[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Volunteer administrators (was: Re: Guy's Rants about volunteerism)



In the interest of reducing the amount of rants/flames/tomato 
throwing/A-bomb making/fish slapping, I will now officially state that I 
have offered my help in maintaining the security of the server. I have 
one "welcome" and four silent agreements (i.e. - people who were 
notified but did not say "no"). I hope that I don't count as either 
newbe or inexperienced, and will therefor aleviete some of the complains.

            Shachar

Omer Zak wrote:

>On Mon, 24 Dec 2001, guy keren wrote:
>
>>>Would it save Guy's time (and the time of other busy volunteers) if newbie
>>>volunteer/s join and perform more routine tasks (if necessary,under the
>>>supervision of the oldtimers)?
>>>
>>great. so now i'll have to:
>>
>>1. explain to people who to do stuff.
>>2. fix their mistakes.
>>3. run after them, checking what they did and that it's ok.
>>4. go to actcom's offices every time someone breaks the system.
>>
>>sorry, i veto that, unless you do all the mentoring work, and find
>>someone else to go fix the machine after it breaks (and it will). i'm
>>willing to go fix the machine after it breaks only in 2 cases:
>>
>
>Guy, sorry, I can't buy this rant anymore.
>On one hand you are ranting that people are not helping.
>On the other hand, you are erecting high barriers of entry for people who
>may justify spending time on helping.
>
>In any good organization based upon volunteer work, it is known that one
>of the benefits people get from volunteer work is the experience they get
>in the process.  IGLU is not an organization, but the same principle
>applies.
>
>>1. i broke it.
>>2. i trust the person who broke it, and thus assume this breaking was
>> a possible (yet rare) accident.
>>3. it was broken due to hardware problems.
>>
>
>I suggested that the source code and scripts of the www.iglu.org.il be
>made available for read-only access.  One of the things that people may
>volunteer to do (including me) is to make small improvements, which will
>eventually make the system more friendly to newbie sysadmins.
>
>>we have a mixed situation here - on one hand, this machine is supposed to
>>give a service, and people expect it to work. on the other hand - its a
>>sever for the community, and part of this is allowing the community to
>>learn about system administration. you're combining the worst of both
>>worlds :)
>>
>
>I hope that adding one more goal will improve the situation:
>Develop tools which will make the serer easier to administer by newbie
>sysadmins - such as tools which will grep the logfiles and recognize
>90% of the possible problems.
>Of course, this will be accomplished by volunteers who cannot make heavy
>commitment, but can contribute little bits of time here and there.
>
>>>How feasible is to keep a backup of the scripts and config files to be
>>>able to recover from newbie's screwups (except for the mirror disks, of
>>>course)?
>>>
>>its feasible only if you're in a workplace, and cleaning up after newbies
>>is part of your job. its not feasible for remote administration on one's
>>spare time, unless one realy wants to do this cleaning up.
>>
>
>One important part of oldtime volunteers' mission is to assist in getting
>new volunteers trained.  Consider the above to be part of this mission.
>
>>so what this all comes to:
>>
>>1. root password should only be given to people with experience, or those
>> that have proved useful and donated enough of their time, that others
>> will feel ok with cleaning up after them.
>>
>
>No problems with that.  Newbie sysadmins can still be useful if they
>routinely monitor system logs and the like - things which need only
>read-only access.  The experienced sysadmin will then actualy do the
>fix-up work based upon information from the newbies.
>
>>2. less-experienced users could be given a responsibility of maintaining
>> something that does NOT require root password, and that is rather
>> secluded. in this case, they still need to have experience as linux
>> users, and to be dependable.
>>
>
>If you (or even the newbie) can tuck away a backup of the subsystem, then
>this won't be as critical.  If it is not something that a simple tar xvf
>cannot restore, then let the community improve the subsystem until it
>becomes something that tar xvf can restore.
>
>>so i repeat- are there volunteers, or aren't there? so far all i see is
>>talking and general talking. behdad offered to write the run-rsync shell
>>script, and thus i'll forward the description of the script to him. this
>>still doesn't resolve the issue of actually maintaining the mirror itself
>>(and i'm reluctant to open accounts for people whose sysadmining abilities
>>i've never experienced - source code i can still read before installing).
>>
>
>Why not make the run-rsync script made available for all of us to read and
>comment?  (Since now it has an "owner", I am now speaking about other
>scripts and configuration files).
>
>Either you keep things in secret from the general community and accept the
>price of not having many volunteers, or you open up and only then rant if
>enough volunteers don't come up.
>
>As I remember, when there were Linux booths in exhibitions, there were
>several volunteers.  And those projects were as open to the community as
>possible.
>
>                                             --- Omer
>There is no IGLU Cabal.  Some volunteers were too busy to volunteer to
>manage other volunteers.  So more volunteers were not getting trained or
>supervised.  So only experienced volunteers could further the goals of
>this nonexistent organization.  When they all died off due to old age,
>well, this was the end of it.
>WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html
>
>
>=================================================================
>To unsubscribe, send mail to linux-il-request@linux.org.il with
>the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
>echo unsubscribe | mail linux-il-request@linux.org.il
>
>
>



=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to linux-il-request@linux.org.il with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail linux-il-request@linux.org.il