>>>>> "BS" == Brian Smith <bsm...@systemfabricworks.com> writes:
Hi Brian, while I appreciate your initiative, I'm a bit skeptical about the inclusion of warewulf in Debian for the following reasons: a) Development in the project has stalled for quite a while. It used to be basically a one-man show driven by Gregory M. Kurtzer who now runs a startup (https://www.sylabs.io/) pushing the singularity container software. b) The software is quite complex and involves system components which are rather security critical. Given that we cannot count on upstream concerning fixing security issues, I consider it a substantial risk that we might have a hard time struggling with critical security bugs. c) Given its complexity, the software is also rather involved concerning its packaging process. Hence, I believe it only makes sense to include it in Debian if there is a strong commitment from you and at least one other DD for the long-term maintenance. Because of these points I wouldn't be in favor of including warewulf in Debian. I looked at it myself about a possible inclusion in our own cluster OS Qlustar for a while, but didn't find it suitable for basically the above reasons. Please note, this is only my personal opinion and if the majority of the Debian HPC team thinks otherwise, I have no problem with it. I just think it's better to have this discussion now, rather than after you have done all the work and it possibly would have been in vain ... Cheers, Roland BS> Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: "Brian T. Smith" BS> <bsm...@systemfabricworks.com> X-Debbugs-CC: BS> debian-de...@lists.debian.org, debian-...@lists.debian.org BS> * Package name : warewulf BS> Version : 3.8.1 Upstream Author : Gregory M. Kurtzer BS> <gmkurt...@gmail.com> BS> * URL : https://warewulf.lbl.gov/ BS> * License : BSD-3-Clause-like BS> Programming Lang: Perl, Bourne, Bash Description : Systems BS> management suite for Linux clusters BS> Warewulf is an operating system management toolkit designed to BS> facilitate large scale deployments of systems on physical, BS> virtual and cloud-based infrastructures. It facilitates elastic BS> and large deployments consisting of groups of homogenous BS> systems. BS> Compute nodes are managed via the warewulf suite that is BS> installed to a head node. The head node executes services used BS> to provision the operating system to compute nodes, which BS> execute an iPXE agent. The essential services are tftpd, dhcpd, BS> httpd and nfsd. Warewulf consists of a set of scripts which BS> automate configuration of these services via a command-line BS> interface. BS> The upstream Warewulf source package includes embedded source BS> tarballs for parted, ipxe, e2fsprogs, busybox, libarchive and BS> unionfs. Thus, the upstream builds include binary code for these BS> packages that are already available for Debian. A goal of this BS> project is to remove these embedded packages from the build and BS> ship packages that target the "all" architecture. BS> Warewulf's upstream build also includes packaging of a compute BS> node initrd image, created from the embedded packages. The BS> Debian package will not include an initrd image. Rather, a BS> script to create the initrd image via mkinitramfs and custom BS> hooks will be used by the administrator to build the compute BS> node initrd image after installing warewulf to the head node. BS> This technique has the benefit of easing an administrator's task BS> of updating the initrd image, when necessary. BS> Warewulf is used by administrators who need to manage clusters BS> of linux computers, and also by those who need to deploy BS> operating system images over a LAN. I use it in my development BS> environment for these purposes. BS> I plan to maintain Warewulf within the debian-hpc team, of which BS> I am a member. As my role is Debian Maintainer, the initial BS> upload will require assistance from a sponsor.
