Project

General

Profile

Actions

Task #742

closed

VNC server for daily builds

Added by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago. Updated about 8 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Priority:
Normal
Target version:
Team - Pool
Start date:
Due date:
% Done:

90%


Description

The board agreed on funding a VNC server for daily builds, which needs to be provided.

Description from the budget: Allows QA users without Windows (or a given windows version) to use it remotely for testing or bibisecting. As the work item is about getting people to have easy access to daily builds without any local installation, and the "Hackfest images" provide that already, just enabling to VNC on a desktop on those and start LibreOffice would be good. Then people could test on those VMs (instead of doing what people did at Hackfests: compiling, which is actually more challenging). The other task is getting people to use these images. Another topic for the long run is offering these images on-demand for QA triagers or hackers outside Hackfests or BHS. This might be helpful for volunteers with underpowered hardware etc.


Related issues

Related to Release Engineering - Task #1098: blog about Q1+Q2/2015 achievementsRejectedChristian Lohmaier

Actions
Actions #1

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

Details wll follow, nothing to do yet, but adding to Robinson's pile already. I will follow-up when I have more details.

Actions #2

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

  • Status changed from New to Feedback
Actions #3

Updated by Florian Effenberger about 9 years ago

  • Assignee changed from Robinson Tryon to Christian Lohmaier

Reassigning to Cloph as discussed before

For Mac OS X, it's not trivial - OS X can only be virtualized on OS X and needs a rather powerful machine for concurrent instances (Mac Pro with OS X Server), plus it's buggy when being accessed via VNC, so Apple Remote Desktop sounds like the better solution
For Linux, it's rather trivial
For Windows, we need to clarify the licensing and multi-user issues. Multiple users can only reliably logon with a Windows Server with Terminal Services and respective Client Access Licenses. VNC is not ideal, RDP is better here.

Things that need to be taken care of:

  • Automatic deletion/resetting of user accounts, which might be easier on Linux, but harder on OS X and Windows
  • Prevent the machines being abused for malicious activities when you have a full graphical browser
Actions #4

Updated by Florian Effenberger about 9 years ago

  • Description updated (diff)
Actions #5

Updated by Florian Effenberger about 9 years ago

  • Status changed from Feedback to New
  • Priority changed from Normal to High

This is delayed by the infra story, but assigning higher priority as it's a budget item voted on by the board

Actions #6

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 9 years ago

  • Tracker changed from Feature to Task
Actions #7

Updated by Florian Effenberger almost 9 years ago

Talked to Cloph about this ticket at length and finally agreed on a roadmap. Some details:

  • licensing questions will be clarified by Florian
    • do not make the instance public before it's clarified, just handle the technical side and document it
  • RDP allows for two concurrent users
  • for more user, terminal server + CALs are required
  • user management: one local (non-AD) admin user, and one local (non-AD) remote user
    • either copy profile and copy back when "back to scratch" is required
    • or go for NTUSER.MAN instead of NTUSER.DAT -> Alex might be able to help here
    • for auto-deployment, net user can be used

Tentatively to be provided early July, finally ;-)

Actions #8

Updated by Christian Lohmaier over 8 years ago

  • Status changed from New to Resolved

is live on dauntless, gating linux vm that offers the bibisect repos as nfs, and also as a way to have better access control, and a windows VM on virtualized-only network that is passed through that gating linux VM.

linux vm is vm165.documentfoundation.org and has xfce & x2go installed to allow for linux bibisecting of the builds, and is equipped with all the linux bibisect repositories, as well as with the partial windows one.

You'd connect to the windows one by tunneling the rdp port like "ssh -L 3389:192.168.100.2:3389 " and then can connect via a rdp client like remmina or others to one of the two available user-accounts

Actions #9

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 8 years ago

  • Priority changed from High to Normal
Actions #10

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 8 years ago

  • Status changed from Resolved to Feedback
  • Target version set to Q3/2015

Checking back with Björn how to proceed now

Actions #11

Updated by Bjoern Michaelsen over 8 years ago

Florian Effenberger wrote:

Checking back with Björn how to proceed now

Well, we should try this a upcoming Hackfests. ;) Optionally blogging about -- while not essential -- might help.

Finally Florian, feel free to test this: After all the goal is to make bibisect accessable to ~everyone (including you). If you find things underdocumented, cloph/Robinson might provide the missing bits.

Actions #12

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 8 years ago

  • Status changed from Feedback to In Progress

The Hackfest is a good idea.

Cloph, can you:
  1. merge that with your blogpost (#1098) - given I ask for this rather late, some short reference and pointer to the Hackfest is sufficient
  2. make a test-drive during the LibOCon Hackfest on September 25 so we can identify issues to address in Q4
    (The Hackfest is also a good venue for me to try it out live.)
Actions #13

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 8 years ago

  • Related to Task #1098: blog about Q1+Q2/2015 achievements added
Actions #14

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 8 years ago

  • % Done changed from 0 to 90
Actions #15

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 8 years ago

Did you get feedback during the Hackfest? Is there some more work we need to provision for?

Actions #16

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 8 years ago

  • Status changed from In Progress to Feedback
Actions #17

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 8 years ago

  • Assignee changed from Christian Lohmaier to Sophie Gautier
  • Target version changed from Q3/2015 to Pool

no real demand; AI Sophie to ask on the public QA list; depending on that Florian will just close the ticket, Cloph will shutdown the machine; we can always revisit it later

Actions #18

Updated by Florian Effenberger about 8 years ago

Any news on this one?

Actions #19

Updated by Florian Effenberger about 8 years ago

Sophie, any news, any new feedback?

Actions #20

Updated by Sophie Gautier about 8 years ago

  • Status changed from Feedback to Closed

Florian Effenberger wrote:

Sophie, any news, any new feedback?

It can be closed as there is no real demand for it.

Actions

Also available in: Atom PDF