From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 14 17:28:10 2015 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 3F525C80 for ; Wed, 14 Jan 2015 17:28:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-lb0-x236.google.com (mail-lb0-x236.google.com [IPv6:2a00:1450:4010:c04::236]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (Client CN "smtp.gmail.com", Issuer "Google Internet Authority G2" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A08CEEF8 for ; Wed, 14 Jan 2015 17:28:09 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-lb0-f182.google.com with SMTP id u10so9055195lbd.13 for ; Wed, 14 Jan 2015 09:28:07 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject :from:to:cc:content-type; bh=c2l04Nak0ArWBPC0kjAPWhLGsfE4CN/aO8GXJnb/EGU=; b=u/pCSF74cJxoOzwjTErB2mbIzDoa3BWU5rkPjn9xf5gk8qz6hItYqJ23AQ0pBOO+6H tfzTv0drd4mo3fw1I2qeJ7OTyobLaDn1X/yz3OS2e7pPrJi0lIqNJZKh9YgwbYZ7YY83 sdOjY94BF4DqF16P1PTia2yD9BK3L7rdwjqeRHNsRPKMk2WYFsDH/RQypby8NtwASZPW ulgzsRBPaDxTsaZibYWojF14YQ+xjcU/f7s3s6FTAuGE3vDC966JiJP/NAYj2I+oPKGK VvPF9OihhBmIy1EAzJmq+D+hVq3b4hOxUEUkegiqUl9GlqIiT3CjixSblTlc7KlPnj3O 7zCg== MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.152.23.38 with SMTP id j6mr5173135laf.81.1421256487647; Wed, 14 Jan 2015 09:28:07 -0800 (PST) Sender: crodr001@gmail.com Received: by 10.112.129.3 with HTTP; Wed, 14 Jan 2015 09:28:07 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: References: <20150114023330.GA80986@FreeBSD.org> Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 09:28:07 -0800 X-Google-Sender-Auth: egXKghVC1n3F9ohT9npEjve1SEY Message-ID: Subject: Re: projects to better support FreeBSD sysadmins From: Craig Rodrigues To: Hunter Satterwhite Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.18-1 Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org, Deb Goodkin X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 17:28:10 -0000 On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 7:53 PM, Hunter Satterwhite < hsatterwhite@webassign.net> wrote: > Thanks for providing more detail Craig. > > Fair enough, but these two items are minor at best and I don't feel like > they do much in the way of supporting your previous claim. While I do > wholeheartedly agree with the fact that freebsd-update should "just work" > it's still easy to work around. > kickstart and freebsd-update are just two examples, found very quickly after trying to set this stuff up. freebsd-update has been around since 2006. The problem I mentioned and workarounds have been mentioned on the web since then. To go back to Royce's original posting, I am seeing that there is a definite disconnect between developers who work on the source tree, and people who are deploying FreeBSD in modern datacenter and cloud environments. I'm actually not the only one who has run into these types of problems. I've talked to a friend in a company making a product based on FreeBSD, who has run into similar problems when trying to do kickstart and mass deployment of FreeBSD nodes. If you are willing to code your own stuff up, it is doable, but things are definitely not as well documented and turnkey as the Linux equivalet solutions. > > To automate the installation of FreeBSD without the use of any other > 3rd-party tools you would write your own shell script for bsdinstall. It's > pretty straight forward and easy to do. However, I'd argue that if you want > to operate at the scale you keep referring to and do it full life cycle, > then you're likely not going to be doing this. Instead you'll be using > tools, like Foreman and Puppet, which will make provisioning systems a > cinch. > For the http://jenkins.freebsd.org cluster, I quickly came to the conclusion that you have described. I put out a Call for Help for some devops assistance: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2014-December/053584.html and got one volunteer from Ahmed Kamal, a devops expert who works for a company specializing in cloud/devops ( http://www.cloud9ers.com ): https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-testing/2015-January/000723.html Ahmed is new to FreeBSD, but he definitely knows his stuff with devops and cloud, and has started providing code and scripts to help: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ci/commits/master Any issues that Ahmed is finding in FreeBSD itself (whether it is src, ports, or docs), I am trying to push fixes back into FreeBSD itself to improve things and smooth things over. > > FWIW, I've had both inexperienced and experienced Linux system > administrators who want to employ the use of DevOps and have had both at > some point and time state, "You can't do that with FreeBSD" or "FreeBSD > makes it very difficult to do X". Each and every time they were incorrect > and it was, because FreeBSD is not their wheel house and unfortunately they > didn't take the time to do much research on their own. No one administrator > can be an expert in everything, but part of what we do requires us to be > inquisitive and investigative. Two traits that are fading fast in Linux > administrators. > > Well, like it or not, Linux (in its various distributions) has succeeded in becoming the dominant Unix platform in the modern datacenter. The 3rd party tools, documentation, and skillset of people who are available for hire reflect this, and FreeBSD is an afterthought. Anything that we can do in FreeBSD to change things in the base system, ports, and documentation to make things easier for sysadmins, as Royce pointed out, would be a great focus for the project and Foundation. Having people like Ahmed, who are familiar with the Linux ways of doing things, but are open to pointing out where FreeBSD lags behind and helping improve things, is as good a place to start as any. -- Craig