Signed with security@suse.de key:
pub   2048R/3D25D3D9 1999-03-06
uid                  SuSE 

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

SHA1 Fingerprint=F0:76:9C:42:D3:F1:C0:ED:C6:F6:15:C0:F8:D5:C7:29:60:EB:53:46
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.18 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBTyAnZXey5gA9JdPZAQI7yQf/d4OqlBnV4WT80cqI3DVGGcEacTSES8Ux
dK0z9aW/UQWFTHGoQmDk8xcgHED/mHVAlywIPgccbleWNi3NND3+1EAvsxnR5M1m
mdVsNYOEsGDrk/3qvPVzyTjkBgINOnetH/0Hd77NhxaDVkU0f1Tl0wbO5NdhKy6m
0dmGwJgUESi3IQjubaibmGZHCZPfEEO0ReW00tRDjFpV4MnU923/BZWT30WuvfMo
ClSedk0r6PBt3FGr5yqIFyjM1i3CX/dioW1nJ3qOP1GKMDGLSL20YEY6ZE/F8nL4
bycPLfTjDxKodWXeAmeBlXNTNVYxjphowtjYMQqFe7hXyUkSHBCLLQ==
=UhMT
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

The following hosts will be affected:

• static.opensuse.org
• api.opensuse.org
• build.opensuse.org
• connect.opensuse.org
• features.opensuse.org
• hermes.opensuse.org
• login.opensuse.org
• notify.opensuse.org
• svn.opensuse.org
• ci.opensuse.org

We do not expect any service interruptions, but some users run with strict certificate checks.

The SAN array of the backend server server lost 3 hard disks over the weekend.

That means the array with the built RPMs was broken. We checked and replaced a lot of files from backups – but since not all binary parts of the projects are in backup we need to rebuild some of them (31 from 24,194) afterwards.

The good news: sources and project configurations were affected by this.

• fix storage problems on Build Service machines
• increase network subnet mask for external available servers (means: we are growing ;-)
• exchange some SSL certificates on servers delivering content via HTTPS

We are trying to get everything done during the standard infrastructure window:

Thursday (2011-11-24), 08:00 – 10:00 CET (7:00 -9:00 UTC)

but some services might need a bit longer (for example the schedulers of the Build Service).

Please contact admin@opensuse.org with any queries.
Your openSUSE Admins

Therefore, a downtime is scheduled from 08:00 to 11:00 CEST, altough we believe it won’t take that long (but you never know) :-)

Afterwards, the OBS should be prepared for all the awesome packager workshops happening during the openSUSE Conference.

Affected services are:

• http://build.opensuse.org
• http://api.opensuse.org
• http://software.opensuse.org

We are trying to resolve this as fast as possible. Apologies for inconveniences this may cause.

Please contact admin@opensuse.org with any queries.
Your openSUSE Admins

Update 18:53 UTC: Everything is up and running again. Note the build service scheduler needs to read all files now and create some data structures. It will take a few hours until the build service is building again packages.

The history

The openSUSE Buildservice started out as an internal SUSE technology. In 2006 it was decided to open its source code and development process. From that point on, the scope of the openSUSE Build Service started to widen. First, it was just there to build add-on packages for SUSE Linux. Later on it became able to build openSUSE itself and to support also non-SUSE distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, MeeGo and others) and packaging systems (rpm, debian, kiwi), now expanded to 21 build targets on 6 architectures. We will support even more systems in future, non-Linux targets and also more specialized Linux targets like maintenance channels. But while ‘OBS’ is meant for a much wider audience than openSUSE, being used by projects and companies like VLC, MeeGo, Dell and many others, its name misleadingly signaled a distribution-specific purpose.

OBS is a unique piece of technology and certainly deserves to be known and used by a wide audience. With features like integration with Source Code Management systems including GIT and Subversion and powerful collaborative features has made the public instance on build.opensuse.org the preferred build technology for well over 27,000 users.

Communication

In highlighting the benefits of OBS to the masses, the over-reaching assumption that the service is openSUSE-specfic proved to be a deterrent. It clearly takes additional effort to convince a potential user that despite the name, openSUSE Build Service was not just for openSUSE.  And the distribution-independent technological benefits became lost in the confusion. This effect is very apparent in face to face communication as you’ll almost immediately hear others saying “No, I’m a Fedora packager, this has nothing to do with me.  Sorry.” when they hear about OBS. This same effect lead to less people reading articles or attending talks on the subject.

And while this was an undesirable effect for us promoting one of the key features of the openSUSE Project, we also recognized this was preventing developers and packagers wanting to promote and distribute their software projects from benefiting from a service that would truly enable them to achieve that goal.

