| 1 |
dabbott 09/07/30 12:54:32 |
| 2 |
|
| 3 |
Added: 20090724-robbat2-interview.xml |
| 4 |
Log: |
| 5 |
Interview with robbat2 |
| 6 |
|
| 7 |
Revision Changes Path |
| 8 |
1.1 xml/htdocs/proj/en/pr/20090724-robbat2-interview.xml |
| 9 |
|
| 10 |
file : http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo/xml/htdocs/proj/en/pr/20090724-robbat2-interview.xml?rev=1.1&view=markup |
| 11 |
plain: http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo/xml/htdocs/proj/en/pr/20090724-robbat2-interview.xml?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain |
| 12 |
|
| 13 |
Index: 20090724-robbat2-interview.xml |
| 14 |
=================================================================== |
| 15 |
<?xml version='1.0'?> |
| 16 |
|
| 17 |
<!DOCTYPE news SYSTEM "/dtd/guide.dtd"> |
| 18 |
|
| 19 |
<news gentoo="yes" category="gentoo"> |
| 20 |
|
| 21 |
<!-- Enter your name here --> |
| 22 |
<poster>dabbott</poster> |
| 23 |
|
| 24 |
<!-- Date to be displayed --> |
| 25 |
<date>2009-07-24</date> |
| 26 |
|
| 27 |
<!-- Title of the news item - don't forget to change the date --> |
| 28 |
<title>Interview Gentoo Developer Robin H. Johnson (robbat2)</title> |
| 29 |
|
| 30 |
<body> |
| 31 |
|
| 32 |
<!-- Alter to your liking --> |
| 33 |
|
| 34 |
<p> |
| 35 |
<b>Introduction:</b> |
| 36 |
</p> |
| 37 |
|
| 38 |
<p> |
| 39 |
Today I have the pleasure of introducing to all of you, Robin H. Johnson |
| 40 |
(robbat2) Gentoo Developer, Gentoo Trustee board member, head of the |
| 41 |
infrastructure, without it working smoothly there would not be Gentoo as we |
| 42 |
know it. Robin is also involved with helping out MySQL, LDAP, base-system, and |
| 43 |
lots more. |
| 44 |
</p> |
| 45 |
|
| 46 |
<p> |
| 47 |
Hi Robin, thanks for the interview. |
| 48 |
</p> |
| 49 |
|
| 50 |
<p> |
| 51 |
Hi David, Thanks for asking me. |
| 52 |
</p> |
| 53 |
|
| 54 |
<dl><dt> |
| 55 |
1) Is Gentoo your first open source project? |
| 56 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 57 |
No, my first full-scale involvement was as one of the phpMyAdmin developers, |
| 58 |
starting in May 2001,about 2 months after it first moved onto SourceForge. |
| 59 |
Prior to that it was just the occasional patches submitted back to projects I |
| 60 |
was using as a Slackware user. |
| 61 |
</dd><dt> |
| 62 |
2) How long have you been a Gentoo user? </dt> <dd> According to bugzilla, my |
| 63 |
first ever bug/comment was bug 14397, complaining that PHP was detecting GCC2 |
| 64 |
as a cross-compiler, on 2003-02-25. I wasn't a dev yet then, but it already |
| 65 |
shows the debug path. |
| 66 |
</dd><dt> |
| 67 |
3) How did you come up with the nick (robbat2)? |
| 68 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 69 |
That comes down to an overly long and complicated story for this podcast, but |
| 70 |
it involves multiplayer LAN flight sims, writing Quake 1 mods, a namespace |
| 71 |
conflict on my older nick, and abusing DOS ASCII art. |
| 72 |
</dd><dt> |
| 73 |
4) What has your journey been like with Linux, and how did it start? |
| 74 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 75 |
Being given a RH6.2 CD1 CD (not the entire set), back in 1997, prior to having |
| 76 |
any internet connection, still living in South Africa, and having it |
| 77 |
accidentally wipe out my DOS machine, that I did Pascal programming on at the |
| 78 |
time. Reinstall DOS, try again a couple of months later, when school was out, |
| 79 |
find that the compilers worked, but there wasn't much point to it, go back to |
| 80 |
DOS. Later on, when I first moved to Canada in January 1999, I realized that |
| 81 |
having an always-on internet connection massively widened the realm of Linux |
| 82 |
possibilities. I was going to go with RedHat again, having bought real pressed |
| 83 |
media for $5 at a local Linux festival, but it turned out to be defective, and |
| 84 |
I just downloaded slackware ISOs instead. |
| 85 |
</dd><dt> |
| 86 |
5) What motivated you to become a Gentoo Developer? </dt> <dd> Daniel Robbins |
| 87 |
complained I was submitting too many patches and ideas, and that I might as |
| 88 |
well join to commit them myself. |
| 89 |
</dd><dt> |
| 90 |
6) What aspects of Gentoo do you feel the developers and maintainers have got |
| 91 |
right? |
| 92 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 93 |
This is interesting in the issue of the distribution vs. the |
| 94 |
developers/maintainers. The distribution has got the degree of control down |
| 95 |
very nicely, which is partly due to the developer demand to change stuff to be |
