Re: [Kolab-devel] Kolab 16 for Debian

Nov 24 21:00:44 <timotheus>	Hello all! Who is here for the IRC chat announced on the mailing list? Topic: Kolab on Debian, and more...
Nov 24 21:01:07 *	Airhardt is ready
Nov 24 21:01:08 <timotheus>	I will post a copy of this chat to the mailing list
Nov 24 21:01:27 <timotheus>	hello Airhardt :)
Nov 24 21:01:33 <rbenea>	hi all
Nov 24 21:01:48 <Airhardt>	good evening
Nov 24 21:02:45 <timotheus>	good to see you, rbenea and pklos
Nov 24 21:02:58 <timotheus>	kanarip, are you around?
Nov 24 21:03:35 <pklos>	hi, good evening
Nov 24 21:04:43 <rbenea>	timotheus goot to meet you too
Nov 24 21:05:34 <timotheus>	Aaron has not arrived yet...
Nov 24 21:05:45 <timotheus>	I think his nick was aseigo
Nov 24 21:07:27 <timotheus>	there were a couple of more people on the doodle... hede, and Jochen
Nov 24 21:09:24 <timotheus>	I guess we just make a start, and hope some more will join us
Nov 24 21:10:17 <timotheus>	Current state of Debian in Winterfell: what do you think? are you testing it? or are you most interested in a stable release?
Nov 24 21:10:48 <timotheus>	hede did some work to make the erlang thinks work, I think
Nov 24 21:11:04 <timotheus>	which helped kanarip to package Kolab 16 much faster: https://kanarip.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/kolab-16-1-for-jessie-way-ahead-of-schedule/
Nov 24 21:12:40 <pklos>	I read the mails, and that blog too, but tbh I haven't done any packaging work in a few years
Nov 24 21:12:58 <timotheus>	my nightly tests currently fail for Debian Jessie on Winterfell, I think due to the amavis service not starting
Nov 24 21:13:00 <pklos>	still running 3.4 on debian, but I'd like to get involved again
Nov 24 21:13:21 <timotheus>	that is good to hear, pklos!
Nov 24 21:13:51 <timotheus>	I guess it is not only packaging, but testing and reporting bugs that also helps
Nov 24 21:14:08 <pklos>	yup, of course
Nov 24 21:14:33 <timotheus>	I guess nobody is using Winterfell in production? though one person on Kolab hub is using it in production I think. but that might be on CentOS
Nov 24 21:14:52 <pklos>	I must have a testing vm lying around somewhere, I guess I should see if I can fire that up again :-)
Nov 24 21:15:24 <Airhardt>	I have done a bit of packaging for winterfell, too, but my primary interest lies on the stable branch
Nov 24 21:15:50 <timotheus>	my problem is that I don't know at which point things from winterfell are merged into stable
Nov 24 21:15:52 <Airhardt>	I'm still using 3.4 on my server for now
Nov 24 21:16:40 <rbenea>	I installed 16 on CentOS just for testing. I used 3.4 on Debian. I'm hoping for Kolab on Debian/Ubuntu because I'm more used to it. All my machines are running virtulized in Proxmox
Nov 24 21:16:51 <timotheus>	at Tbits.net, we use Kolab 3.4 on CentOS. so my primary interest is to have a community for Kolab, and I think a big part of the community is traditionally using Debian
Nov 24 21:17:27 <timotheus>	I am using LXC for virtualisation for Kolab
Nov 24 21:17:32 <timotheus>	for the test machines
Nov 24 21:17:52 <rbenea>	Because we use saltstack, my goal would be to create a formula to deploy kolab servers
Nov 24 21:18:21 <rbenea>	Proxmox is using LXC now too
Nov 24 21:19:16 <Airhardt>	anyone here running kolab on ubuntu?
Nov 24 21:20:32 <Airhardt>	my general feeling is that the interest in getting kolab support for debian is quite a bit higher than for ubuntu
Nov 24 21:23:27 <timotheus>	my answer to Airhardt somehow disappeared? my connection is bad tonight
Nov 24 21:23:37 <rbenea>	do you think if it's working on Debian would work out of the box in Ubuntu?
