Hi aur-general, my name is Kaiting Chen and Xyne has decided to sponsor me for my TU application.
I'm twenty one years old and a senior at Duke University studying Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Economics. I have also been a web developer and systems administrator for about four years now and am currently working on a rather long and protracted project for the university. I have been using Linux on a daily basis for about seven years now starting with Red Hat Linux, then Debian, Gentoo and finally Arch Linux for the last three years. And I use C, C++, x86 ASM, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Javascript on a daily basis.
I have Arch installed on four servers in total as well as on one virtual machine. I'm not ashamed to admit that I run a Windows 7 notebook as my only physical computer; though it's only role these days is to not bother me while I SSH into my Linux machines.
I maintain a small cluster running Arch where I hand out free shell accounts to anyone who wants them. Currently this cluster has one hundred and twenty five users though I am in the process of updating its infrastructure to (hopefully) scale up to a couple thousand. The most important services on this cluster are/were glusterfs, nfs, ntpd, httpd, vsftpd, postfix, dovecot, postgresql, ejabberd, slapd, openvpn, memcached, pvpgn (this list is being updated quite often).
I currently maintain thirty packages in the AUR, most of which I do not use but would be unhappy in seeing them orphaned.
I would like to become a Trusted User simply because I would like to maintain packages more effectively. Recently there's been a thread on aur-general about the possible removal of hundreds of packages from [community] which makes me very worried. Packages such as cacti, courier-*, ejabberd, freeradius*, ipsec-tools, monit, roundcubemail, scilab, and *ircd are very important to people who run Arch on the server such as myself. This list evinces a fundamental problem however that there is simply not enough manpower to maintain the current repositories. Because I am able (or hopefully will be deemed so by the powers that be/grant TU priveleges) I would like to help alleviate this condition. Arch allows me to focus on the work that I do; it should be obvious that helping to ensure that Arch functions smoothly and efficiently is a necessary task for anyone who has made this distribution a valuable part of their workflow.
In more concrete terms of how I want to contribute, I would like to start by adopting python-openbabel, freeimage, metakit, gen2shp, tdl, python-bsddb, and other orphaned packages in [community] once I have the chance to take a closer look at the orphan list. I'd also like to pull smalltalk, burp, bti, liboauth, and vim-align into [community]. I would also like to work on bringing some of the packages in [community] up to date such as rsyslog, pyinotify, openntpd, and ngspice.
I would also like to work on maintain the Arch web presence. I think that a separate login is needed for each part of the site is something that should be fixed. The AUR is also somewhat outdated and I in large part agree with the page here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_2.
That's about all I can think of for now. Please feel free to ask any questions and thanks for taking the time to consider my application.
Kaiting.
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 12:33:51AM -0400, Kaiting Chen wrote:
I currently maintain thirty packages in the AUR, most of which I do not use but would be unhappy in seeing them orphaned.
Could you please add a link to your AUR packages? :)
I would also like to work on maintain the Arch web presence. I think that a separate login is needed for each part of the site is something that should be fixed.
Single sign-on might be a cool thing but is really hard to implement and maintain properly in practice, especially if there's a large number of independent modules that have to be integrated. Most of the projects I implemented SSO for went back to separate logins after some time, just because it was too much effort to maintain integration for all submodules.
I don't say it's impossible but it's a lot of work.
The AUR is also somewhat outdated and I in large part agree with the page here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_2.
Well, the AUR is simple, easy to use and just works. Loui and me are also working on some improvements and fixes right now. Tho I agree that the AUR code base is a bit outdated and some parts should better be rewritten.
Could you please add a link to your AUR packages? :)
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?SeB=m&K=kaitocracy
I would also like to work on maintain the Arch web presence. I think that
a
separate login is needed for each part of the site is something that
should
be fixed.
Single sign-on might be a cool thing but is really hard to implement and maintain properly in practice, especially if there's a large number of independent modules that have to be integrated. Most of the projects I implemented SSO for went back to separate logins after some time, just because it was too much effort to maintain integration for all submodules.