| 96 |
the way they want it, but the degree of transparency is also much better than |
| 97 |
the binary distributions I feel. I remember looking for RPM specfiles in the |
| 98 |
past, and not being able to find them, to see what patches were being used, or |
| 99 |
configure flags were being passed. |
| 100 |
</dd><dt> |
| 101 |
7) What is it about Gentoo you would like to see improved? |
| 102 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 103 |
Transparency in projects that are going on, but also in users paying attention |
| 104 |
to what we are doing. However, if there's one single area, it's how slow we |
| 105 |
move stuff to stable. I've complained before, but recent presentation by Scott |
| 106 |
Shawcroft from OSCON showed just how bad it is. Our unstable tree is in great |
| 107 |
shape, but our stable tree is worse than many of the major distros, esp Ubuntu |
| 108 |
and Fedora. |
| 109 |
</dd><dt> |
| 110 |
8) What are some of the Projects within Gentoo that you enjoy contributing to? |
| 111 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 112 |
The infrastructure project is the most fun, as I enjoy the challenge involved |
| 113 |
in cohesively managing 40+ disparate servers, scattered in 12 locations around |
| 114 |
the world. The requirements of unique development to automate the work is also |
| 115 |
fun. |
| 116 |
</dd><dt> |
| 117 |
9) Could you give me an overview of the Gentoo infrastructure? |
| 118 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 119 |
Nearly 50 percent of the infrastructure hardware is taken up by web |
| 120 |
applications, because we have a lot of separation between web applications that |
| 121 |
have a high security exposure. Admittedly some of the web services are a very |
| 122 |
big deal for Gentoo, like our Bugzilla service, running on 4 machines sponsored |
| 123 |
by the Dutch social network, Hyves. Very recently we've gotten new hardware for |
| 124 |
Forums, sponsored by Gossamer Threads. The next largest slice after that is the |
| 125 |
machines that provides rsync.gentoo.org service. Only then do we get down to |
| 126 |
individual machines for purposes. There's some cases where having more hardware |
| 127 |
as fail-over in case we lose a machine would be nice, but I think the place |
| 128 |
that'd we would benefit the most presently would be a newer mail server |
| 129 |
infrastructure, so that we can deploy heavier spam filtering. |
| 130 |
</dd><dt> |
| 131 |
10) Who helps you with the infrastructure? </dt> <dd> Lance (ramareth) was the |
| 132 |
previous infrastructure lead, and Mike (kingtaco) is my present co-lead, but |
| 133 |
he's a slacker most of the time. Shyam (fox2mike) started off in handling |
| 134 |
mirrors, but is now up at handling some day-to-day infrastructure issues as |
| 135 |
well. Solar helps out with stuff as well, but is mainly there in an advisory |
| 136 |
role these days. |
| 137 |
</dd><dt> |
| 138 |
11) What is the process for someone to donate a server or set up an rsync mirror? |
| 139 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 140 |
If you'd like to set up your own rsync or source mirror, we offer complete |
| 141 |
instructions linked from the very bottom of the Mirrors page on the website. |
| 142 |
The 'gentoo-rsync-mirror' package also offers a sample configuration and |
| 143 |
scripts for rsync mirrors. Most of our server donations are in the form of the |
| 144 |
sponsor continuing to own the hardware, and hosting it at their own location. |
| 145 |
Rackspace, power and bandwidth costs ultimately add up to much more than the |
| 146 |
value of the hardware. We'd like to move into having more hardware that Gentoo |
| 147 |
actually owns, but we need to secure more hosting (and possibly remote hands) |
| 148 |
before that. In the meantime, for hosting a server for, contact the |
| 149 |
infrastructure team, infra@g.o, to set us up with access to the new |
| 150 |
hardware, running on a LiveCD so that we can perform our cfengine-powered |
| 151 |
install of the hardened system. If you've got IPMI or remote console (serial or |
| 152 |
KVM), that's extremely useful as well. |
| 153 |
</dd> <dt> |
| 154 |
12) Is git in the future plans? |
| 155 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 156 |
With more hours in the day, it'll come sooner, but it's not a high priority |
| 157 |
item. I passed out a few of the TODO items on my last status post to the |
| 158 |
gentoo-scm mailing list. Of them, only WilliamH has done anything. One of the |
| 159 |
upstream cvs2svn authors, mhagger, helped out significantly in performance |
