Help Create A Chat Control Resistant Turnkey Chatmail/Deltachat Relay Stack - Rootless Podman Compose, OpenSUSE BCI, Hardened, & SELinux by 3nd5h1771fy

Description

The Mission: Decentralized & Sovereign Messaging

FYI: If you have never heard of "Chatmail", you can visit their site here, but simply put it can be thought of as the underlying protocol/platform decentralized messengers like DeltaChat use for their communications. Do not confuse it with the honeypot looking non-opensource paid for prodect with better seo that directs you to chatmailsecure(dot)com

In an era of increasing centralized surveillance by unaccountable bad actors (aka BigTech), "Chat Control," and the erosion of digital privacy, the need for sovereign communication infrastructure is critical. Chatmail is a pioneering initiative that bridges the gap between classic email and modern instant messaging, offering metadata-minimized, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) communication that is interoperable and open.

However, unless you are a seasoned sysadmin, the current recommended deployment method of a Chatmail relay is rigid, fragile, difficult to properly secure, and effectively takes over the entire host the "relay" is deployed on.

Why This Matters

A simple, host agnostic, reproducible deployment lowers the entry cost for anyone wanting to run a privacy‑preserving, decentralized messaging relay. In an era of perpetually resurrected chat‑control legislation threats, EU digital‑sovereignty drives, and many dangers of using big‑tech messaging platforms (Apple iMessage, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Instagram, SMS, Google Messages, etc...) for any type of communication, providing an easy‑to‑use alternative empowers:

• Censorship resistance - No single entity controls the relay; operators can spin up new nodes quickly.
  
• Surveillance mitigation - End‑to‑end OpenPGP encryption ensures relay operators never see plaintext.
  
• Digital sovereignty - Communities can host their own infrastructure under local jurisdiction, aligning with national data‑policy goals.
  

By turning the Chatmail relay into a plug‑and‑play container stack, we enable broader adoption, foster a resilient messaging fabric, and give developers, activists, and hobbyists a concrete tool to defend privacy online.

Goals

As I indicated earlier, this project aims to drastically simplify the deployment of Chatmail relay. By converting this architecture into a portable, containerized stack using Podman and OpenSUSE base container images, we can allow anyone to deploy their own censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving communications node in minutes.

Our goal for Hack Week: package every component into containers built on openSUSE/MicroOS base images, initially orchestrated with a single container-compose.yml (podman-compose compatible). The stack will:

• Run on any host that supports Podman (including optimizations and enhancements for SELinux‑enabled systems).
  
• Allow network decoupling by refactoring configurations to move from file-system constrained Unix sockets to internal TCP networking, allowing containers achieve stricter isolation.
• Utilize Enhanced Security with SELinux by using purpose built utilities such as udica we can quickly generate custom SELinux policies for the container stack, ensuring strict confinement superior to standard/typical Docker deployments.
• Allow the use of bind or remote mounted volumes for shared data (/var/vmail, DKIM keys, TLS certs, etc.).
  
• Replace the local DNS server requirement with a remote DNS‑provider API for DKIM/TXT record publishing.
  

By delivering a turnkey, host agnostic, reproducible deployment, we lower the barrier for individuals and small communities to launch their own chatmail relays, fostering a decentralized, censorship‑resistant messaging ecosystem that can serve DeltaChat users and/or future services adopting this protocol

Resources

• The links included above
• https://chatmail.at/doc/relay/
• https://delta.chat/en/help
• Project repo -> https://codeberg.org/EndShittification/containerized-chatmail-relay

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Bring to Cockpit + System Roles capabilities from YAST by miguelpc

Bring to Cockpit + System Roles features from YAST

Cockpit and System Roles have been added to SLES 16 There are several capabilities in YAST that are not yet present in Cockpit and System Roles We will follow the principle of "automate first, UI later" being System Roles the automation component and Cockpit the UI one.

