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 (including bootstrapping with bootstrap script) and Salt-ssh clients

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 :-)

In progress/done for Hack Week 25

Guide

We started writin a Guide: Adding a new client GNU Linux distribution to Uyuni at https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/wiki/Guide:-Adding-a-new-client-GNU-Linux-distribution-to-Uyuni, to make things easier for everyone, specially those not too familiar wht Uyuni or not technical.

openSUSE Leap 16.0

The distribution will all love!

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Roadmap#DRAFTScheduleforLeap16.0

Curent Status We started last year, it's complete now for Hack Week 25! :-D

• [W] Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file) NOTE: Done, client tools for SLMicro6 are using as those for SLE16.0/openSUSE Leap 16.0 are not available yet
• [W] 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)
• [W] Package management (install, remove, update...). Works, even reboot requirement detection

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Uyuni Saltboot rework by oholecek

Description

When Uyuni switched over to the containerized proxies we had to abandon salt based saltboot infrastructure we had before. Uyuni already had integration with a Cobbler provisioning server and saltboot infra was re-implemented on top of this Cobbler integration.

What was not obvious from the start was that Cobbler, having all it's features, woefully slow when dealing with saltboot size environments. We did some improvements in performance, introduced transactions, and generally tried to make this setup usable. However the underlying slowness remained.

Goals

This project is not something trying to invent new things, it is just finally implementing saltboot infrastructure directly with the Uyuni server core.

Instead of generating grub and pxelinux configurations by Cobbler for all thousands of systems and branches, we will provide a GET access point to retrieve grub or pxelinux file during the boot:

/saltboot/group/grub/$fqdn and similar for systems /saltboot/system/grub/$mac

Next we adapt our tftpd translator to query these points when asked for default or mac based config.

Lastly similar thing needs to be done on our apache server when HTTP UEFI boot is used.

Resources

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Ansible to Salt integration by vizhestkov

Description

We already have initial integration of Ansible in Salt with the possibility to run playbooks from the salt-master on the salt-minion used as an Ansible Control node.

In this project I want to check if it possible to make Ansible working on the transport of Salt. Basically run playbooks with Ansible through existing established Salt (ZeroMQ) transport and not using ssh at all.

It could be a good solution for the end users to reuse Ansible playbooks or run Ansible modules they got used to with no effort of complex configuration with existing Salt (or Uyuni/SUSE Multi Linux Manager) infrastructure.

Goals

• [v] Prepare the testing environment with Salt and Ansible installed
• [v] Discover Ansible codebase to figure out possible ways of integration
• [v] Create Salt/Uyuni inventory module
• [v] Make basic modules to work with no using separate ssh connection, but reusing existing Salt connection
• [v] Test some most basic playbooks

Resources

GitHub page

Video of the demo

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Set Uyuni to manage edge clusters at scale by RDiasMateus

Description

Prepare a Poc on how to use MLM to manage edge clusters. Those cluster are normally equal across each location, and we have a large number of them.

The goal is to produce a set of sets/best practices/scripts to help users manage this kind of setup.

Goals

step 1: Manual set-up

Goal: Have a running application in k3s and be able to update it using System Update Controler (SUC)

• Deploy Micro 6.2 machine

• Deploy k3s - single node

  • https://docs.k3s.io/quick-start

• Build/find a simple web application (static page)

  • Build/find a helmchart to deploy the application

• Deploy the application on the k3s cluster

• Install App updates through helm update

• Install OS updates using MLM

step 2: Automate day 1

Goal: Trigger the application deployment and update from MLM

• Salt states For application (with static data)
  • Deploy the application helmchart, if not present
  • install app updates through helmchart parameters
• Link it to GIT
  • Define how to link the state to the machines (based in some pillar data? Using configuration channels by importing the state? Naming convention?)
  • Use git update to trigger helmchart app update
• Recurrent state applying configuration channel?

step 3: Multi-node cluster

Goal: Use SUC to update a multi-node cluster.

• Create a multi-node cluster
• Deploy application
  • call the helm update/install only on control plane?
• Install App updates through helm update
• Prepare a SUC for OS update (k3s also? How?)
  • https://github.com/rancher/system-upgrade-controller
  • https://documentation.suse.com/cloudnative/k3s/latest/en/upgrades/automated.html
  • Update/deploy the SUC?
  • Update/deploy the SUC CRD with the update procedure

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Uyuni Health-check Grafana AI Troubleshooter by ygutierrez

Description

This project explores the feasibility of using the open-source Grafana LLM plugin to enhance the Uyuni Health-check tool with LLM capabilities. The idea is to integrate a chat-based "AI Troubleshooter" directly into existing dashboards, allowing users to ask natural-language questions about errors, anomalies, or performance issues.