| 160 |
improvements, but those aren't fully baked yet, he'd like to find some time to |
| 161 |
finish them, and possibly some sponsorship so he can put aside his dayjob to |
| 162 |
work on them. |
| 163 |
</dd><dt> |
| 164 |
13) As a Gentoo Developer what are some of your accomplishments? |
| 165 |
</dt><dd> |
| 166 |
Over my time as a developer, a lot of the things I do seem to be because it was |
| 167 |
broken, and nobody else cared about it at the time. That's how I came to be |
| 168 |
the maintainer of qmail, PHP and MySQL back in my early developer days. In all |
| 169 |
3 cases, I started the teams to maintain them. The MySQL team is the only one |
| 170 |
of those not still in existence. The developers that joined have retired |
| 171 |
before me, and MySQL has come back to me. |
| 172 |
</dd><dt> |
| 173 |
14) What applications would you like to see included within Gentoo? |
| 174 |
</dt><dd> |
| 175 |
There are a couple of more complex applications I've run into, that I'd like |
| 176 |
packaged, but after attempting to do so myself, I can see why nobody else has |
| 177 |
yet either. Most recently, was the Evergreen Library System, after I met some |
| 178 |
of the local implementors at an unconference last year. |
| 179 |
</dd><dt> |
| 180 |
15) What are your thoughts on Sun acquiring Oracle and its effect on MySQL? |
| 181 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 182 |
(assuming you meant Oracle acquiring Sun). My views on the matter are |
| 183 |
reasonably positive for both Sun and MySQL, due to Oracle's dependence on Java, |
| 184 |
along with the spread of the original core MySQL employees to no longer work |
| 185 |
for any of the 3 companies, and MySQL AB's recently renewed commitment to |
| 186 |
having a fully open MySQL - they got rid of the split between MySQL-community |
| 187 |
and MySQL-enterprise. |
| 188 |
</dd><dt> |
| 189 |
16) What open source software can you not live without at home and at work? |
| 190 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 191 |
I'd have to put VIM first on the list, it does wonders for productivity. |
| 192 |
Similarly, Gentoo itself belongs there, as we rely critically on it for work |
| 193 |
and also my personal systems. |
| 194 |
</dd><dt> |
| 195 |
17) Which open source programs would you like to see developed? |
| 196 |
</dt><dd> |
| 197 |
Less reliance and imitation of windows, we need to come up with new concepts of |
| 198 |
software more. The Evergreen Library system is making good inroads for that |
| 199 |
field, but it's extremely complex. The Radeon and Nvidia open source drivers |
| 200 |
are making good but slow progress. There's a couple of ideas I've had floating |
| 201 |
in my head, mainly for reimplementing software where I don't like any of the |
| 202 |
existing options, but none of them are really radically new. |
| 203 |
</dd><dt> |
| 204 |
18) What resources have you found most helpful when troubleshooting within Gentoo? |
| 205 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 206 |
Don't underestimate the ability to take any code apart and inspect it, combined |
| 207 |
with some form of debugging, if not gdb, then simply putting in your own print |
| 208 |
statements. |
| 209 |
</dd><dt> |
| 210 |
19) Do you get to do much programming? |
| 211 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 212 |
A lot less than I used to, but still probably on the order of 100 lines of |
| 213 |
code/week. |
| 214 |
</dd><dt> |
| 215 |
20) What would be your dream job? |
| 216 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 217 |
In some ways I'm very close to it already, as the lead developer nee |
| 218 |
development manager and deep-problem sysadmin for IsoHunt.com. Our ruby |
| 219 |
developers are like herding cats at times however, and I'd like to get more |
| 220 |
time to work on problems of my own choice. It is already great in that I can |
| 221 |
contribute to Gentoo during my work hours, as we are a 100% Gentoo shop for our |
| 222 |
servers. I'd certainly consider doing more Gentoo stuff on a consulting basis |
| 223 |
as well if the opportunity was available, as it tends to focus more on solving |
| 224 |
interesting problems. |
| 225 |
</dd><dt> |
| 226 |
21) What can users do to improve Gentoo? |
| 227 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 228 |
Read the documentation and source code, and ask intelligent questions, ideally |
| 229 |
with patches to at least roughly implement your ideas. Filing stable requests |
| 230 |
for stuff that's been around long enough would also help a lot. |
