Hi
as you might have noticed, its time to open registration... And as its
tradition, every DebConf wants to know different things from the
users. Wouldn't be fun if its always the same...
And as we stay one more year with pentabarf it magically got to me to
change it. I didn't only change the UI, now thats too boring. Could have
left Gunnar to that.
Instead, this weekend I moved our pentabarf installation from its old
machine to a new VM on a nice shiny host, from a Dual Core Opteron with
a shared[1] gigabyte of RAM, to a (kvm based) VM, with 4 CPUs and 4GB of
RAM dedicated to Pentabarf. Also, the HDDs behind it are much nicer - of
course, all of 6 years younger. To add to the fun, its now a wheezy
system (though postgres 8.4, 9.1 doesn't work with penta) and no longer
good old mongrel_rails but Phusion Passenger based.
That all summarizes to a - it reacts much faster.[2] Also may generate
tons of errors due to the upgrade, who knows. I've fixed a lot while
cursing at it to get it work, but right now I haven't checked all of
pentabarf. Until bugreports come in, I assume it works. :)
It's now accessible via v6 too.
Now, changes:
I implemented whats written up on
https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf13/Orga/Registration - with small
changes. I commented inside that page, but see below...
I also added a DebConf13 to pentabarf, so we can actually have people
use it. And I closed DC12 submission.
You may notice the logo looks weird for DC13 - thats because I just took
the one from the webpage, which doesn't fit in its dimensions to what
Penta wants. Someone provide a shrinked down one and I add it.
Those with admin access to penta: Ensure that the select box on the left
side says DC13 before you do anything in the admin interface!
Now, my points to the changes:
- Reconfirm checkbox and Roommate preference appear automagically when we
turn on reconfirmation.
- I saw no point in the forcing of a N/A food preference, should one
select "provide own food".
Cite myself from the wiki:
--8<------------------------schnipp------------------------->8---
Whats the point of making food preference depend on food? If
someone does own food they can sure select any of the other options.
We don't care.
The only point I can see is the orga selecting on it.
And thats better done in sql (queries, views, etc), than forcing
ui changes to the user when selecting stuff.
--8<------------------------schnapp------------------------->8---
There is the extra point that it makes the thing MUCH more
complex. Instead of reusing the same food preference box from all
years before, I have to special case DC13, add the mapping table, and
link them together. And that linking thing is THE BEAST. Took me long
enough to have the category stuff linked correctly to the debconf role
while not at the same time kill dc12 data.
I would love to avoid that complexity here.
- Similar with the "other" field, I saw no point. Its easy to add a
textfield, so if its really wanted to have there, I add it.
--8<------------------------schnipp------------------------->8---
Do we really need a textfield for other? It currently reads
Other (contact organizers).
If someone has really special requirements that they need extra
attention, can't we trust them to send a mail? Which can go to
lotsa orga people, while here one needs to select the admin
interface and check through people. Or ask someone to do sql magic.
--8<------------------------schnapp------------------------->8---
- I implemented the "If you are requesting sponsorship of food,
accommodation or travel" as one big textbox, listing the questions
before it. That way I could reuse something we already had. And the
answer quality won't go up if we have multiple fields, so...
Now, I *think* I'm through with the changes as detailed on the
wikipage. Please take a look and check that I haven't missed anything.
Also, try to use pentabarf and note down if you spot (behaviour)
errors (that hadn't been there before).
The machine isn't yet fully setup, stuff like mail config, backup, munin
and so is missing. I intend to fix that up tomorrow evening after work,
far enough that we can open registration late the 15th, or early
16th. Or whenever after. Depending on how many "change penta" requests I
get...
Those with machine access: Your data is in /srv/oldskinner/home. No
cronjobs have been restored.
[1] with another vserver
[2] There are delays whenever the apache gets a new child, which happens
after soo much requests, but it generally feels better. To me.
--
bye, Joerg
[...] when an Idea and a developer get laid, code awakes to the world, then
a Debian package is made and pulled in the unstable distribution[...]
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