RM Q&A for Sysadmins

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This is the output of a session between Zen-Fu and Anonym where they quickly went through the Release Process documentation (https://tails.net/contribute/release_process/) and tried to pin point which parts of the Infra are used during the release process.

Q: Do you use Gitolite repos at git.tails.net?

A: Not anymore!

A: Each branch and tag of tails.git generates a correspondent APT repo (even feature-branches).

Q: What are APT overlays?

A: They are APT repos made from feature branches. If there are files in config/APT_overlays.d named according to branches, those APT repos are included when Tails is built. Then, right before a release, we merge these feature branch APT suites into the "base" APT suite used for the release (stable or testing) by bin/merge-APT-overlays.

Example: applying patches from Tor --> create a branch feature/new-tor --> Push repo --> APT repo is created --> touch file in config/APT_overlays.d --> gets merged. If instead we merged into stable we wouldn't be able to revert. It's like a soft merge.

Q: What are the base APT repos of Tails?

A: Stable (base, for releases), testing (when we freeze devel), development.

Q: What "freeze snapshot" does?

A: It's local, sets URLs from where to fetch.

Q: How to import tor browser?

A: There's a git-annex repo for it, which pushes to tor browser archive.

Q: What kind of APT snapshots we have?

A: Time-based snapshots include everything on a repo on a certain moment (based on timestamps); and tagged snapshots (related to Git tags) contain exactly the packages included in a release.

Q: Who actually builds images?

A: Jenkins, the RM, and trusted reproducers.

A: It has to announce new releases.

Q: How are images distributed?

A: From jenkins, they go to rsync server which will seed mirrors.

Q: Which IUKs do we maintain at a certain point in time?

A: Only IUKs from all past versions (under the same major release) to the latest version. When there's a new Debian, older IUKs are deleted.

Q: Where are torrent files generated?

A: RM's system.

Q: Does Schleuder play a role somewhere?

A: Yes, it's used to send e-mail to manual testers.

Q: When should Sysadmins be present to support the release process?

A: Generally, the most intensive day is the day before the release, but RMs might do some work the days before. Check frequently with them to see if this eventually changes.

Q: How do we know who'll be RM for a specific release?

A: https://tails.net/contribute/calendar/