Future of Hobbit - Getting added to distro repos
list Charles Jones
I am going to attempt to drive getting Hobbit added to the Centos Plus repository, but first we need to figure out a few things:
1. Who will create and maintain the RPMs
I'd rather someone with experience creating and maintaining distribution packages do this, but if all else fails I will volunteer.
2. Resolution of common problems when installing Hobbit on RHEL/CentOS
Here are problems I have encountered in the past:
* SELINUX blocks access to hobbit cgi and web content (and probably the creation of suid hobbitping). So the RPM installer script needs to set the proper security context on the files.
* librrdtool is not provided in the RHEL or CentOS/CentOS Plus repository (so even if you had a Hobbit RPM, you would have to go and get 3 rrdtool packages (rrdtool, rrdtool-devel, and perl-rrdtool) from the DAG repository. Possible resolution is to also get rrdtool added to CentOS Plus.
3. Figuring out what would be the most common/preferred/accepted installation dirs for Hobbit. Last week I installed the FC5 rpm, and it installed to /etc/hobbit, whereas the tarball by default installs to a subdirectory of /home. Some people like system tools to be in a "system" directory, while others like being able to install to a user space controlled location.
Any other ideas? Am I leaving anything out?
I'd really like to see Hobbit be an available package on "RedHat" (RHEL, CentOS), as well as Fedora.
-Charles
list Henrik Størner
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On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 01:18:56PM -0700, Charles Jones wrote:
I am going to attempt to drive getting Hobbit added to the Centos Plus repository, but first we need to figure out a few things: 1. Who will create and maintain the RPMs I'd rather someone with experience creating and maintaining distribution packages do this, but if all else fails I will volunteer.
One reason why I hesitate to contact the various distributions is that I don't know what their normal practice is for package maintainers. Some - like Red Hat - have their own team, others depend on volunteers. And some just pick up one of their distribution brethren.
* librrdtool is not provided in the RHEL or CentOS/CentOS Plus repository (so even if you had a Hobbit RPM, you would have to go and get 3 rrdtool packages (rrdtool, rrdtool-devel, and perl-rrdtool) from the DAG repository.
Major issue. rrdtool is used by a lot of software packages.
3. Figuring out what would be the most common/preferred/accepted installation dirs for Hobbit. Last week I installed the FC5 rpm, and it installed to /etc/hobbit, whereas the tarball by default installs to a subdirectory of /home. Some people like system tools to be in a "system" directory, while others like being able to install to a user space controlled location.
There is actually a standard for this: The Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). The packaging scripts that come with Hobbit tries to follow it. One of the things that FHS/LSB dictates is that you do not EVER install software in /home or /usr/local . Architecture dependant binaries go in /usr, configuration files in /etc, logs in /var/log, data files in /var and so on. Wikipedia has a brief overview of this in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard Regards, Henrik
list Josh Luthman
I'm using CentOS but I always install rpmforge once the install is done. I know for a fact that rrdtool is in either the CentOS or rpmforge repo's. If you're correct that the rrdtool isn't on the CentOS repo, it is on the rpmforge one. It is a VERY easy install: http://wiki.centos.org/Repositories/RPMForge Here's a snip from my install notes: yum -y install yum-priorities wget http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/RPMS.dag/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm rpm --import http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt rpm -K rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.*.rpm rpm -i rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.*.rpm yum -y install gcc gcc-c++ pcre-devel libpng-devel openssl-devel openldap-devel fping rrdtool-devel yum -y update
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On 1/30/08, Henrik Stoerner <user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid> wrote:On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 01:18:56PM -0700, Charles Jones wrote:I am going to attempt to drive getting Hobbit added to the Centos Plus repository, but first we need to figure out a few things: 1. Who will create and maintain the RPMs I'd rather someone with experience creating and maintaining distribution packages do this, but if all else fails I will volunteer.One reason why I hesitate to contact the various distributions is that I don't know what their normal practice is for package maintainers. Some - like Red Hat - have their own team, others depend on volunteers. And some just pick up one of their distribution brethren.