Separation and priority of tasks (was Re: [clue-admin] Notes from Tuesday meeting)

[Crawford Rainwater]

Folks:

If I may suggest, let us stabilize what CLUE needs first, i.e., hosting via VPSLink or an alternative.  After this is accomplished and completed, then we can discuss other "ideas" for CLUE's site.  If there is no CLUE server (via VPS or otherwise), then there is no need to pursue enhancements after all.

On the merging Linux ETC accounts, there are some tools with VPSLink that permit additional monitoring of the server in the event of something going down service wise or the whole server goes out.  I made this suggestion since Linux ETC has several clients' accounts with VPSLink so that Linux ETC may do what the client asked which is be their server administrator.  The clients' still have ssh login for them to "do their thing" with the VPS.

On using Xen vs. OpenVZ there is a virtual memory cap using OpenVZ without access to the server configuration side to adjust this with VPSLink.  Xen does not have this save the allocated memory of the Xen VPS.  This would permit a few items to be used that have been discussed in the past, which could not be used at this time.

Additionally with a new VPSLink account that is Xen based, we can upgrade to CentOS 5.x vs. CentOS 4.x which we are currently on.  For any major version upgrade of any Linux distro at VPSLink though, this would require rebuilding the VPS from scratch, then putting things back into place (e.g., Apache, MailMan, CVS, Postfix, etc.).  The VPSLink VPS's are tailored for those specific versions, so even going with Ubuntu and doing an upgrade from 6.06LTS to 8.04LTS would not occur due to the kernel differences within both.  So with that, a proper backup of all data portions of the CLUE server once again will be needed, tested, and verified for this to happen if and when a major distro upgrade comes out.

I think these should be the first priorities with the "I would like to see..." be considered later.  Just my $0.02 here.

For reference, I get the list in Digest format so pardon any delays to responses in advance.

--- Crawford

The Linux ETC Company
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