As our openSUSE ambassadors around the world have been stepping up our communication and promotion around OBS, they have noticed this effect. After some discussion on the international marketing mailing list it was agreed to recommend the OBS team to rename their technology to Open Build Service. This would retain the OBS acronym and excellent search engine position at the slight expense of a weakened link between the openSUSE community, where OBS originated, and the Build Service currently lives.

But it would clearly signal the open and collaborative nature of OBS and allow OBS to spread its wings and reach an even wider audience, benefiting all of Free Software.  And that has always and continues to be the higher goal of the openSUSE Project.

Decision

So after ample deliberation and discussion with all the major stakeholders, the OBS team agreed that it would be beneficial to rename the openSUSE Build Service to Open Build Service. It is and will remain an openSUSE project, with significant contributions from SUSE and openSUSE community members as well as many others from communities like MeeGo and VLC but also be more clear about its cross-distribution, cross-project goals and ambitions.

The branding part of OBS will be adapted to make it easy for projects deploying their own OBS to name their OBS while staying connected with the OBS project. We suggest to name a project-specific OBS instance “XXX Open Build Service”, like “VLC Open Build Service”. The new domain name for the project will be openbuildservice.org.

Reactions

Of course, we at openSUSE are very happy with this change. And so are our friends and users of OBS!

Ralph Dehner, CEO at B1 systems notes:

“In the past B1 Systems has written build environments for the customers by itself. With the open Build Service now exists a “standard” which makes it easy to build packages for different distributions and architectures.

This will be also interesting for many other open source projects.”

“The Linux Foundation views OBS as an important and useful tool for building software for Linux,” said Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer program for the Linux Foundation. “As adoption of OBS has increased, it’s a natural step to rename it to reflect its open nature and cross-distribution support.”

Enterprise support

As OBS has matured and becomes more widespread, SUSE has decided to help organizations who want to use and deploy it. SUSE OBS Developer Support brings commercial support options for customers and partners that want to run their own instance of the Open Build Service.

The support offering will be handled via a new OBS Developer Services (DS) program. Under this program, customers will receive support for configuration and setup issues as well as the ability to get code fixes for bugs that affect them. As part of this program, SUSE is also collecting requirements to the OBS software and will input this into the planning process for OBS. SUSE will be working with partners to enable and back them to offer implementation and consulting services.

• build.opensuse.org
• api.opensuse.org
• software.opensuse.org
• stage.opensuse.org
• features.opensuse.org
• connect.opensuse.org
• hermes.opensuse.org
• users.opensuse.org
• board.opensuse.org
• conference.opensuse.org

The content on download.opensuse.org will come from a fall back system and will not get updated during Saturday evening.

• build.opensuse.org
• api.opensuse.org
• hermes.opensuse.org
• notify.opensuse.org
• features.opensuse.org

We hope that this new proxy is working reliably now.  The new proxy is open source and source code can be found on gitorious.org. A future version of the openSUSE Build Service (OBS)  (not 2.3) will come with this proxy as authentication mechanism as well.

For the openSUSE Build Service, another change is that we switched to apache and the passenger module on our productive system, following the new default of OBS 2.3. This should also fix some cases of invalid http answers.

In short, we have changed some key parts of our infrastructure and introduced a new login proxy, so there might still be some pitfalls. But we have it under our control now and can debug and even fix any issue with it. In case of problems, please speak up on the opensuse-buildservice mailing list.

Your make-OBS-stable-team, Michael Schröder, Stephan Kulow and Adrian Schröter

We want to let you know that we are aware about an invalid SSL certificate on some of our servers behind the https protocol. This is the case most of the time at least between 04:00 until 11:00 CET today.

We took down some of our services temporarily after getting aware of this. Affected services were

• build.opensuse.org
• api.opensuse.org
• hermes.opensuse.org
• notify.opensuse.org
• connect.opensuse.org
• features.opensuse.org

The issue is reported to our service provider maintaining the proxy who delivers this certificate.

I hope everybody of you will continue not to trust invalid certifications for our services. It can always be a man-in-the-middle-attack and especially when submitting passwords or sensitive data like source code it is not acceptable. So please continue to miss-trust invalid certificates on our servers.

Sorry

http://build.opensuse.org
http://api.opensuse.org
http://features.opensuse.org

We are trying to resolve this as fast as possible. Apologies for inconveniences this may cause.

Please contact admin@opensuse.org with any queries.
Your openSUSE Admins

Update 2011-03-28 10:30 UTC: Everything is working again.

Update 2011-03-28 13:44 UTC: The login system is a bit unstable at the moment and might be occasionally unavailable for a few minutes again, they will be back soon. We’re working on getting everything running smoothly again.