Infrastructure/GettingStarted

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Help Wanted

We're looking for dedicated and energetic people to join the fun times in the Fedora Infrastructure team. What fun stuff will you do to support and grow the Fedora community?

• You will help Design and Implement Highly Available and Fault Tolerant Systems
• Fix System Issues for Grateful Fedora developers
• Maintain the Servers that make the Fedora Project possible
• Create and Maintain Custom Tools and Applications to Automate Systems Maintenance
• Create and Maintain Tools and Applications to Enhance and Grow the Fedora community

The skills you should possess or be willing to learn to do this work include:

• Being Polite
• How to Help Fellow Hackers
• How to Write Systems Administration Scripts
• How to Write Web Applications
  • We primarily use Python, SQL and Associated Technologies
  • Other equivalent technologies are welcome
  • We can especially use skills in this area or folks that are willing to learn
• How the Fedora Project Works "Behind the Scenes"

It would be great if

• You Have Previous Systems Admin Experience
• Have Access to Your Own Testing Machines
  • Our resources are limited, especially for testing!
• Work in Other Areas of Fedora like Packaging or Documentation

Getting Started

Read through the Primary Steps to learn how to start on the path to helping the Fedora Infrastructure group and then when you're ready for more, read through the What do I do next? section.

There are also some videos intended to introduce new contributors to the team.

Primary Steps

• First you will need to read through and understand how to be a successful contributor.
• Next you will need to create a Fedora Account:
  • This account will be used for just about everything you do as a member of the Fedora Community
  • You will need it to sign the FPCA which is required to contribute to the Fedora Community
  • You will need it to login to various systems associated with the Infrastructure Group
  • You will need it to upload code changes, make changes to this wiki and etc.
• After you have created your account and signed the CLA, you should then subscribe to the Fedora Infrastructure Mailing List as you will use this to send your "Hello World!" to the Fedora Infrastructure Team as well as communicate with other team members
• When you are ready to send your introduction to the group, your subject should be 'Meeting Agenda Item: Introduction Your Name'. The message body should include:
  • Your IRC handle
    • What's this?
    • Beginner's Guide to IRC
  • What skills you have to offer and which you would like to learn. This can include...
    • Programming languages you are familiar with or have used
    • Systems administration skills, certifications, and technologies you have or have used (or wish to learn)
    • Any associations you have (e.g. local hackerspace / makerspace, Linux User Groups, employer, etc.)
• What you want to learn
  • What you would like to work on and quite possibly which outstanding issues you would like to help resolve
• Any initial questions you have for the team
  • After you send your "Hello World!" to the Fedora Infrastructure Group, a greeter should respond to you on the mailing list offering to help you get started. But don't feel like you have to wait for this message, you can also join the #fedora-admin channel on IRC and ask for a greeter to help you out!

What do I do next?

After you've completed the steps outlined in the Primary Steps section you should

• Regularly attend the Weekly Meetings on IRC and be sure to introduce yourself the first time you attend.
• Take some time to learn about the services the Fedora Infrastructure Group develops, deploys and maintains.
• Ask about joining the Fedora Infrastructure Apprentice (fi-apprentice) group.
• Get Sponsored. Find sponsors in the FIG you've selected and keep bugging them until someone says yes. Constantly coming back and saying I want to help says a lot but picking an item to resolve and showing that you've researched a solution or would like to help solve it says even more!
• Read up a SOP [1] related to one of your interest. These are a good point of reference for hosts related to an app. They give an overview of how things work for that app.

If you don't have the time to be involved on a regular basis at this point, please feel free to watch over things and report bugs and RFEs as you see fit. Showing interest now is a great way to make it easier to join the team's activities later!

How the team works

The Fedora Infrastructure Group consists of volunteers and Red Hat employees. Our preferred method of communication is IRC on freenode.net in #fedora-admin^[?] channel though we also heavily use the Fedora Infrastructure Mailing List. We try to be as transparent as possible though when security is involved we'll probably use our private list.

New members are encouraged to join the list and attend a few meetings before they request sponsorship. Getting a feel for how the group works is important and should not be neglected.