Linux Working Group

Meeting Date

• TEAMS: 2023-12-13

Invited

Anthony (group leader), Lori, Dave, O, Clayton, Guoxiang, Nathan, Nick, Todd, Ed, Devon

Attendees

Anthony (group leader), Clayton, Nathan, Nick, Todd

Review and accept previous meeting minutes.

CsLWGMeeting20231129

Review last meeting's Action Items

CS Mailservers are going away - by Jan 1

• provided Lori with list of hosts still using it as a relay, will check next week for action
  • some progress has been made on this front
• alias / vanity addresses will stop working
• csadviso@cs.uwaterloo.ca special forwarding will cease working, consulting with IST and Brad Lushman (a2brenna) * Nick is looking to replace the forwarding script with Microsoft Power Automate (M365) * Demo what has been completed to advisors, IST has been notified, advisors need to provide feedback

Ongoing problems with Inventory and IPAM are hobbling Infrastructure operations - RT1285291

• Inventory is unaware of this IP / domain limitations in IPAM as well as DHCP and MAC address requirements
  • Invalid records were imported from Infoblox that work until they are edited
  • public domain that resolved to private IP, modifying this record will break the record
• Some CSCF do not have access to create manual DNS entries (Devon, Lori, Guoxiang, Todd have access. Dave?)
• Inventory bug: Changing room field on a record with IPAM DNS & DHCP causes DHCP to break
• Anthony to reach out to IST for clarification regarding is this a policy vs technological limitation.
  • Delayed due to lack of staff time
• Need CSCF management to take over this ticket

What's still using old MySQL?

NextCloud (Vault) pending migration

• Nextcloud DB migration (Nathan, Fraser) - Thursday, Dec 14
  • Lori to notify staff

Web server (includes Inventory)

• needs OS (whole LAMP stack) to be updated (Nathan, Isaac)
  • When?

Retire CS-GENERAL and associated domain controllers

• Last user is Vault
  • Vault upgrade needs to be performed - move db to mysql 8, upgrade NextCloud, then fix AD
  • Vault migration from GENERAL to CS-GENERAL may take place after upgrade. Nathan to determine what is priority
  • Why can't vault switch domains to GENERAL? (a2brenna) - File space in vault is mapped to the user's UUID. Clayton has provided a mapping from GENERAL to CS-GENERAL.

Ongoing problems with NFS ganesha server RT#1303795

• needs further enhancements to monitoring service?
  • Devon and Anthony to preparing doc for help desk
    • Delayed due to lack of staff time
  • More comprehensive monitoring of NFS performance is in the works (a2brenna, dmerner) ~ January
    • Delayed due to lack of staff time

Monitoring Services

• Number of false alerts is a concern.
• Lack of Service Maintenance outside of standard working hours has been more of a problem lately.
  • Management is aware and need to review this.

More usage data needed for labs (Mac and Linux) RT #1284635

• https://icinga.cscf.uwaterloo.ca/grafana/d/ad3e49d5-0353-4d40-ac10-25d8a97b947e/lab-usage?orgId=1
  • Worth noting this dramatically underestimates people in the lab. On 2023-11-27T12:23:00 a2brenna walked past the lab with dlgawley and pbeldows and counted no fewer than 19 occupants, Grafana indicates between 3 and 4 logged in users at that time.
  • Other faculties are interested in using labs

linux.cscf.uwaterloo.ca

• New linux.cscf.uwaterloo.ca running Ubuntu 22.04 is almost ready
  • Switch over first week of Jan

Incremental backups of block devices

• Possible solutions include rsync and borg but neither is ideal
• gxshen to investigate Legato NetWorker backups of block devices

Snapshots are still disabled

• a2brenna to enable snapshots on a file system to test performance - hoping to be done before start of next term
  • Delayed due to lack of staff time
• communication should be sent at the beginning of the term to inform users of the current status

Postmortem of chilled water outage

• Needs to be scheduled - CSCF Management

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