Nov 24 21:23:54 <timotheus>	there is this problem with swig, it does not support php 7 on Ubuntu 16.04 yet
Nov 24 21:24:07 <Airhardt>	timotheus: apparently yes, I didn't receive anything
Nov 24 21:24:51 <timotheus>	Airhardt, Ubuntu wants to be a serious Server OS, but we are used to think of it as a desktop OS
Nov 24 21:25:15 <timotheus>	but they are doing a lot with LXC, and so on
Nov 24 21:25:26 <Airhardt>	the PHP 7 problem will probably bite us with debian 9 as well, won't it?
Nov 24 21:25:42 <timotheus>	Debian 9 will come out in Spring 2017?
Nov 24 21:26:16 <Airhardt>	probably
Nov 24 21:26:44 <rbenea>	In Ubuntu 16.04 you can downgrade to PHP5
Nov 24 21:27:33 <rbenea>	the interesting part in Proxmox, the LXC Debian 8 template is not using systemd because they said it was not mature enough
Nov 24 21:28:24 <rbenea>	so in this case, I assume that for Proxmox I'll be forced to use Ubuntu 16.04 because of systemd
Nov 24 21:29:04 <timotheus>	Kolab Systems think about getting rid of PHP in the longterm, I cannot think how much work that will be
Nov 24 21:29:34 <Airhardt>	to me, that sounds like a mid- to long-term goal
Nov 24 21:29:47 <timotheus>	Ok, perhaps we should talk about Kolab 16.1 then
Nov 24 21:29:47 <rbenea>	:( I like PHP
Nov 24 21:29:54 <timotheus>	me too
Nov 24 21:30:07 <rbenea>	what do you want to replace Roundcube with ?
Nov 24 21:30:18 <timotheus>	Roundcube.next will be more or less javascript
Nov 24 21:30:25 <timotheus>	and JMAP on the server side
Nov 24 21:30:37 <timotheus>	which is implemented by Cyrus
Nov 24 21:30:57 <timotheus>	or Dovecot
Nov 24 21:31:22 <Airhardt>	anyway, I'd like to get back to timotheus' original question: does anyone actually use winterfell for serious testing or is it just a kind of dumping ground for mildly tested packages?
Nov 24 21:31:49 <timotheus>	mildly tested: only some automatic tests by continuous delivery
Nov 24 21:31:49 <rbenea>	I plan to dedicate more time to Kobal 16.1 next month when I hope that business will go slower
Nov 24 21:32:37 <timotheus>	should we as community help with increasing the test suite?
Nov 24 21:32:38 <pklos>	I haven't looked at winterfell at all yet
Nov 24 21:32:43 <Airhardt>	i.e. "if it compiles, ship it"? ;-)
Nov 24 21:33:01 *	huetterm_ ([email protected]) has joined
Nov 24 21:34:31 <timotheus>	all development of the packages should happen in Winterfell
Nov 24 21:34:41 <timotheus>	I wonder why that is not appealing to the community
Nov 24 21:34:49 <timotheus>	we want something that works?
Nov 24 21:34:53 <timotheus>	and is stable?
Nov 24 21:34:57 <timotheus>	and can be improved?
Nov 24 21:35:03 <Airhardt>	how easy would it be to provide automated tests for everyday use cases?
Nov 24 21:35:16 <timotheus>	Airhardt, I am looking where there are test cases in git
Nov 24 21:35:29 <timotheus>	phabricator has a module harbour or something
Nov 24 21:35:37 <timotheus>	and stick is Suite Testing Integration Continous Kolab
Nov 24 21:35:52 <timotheus>	see https://cgit.kolab.org/stick/tree/drydocker
Nov 24 21:36:03 <timotheus>	but I cannot find the specific tests that I have seen some time ago
Nov 24 21:36:52 *	huetterm__ has quit (Ping timeout: 268 seconds)
Nov 24 21:37:59 <Airhardt>	I think one issue with winterfell is that most people cannot afford doing any real-life testing with it
Nov 24 21:38:10 <rbenea>	I agree
Nov 24 21:38:34 *	huetterm__ ([email protected]) has joined
Nov 24 21:38:37 <Airhardt>	one would have to set up a second machine, configure it all the way, and then do real stuff with it
Nov 24 21:39:20 <rbenea>	and the thing is that you don't configure a kolab server every day, you have to start reading again all about it etc..
