CAcert System Admins discussion list

[<ulrich AT cacert.org>]

Hi Ian and Others,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian G 
> [mailto:iang AT iang.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 5:28 AM

> On 4/08/10 11:21 AM, 
> ulrich AT cacert.org
>  wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Seeing a problem in following areas
>>   * Community.cacert.org

> What is on this system other than Voting tool and Mail ?

and probably webmail ?!?

>>   * Lists.cacert.org
>> caused by low admin resources
>> I hereby volunteer temporarly
>> to administer both named systems, until
>> further (active) admins are available.


> Hmmm... cautiously, I agree   *if* lots and lots of effort is directed
> to finding new sysadms and bringing them in to help ;)

> What do others think?

> (Board is currently de facto sysadm leader at the moment.)

> Not that I'm against help or anything, but I already know that Ulrich
> has an Arbitration case load and a big responsibility for audit:
> getting ATEs moving and co-audits humming...  Oh, and software.  Mustn't

> forget software.  And, and, and...

> It were just the Voting too, fine ... but the mail is a big system.

In business I'm working on Server Hosting since about 20 years.
What me makes so crazy is, that there is only one sysadmin
on each system ...

What if one of the sysadmins runs into a car tommorow in the morning ?
Each system needs at least one backup
In 2009 i've pushed some of the new sysadmins into their roles ...
but thats not enough .... we need more, much more !!!

Have a look at Support ... we have currently 5 (?) Support Engineers.
One is invisible for a longer time, a second was absent for a longer
time, 1 is busy, the 4th is currently also invisible and the 5th
is available around shifts, so currently Support has a backlog
by 5 SEs .... grrr
But this isn't a big problem like we had back in November 2009 ...
so this is under control ...

But what is with our infrastructure systems ?

One point we've discussed in the path was, that we need
an infrastructure team, right ?

So, who picks up this task, to contact several people
to ask them for help in the infrastructure area ?
Since Daniels resignation, this task is moved back
to board. But board probably doesn't see the problem
that araises in this area within the next couple of months.

So its a good point ... I'm active in Arbitration, Software-Assessment
(currently building up a test team), Assurance (ATE) ...
so yes, I'm active in many areas ... and the area I'm volunteer for
is as said temporarely, until the infrastructure team works
as a team ... and a new team leader is found ...
In the meanwhile I'm available as a backup for the community and lists ...

With the ATE's in mind for recruitments, I'll think, it helps to
see some live work with the systems, to see how time consuming
the admin work is, before nominate candidates to become
new infrastructure admins

Sample: yesterday we had our Arbitration team meeting ...
Ted requests an OTRS account ... but who could I ask
for doing this administrative task to create a new account
on OTRS ?
Ok, checking the staff list -> mario ...
Ok pinging Mario on IRC ... sorry .. busy ...
working on his private backlog ... but he has the
answer to me ... Michael is also an admin  ,-)
So here we have a system with 2 admins running ... fine ...
what's with community, lists ?-)
or could you name me the backups for both systems ?-)

> iang


regards, uli   ;-)

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