Open sysadmin-requests mailing-list?

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

The administration of our various servers is failing, because the select few
people listening to gnome-sysadmin gnome org just don't have enough time,
and we naturally can't give the root password and responsibilities to yet
more people. We are all very grateful for the work that the sysadmins do
manage to do.

One solution is to employ a full-time system administrator, but that isn't
likely to happen any time soon.

I think we should at least have an open sysadmin-requests mailing list so
- everyone can see what needs to be done. This would also build a case for
employing a sysadmin.
- everyone can see how best to request something.
- the undocumented workings of our servers would be a bit more documented.
- people without the root password can investigate problems and suggest
solutions that the syadmins can try quickly.

I'd like to think that we can put _all_ sysadmin discussion on an open
mailing list instead of having security-via-obscurity, but it doesn't look
like people will agree to that.

So, any thoughts? Any objections to creating an open sysadmin-requests
mailing list and advertising this as the place to ask for sysadmin stuff?
Alternatively, we might make gnome-sysadmin public and move secret
discussion onto a new private list. Or would a syadmin bugzilla product be
better?


By the way, here are some of the current problems that I know of personally:
- libxslt crashes while building Docbook documentation, on widget.
- A new cvs server is apparently on the way, or has maybe arrived already,
is maybe in limbo. A mystery.
- We need to use cvs via ssh. [1]
- It's very difficult to add new mailing lists. I generally have to ask 3 or
4 times.
- widget is running an old distro that lacks something needed by Jeff's
auto-upload-of-developer-documentation, so
  we have currently uploaded arbitrary old documentation versions to
developer.gnome.org. Jeff gave specifics in an email somewhere.

[1] This is one reason that gstreamer has not yet moved to gnome's cvs. The
GNOME build in jhbuild has been broken for the past week because
sourceforge's anonymous servers are failing.


Murray Cumming
murrayc usa net
www.murrayc.com