I don't say it's impossible but it's a lot of work.
Maybe an LDAP solution? I haven't really looked at the code yet.
Maybe an LDAP solution? I haven't really looked at the code yet.
And by that I mean that I don't care so much about single sign on, more about sharing the same authentication data across services.
On 27/10/10 16:47, Kaiting Chen wrote:
I would also like to work on maintain the Arch web presence. I think that
a
separate login is needed for each part of the site is something that
should
be fixed.
Single sign-on might be a cool thing but is really hard to implement and maintain properly in practice, especially if there's a large number of independent modules that have to be integrated. Most of the projects I implemented SSO for went back to separate logins after some time, just because it was too much effort to maintain integration for all submodules.
I don't say it's impossible but it's a lot of work.
Maybe an LDAP solution? I haven't really looked at the code yet.
See comments in https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10703 to know why this is not easy...
Maybe an LDAP solution? I haven't really looked at the code yet.
See comments in https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10703 to know why this is not easy...
I see. Well I'll let you know if I come up with any creative solutions.
Am Wed, 27 Oct 2010 02:47:01 -0400 schrieb Kaiting Chen kaitocracy@gmail.com:
Could you please add a link to your AUR packages? :)
What do you need base-meta and base-devel-meta for?
pacman -S base and pacman -S base-devel install every package of these groups. And with this method you always automatically get the latest group packages.
pacman -Rs base and pacman -Rs base-devel deinstall these groups.
Btw., base is automatically installed during the first installation from the install CD anyway. And not having base installed can have curious effects.
I'd rather suggest deleting these packages from AUR.
Heiko
What do you need base-meta and base-devel-meta for?
pacman -S base and pacman -S base-devel install every package of these groups. And with this method you always automatically get the latest group packages.
pacman -Rs base and pacman -Rs base-devel deinstall these groups.
Btw., base is automatically installed during the first installation from the install CD anyway. And not having base installed can have curious effects.
I'd rather suggest deleting these packages from AUR.
Heiko
I adopted those packages from orphan status. It's for people who like to manage their dependencies carefully. Thus one need only base-devel-meta as explicit and the rest of the toolchain (gcc, patch, etc.) can be made into dependencies without showing up in pacman -Qtd. I don't actually use those packages.
Kaiting Chen wrote:
What do you need base-meta and base-devel-meta for?
pacman -S base and pacman -S base-devel install every package of these groups. And with this method you always automatically get the latest group packages.
pacman -Rs base and pacman -Rs base-devel deinstall these groups.
Btw., base is automatically installed during the first installation from the install CD anyway. And not having base installed can have curious effects.
I'd rather suggest deleting these packages from AUR.
Heiko
I adopted those packages from orphan status. It's for people who like to manage their dependencies carefully. Thus one need only base-devel-meta as explicit and the rest of the toolchain (gcc, patch, etc.) can be made into dependencies without showing up in pacman -Qtd. I don't actually use those packages.
Hehe, this came up in the pre-application discussion. I knew someone would mention this. :P
Metapackages behave differently than groups. Once a group is installed it is no different than a set of unrelated packages expect that they can be removed together with a single command. If the members of a group change, the user will not be informed and would have to run an extra command to make sure that the package is up-to-date. Removing old members is also difficult as they are explicitly installed and thus do not show up as orphans.
A metapackage resolves these issues and also reduces the clutter of "pacman -Qe".
I've discussed the merits of metapackages vs groups at length before (check the forum and pacman-dev mailing list). Basically, if optdeps were handled properly, metapackages would be much better than groups imo.
Anyway, in this case, I'm still not sure whether such packages belong on the AUR, but I don't see what harm they do and others clearly find them useful, so this shouldn't be an issue.
Regards, Xyne
On 10/27/2010 07:33 AM, Kaiting Chen wrote:
Hi aur-general, my name is Kaiting Chen and Xyne has decided to sponsor me for my TU application.
fresh blood!