Goals

The idea is to implement service configuration in System Roles and then add an UI to manage these in Cockpit. For some capabilities it will be required to have an specific Cockpit Module as they will interact with a reasource already configured.

Resources

A plan on capabilities missing and suggested implementation is available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZhX-Ip9MKJNeKSYV3bSZG4Qc5giuY7XSV0U61Ecu9lo/edit

Linux System Roles:

• https://linux-system-roles.github.io/
• https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory/ansible-linux-system-roles Package on sle16 ansible-linux-system-roles

First meeting Hackweek catchup

• Monday, December 1 · 11:00 – 12:00
• Time zone: Europe/Madrid
• Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/rrc-kqch-hca

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Liz - Prompt autocomplete by ftorchia

Description

Liz is the Rancher AI assistant for cluster operations.

Goals

We want to help users when sending new messages to Liz, by adding an autocomplete feature to complete their requests based on the context.

Example:

• User prompt: "Can you show me the list of p"
• Autocomplete suggestion: "Can you show me the list of p...od in local cluster?"

Example:

• User prompt: "Show me the logs of #rancher-"
• Chat console: It shows a drop-down widget, next to the # character, with the list of available pod names starting with "rancher-".

Technical Overview

1. The AI agent should expose a new ws/autocomplete endpoint to proxy autocomplete messages to the LLM.
2. The UI extension should be able to display prompt suggestions and allow users to apply the autocomplete to the Prompt via keyboard shortcuts.

Resources

GitHub repository

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Collection and organisation of information about Bulgarian schools by iivanov

Description

To achieve this it will be necessary:

• Collect/download raw data from various government and non-governmental organizations
• Clean up raw data and organise it in some kind database.
• Create tool to make queries easy.
• Or perhaps dump all data into AI and ask questions in natural language.

Goals

By selecting particular school information like this will be provided:

• School scores on national exams.
• School scores from the external evaluations exams.
• School town, municipality and region.
• Employment rate in a town or municipality.
• Average health of the population in the region.

Resources

Some of these are available only in bulgarian.

• https://danybon.com/klasazia
• https://nvoresults.com/index.html
• https://ri.mon.bg/active-institutions
• https://www.nsi.bg/nrnm/ekatte/archive

Results

• Information about all Bulgarian schools with their scores during recent years cleaned and organised into SQL tables
• Information about all Bulgarian villages, cities, municipalities and districts cleaned and organised into SQL tables
• Information about all Bulgarian villages and cities census since beginning of this century cleaned and organised into SQL tables.
• Information about all Bulgarian municipalities about religion, ethnicity cleaned and organised into SQL tables.
• Data successfully loaded to locally running Ollama with help to Vanna.AI
• Seems to be usable.

TODO

• Add more statistical information about municipalities and ....

Code and data

• Github

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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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The Agentic Rancher Experiment: Do Androids Dream of Electric Cattle? by moio

Rancher is a beast of a codebase. Let's investigate if the new 2025 generation of GitHub Autonomous Coding Agents and Copilot Workspaces can actually tame it.

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The Plan

Create a sandbox GitHub Organization, clone in key Rancher repositories, and let the AI loose to see if it can handle real-world enterprise OSS maintenance - or if it just hallucinates new breeds of Kubernetes resources!

Specifically, throw "Agentic Coders" some typical tasks in a complex, long-lived open-source project, such as:

❥ The Grunt Work: generate missing GoDocs, unit tests, and refactorings. Rebase PRs.

❥ The Complex Stuff: fix actual (historical) bugs and feature requests to see if they can traverse the complexity without (too much) human hand-holding.

❥ Hunting Down Gaps: find areas lacking in docs, areas of improvement in code, dependency bumps, and so on.

If time allows, also experiment with Model Context Protocol (MCP) to give agents context on our specific build pipelines and CI/CD logs.

Why?