* librrdtool is not provided in the RHEL or CentOS/CentOS Plus repository (so even if you had a Hobbit RPM, you would have to go and get 3 rrdtool packages (rrdtool, rrdtool-devel, and perl-rrdtool) from the DAG repository.Major issue. rrdtool is used by a lot of software packages.3. Figuring out what would be the most common/preferred/accepted installation dirs for Hobbit. Last week I installed the FC5 rpm, and it installed to /etc/hobbit, whereas the tarball by default installs to a subdirectory of /home. Some people like system tools to be in a "system" directory, while others like being able to install to a user space controlled location.There is actually a standard for this: The Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). The packaging scripts that come with Hobbit tries to follow it. One of the things that FHS/LSB dictates is that you do not EVER install software in /home or /usr/local . Architecture dependant binaries go in /usr, configuration files in /etc, logs in /var/log, data files in /var and so on. Wikipedia has a brief overview of this in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard Regards, Henrik
--
Josh Luthman
Office: XXX-XXX-XXXX
Direct: XXX-XXX-XXXX
XXXX Wayne St
Suite XXXX
Troy, OH XXXXX
Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
--- Henry Spencer
list Tom Georgoulias
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Henrik Stoerner wrote:
On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 01:18:56PM -0700, Charles Jones wrote:I am going to attempt to drive getting Hobbit added to the Centos Plus repository, but first we need to figure out a few things: 1. Who will create and maintain the RPMs I'd rather someone with experience creating and maintaining distribution packages do this, but if all else fails I will volunteer.One reason why I hesitate to contact the various distributions is that I don't know what their normal practice is for package maintainers. Some - like Red Hat - have their own team, others depend on volunteers. And some just pick up one of their distribution brethren.
Red Hat offers other monitoring tools and solutions (i.e. a plugin for RHN Satelitte and Red Hat Command Center) that they are pushing, so I think Hobbit is more likely to make its way into RHEL5 through Cent OS or the EPEL repos (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL). Tom
list Charles Jones
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Josh Luthman wrote:
I'm using CentOS but I always install rpmforge once the install is done. I know for a fact that rrdtool is in either the CentOS or rpmforge repo's. If you're correct that the rrdtool isn't on the CentOS repo, it is on the rpmforge one.
Indeed, rpmforge = DAGs. In the past I have both installed the rpmforge repo, and also just manually fetched rrdtool, rrdtool-devel, and perl-rrdtool from http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rrdtool/
list Josh Luthman
I install a lot of things from rpmforge and it is very convenient to do a yum -y install package1 package2 and switch do a different ssh session. Fetching them one by one is a great solution if you only need a package or two, though.
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On 1/30/08, Charles Jones <user-e86b4aeade4e@xymon.invalid> wrote:Josh Luthman wrote:I'm using CentOS but I always install rpmforge once the install is done. I know for a fact that rrdtool is in either the CentOS or rpmforge repo's. If you're correct that the rrdtool isn't on the CentOS repo, it is on the rpmforge one.Indeed, rpmforge = DAGs. In the past I have both installed the rpmforge repo, and also just manually fetched rrdtool, rrdtool-devel, and perl-rrdtool from http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rrdtool/
-- Josh Luthman Office: XXX-XXX-XXXX Direct: XXX-XXX-XXXX XXXX Wayne St Suite XXXX Troy, OH XXXXX Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. --- Henry Spencer
list Charles Jones
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Henrik Stoerner wrote:
On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 01:18:56PM -0700, Charles Jones wrote:I am going to attempt to drive getting Hobbit added to the Centos Plus repository, but first we need to figure out a few things: 1. Who will create and maintain the RPMs I'd rather someone with experience creating and maintaining distribution packages do this, but if all else fails I will volunteer.One reason why I hesitate to contact the various distributions is that I don't know what their normal practice is for package maintainers. Some - like Red Hat - have their own team, others depend on volunteers. And some just pick up one of their distribution brethren.
Same problem here. Apparently though I am told that one of the persons involved in managing CentOS Plus is a member of our local LUG. I intend to get some information from him and perhaps his help on getting the packages we need included.
