Testing and adding GNU/Linux distributions on Uyuni by juliogonzalezgil

Join the Gitter channel! https://gitter.im/uyuni-project/hackweek

Uyuni is a configuration and infrastructure management tool that saves you time and headaches when you have to manage and update tens, hundreds or even thousands of machines. It also manages configuration, can run audits, build image containers, monitor and much more!

Currently there are a few distributions that are completely untested on Uyuni or SUSE Manager (AFAIK) or just not tested since a long time, and could be interesting knowing how hard would be working with them and, if possible, fix whatever is broken.

For newcomers, the easiest distributions are those based on DEB or RPM packages. Distributions with other package formats are doable, but will require adapting the Python and Java code to be able to sync and analyze such packages (and if salt does not support those packages, it will need changes as well). So if you want a distribution with other packages, make sure you are comfortable handling such changes.

No developer experience? No worries! We had non-developers contributors in the past, and we are ready to help as long as you are willing to learn. If you don't want to code at all, you can also help us preparing the documentation after someone else has the initial code ready, or you could also help with testing :-)

The idea is testing Salt and Salt-ssh clients, but NOT traditional clients, which are deprecated.

To consider that a distribution has basic support, we should cover at least (points 3-6 are to be tested for both salt minions and salt ssh minions):

1. Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
2. Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap scritp, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator)
3. Package management (install, remove, update...)
4. Patching
5. Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
6. Salt remote commands
7. Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement
8. Bonus point: sumaform enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/sumaform)
9. Bonus point: Documentation (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-docs)
10. Bonus point: testsuite enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/tree/master/testsuite)

If something is breaking: we can try to fix it, but the main idea is research how supported it is right now. Beyond that it's up to each project member how much to hack :-)

• If you don't have knowledge about some of the steps: ask the team
• If you still don't know what to do: switch to another distribution and keep testing.

This card is for EVERYONE, not just developers. Seriously! We had people from other teams helping that were not developers, and added support for Debian and new SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Leap versions :-)

Pending

FUSS

FUSS is a complete GNU/Linux solution (server, client and desktop/standalone) based on Debian for managing an educational network.

https://fuss.bz.it/

Seems to be a Debian 12 derivative, so adding it could be quite easy.

• [W] Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
• [W] Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap script, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator) --> Working for all 3 options (salt minion UI, salt minion bootstrap script and salt-ssh minion from the UI).
• [W] Package management (install, remove, update...) --> Installing a new package works, needs to test the rest.
• [I] Patching (if patch information is available, could require writing some code to parse it, but IIRC we have support for Ubuntu already). No patches detected. Do we support patches for Debian at all?
• [W] Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
• [W] Salt remote commands
• [ ] Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement

---

SUSE AI Meets the Game Board by moio

Use tabletopgames.ai’s open source TAG and PyTAG frameworks to apply Statistical Forward Planning and Deep Reinforcement Learning to two board games of our own design. On an all-green, all-open source, all-AWS stack!

---

Results: Infrastructure Achievements

We successfully built and automated a containerized stack to support our AI experiments. This included:

• a Fully-Automated, One-Command, GPU-accelerated Kubernetes setup: we created an OpenTofu based script, tofu-tag, to deploy SUSE's RKE2 Kubernetes running on CUDA-enabled nodes in AWS, powered by openSUSE with GPU drivers and gpu-operator
• Containerization of the TAG and PyTAG frameworks: TAG (Tabletop AI Games) and PyTAG were patched for seamless deployment in containerized environments. We automated the container image creation process with GitHub Actions. Our forks (PRs upstream upcoming):
  • https://github.com/moio/TabletopGames/tree/hackweek24
  • https://github.com/moio/PyTAG/tree/hackweek24

./deploy.sh and voilà - Kubernetes running PyTAG (k9s, above) with GPU acceleration (nvtop, below)

Results: Game Design Insights

Our project focused on modeling and analyzing two card games of our own design within the TAG framework:

• Game Modeling: We implemented models for Dario's "Bamboo" and Silvio's "Totoro" and "R3" games, enabling AI agents to play thousands of games ...in minutes!
• AI-driven optimization: By analyzing statistical data on moves, strategies, and outcomes, we iteratively tweaked the game mechanics and rules to achieve better balance and player engagement.
• Advanced analytics: Leveraging AI agents with Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and random action selection, we compared performance metrics to identify optimal strategies and uncover opportunities for game refinement .
  • more about Bamboo on Dario's site
  • more about R3 on Silvio's site (italian, translation coming)
  • more about Totoro on Silvio's site

A family picture of our card games in progress. From the top: Bamboo, Totoro, R3

Results: Learning, Collaboration, and Innovation

Beyond technical accomplishments, the project showcased innovative approaches to coding, learning, and teamwork:

• "Trio programming" with AI assistance: Our "trio programming" approach—two developers and GitHub Copilot—was a standout success, especially in handling slightly-repetitive but not-quite-exactly-copypaste tasks. Java as a language tends to be verbose and we found it to be fitting particularly well.
• AI tools for reporting and documentation: We extensively used AI chatbots to streamline writing and reporting. (Including writing this report! ...but this note was added manually during edit!)
• GPU compute expertise: Overcoming challenges with CUDA drivers and cloud infrastructure deepened our understanding of GPU-accelerated workloads in the open-source ecosystem.
• Game design as a learning platform: By blending AI techniques with creative game design, we learned not only about AI strategies but also about making games fun, engaging, and balanced.

Last but not least we had a lot of fun! ...and this was definitely not a chatbot generated line!

The Context: AI + Board Games

---

Switch software-o-o to parse repomd data by hennevogel

Currently software.opensuse.org search is using the OBS binary search for everything, even for packages inside the openSUSE distributions. Let's switch this to use repomd data from download.opensuse.org

---

A CLI for Harvester by mohamed.belgaied

[comment]: # Harvester does not officially come with a CLI tool, the user is supposed to interact with Harvester mostly through the UI [comment]: # Though it is theoretically possible to use kubectl to interact with Harvester, the manipulation of Kubevirt YAML objects is absolutely not user friendly. [comment]: # Inspired by tools like multipass from Canonical to easily and rapidly create one of multiple VMs, I began the development of Harvester CLI. Currently, it works but Harvester CLI needs some love to be up-to-date with Harvester v1.0.2 and needs some bug fixes and improvements as well.

Project Description

Harvester CLI is a command line interface tool written in Go, designed to simplify interfacing with a Harvester cluster as a user. It is especially useful for testing purposes as you can easily and rapidly create VMs in Harvester by providing a simple command such as: harvester vm create my-vm --count 5 to create 5 VMs named my-vm-01 to my-vm-05.

Harvester CLI is functional but needs a number of improvements: up-to-date functionality with Harvester v1.0.2 (some minor issues right now), modifying the default behaviour to create an opensuse VM instead of an ubuntu VM, solve some bugs, etc.

Github Repo for Harvester CLI: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli

Done in previous Hackweeks

• Create a Github actions pipeline to automatically integrate Harvester CLI to Homebrew repositories: DONE
• Automatically package Harvester CLI for OpenSUSE / Redhat RPMs or DEBs: DONE

Goal for this Hackweek

The goal for this Hackweek is to bring Harvester CLI up-to-speed with latest Harvester versions (v1.3.X and v1.4.X), and improve the code quality as well as implement some simple features and bug fixes.

Some nice additions might be: * Improve handling of namespaced objects * Add features, such as network management or Load Balancer creation ? * Add more unit tests and, why not, e2e tests * Improve CI * Improve the overall code quality * Test the program and create issues for it

Issue list is here: https://github.com/belgaied2/harvester-cli/issues

Resources

The project is written in Go, and using client-go the Kubernetes Go Client libraries to communicate with the Harvester API (which is Kubernetes in fact). Welcome contributions are:

• Testing it and creating issues
• Documentation
• Go code improvement

What you might learn

Harvester CLI might be interesting to you if you want to learn more about:

• GitHub Actions
• Harvester as a SUSE Product
• Go programming language
• Kubernetes API

---