Let's make reposync faster
Every day,
Multiple times a day,
Every SUSE Manager customer,
Every Red Hat Satellite customer,
Every Spacewalk user,
And every Uyuni user...
...spends a lot of CPU and wall clock time in reposyncing.
Intro
A lot of that time is wasted by an old, overcomplicated and most of all inefficient algorithm that contributes heavily on heat dissipation and user patience depletion!
HackWeek hackers, we can change that!
Past attempts only partially succeeded: https://trello.com/c/inl9Wu0p/40-reduce-global-warming, https://trello.com/c/dYAR0J8K/13-reduce-global-warming-take-2
But we have better tools now!
Tooling
py-spy to the rescue: introduction
Install with:
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
python get-pip.py
pip install py-spy
Trace a running spacewalk-repo-sync
with:
py-spy --nonblocking --pid `ps aux | grep spacewalk-repo-sync | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'` --flame output.svg --duration 10
Look at the results with:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8666
And point your browser to http://:8666/output.html
. Here is one such example:
Current remarks:
- we currently spend a lot of time in lookup functions
- lookup functions SELECT rows at every INSERT
- this is especially bad for checksums, capabilities and some other cases
- design comes from Oracle and can probably be changed!
Looking for hackers with the skills:
This project is part of:
Hack Week 18
Activity
Comments
-
over 5 years ago by ebischoff | Reply
See also this fate request "Have a synchronization that does not take hours (or days)"
-
over 5 years ago by joachimwerner | Reply
Related, but probably out of scope for your hack week project: Once we've optimized the syncing code, I think we could also reduce the scope of what needs to be synced for many customers: Especially for pilots, but also in real life, many of the older updates (e.g. several complete kernels, several Java updates) are never going to be needed, but still synced. We should investigate how we can offer something like a "JeR" ("Just enough Repo") to speed things up even more. This could be done server-side (provide alternative repo metadata for a "current stuff only" repo or client-side (but then some dependency resolution magic is probably needed).
Similar Projects
Saline (state deployment control and monitoring tool for SUSE Manager/Uyuni) by vizhestkov
Project Description
Saline is an addition for salt used in SUSE Manager/Uyuni aimed to provide better control and visibility for states deploymend in the large scale environments.
In current state the published version can be used only as a Prometheus exporter and missing some of the key features implemented in PoC (not published). Now it can provide metrics related to salt events and state apply process on the minions. But there is no control on this process implemented yet.
Continue with implementation of the missing features and improve the existing implementation:
authentication (need to decide how it should be/or not related to salt auth)
web service providing the control of states deployment
Goal for this Hackweek
Implement missing key features
Implement the tool for state deployment control with CLI
Resources
https://github.com/openSUSE/saline
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):
- Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
- 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)
- Package management (install, remove, update...)
- Patching
- Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
- Salt remote commands
- Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement
- Bonus point: sumaform enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/sumaform)
- Bonus point: Documentation (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-docs)
- 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
ClusterOps - Easily install and manage your personal kubernetes cluster by andreabenini
Description
ClusterOps is a Kubernetes installer and operator designed to streamline the initial configuration
and ongoing maintenance of kubernetes clusters. The focus of this project is primarily on personal
or local installations. However, the goal is to expand its use to encompass all installations of
Kubernetes for local development purposes.
It simplifies cluster management by automating tasks and providing just one user-friendly YAML-based
configuration config.yml
.
Overview
- Simplified Configuration: Define your desired cluster state in a simple YAML file, and ClusterOps will handle the rest.
- Automated Setup: Automates initial cluster configuration, including network settings, storage provisioning, special requirements (for example GPUs) and essential components installation.
- Ongoing Maintenance: Performs routine maintenance tasks such as upgrades, security updates, and resource monitoring.
- Extensibility: Easily extend functionality with custom plugins and configurations.
- Self-Healing: Detects and recovers from common cluster issues, ensuring stability, idempotence and reliability. Same operation can be performed multiple times without changing the result.
- Discreet: It works only on what it knows, if you are manually configuring parts of your kubernetes and this configuration does not interfere with it you can happily continue to work on several parts and use this tool only for what is needed.
Features
- distribution and engine independence. Install your favorite kubernetes engine with your package
manager, execute one script and you'll have a complete working environment at your disposal.
- Basic config approach. One single
config.yml
file with configuration requirements (add/remove features): human readable, plain and simple. All fancy configs managed automatically (ingress, balancers, services, proxy, ...). - Local Builtin ContainerHub. The default installation provides a fully configured ContainerHub available locally along with the kubernetes installation. This configuration allows the user to build, upload and deploy custom container images as they were provided from external sources. Internet public sources are still available but local development can be kept in this localhost server. Builtin ClusterOps operator will be fetched from this ContainerHub registry too.
- Kubernetes official dashboard installed as a plugin, others planned too (k9s for example).
- Kubevirt plugin installed and properly configured. Unleash the power of classic virtualization (KVM+QEMU) on top of Kubernetes and manage your entire system from there, libvirtd and virsh libs are required.
- One operator to rule them all. The installation script configures your machine automatically during installation and adds one kubernetes operator to manage your local cluster. From there the operator takes care of the cluster on your behalf.
- Clean installation and removal. Just test it, when you are done just use the same program to uninstall everything without leaving configs (or pods) behind.
Planned features (Wishlist / TODOs)
- Containerized Data Importer (CDI). Persistent storage management add-on for Kubernetes to provide a declarative way of building and importing Virtual Machine Disks on PVCs for
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):
./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
Make more sense of openQA test results using AI by livdywan
Description
AI has the potential to help with something many of us spend a lot of time doing which is making sense of openQA logs when a job fails.
User Story
Allison Average has a puzzled look on their face while staring at log files that seem to make little sense. Is this a known issue, something completely new or maybe related to infrastructure changes?
Goals
- Leverage a chat interface to help Allison
- Create a model from scratch based on data from openQA
- Proof of concept for automated analysis of openQA test results
Bonus
- Use AI to suggest solutions to merge conflicts
- This would need a merge conflict editor that can suggest solving the conflict
- Use image recognition for needles
Resources
Timeline
Day 1
- Conversing with open-webui to teach me how to create a model based on openQA test results
- Asking for example code using TensorFlow in Python
- Discussing log files to explore what to analyze
- Drafting a new project called Testimony (based on Implementing a containerized Python action) - the project name was also suggested by the assistant
Day 2
- Using NotebookLLM (Gemini) to produce conversational versions of blog posts
- Researching the possibility of creating a project logo with AI
- Asking open-webui, persons with prior experience and conducting a web search for advice
Highlights
- I briefly tested compared models to see if they would make me more productive. Between llama, gemma and mistral there was no amazing difference in the results for my case.
- Convincing the chat interface to produce code specific to my use case required very explicit instructions.
- Asking for advice on how to use open-webui itself better was frustratingly unfruitful both in trivial and more advanced regards.
- Documentation on source materials used by LLM's and tools for this purpose seems virtually non-existent - specifically if a logo can be generated based on particular licenses
Outcomes
- Chat interface-supported development is providing good starting points and open-webui being open source is more flexible than Gemini. Although currently some fancy features such as grounding and generated podcasts are missing.
- Allison still has to be very experienced with openQA to use a chat interface for test review. Publicly available system prompts would make that easier, though.