Nov 24 21:39:40 <Airhardt>	personally, I have a kolab instance running on my private server, and I need that instance to be stable
Nov 24 21:40:17 <timotheus>	so Kolab is too complex for casual tests?
Nov 24 21:40:38 <timotheus>	I have my scripts to setup a kolab server automatically. but I am doing that for work
Nov 24 21:40:55 <timotheus>	so perhaps not to be compared with average community member
Nov 24 21:41:03 <Airhardt>	concerning the integrated overall bundle: yes, definitely
Nov 24 21:41:14 <rbenea>	timotheus: I would appreciate if you could share the scripts
Nov 24 21:41:21 <rbenea>	:)
Nov 24 21:41:34 <timotheus>	rbenea, they are shared :) https://github.com/TBits/KolabScripts
Nov 24 21:41:41 <timotheus>	see the various branches
Nov 24 21:41:54 <timotheus>	for Kolab 3.4, winterfell, kolab 16
Nov 24 21:42:02 <timotheus>	they work for Debian and Centos
Nov 24 21:42:10 <timotheus>	Ubuntu in theory as well
Nov 24 21:42:19 <timotheus>	Fedora as well, but I have not tested that in a while
Nov 24 21:42:20 *	huetterm_ has quit (Ping timeout: 260 seconds)
Nov 24 21:42:27 <timotheus>	because Fedora packages are not built on OBS at the moment
Nov 24 21:43:03 <timotheus>	kanarip says, that Kolab should be packaged by the distributions, ie Debian, Fedora
Nov 24 21:43:14 <timotheus>	what do people think? is that something you would be interested in helping?
Nov 24 21:43:23 <rbenea>	timotheus:  thank you, looks great.
Nov 24 21:44:14 <Airhardt>	it's a bit of a two-sided medal in my opinion
Nov 24 21:44:16 <rbenea>	I have little experience with making *.debs
Nov 24 21:44:28 <rbenea>	I could help
Nov 24 21:45:08 <Airhardt>	I agree that it's generally a good idea for packages to end up in the official distro repositories
Nov 24 21:45:11 <pklos>	I was involved in getting libkolab(xml) into debian
Nov 24 21:45:45 <Airhardt>	that said, the debian release cycle is a bit, well, slow
Nov 24 21:45:50 <timotheus>	pklos, you needed to become a debian maintainer? how much work is that?
Nov 24 21:45:59 <timotheus>	Airhardt, Debian Testing is quite a rolling release
Nov 24 21:46:08 <timotheus>	I have heard people use that for production?
Nov 24 21:46:09 <pklos>	I wasn't actually the maintainer; I had a sponsor
Nov 24 21:46:46 <pklos>	I think it differs, I suppose many people run stable for its, wel, stability :-)
Nov 24 21:46:48 <timotheus>	I have become a Fedora maintainer, still it would be quite a number of packages to maintain
Nov 24 21:46:50 <Airhardt>	hmm
Nov 24 21:47:00 <Airhardt>	I use debian stable :-)
Nov 24 21:47:48 <timotheus>	I guess the kolab packages are not evolving that much
Nov 24 21:48:15 <timotheus>	my personal view is that work goes into new components, that are not interesting to me
Nov 24 21:48:24 <timotheus>	but the core does not change much
Nov 24 21:48:31 <timotheus>	kolab webadmin and roundcube
Nov 24 21:48:57 <timotheus>	I am not interested in manticore or guam at the moment
Nov 24 21:49:24 <pklos>	same here
Nov 24 21:49:26 <Airhardt>	agreed
Nov 24 21:49:58 <timotheus>	roundcube could use some new features, email reminder for appointments, and such things I would like
Nov 24 21:50:21 <Airhardt>	ideally, all those base packages would end up in the distros
Nov 24 21:50:21 <rbenea>	I like how you install gitlab or docker like 'curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh'  so if it's in a distribution or not does not matter as long as it's easy to setup
Nov 24 21:50:58 <timotheus>	gitlab is a good example
Nov 24 21:51:05 <timotheus>	I don't know how it works, and I don't need to
Nov 24 21:51:12 <timotheus>	but it works reliably
Nov 24 21:51:18 <rbenea>	yup
Nov 24 21:51:52 <timotheus>	not sure how their business model is. Kolab Systems would be out of business if Kolab was that easy???