Goals

• Investigate if and how the grafana-llm-app plug-in can be used within the Uyuni Health-check tool.
• Investigate if this plug-in can be used to query LLMs for troubleshooting scenarios.
• Evaluate support for local LLMs and external APIs through the plugin.
• Evaluate if and how the Uyuni MCP server could be integrated as another source of information.

Resources

Grafana LMM plug-in

Uyuni Health-check

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Try AI training with ROCm and LoRA by bmwiedemann

Description

I want to setup a Radeon RX 9600 XT 16 GB at home with ROCm on Slowroll.

Goals

I want to test how fast AI inference can get with the GPU and if I can use LoRA to re-train an existing free model for some task.

Resources

• https://rocm.docs.amd.com/en/latest/compatibility/compatibility-matrix.html
• https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/science:GPU:ROCm
• https://src.opensuse.org/ROCm/
• https://www.suse.com/c/lora-fine-tuning-llms-for-text-classification/

Results

got inference working with llama.cpp:

export LLAMACPP_ROCM_ARCH=gfx1200
HIPCXX="$(hipconfig -l)/clang" HIP_PATH="$(hipconfig -R)" \
cmake -S . -B build -DGGML_HIP=ON -DAMDGPU_TARGETS=$LLAMACPP_ROCM_ARCH \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DLLAMA_CURL=ON \
-Dhipblas_DIR=/usr/lib64/cmake/hipblaslt/ \
&& cmake --build build --config Release -j8
m=models/gpt-oss-20b-mxfp4.gguf
cd $P/llama.cpp && build/bin/llama-server --model $m --threads 8 --port 8005 --host 0.0.0.0 --device ROCm0 --n-gpu-layers 999

Without the --device option it faulted. Maybe because my APU also appears there?

I updated/fixed various related packages: https://src.opensuse.org/ROCm/rocm-examples/pulls/1 https://src.opensuse.org/ROCm/hipblaslt/pulls/1 SR 1320959

benchmark

I benchmarked inference with llama.cpp + gpt-oss-20b-mxfp4.gguf and ROCm offloading to a Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB. I varied the number of layers that went to the GPU:

• 0 layers 14.49 tokens/s (8 CPU cores)
• 9 layers 17.79 tokens/s 34% VRAM
• 15 layers 22.39 tokens/s 51% VRAM
• 20 layers 27.49 tokens/s 64% VRAM
• 24 layers 41.18 tokens/s 74% VRAM
• 25+ layers 86.63 tokens/s 75% VRAM (only 200% CPU load)

So there is a significant performance-boost if the whole model fits into the GPU's VRAM.

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Background Coding Agent by mmanno

Description

I had only bad experiences with AI one-shots. However, monitoring agent work closely and interfering often did result in productivity gains.

Now, other companies are using agents in pipelines. That makes sense to me, just like CI, we want to offload work to pipelines: Our engineering teams are consistently slowed down by "toil": low-impact, repetitive maintenance tasks. A simple linter rule change, a dependency bump, rebasing patch-sets on top of newer releases or API deprecation requires dozens of manual PRs, draining time from feature development.

So far we have been writing deterministic, script-based automation for these tasks. And it turns out to be a common trap. These scripts are brittle, complex, and become a massive maintenance burden themselves.

Can we make prompts and workflows smart enough to succeed at background coding?

Goals

We will build a platform that allows engineers to execute complex code transformations using prompts.

By automating this toil, we accelerate large-scale migrations and allow teams to focus on high-value work.

Our platform will consist of three main components:

• "Change" Definition: Engineers will define a transformation as a simple, declarative manifest:
  
  • The target repositories.
    
  • A wrapper to run a "coding agent", e.g., "gemini-cli".
    
  • The task as a natural language prompt.
    
• "Change" Management Service: A central service that orchestrates the jobs. It will receive Change definitions and be responsible for the job lifecycle.
  
• Execution Runners: We could use existing sandboxed CI runners (like GitHub/GitLab runners) to execute each job or spawn a container.

MVP

• Define the Change manifest format.
  
• Build the core Management Service that can accept and queue a Change.
• Connect management service and runners, dynamically dispatch jobs to runners.
• Create a basic runner script that can run a hard-coded prompt against a test repo and open a PR.
  