| 231 |
</dd><dt> |
| 232 |
22) What are some of the ways LDAP is put to use in the real world. |
| 233 |
</dt><dd> |
| 234 |
Is Gentoo not the real world? Outside of Gentoo, it's mainly good as a large |
| 235 |
hierarchal database, most often used as an address book and directory service |
| 236 |
for authentication and control. It's not always secured very well however, a |
| 237 |
fact that got me into trouble at one point during university - the userPassword |
| 238 |
field for on the address book server at the main campus wasn't restricted at |
| 239 |
all, you could query it from the public internet, even with Netscape's address |
| 240 |
book functionality. They have since fixed it. |
| 241 |
</dd><dt> |
| 242 |
23) What users would you like to recruit to become Gentoo Developers? |
| 243 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 244 |
More developers focused on small sets of packages. Look at the Debian |
| 245 |
maintainer system, they have more than a thousand maintainers, and their |
| 246 |
bleeding edge stuff actually isn't that far behind. Some with interest in |
| 247 |
backup applications or MySQL would go a long way to start. |
| 248 |
</dd><dt> |
| 249 |
24) Is the biggest hurdle in getting the users and developers working more |
| 250 |
closely, the time it takes to build trust? |
| 251 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 252 |
Not the time that it takes to build trust, but the degree to which users don't |
| 253 |
realize why their proposed (crazy) solutions won't work out as nicely as they |
| 254 |
want. They say simply "re-enable FOO" that was disabled in the latest version |
| 255 |
of something by upstream, without examining the causes as to why it was |
| 256 |
disabled or no longer functions like it used to. Giving detailed, but relevant |
| 257 |
information is highly useful as well. If it's a segfault, provide a backtrace |
| 258 |
with debugging, and figure out what conditions you need to reproduce a problem, |
| 259 |
not just your set of conditions, but what simple subset of changes trigger it. |
| 260 |
</dd> <dt> |
| 261 |
25) What are the specs of your current boxes? |
| 262 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 263 |
The 4 machines at home that run the most often: |
| 264 |
</dd> <dt> |
| 265 |
<b>curie</b> |
| 266 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 267 |
<ul> |
| 268 |
<li>old old web and mail server</li> |
| 269 |
<li>AMD Athlon w/ 1GB RAM</li> |
| 270 |
<li>200GiB RAID1 disk</li> |
| 271 |
</ul> |
| 272 |
</dd> <dt> |
| 273 |
<b>grubbs</b> |
| 274 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 275 |
<ul> |
| 276 |
<li>development and testing server, will ultimately replace curie.</li> |
| 277 |
<li>Core2 Q6600 w/ 5.8 GiB of RAM (odd number due to BIOS MTRR issues)</li> |
| 278 |
<li>1.7TiB RAID5 disk</li> |
| 279 |
<li>3TiB external eSATA RAID5 enclosure</li> |
| 280 |
<li>LTO3 backup tape</li> </ul> |
| 281 |
</dd> <dt> |
| 282 |
<b>bohr</b> |
| 283 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 284 |
<ul> |
| 285 |
<li>desktop machine</li> |
| 286 |
<li>Core2 Q9550 w/ 16GiB RAM</li> |
| 287 |
<li>1.3TiB RAID10 disk</li> |
| 288 |
</ul> |
| 289 |
</dd><dt> |
| 290 |
<b>speedracer</b> |
| 291 |
</dt> <dd> |
| 292 |
<ul> |
| 293 |
<li>1U server, in a local colocation facility</li> |
| 294 |
<li>Asus RS120-E4/PA4</li> |
| 295 |
<li>Core2 Q6600 w/ 8GiB RAM</li> |
| 296 |
<li>2TiB RAID5 disk</li> |
| 297 |
<li>Runs the Willikins bot for all of the Gentoo channels</li> |
| 298 |
</ul> |
| 299 |
</dd> <dt> |
| 300 |
<b>ebadi</b> |
| 301 |
</dt><dd> |
| 302 |
<ul> |
| 303 |
<li>old Asus W5F laptop</li> |
| 304 |
<li>Core1 w/ 1.5GiB RAM</li> |
| 305 |
<li>200GiB disk</li> |
| 306 |
</ul> |
| 307 |
</dd> <dd> |
| 308 |
3ware RAID controllers on the non-laptop systems. Beyond these machines that |
| 309 |
run most of the time, I've also got half a dozen embedded systems of different |
| 310 |
architectures. |
| 311 |
</dd><dt> |
| 312 |
26) Did the Gentoo Developers played any tricks on you when you were a rookie, |
| 313 |
new to the developer pool? |
| 314 |
</dt><dd> None that I can recall, I wasn't on IRC a lot in the early days. |
| 315 |
</dd><dt> |
| 316 |
27) What gives you the most enjoyment within the Gentoo community? |
| 317 |
</dt><dd> |
| 318 |
Definitely the Infrastructure project. |
| 319 |
</dd></dl> |
| 320 |
|
| 321 |
<p> <e><mail link="dabbott"/> contributed the draft for this announcement.</e> |
| 322 |
</p> |
| 323 |
|
| 324 |
</body> |
| 325 |
|
| 326 |
</news> |
Archives