Nov 24 21:52:05 *	Airhardt still doesn't like this "curl | sh" approach too much
Nov 24 21:52:38 <timotheus>	gitlab use omnibus packages to install all dependancies, postgresql, ruby on rails, redis
Nov 24 21:52:39 <rbenea>	and the thing is that we migrated from the manually installed on Debian to installed on their way just to be easyer to update
Nov 24 21:53:03 <Airhardt>	(but I guess that's off topic)
Nov 24 21:53:07 <timotheus>	gitlab provides one rpm or deb package, and update works with apt-get update or yum update
Nov 24 21:53:13 <timotheus>	right
Nov 24 21:53:30 <timotheus>	so we want Kolab to be installable much easier
Nov 24 21:53:43 <timotheus>	which would help us to test more
Nov 24 21:53:51 <Airhardt>	still, gitlab is kind of self-contained, isn't it?
Nov 24 21:53:55 <timotheus>	in the end I think we need to drastically increase the user base for Kolab
Nov 24 21:54:28 <Airhardt>	kolab, on the other hand, is LDAP + SASL + SMTP + IMAP + POP3 + HTTP + ...
Nov 24 21:54:34 <pklos>	what about debconf? kolab doesn't really use it, and sort of keeps track of installation/configuration parameters in its own way
Nov 24 21:54:36 <timotheus>	perhaps gitlab is easier because the usage scenario is everywhere the same
Nov 24 21:54:42 <pklos>	would that help?
Nov 24 21:54:43 <Airhardt>	lots of different services working together
Nov 24 21:55:39 <timotheus>	I think one issue is that kanarip says he does not want to take responsibility for Kolab instances around the world
Nov 24 21:55:46 <timotheus>	so the administrator should still be in charge
Nov 24 21:55:59 <timotheus>	and people use Kolab in so many different ways
Nov 24 21:56:02 <rbenea>	well, now that all gsuite, office etc.. are not free any more and this cloud thing that you don't know who is poking around with your data, kolab makes a very good candidate for taking ownership of your data
Nov 24 21:56:51 <timotheus>	definitely
Nov 24 21:56:53 <pklos>	that sure is what I like about it, but you need to be aware that it comes with the responsibility attached
Nov 24 21:56:59 <rbenea>	also I use Kolab's LDAP to authenticate GitLab, FengOffice and Zabbix
Nov 24 21:57:40 <Airhardt>	I'd like to get back to the winterfell topic for a second
Nov 24 21:58:21 *	BRLX has quit (Quit: BRLX)
Nov 24 21:58:24 <Airhardt>	who decides which packages from winterfell end up in the release branch?
Nov 24 21:58:37 <Airhardt>	kanarip, I guess?