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* librrdtool is not provided in the RHEL or CentOS/CentOS Plus repository (so even if you had a Hobbit RPM, you would have to go and get 3 rrdtool packages (rrdtool, rrdtool-devel, and perl-rrdtool) from the DAG repository.Major issue. rrdtool is used by a lot of software packages.
Agreed. It is available via third party repos, but that creates extra steps to successfully install Hobbit. If they will accept Hobbit perhaps they will accept rrdtool as well.
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3. Figuring out what would be the most common/preferred/accepted installation dirs for Hobbit. Last week I installed the FC5 rpm, and it installed to /etc/hobbit, whereas the tarball by default installs to a subdirectory of /home. Some people like system tools to be in a "system" directory, while others like being able to install to a user space controlled location.There is actually a standard for this: The Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). The packaging scripts that come with Hobbit tries to follow it. One of the things that FHS/LSB dictates is that you do not EVER install software in /home or /usr/local . Architecture dependant binaries go in /usr, configuration files in /etc, logs in /var/log, data files in /var and so on. Wikipedia has a brief overview of this in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard
Hmm everytime I have installed Hobbit from source, it asks what user Hobbit will run as, and then defaults to installing in /home/user. Here is the basic dir layout you get from FC5 rpm install: /etc/hobbit/bb-hosts /etc/hobbit/web /usr/bin/bb /usr/lib/hobbit/cgi-bin /usr/lib/hobbit/server/etc /usr/lib/hobbit/server/bin/bb /var/lib/hobbit/www /var/log/hobbit -Charles
list Colin Coe
Hi all The rrdtool RPMs are in the Fedora 7/8 Everything repos. This means that the _might_ find their way into RHEL6 providing rrdtool (and all its components) are compatible with RedHat. It's unlikely hobbit would go into RHEL until it's been in Fedora and I've had a quick look at the hobbit README and seen that there are four components that are not GPLed, this may or may not be a problem for RedHat's lawyers. This post (http://www.archivum.info/user-641dcf180e38@xymon.invalid/2005-05/msg00099 .html) requested a review of hobbit for inclusion in Fedora but looks like no one took up the challenge. Anyway, I've raised tickets 1801320 and 1801322 with RedHat to have rrdtool and hobbit included in RHEL5. I have some experience creating/maintaining RPMs so I'll put my name forward for consideration in the interim. HTH CC
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-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Jones [mailto:user-e86b4aeade4e@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Thursday, 31 January 2008 5:19 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: [hobbit] Future of Hobbit - Getting added to distro repos
I am going to attempt to drive getting Hobbit added to the Centos Plus
repository, but first we need to figure out a few things:
1. Who will create and maintain the RPMs
I'd rather someone with experience creating and maintaining
distribution packages do this, but if all else fails I will volunteer.
2. Resolution of common problems when installing Hobbit on RHEL/CentOS
Here are problems I have encountered in the past:
* SELINUX blocks access to hobbit cgi and web content (and probably
the creation of suid hobbitping). So the RPM installer script needs to
set the proper security context on the files.
* librrdtool is not provided in the RHEL or CentOS/CentOS Plus
repository (so even if you had a Hobbit RPM, you would have to go and
get 3 rrdtool packages (rrdtool, rrdtool-devel, and perl-rrdtool) from
the DAG repository. Possible resolution is to also get rrdtool added to
CentOS Plus.
3. Figuring out what would be the most common/preferred/accepted
installation dirs for Hobbit. Last week I installed the FC5 rpm, and it
installed to /etc/hobbit, whereas the tarball by default installs to a
subdirectory of /home. Some people like system tools to be in a "system"
directory, while others like being able to install to a user space
controlled location.
Any other ideas? Am I leaving anything out?
I'd really like to see Hobbit be an available package on "RedHat" (RHEL,
CentOS), as well as Fedora.
-Charles
NOTICE: This email and any attachments are confidential.
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list Buchan Milne
▸
On Wednesday 30 January 2008 22:18:56 Charles Jones wrote:
I am going to attempt to drive getting Hobbit added to the Centos Plus repository, but first we need to figure out a few things: 1. Who will create and maintain the RPMs
The Mandriva SRPMS (which I maintain) already build fine on RHEL (2.1, 3, 4, 5). Please take a look at the changes there, they would most likely be required by any distro with a sane packaging policy.