Stretch Goals:

• Multi-layered approach, Workflow Agents trigger Coding Agents:
  
  1. Workflow Agent: Gather information about the task interactively from the user.
     
  2. Coding Agent: Once the interactive agent has refined the task into a clear prompt, it hands this prompt off to the "coding agent." This background agent is responsible for executing the task and producing the actual pull request.
     
• Use MCP:
  
  1. Workflow Agent gathers context information from Slack, Github, etc.
     
  2. Workflow Agent triggers a Coding Agent.
     
• Create a "Standard Task" library with reliable prompts.
  1. Rebasing rancher-monitoring to a new version of kube-prom-stack
     
  2. Update charts to use new images
     
  3. Apply changes to comply with a new linter
     
  4. Bump complex Go dependencies, like k8s modules
     
  5. Backport pull requests to other branches
• Add “review agents” that review the generated PR.
  

See also

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MCP Trace Suite by r1chard-lyu

Description

This project plans to create an MCP Trace Suite, a system that consolidates commonly used Linux debugging tools such as bpftrace, perf, and ftrace.

The suite is implemented as an MCP Server. This architecture allows an AI agent to leverage the server to diagnose Linux issues and perform targeted system debugging by remotely executing and retrieving tracing data from these powerful tools.

• Repo: https://github.com/r1chard-lyu/systracesuite
• Demo: Slides

Goals

1. Build an MCP Server that can integrate various Linux debugging and tracing tools, including bpftrace, perf, ftrace, strace, and others, with support for future expansion of additional tools.

2. Perform testing by intentionally creating bugs or issues that impact system performance, allowing an AI agent to analyze the root cause and identify the underlying problem.

Resources

• Gemini CLI: https://geminicli.com/
• eBPF: https://ebpf.io/
• bpftrace: https://github.com/bpftrace/bpftrace/
• perf: https://perfwiki.github.io/main/
• ftrace: https://github.com/r1chard-lyu/tracium/

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Kubernetes-Based ML Lifecycle Automation by lmiranda

Description

This project aims to build a complete end-to-end Machine Learning pipeline running entirely on Kubernetes, using Go, and containerized ML components.

The pipeline will automate the lifecycle of a machine learning model, including:

• Data ingestion/collection
• Model training as a Kubernetes Job
• Model artifact storage in an S3-compatible registry (e.g. Minio)
• A Go-based deployment controller that automatically deploys new model versions to Kubernetes using Rancher
• A lightweight inference service that loads and serves the latest model
• Monitoring of model performance and service health through Prometheus/Grafana

The outcome is a working prototype of an MLOps workflow that demonstrates how AI workloads can be trained, versioned, deployed, and monitored using the Kubernetes ecosystem.

Goals

By the end of Hack Week, the project should:

1. Produce a fully functional ML pipeline running on Kubernetes with:

   • Data collection job
   • Training job container
   • Storage and versioning of trained models
   • Automated deployment of new model versions
   • Model inference API service
   • Basic monitoring dashboards

2. Showcase a Go-based deployment automation component, which scans the model registry and automatically generates & applies Kubernetes manifests for new model versions.

3. Enable continuous improvement by making the system modular and extensible (e.g., additional models, metrics, autoscaling, or drift detection can be added later).

4. Prepare a short demo explaining the end-to-end process and how new models flow through the system.

Resources

Project Repository

Updates

1. Training pipeline and datasets
2. Inference Service py

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SUSE Edge Image Builder MCP by eminguez

Description

Based on my other hackweek project, SUSE Edge Image Builder's Json Schema I would like to build also a MCP to be able to generate EIB config files the AI way.

Realistically I don't think I'll be able to have something consumable at the end of this hackweek but at least I would like to start exploring MCPs, the difference between an API and MCP, etc.

Goals

• Familiarize myself with MCPs
• Unrealistic: Have an MCP that can generate an EIB config file

Resources

• https://hackweek.opensuse.org/25/projects/suse-edge-image-builder-json-schema
• Anything else :)

Result

https://github.com/e-minguez/eib-mcp

I've extensively used antigravity and its agent mode to code this. This heavily uses https://hackweek.opensuse.org/25/projects/suse-edge-image-builder-json-schema for the MCP to be built.