I would also like to work on maintain the Arch web presence. I think that a separate login is needed for each part of the site is something that should be fixed. The AUR is also somewhat outdated and I in large part agree with the page here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_2.
Nice, Dan was talking the other day that right now we don't have any active web maintainers for our websites, yes, i'm not talking about aur here :D
That's about all I can think of for now. Please feel free to ask any questions and thanks for taking the time to consider my application.
Kaiting.
Kaiting Chen kaitocracy@gmail.com writes:
Hi aur-general, my name is Kaiting Chen and Xyne has decided to sponsor me
Hi Kaiting,
And I use C, C++, x86 ASM, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Javascript on a daily basis.
Whoa, that's quite a list. Just out of pure idle curiosity, what do you do with x86 assembly on a daily basis? I learned it years ago, and I even have a googleable code sample (look for Chris Brannon's uuencode). I've never used assembly for anything serious.
I maintain a small cluster running Arch where I hand out free shell accounts to anyone who wants them.
It's very nice of you to offer such a service!
This list evinces a fundamental problem however that there is simply not enough manpower to maintain the current repositories. Because I am able (or hopefully will be deemed so by the powers that be/grant TU priveleges) I would like to help alleviate this condition. Arch allows me to focus on the work that I do; it should be obvious that helping to ensure that Arch functions smoothly and efficiently is a necessary task for anyone who has made this distribution a valuable part of their workflow.
That's a wonderful statement of intent. I like your attitude.
Good luck! -- Chris
And I use C, C++, x86 ASM, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Javascript on a daily basis.
Whoa, that's quite a list. Just out of pure idle curiosity, what do you do with x86 assembly on a daily basis? I learned it years ago, and I even have a googleable code sample (look for Chris Brannon's uuencode). I've never used assembly for anything serious.
The C, C++, and x86 ASM are because I audit an operating systems computer science course. The rest is for my web work. And apparently everything remotely academic is written in Java.
On 27.10.2010 06:33, Kaiting Chen wrote:
I'm twenty one years old and a senior at Duke University studying Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Economics. I have also been a web developer and systems administrator for about four years now and am currently working on a rather long and protracted project for the university. I have been using Linux on a daily basis for about seven years now starting with Red Hat Linux, then Debian, Gentoo and finally Arch Linux for the last three years. And I use C, C++, x86 ASM, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Javascript on a daily basis.
That is fairly impressive. Once I turn 21 I will barely be through regular school and just about to start studying.
I have Arch installed on four servers in total as well as on one virtual machine. I'm not ashamed to admit that I run a Windows 7 notebook as my only physical computer; though it's only role these days is to not bother me while I SSH into my Linux machines.
Let's not be ashamed. I'm using Windows 7 for delicious games but I *do* wonder about the excuse why a netbook should have to run it. :P
I currently maintain thirty packages in the AUR, most of which I do not use but would be unhappy in seeing them orphaned.
If you are a good maintainer and at least test but not usually use your packages, that should be alright.
I would like to become a Trusted User simply because I would like to maintain packages more effectively. Recently there's been a thread on aur-general about the possible removal of hundreds of packages from [community] which makes me very worried. Packages such as cacti, courier-*, ejabberd, freeradius*, ipsec-tools, monit, roundcubemail, scilab, and *ircd are very important to people who run Arch on the server such as myself. This list evinces a fundamental problem however that there is simply not enough manpower to maintain the current repositories. Because I am able (or hopefully will be deemed so by the powers that be/grant TU priveleges) I would like to help alleviate this condition. Arch allows me to focus on the work that I do; it should be obvious that helping to ensure that Arch functions smoothly and efficiently is a necessary task for anyone who has made this distribution a valuable part of their workflow.
Great idea, many packages required by servers get little love right now. I've taken it upon myself to keep my mail stack maintained (courier-*). I'd be glad if there were more people helping out here.