We know AI can write "Hello World." and also moderately complex programs from a green field. But can it rebase a 3-month-old PR with conflicts in rancher/rancher? I want to find the breaking point of current AI agents to determine if and how they can help us to reduce our technical debt, work faster and better. At the same time, find out about pitfalls and shortcomings.

The CONCLUSION!!!

A State of the Union document was compiled to summarize lessons learned this week. For more gory details, just read on the diary below!

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Technical talks at universities by agamez

Description

This project aims to empower the next generation of tech professionals by offering hands-on workshops on containerization and Kubernetes, with a strong focus on open-source technologies. By providing practical experience with these cutting-edge tools and fostering a deep understanding of open-source principles, we aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry.

For now, the scope is limited to Spanish universities, since we already have the contacts and have started some conversations.

Goals

• Technical Skill Development: equip students with the fundamental knowledge and skills to build, deploy, and manage containerized applications using open-source tools like Kubernetes.
• Open-Source Mindset: foster a passion for open-source software, encouraging students to contribute to open-source projects and collaborate with the global developer community.
• Career Readiness: prepare students for industry-relevant roles by exposing them to real-world use cases, best practices, and open-source in companies.

Resources

• Instructors: experienced open-source professionals with deep knowledge of containerization and Kubernetes.
• SUSE Expertise: leverage SUSE's expertise in open-source technologies to provide insights into industry trends and best practices.

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Preparing KubeVirtBMC for project transfer to the KubeVirt organization by zchang

Description

KubeVirtBMC is preparing to transfer the project to the KubeVirt organization. One requirement is to enhance the modeling design's security. The current v1alpha1 API (the VirtualMachineBMC CRD) was designed during the proof-of-concept stage. It's immature and inherently insecure due to its cross-namespace object references, exposing security concerns from an RBAC perspective.

The other long-awaited feature is the ability to mount virtual media so that virtual machines can boot from remote ISO images.

Goals

1. Deliver the v1beta1 API and its corresponding controller implementation
2. Enable the Redfish virtual media mount function for KubeVirt virtual machines

Resources

• The KubeVirtBMC repo: https://github.com/starbops/kubevirtbmc
• The new v1beta1 API: https://github.com/starbops/kubevirtbmc/issues/83
• Redfish virtual media mount: https://github.com/starbops/kubevirtbmc/issues/44

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Self-Scaling LLM Infrastructure Powered by Rancher by ademicev0

Self-Scaling LLM Infrastructure Powered by Rancher

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Description

The Problem

Running LLMs can get expensive and complex pretty quickly.

Today there are typically two choices:

1. Use cloud APIs like OpenAI or Anthropic. Easy to start with, but costs add up at scale.
2. Self-host everything - set up Kubernetes, figure out GPU scheduling, handle scaling, manage model serving... it's a lot of work.

What if there was a middle ground?

What if infrastructure scaled itself instead of making you scale it?

Can we use existing Rancher capabilities like CAPI, autoscaling, and GitOps to make this simpler instead of building everything from scratch?

Project Repository: github.com/alexander-demicev/llmserverless

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What This Project Does

A key feature is hybrid deployment: requests can be routed based on complexity or privacy needs. Simple or low-sensitivity queries can use public APIs (like OpenAI), while complex or private requests are handled in-house on local infrastructure. This flexibility allows balancing cost, privacy, and performance - using cloud for routine tasks and on-premises resources for sensitive or demanding workloads.

A complete, self-scaling LLM infrastructure that:

• Scales to zero when idle (no idle costs)
• Scales up automatically when requests come in
• Adds more nodes when needed, removes them when demand drops
• Runs on any infrastructure - laptop, bare metal, or cloud

Think of it as "serverless for LLMs" - focus on building, the infrastructure handles itself.

How It Works

A combination of open source tools working together:

Flow:

• Users interact with OpenWebUI (chat interface)
• Requests go to LiteLLM Gateway
• LiteLLM routes requests to:
  • Ollama (Knative) for local model inference (auto-scales pods)
  • Or cloud APIs for fallback

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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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