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I'd rather someone with experience creating and maintaining distribution packages do this, but if all else fails I will volunteer. 2. Resolution of common problems when installing Hobbit on RHEL/CentOS Here are problems I have encountered in the past: * SELINUX blocks access to hobbit cgi and web content (and probably the creation of suid hobbitping). So the RPM installer script needs to set the proper security context on the files.
I'll try and take a look, it should be a relatively simple thing to fix (maybe in a %post scriptlet).
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* librrdtool is not provided in the RHEL or CentOS/CentOS Plus repository (so even if you had a Hobbit RPM, you would have to go and get 3 rrdtool packages (rrdtool, rrdtool-devel, and perl-rrdtool) from the DAG repository. Possible resolution is to also get rrdtool added to CentOS Plus.
Again, I rebuild the Mandriva SRPM :-).
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3. Figuring out what would be the most common/preferred/accepted installation dirs for Hobbit. Last week I installed the FC5 rpm, and it installed to /etc/hobbit, whereas the tarball by default installs to a subdirectory of /home. Some people like system tools to be in a "system" directory, while others like being able to install to a user space controlled location.
Distribution policies normally outlaw the placement of files on /home by a package. Please compare to the vast number of similar packages, typically the home directory is set to a location under /var/lib, or if the package doesn't allow that, /usr/lib(64)?
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Any other ideas? Am I leaving anything out? I'd really like to see Hobbit be an available package on "RedHat" (RHEL, CentOS), as well as Fedora.
I might consider starting to maintain some of my Mandriva packages in parallel in Fedora, since they are very compatible. Wasting more time on a separate package would be a waste. I'll try and publish my Hobbit packages later today (at http://staff.telkomsa.net/packages, where OpenLDAP rebuilds from Mandriva on RHEL are already quite popular). Regards, Buchan
list Buchan Milne
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On Wednesday 30 January 2008 23:15:04 Josh Luthman wrote:
I'm using CentOS but I always install rpmforge once the install is done. I know for a fact that rrdtool is in either the CentOS or rpmforge repo's. If you're correct that the rrdtool isn't on the CentOS repo, it is on the rpmforge one. It is a VERY easy install: http://wiki.centos.org/Repositories/RPMForge
Just for reference, our policy doesn't allow the use of 3rd-party repositories ... but we run our own internally. It really would be best to get Hobbit into EPEL. Regards, Buchan
list Buchan Milne
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On Thursday 31 January 2008 02:36:41 Coe, Colin C. (Unix Engineer) wrote:
Hi all The rrdtool RPMs are in the Fedora 7/8 Everything repos. This means that the _might_ find their way into RHEL6 providing rrdtool (and all its components) are compatible with RedHat. It's unlikely hobbit would go into RHEL until it's been in Fedora and I've had a quick look at the hobbit README and seen that there are four components that are not GPLed, this may or may not be a problem for RedHat's lawyers. This post (http://www.archivum.info/user-641dcf180e38@xymon.invalid/2005-05/msg00099 .html) requested a review of hobbit for inclusion in Fedora but looks like no one took up the challenge. Anyway, I've raised tickets 1801320 and 1801322 with RedHat to have rrdtool and hobbit included in RHEL5. I have some experience creating/maintaining RPMs so I'll put my name forward for consideration in the interim.