In more concrete terms of how I want to contribute, I would like to start by adopting python-openbabel, freeimage, metakit, gen2shp, tdl, python-bsddb, and other orphaned packages in [community] once I have the chance to take a closer look at the orphan list. I'd also like to pull smalltalk, burp, bti, liboauth, and vim-align into [community]. I would also like to work on bringing some of the packages in [community] up to date such as rsyslog, pyinotify, openntpd, and ngspice.
Sounds like a plan.
That's about all I can think of for now. Please feel free to ask any questions and thanks for taking the time to consider my application
Your application failed in terms of entertainment but otherwise was fine.
All in all, this is +2.
-- Sven-Hendrik
Your application failed in terms of entertainment but otherwise was fine
Sorry dude, it's been three years since I've written anything that wasn't code, math, a lab report, or technical specifications. I'd rather leave the entertaining the the experts, so http://oi35.tinypic.com/352en8j.jpg
Kaiting.
On 28.10.2010 00:21, Kaiting Chen wrote:
Your application failed in terms of entertainment but otherwise was fine
Sorry dude, it's been three years since I've written anything that wasn't code, math, a lab report, or technical specifications. I'd rather leave the entertaining the the experts, so http://oi35.tinypic.com/352en8j.jpg
Kaiting.
In Arch you are, of course, required to constantly express your own awesomeness and superiority in subtle ways. Here, take my application as an example: http://www.mail-archive.com/aur-general@archlinux.org/msg08060.html
Anyhow, wish you luck with your voting period.
-- Sven-Hendrik
On 2010-10-27 00:33 -0400 (43:3) Kaiting Chen wrote:
Hi aur-general, my name is Kaiting Chen and Xyne has decided to sponsor me for my TU application.
/snip
Hi all,
I confirm that I have agreed to sponsor Kaiting. He has the skills and motivation to be a good TU and I believe that his interests in particular areas will complement the team nicely.
Let the discussion period begin. :)
Regards, Xyne
On Thu 28 Oct 2010 18:03 +0200, Xyne wrote:
On 2010-10-27 00:33 -0400 (43:3) Kaiting Chen wrote:
Hi aur-general, my name is Kaiting Chen and Xyne has decided to sponsor me for my TU application.
/snip
Hi all,
I confirm that I have agreed to sponsor Kaiting. He has the skills and motivation to be a good TU and I believe that his interests in particular areas will complement the team nicely.
Let the discussion period begin. :)
Awesome.
Loui Chang wrote:
On Thu 28 Oct 2010 18:03 +0200, Xyne wrote:
On 2010-10-27 00:33 -0400 (43:3) Kaiting Chen wrote:
Hi aur-general, my name is Kaiting Chen and Xyne has decided to sponsor me for my TU application.
/snip
Hi all,
I confirm that I have agreed to sponsor Kaiting. He has the skills and motivation to be a good TU and I believe that his interests in particular areas will complement the team nicely.
Let the discussion period begin. :)
Awesome.
Ok, 5 days have passed. TUs, please cast your votes:
Xyne wrote:
Ok, 5 days have passed. TUs, please cast your votes:
The voting period is over. (Sorry for the delayed announcement.)
Yes: 12 No: 5 Abstain: 6 Total: 23
Out of 28 TUs, 28% percent have participated and quorum has been established. The application is thereby accepted.
Welcome aboard, Kaiting!
You can find the TODO list for new TUs here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_Trusted_User_Guidelines#TODO_list_fo...
*cracks whip* Now fall in line with the other new slaves. :P
I also want to address something else. I am disappointed that 5 TUs voted no without anyone voicing any concerns during the discussion period. To abstain from a vote indicates that you do not have an opinion one way or the other, but to vote no is to indicate that you have a reason to believe that the application should be rejected. The discussion period is for discussing exactly such things. It gives the applicant a chance to address any issues and it enables others to consider what they might not have considered before.