Nov 24 21:58:54 <timotheus>	yes. at some point he was looking for a person to take care of Winterfell
Nov 24 22:00:02 <Airhardt>	I'd be interested in the criteria a package must fulfil for that
Nov 24 22:00:20 <timotheus>	I would like much more communication from Kolab Systems
Nov 24 22:00:38 <Airhardt>	... whether there's a concrete list or whether it's just based on gut feeling
Nov 24 22:00:46 <Airhardt>	indeed
Nov 24 22:01:00 <timotheus>	we have had a problem in Kolab 16 with installation last week, it was not tested at all
Nov 24 22:01:13 <timotheus>	kanarip committed the change to Winterfell and Kolab 16 at the same time
Nov 24 22:01:31 <Airhardt>	overall, communication has been very scarce this year
Nov 24 22:01:35 <timotheus>	I could not catch it in time with my nightly tests on Winterfell, because it ahppend at the same time
Nov 24 22:03:13 <Airhardt>	unfortunately, it kind of fits the picture that aaron is missing even though he annouced that he'd attend this session :-(
Nov 24 22:04:08 <timotheus>	yes
Nov 24 22:04:37 <Airhardt>	it feels like kolab systems are doing stuff mostly behind closed doors, even though the code itself is visible to us
Nov 24 22:05:02 <timotheus>	phabricator is in the public
Nov 24 22:05:19 <timotheus>	but it is still difficult to track their boards of things to do
Nov 24 22:05:28 <Airhardt>	true
Nov 24 22:05:29 <timotheus>	it would be nicer if they would answer questions
Nov 24 22:05:51 <timotheus>	the other question would be: would the community help Kolab Systems more if there was more communication?
Nov 24 22:06:11 <timotheus>	I have the feeling that Kolab Systems does not expect much from us
Nov 24 22:06:41 <timotheus>	and we are not prepared to test a lot if we are not told where the journey goes, and we cannot have a voice
Nov 24 22:06:48 <Airhardt>	knowing the overall direction would be helpful
Nov 24 22:07:04 <timotheus>	office365 alternative
Nov 24 22:07:43 <timotheus>	but the how is important too
Nov 24 22:07:48 <timotheus>	and that is not clear
Nov 24 22:08:31 <timotheus>	so how do we wrap this up for tonight? anything we should discuss today?
Nov 24 22:08:55 <timotheus>	some will do Kolab 16.1 testing?
Nov 24 22:09:08 <timotheus>	one question is if the current state of Kolab 16 in OBS is already Kolab 16.1?
Nov 24 22:09:23 <timotheus>	we should have testing before the release, not after :)
Nov 24 22:09:31 <timotheus>	but that did not work in past releases either
Nov 24 22:09:48 <rbenea>	the part that I liked was 'create an easy to install' script like gitlab has
Nov 24 22:10:30 <rbenea>	next month I hope to be able to provide more feedback after testing (if that's not to late)
Nov 24 22:10:47 <Airhardt>	according to https://obs.kolabsys.com/package/view_file/Kolab:16/kolab/kolab.spec?expand=1, the version is still 16.0.1
Nov 24 22:11:11 <Airhardt>	rbenea: any feedback is welcome
Nov 24 22:12:08 <timotheus>	I would like if the fix for amavisd would get into Kolab 16, then my nightly tests might get further
Nov 24 22:12:37 <timotheus>	at the moment that fix sits in git of pykolab, but has not been pushed to winterfell or kolab 16 yet
Nov 24 22:13:29 <Airhardt>	do you know whom to lobby?
Nov 24 22:13:53 <timotheus>	send chocolate to kanarip ;) but he is at the source in Switzerland :)
Nov 24 22:14:11 <Airhardt>	;-)
Nov 24 22:14:59 <timotheus>	should we have such a meeting again? or wait for an invitation from Kolab Systems?
Nov 24 22:16:07 <Airhardt>	we definitely need another meeting, and this time with someone from KS attending
Nov 24 22:16:17 <rbenea>	maybe we should try :) let's hope for double the participants
Nov 24 22:17:33 <timotheus>	yes
Nov 24 22:17:50 <timotheus>	I think our meeting was important, because the transcript of the chat will be read by more people
Nov 24 22:18:43 <timotheus>	ok, then I think we close this meeting! thanks to all of you who attended! have a good night!
Nov 24 22:18:47 <rbenea>	Ok guys, I have to go, looking forward to get in touch to you
Nov 24 22:19:08 <Airhardt>	see you!
Nov 24 22:19:19 <rbenea>	good night
Nov 24 22:19:29 *	rbenea ([email protected]) has left
Nov 24 22:19:32 *	You are now known as timotheusOff