[libre-riscv-dev] dns entries for talos server & server maintenance

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 10:21 PM Jacob Lifshay <programmerjake at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> to make it easier to connect to without having to remember the IP
> address, I think we should add a dns entry for the talos server, I'd
> suggest talos1.libre-soc.org. As a reminder, the IP address is
> 23.155.224.75

good idea.

> Also, someone forgot to enable automatic updates,

no, it was not "forgotten" - the absolute last thing we need is
"automatically introduced problems", particularly if - especially as -
the setup is using debian/testing.

debian/stable and "production" servers with carefully pre-planned
setups, or "toys" where nobody else is relying on it, or "your own
personal machine" is absolutely fine to enable potentially-damaging
"automatic updates".


> so I updated the
> software manually. Sorry if that broke something.

yes please don't do that without consulting everyone, first.

to give you some idea: the notification schedule that servers used to
be on at Imperial College was 90 days advance warning of softtware
updates, and one year for a reboot.


> The server needs to be rebooted to use the new kernel that got
> installed,

which is precisely why you don't "upgrade" a server, especially
without notice or discussion.  we are now critically dependent on that
machine having 100% uninterrupted power.

if there is a power-outage in the data centre that causes an
unscheduled reboot, resulting in that machine going down, and we are
critically reliant on it for testing at the time, someone has to drop
everything they're doing, scramble to look up the procedure for
logging in to the virtual console, and then work out how to recover
the machine.


> so, Luke, I'll let you do that since you have stuff running
> on it.

no, i'm not going to reboot it, because if it doesn't come back up
someone has to spend the time recovering it.

lesson learned: never "upgrade" servers without consulting people, ok?

l.