[maemo-community] maemo.org infra safety - HiFo action URGENTLY needed.

[From: joerg Reisenweber]

On Tue 11 March 2014 05:02:46 Craig Woodward wrote:
> The servers were in fact transferred to HiFo from Nokia, with the express

The servers were transferred from Nemein to IPHH by UPS(?) paid by Nokia. 
Nemein granted Falk and me access to their own infra (XEN grid, migration#1) 
before any such server transfer happened.

> understanding that they were CONTINGENT on a resolution of negotiations on
> the legal transfer of all rights needed by HiFo to operate Maemo going
> forward.
And? What's the status of such negotiations?

> This was why I had concerns about that process not finishing,
> since Nokia could in fact pull them back if negotiations do not finish

Exactly.

> (despite your claims counter to such).  

Nope, I don't think I ever did. I think my words were "are owned by Nokia, 
Nemein, or even Falk, depending on what's been written in delivery papers and 
who holds the complete documents for the server iron"

> Right now, Nokia legally still
> owns these servers, and has allowed HiFo to house/access/administer them
> while negotiations are ongoing.

Hey, where's the damn problem then? Show me the letter from Nokia where this 
is written and we *all* are much happier!

> HiFo asked for volunteers to form a
> technical team to administer those servers, and after vetting, instructed
> Nemien (via Nokia) to grant them access to these machines.  So yes,
> legally, Nokia COULD pull them back, and HiFo CAN change who is a current
> administrator.

This proves pretty comprehensive your own confusion and your inability to read 
my statements as what they are saying. The answer is simple: you say HiFo 
instructed Nokia to instruct Nemein to grant Falk and me root access to the 
server. Then please do same to change the root permissions, withdraw them from 
Falk and me and grant them to you directly. Since I have no proof for your 
claim that  *you instructed Nokia*, I'm not liable and bound to orders from 
you but to Nemein, until you provide a document that makes clear you own the 
servers now - like, back in 2012, I anticipated you would do soon, but afaik 
you failed to negoatiate that so far. So much for the de jure status.
Thanks for these clear words of yours.

And no worries, nobody is "walk[ing] off with the servers" (nobody except maybe 
Falk even *could*), they'll stay where they are and will probably keep 
running. Despite your fuzzy ideas about what's happening inside techstaff, I'm 
not touching them since several months, I never did to the amount you and 
others suggested here, and 
*my role* in techstaff is simply that of the *keyholder* and a *service* *to* 
our first and second *sysops* Falk and Xes who receive suggestions from me whom 
to grant which accounts and access on which servers, so they don't have to 
negotiate that with whomever or take the responsibility for new maintainers 
themselves. It's also my duty to report to HiFo and council about any such 
changes in techstaff, which I always diligently did so far. Our sysops are not 
inclined to do that tedious task themselves.
Anyway your silly idea/nightmare of me as a single point of failure and a 
danger to the maemo infra and operation is exactly what I always massively 
acted to avoid coming true, by sharing everything I do in the channel designed 
for that (you now it: ##maemo-admin) and by clearly leaving final 
responsibility for technical management of servers to our two main sysops (who 
both consider me as one of them in that I have access to the servers - 
implicitly by "holding the keys" - but I always did step back from any major 
sysop tasks due to my lesser qualification and I try to never interfere with 
their duties). Au contraire they give me instructions when it comes to 
handling technical details, while I do what a coordinator/manager does: 
keeping the loose ends together and introducing new staff to them. On the other 
hand they ask me which permissions a new maintainer needs, on which servers. 
So I'm not a single point of failure but maybe the single point of 
information, which HiFo seems to completely miss to understand. Techstaff is 
organized in a way that creates maximum redundancy and peer review. Except for 
tmo, whose maintainer til today failed to consider the several requests to 
install a proper proxy for him who could take over when said maintainer gets 
hit by a bus. And who constantly refuses to use the proper dedicated channels 
(##maemo-admin) to coordinate any issues with his techstaff peers. 
Again: sysops ask me who's going to get which accounts/permissions, and 
answering that is the single most important and pretty much the only task I 
do, and I got assigned exactly that task, officially by HiFo (despite it's 
questionable if they could do that at that point in time since they didn't own 
the servers yet, as woody explained above), and implicitly by Nemein who 
granted root access to maemo infra to me and Falk. *You* could ask them sysops 
to stop that practice of asking me about accounts/permissions. I don't see 
other ways to do the requested obscure "handover" HiFo expects me to do. 
"handover" of what? To whom? Whom are the sysops going to ask when you "kicked 
me"?
And btw sysops already said they don't see a reason to remove my accounts from 
the servers, they seem not concerned at all about me doing anything rogue in 
my implicit role as junior/standin admin. They however see damage done by HiFo 
approaching techstaff with silly "orders". HiFo seems not content with the way 
maemo administration is organized and working right now, however they request 
obscure "handover" and don't suggest an alternative to the way things are 
working now. That's a pretty destructive approach and I don't see it helping 
anybody, thus I'm not supporting it.


/j


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