If you have a concern that no one else has expressed during a discussion period then it is your duty as a TU and an active participant in the discussion to bring it up. Please do so in the future.
I also want to say that I do not want anyone to bring up there reasons now. The time for that is past and there would be nothing to be gained from it, and it might lead to unnecessary tensions.
Regards, Xyne
On 10/11/10 21:15, Xyne wrote:
Xyne wrote:
Ok, 5 days have passed. TUs, please cast your votes:
The voting period is over. (Sorry for the delayed announcement.)
Yes: 12 No: 5 Abstain: 6 Total: 23
Out of 28 TUs, 28% percent have participated and quorum has been established. The application is thereby accepted.
28% is not a quorum! :P
On Wed, 2010-11-10 at 21:27 +1000, Allan McRae wrote:
On 10/11/10 21:15, Xyne wrote:
Xyne wrote:
Ok, 5 days have passed. TUs, please cast your votes:
The voting period is over. (Sorry for the delayed announcement.)
Yes: 12 No: 5 Abstain: 6 Total: 23
Out of 28 TUs, 28% percent have participated and quorum has been established. The application is thereby accepted.
28% is not a quorum! :P
Dammit Allan, I was about the say the same thing!
Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
On Wed, 2010-11-10 at 21:27 +1000, Allan McRae wrote:
On 10/11/10 21:15, Xyne wrote:
Xyne wrote:
Ok, 5 days have passed. TUs, please cast your votes:
The voting period is over. (Sorry for the delayed announcement.)
Yes: 12 No: 5 Abstain: 6 Total: 23
Out of 28 TUs, 28% percent have participated and quorum has been established. The application is thereby accepted.
28% is not a quorum! :P
Dammit Allan, I was about the say the same thing!
Gah, apparently I'm dyslexic, or at least my fingers are. From now on, all participation must be in integer multiples of 11%.
And for those of you two lazy to calculate 23/28, it's ~82%, not 28% ;)
p.s. I hate mailings lists. Every stupid mistake is committed to public viewing until the end of the internet. I'd propose an edit button for the internet, but there are already too many people trying to implement one :/
Xyne wrote:
And for those of you two lazy to calculate 23/28, it's ~82%, not 28% ;) those of you two lazy two
*sigh*
I'm revoking my mailing list privileges for the rest of the day. I'll see you tomorrow.
On Wed 10 Nov 2010 21:27 +1000, Allan McRae wrote:
On 10/11/10 21:15, Xyne wrote:
Xyne wrote:
Ok, 5 days have passed. TUs, please cast your votes:
The voting period is over. (Sorry for the delayed announcement.)
Yes: 12 No: 5 Abstain: 6 Total: 23
Out of 28 TUs, 28% percent have participated and quorum has been established. The application is thereby accepted.
28% is not a quorum! :P
I think Xyne meant 82%.
On 10 November 2010 17:15, Xyne xyne@archlinux.ca wrote:
I also want to address something else. I am disappointed that 5 TUs voted no without anyone voicing any concerns during the discussion period. To abstain from a vote indicates that you do not have an opinion one way or the other, but to vote no is to indicate that you have a reason to believe that the application should be rejected. The discussion period is for discussing exactly such things. It gives the applicant a chance to address any issues and it enables others to consider what they might not have considered before.
If you have a concern that no one else has expressed during a discussion period then it is your duty as a TU and an active participant in the discussion to bring it up. Please do so in the future.
I also want to say that I do not want anyone to bring up there reasons now. The time for that is past and there would be nothing to be gained from it, and it might lead to unnecessary tensions.
There is no problem with that. The bylaws do not dictate against silence. This is why:
It was brought to our attention at least on one prior occasion. The problem only arises when an application fails, and everyone keeps quiet. That is simply not very nice, though they have the technical right to do so.