I've ended up learning a lot of things about "prompting", json schemas in general, some golang, MCPs and AI in general :)

Example:

Generate an Edge Image Builder configuration for an ISO image based on slmicro-6.2.iso, targeting x86_64 architecture. The output name should be 'my-edge-image' and it should install to /dev/sda. It should deploy a 3 nodes kubernetes cluster with nodes names "node1", "node2" and "node3" as: * hostname: node1, IP: 1.1.1.1, role: initializer * hostname: node2, IP: 1.1.1.2, role: agent * hostname: node3, IP: 1.1.1.3, role: agent The kubernetes version should be k3s 1.33.4-k3s1 and it should deploy a cert-manager helm chart (the latest one available according to https://cert-manager.io/docs/installation/helm/). It should create a user called "suse" with password "suse" and set ntp to "foo.ntp.org". The VIP address for the API should be 1.2.3.4

Generates:

``` apiVersion: "1.0" image: arch: x86_64 baseImage: slmicro-6.2.iso imageType: iso outputImageName: my-edge-image kubernetes: helm: charts: - name: cert-manager repositoryName: jetstack

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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 (including bootstrapping with bootstrap script) and Salt-ssh clients

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 :-)

In progress/done for Hack Week 25

Guide

We started writin a Guide: Adding a new client GNU Linux distribution to Uyuni at https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/wiki/Guide:-Adding-a-new-client-GNU-Linux-distribution-to-Uyuni, to make things easier for everyone, specially those not too familiar wht Uyuni or not technical.

openSUSE Leap 16.0

The distribution will all love!

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Roadmap#DRAFTScheduleforLeap16.0

Curent Status We started last year, it's complete now for Hack Week 25! :-D

• [W] Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file) NOTE: Done, client tools for SLMicro6 are using as those for SLE16.0/openSUSE Leap 16.0 are not available yet
• [W] 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)
• [W] Package management (install, remove, update...). Works, even reboot requirement detection

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openQA tests needles elaboration using AI image recognition by mdati

Description

In the openQA test framework, to identify the status of a target SUT image, a screenshots of GUI or CLI-terminal images, the needles framework scans the many pictures in its repository, having associated a given set of tags (strings), selecting specific smaller parts of each available image. For the needles management actually we need to keep stored many screenshots, variants of GUI and CLI-terminal images, eachone accompanied by a dedicated set of data references (json).

A smarter framework, using image recognition based on AI or other image elaborations tools, nowadays widely available, could improve the matching process and hopefully reduce time and errors, during the images verification and detection process.

Goals

Main scope of this idea is to match a "graphical" image of the console or GUI status of a running openQA test, an image of a shell console or application-GUI screenshot, using less time and resources and with less errors in data preparation and use, than the actual openQA needles framework; that is:

• having a given SUT (system under test) GUI or CLI-terminal screenshot, with a local distribution of pixels or text commands related to a running test status,
• we want to identify a desired target, e.g. a screen image status or data/commands context,
  • based on AI/ML-pretrained archives containing object or other proper elaboration tools,
  • possibly able to identify also object not present in the archive, i.e. by means of AI/ML mechanisms.
• the matching result should be then adapted to continue working in the openQA test, likewise and in place of the same result that would have been produced by the original openQA needles framework.
• We expect an improvement of the matching-time(less time), reliability of the expected result(less error) and simplification of archive maintenance in adding/removing objects(smaller DB and less actions).

Hackweek POC:

Main steps

• Phase 1 - Plan
  • study the available tools
  • prepare a plan for the process to build
• Phase 2 - Implement
  • write and build a draft application
• Phase 3 - Data
  • prepare the data archive from a subset of needles
  • initialize/pre-train the base archive
  • select a screenshot from the subset, removing/changing some part
• Phase 4 - Test
  • run the POC application
  • expect the image type is identified in a good %.

Resources

First step of this project is quite identification of useful resources for the scope; some possibilities are:

• SUSE AI and other ML tools (i.e. Tensorflow)
• Tools able to manage images
• RPA test tools (like i.e. Robot framework)
  
• other.

Project references

• Repository: openqa-needles-AI-driven

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Multimachine on-prem test with opentofu, ansible and Robot Framework by apappas

Description

A long time ago I explored using the Robot Framework for testing. A big deficiency over our openQA setup is that bringing up and configuring the connection to a test machine is out of scope.

Nowadays we have a way¹ to deploy SUTs outside openqa, but we only use if for cloud tests in conjuction with openqa. Using knowledge gained from that project I am going to try to create a test scenario that replicates an openqa test but this time including the deployment and setup of the SUT.

Goals

Create a simple multimachine test scenario with the support server and SUT all created by the robot framework.

Resources

1. https://github.com/SUSE/qe-sap-deployment
2. terraform-libvirt-provider

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