I'd recommend you take a look at my Mandriva package first: http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/packages/cooker/hobbit/current/ The packages basically have no valid errors from rpmlint, or duplicate files in distro checks etc (some of which can be seen on my page on one of the 3rd-party package checking tools for Mandriva - http://youri.zarb.org/demo/mandriva/user-88e1743d6c68@xymon.invalid/rpmcheck.html note the absence of Hobbit). Regards, Buchan
list Colin Coe
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-----Original Message----- From: Buchan Milne [mailto:user-9b139aff4dec@xymon.invalid] Sent: Thursday, 31 January 2008 5:50 PM To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid Cc: Coe, Colin C. (Unix Engineer) Subject: Re: FW: [hobbit] Future of Hobbit - Getting added to distro repos On Thursday 31 January 2008 02:36:41 Coe, Colin C. (Unix Engineer) wrote:Hi all The rrdtool RPMs are in the Fedora 7/8 Everything repos. This means that the _might_ find their way into RHEL6 providing rrdtool (and all its components) are compatible with RedHat. It's unlikely hobbit would go into RHEL until it's been in Fedora and I've had a quick look at the hobbit README and seen that there are four components that are not GPLed, this may or may not be a problem for RedHat's lawyers. This post
(http://www.archivum.info/user-641dcf180e38@xymon.invalid/2005-0
5/msg00099
▸
.html) requested a review of hobbit for inclusion in Fedora but looks like no one took up the challenge. Anyway, I've raised tickets 1801320 and 1801322 with RedHat to have rrdtool and hobbit included in RHEL5. I have some experience creating/maintaining RPMs so I'll put my name forward for consideration in the interim.I'd recommend you take a look at my Mandriva package first:
http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/packages/cooker/hob bit/current/ The packages basically have no valid errors from rpmlint, or duplicate files in distro checks etc (some of which can be seen on my page on one of the 3rd-party package checking tools for Mandriva - http://youri.zarb.org/demo/mandriva/user-88e1743d6c68@xymon.invalid/rpmch eck.html note the absence of Hobbit). Regards, Buchan
I've had a look at your SPEC file. It doesn't build cleanly under RHEL due to the Mandrivia specific macros. Can you make it more generic so as to support other RPM based distros? CC
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NOTICE: This email and any attachments are confidential. They may contain legally privileged information or copyright material. You must not read, copy, use or disclose them without authorisation. If you are not an intended recipient, please contact us at once by return email and then delete both messages and all attachments.
list Buchan Milne
▸
On Friday 01 February 2008 01:59:19 Coe, Colin C. (Unix Engineer) wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Buchan Milne [mailto:user-9b139aff4dec@xymon.invalid] Sent: Thursday, 31 January 2008 5:50 PM To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid Cc: Coe, Colin C. (Unix Engineer) Subject: Re: FW: [hobbit] Future of Hobbit - Getting added to distro repos
[...]
I'd recommend you take a look at my Mandriva package first: http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/packages/cooker/hobbit/current/The packages basically have no valid errors from rpmlint, or duplicate files in distro checks etc (some of which can be seen on my page on one of the 3rd-party package checking tools for Mandriva - http://youri.zarb.org/demo/mandriva/user-88e1743d6c68@xymon.invalid/rpmch eck.html note the absence of Hobbit).I've had a look at your SPEC file. It doesn't build cleanly under RHEL due to the Mandrivia specific macros. Can you make it more generic so as to support other RPM based distros?
IMHO, this is going backwards. Some of these functions for which Mandriva has standard macros really are required, and implementations need to differ. However, I have got a macros file which has RedHat implementations of these macros: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Projects/BackPorts#Building_Mandriva_SRPMS_on_other_distributions Maybe I need to start proposing standard macros across all rpm-based distros ...
list S Aiello
I have been watching this thread for binaries for different linux Distros for awhile. About a few months back I started initial implementation of clientupdate. With clientupdate, all linux distibutions boil down to 'linux' OS. So if there are multiple linux distros being monitored, or same distro but different versions, wouldn't this lead to complication with clientupdate ? Because that same tar will be pushed out to everything 'linux'. The way I dealt with this issue, is that my hobbit tar was compiled statically. Ideally the binaries have all the dependencies compiled in. So it should work on any linux distro. So multiple distro packages are nice, but is there a problem when updates need to be pushed ? Or did I just miss something obvious ? ~Steve
list Henrik Størner
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On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 07:54:59AM -0500, user-ce96540ed38f@xymon.invalid wrote:
So multiple distro packages are nice, but is there a problem when updates need to be pushed ? Or did I just miss something obvious ?
Clients should be immune to small differences in distribution - the only problem really is if the client binaries (logfetch, msgcache and bb) are linked against different glibc versions. If it does become a problem, start the client with the "--class=FOO" option and it will pick up the update-package FOO instead of "linux". Henrik