messages for munin but no
> details in trac) or alerting?

Martin set up munin and I have monit running. We should probably add
details to trac.

Currently monit messages are being sent to admin at okfn.org. I am going
to create a new dedicated sysadmin at okfn.org alias to which these can
get sent and subscribe and forward this to you guys.

>  * do we have any process regarding deployment of new apps?

Not really.

For pylons-based apps we currently have
http://okfn.org/sysadmin/svn/trunk/deploy/

>  * I cannot see any mention of backup strategies on trac

We do have one :)

Backup scripts are in: http://www.okfn.org/sysadmin/svn/trunk/bin/

The results are then synced off each machine to elsewhere. We also do
some rsyncing between machines. E.g. eu0.okfn.org has a mirror of the
live kforge data which is on us0.okfn.org.

> As for 2. I am gradually getting up to speed on what is where, but not
> yet enough to start doing things.
>
> In general, what do we need to do to form this working group? An okfn
> wiki page and a regular meeting?  We would surely need to get people

I think we probably want a regular monthly meeting plus, perhaps an
agreed evening once a week where people can hang out on irc and know
others will be there.

> in from each of the projects in (2) involved.

Absolutely. There are, at present, only 3 or so people contributing
code to KForge, CKAN etc and they are all on okfn-help already I
think.

Rufus