A TU may or may not participate in the discussion depending on whether she has anything significant to add, and if she decides not and chooses to vote against the applicant, may do so without voicing an opinion. If this contributes to a failed application, then the ethical thing to do is to state her reasons for the negative vote. Hell, we wouldn't even know if one or more TUs just played around with the buttons!
Anyway, welcome aboard, Kaiting!
Ray Rashif wrote:
On 10 November 2010 17:15, Xyne xyne@archlinux.ca wrote:
I also want to address something else. I am disappointed that 5 TUs voted no without anyone voicing any concerns during the discussion period. To abstain from a vote indicates that you do not have an opinion one way or the other, but to vote no is to indicate that you have a reason to believe that the application should be rejected. The discussion period is for discussing exactly such things. It gives the applicant a chance to address any issues and it enables others to consider what they might not have considered before.
If you have a concern that no one else has expressed during a discussion period then it is your duty as a TU and an active participant in the discussion to bring it up. Please do so in the future.
I also want to say that I do not want anyone to bring up there reasons now. The time for that is past and there would be nothing to be gained from it, and it might lead to unnecessary tensions.
There is no problem with that. The bylaws do not dictate against silence. This is why:
It was brought to our attention at least on one prior occasion. The problem only arises when an application fails, and everyone keeps quiet. That is simply not very nice, though they have the technical right to do so.
A TU may or may not participate in the discussion depending on whether she has anything significant to add, and if she decides not and chooses to vote against the applicant, may do so without voicing an opinion. If this contributes to a failed application, then the ethical thing to do is to state her reasons for the negative vote. Hell, we wouldn't even know if one or more TUs just played around with the buttons!
I still see this as an issue. We're not voting on pizza toppings here. We're granting people access to the [community] repo which is trusted by most Arch users. The TUs are entrusted with maintaining that repo and its standards.
If one person had voice a concern with an application and then 5 others silently agreed by voting no, then I see no problem with that. My issue with this is that not a single person said anything. I would hope that a TU would have at least a decent reason to vote no instead of abstain, and I would hope that TUs do more than just pick random buttons when voting.
I think my difficulty is in understanding how someone can feel that something merits a rejection yet not a discussion, i.e. "this is clearly an issue for me that makes me think this person won't be a TU, but I see no reason to make the other TUs aware of it... I'll just leave it to luck".
The only thing that I can think of is that the distinction between "abstain" and "no" isn't clear. In a way they make no difference as only yes votes and the total number of votes decide the outcome, but there is still a big difference on a personal level between the two, with all the aforementioned implications.
Meh, this isn't that big of an issue and it's definitely not a by-law issue. As I wrote before, I'm simply disappointed by this behavior.
Welcome aboard Kaiting
On 10 November 2010 12:15, Xyne xyne@archlinux.ca wrote:
Xyne wrote:
Ok, 5 days have passed. TUs, please cast your votes:
The voting period is over. (Sorry for the delayed announcement.)
Yes: 12 No: 5 Abstain: 6 Total: 23
Out of 28 TUs, 28% percent have participated and quorum has been established. The application is thereby accepted.
Welcome aboard, Kaiting!
You can find the TODO list for new TUs here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_Trusted_User_Guidelines#TODO_list_fo...
*cracks whip* Now fall in line with the other new slaves. :P
I also want to address something else. I am disappointed that 5 TUs voted no without anyone voicing any concerns during the discussion period. To abstain from a vote indicates that you do not have an opinion one way or the other, but to vote no is to indicate that you have a reason to believe that the application should be rejected. The discussion period is for discussing exactly such things. It gives the applicant a chance to address any issues and it enables others to consider what they might not have considered before.
If you have a concern that no one else has expressed during a discussion period then it is your duty as a TU and an active participant in the discussion to bring it up. Please do so in the future.
I also want to say that I do not want anyone to bring up there reasons now. The time for that is past and there would be nothing to be gained from it, and it might lead to unnecessary tensions.
Regards, Xyne
Welcome Kaiting!
aur-general@lists.archlinux.org