Help:Getting Started
 | Please read the Wikimedia Cloud Services Introduction. |
Overview
Wikimedia Cloud Services provides tools, services, and support for technical collaborators who want to contribute to Wikimedia software projects.
This page outlines the accounts you will need and basic first steps, which will allow you to contribute to this wiki and Wikimedia's technical spaces, including:
You will learn how to:
- Join an existing project or begin a new project.
- Add members or admins to projects.
- Create and configure instances within a project.
- Find help and ways to participate.
Set up your accounts
To access and contribute to Cloud Services projects and tools, you will need the following accounts. Please note, these are two distinct accounts:
- Wikimedia account - this account is used to contribute to Wikipedia and its sister projects.
- When you create your Wikimedia account, you will create a username and password.
- Wikimedia developer account - this account is used to log into this wiki, Toolforge, Cloud VPS, Gerrit and other protected Wikimedia Services.
- When you create your Wikimedia developer account, you will create a username (sometimes called LDAP username), UNIX shell username, and password.
Get started with Toolforge
- Submit a Toolforge project membership request.
- Wait for membership approval.
- Your request will be reviewed, and you will receive confirmation within a week. You will be notified through your Wikitech user account that you have been added to the project Nova Resource:Tools.
- Once you are added as a Toolforge member you must logout and then login again at https://toolsadmin.wikimedia.org/ for your membership to take effect.
- Access the Toolforge project.
- Use your "UNIX shell username" provided when creating your developer account and the SSH private key matching the public key you supplied for authentication.
For more information about accessing the project, please see Using Toolforge and managing your files.
 | It can take up to 5 minutes from account creation time until your user is in the proper groups |
Get started with Cloud VPS Projects
Join an existing project
- Choose a project to join with OpenStack browser.
- Request membership by creating a Phabricator task and assigning it directly to the project administrator(s).
- You can find the list of project admins by going to http://tools.wmflabs.org/openstack-browser/project/<project-name>.
Create a new project
- Follow the instructions on the "Cloud-VPS (Project-requests)" phabricator task.
Add members and admin users to a project
Project admins can use the following steps to add new members or grant administrative permissions to members.
- Go to Special:NovaProject.
- Use Add member link to add new members.
- Use Add member link for the projectadmin role in the Role column.
- Log at #wikimedia-cloud connect that you added/granted admin to the member.
Learn about project instances
To learn more about project instances, read the project instances documentation.
Log your actions
It is best practice to log changes to all instances of your project.
Wikimedia Cloud Services provides a Server Admin Log for users to log their project server administration actions on.
You can add a log entry in the #wikimedia-cloud connect channel on Freenode by using the sending a message like: !log <projectname> <message>
See Tool:Stashbot for more information.
Get started with Gerrit
Gerrit is Wikimedia's code review system.
Once you have created your Wikimedia account and Wikimedia developer account, including your UNIX shell username, follow the instructions in the Gerrit tutorial to get started.
Communication and support
We communicate and provide support through several primary channels. Please reach out with questions and to join the conversation.
| Connect | Best for | |
|---|---|---|
| Phabricator Workboard | #Cloud-Services | Task tracking and bug reporting |
| IRC Channel | #wikimedia-cloud connect | General discussion and support |
| Mailing List | cloud@ | Information about ongoing initiatives, general discussion and support |
| Announcement emails | cloud-announce@ | Information about critical changes (all messages mirrored to cloud@) |
| News wiki page | News | Information about major near-term plans |
| Blog | Clouds & Unicorns | Learning more details about some of our work |
