Groups in Fedora

What are the different types of groups?

Fedora has a few types of groups:

  • Tracking groups

    The tracking groups are primarily meant to indicate that people are contributors in a certain part of the Fedora Project. These group will allow new accounts to become CLA+1 which is the way of saying that someone has signed the FPCA (which used to be called CLA, but the FPCA is not a CLA, thus the rename) and is a member of one other group. Being CLA+1 is the criteria the project has set to recognize someone has been an active contributor. With this trust comes a few "priviledges" such as:

    • Access to the @fedoraproject.org email alias

    • Access to fedorapeople.org

    • Possibility to vote on some of the elections (including FESCo and the Council)

    These groups are also the ones used when one wants to share the maintenance of COPR projects with other people via a group.

  • Shell groups

    These groups are used when contributors gain access to some of the machines in the Fedora Infrastructure. For example, members of the sysadmin group are allowed to commit on the infrastructure’s git repository and this is allowed by giving write access to the git repository to this group, on the file-system.

  • pkgdb groups

    These groups are meant to facilitate the collective maintenance of packages in Fedora. In other words, by giving commit access to the group on a package (or set of packages), everyone in the group can commit to the package and thus the maintenance of the package can be shared amongs the members of the group.

How to request a group to be created?

The short answer is to open a ticket on the fedora-infrastructure issue tracker: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/

It is unlikely you will need to create "shell" group, but you can ask for the creation of a "tracking" or "pkgdb" group.

COPR groups

COPR supports giving access to project based on group membership. These groups are regular tracking groups.

"pkgdb" groups name

In the days where pkgdb was an application in addition to a type of group, groups meant to share the collaboration of packages had to end with -sig. This is technically no longer a requirement today, however, it remains a standard we try to maintain as it makes it easier to identify "pkgdb" group by their names.

When requesting a "pkgdb" group, please try to adhere to this standard.

"pkgdb" groups and mailing list

"pkgdb" groups are created to maintain packages. They are meant to be CC’ed on bugzilla tickets associated with these packages. The tools syncing the information from dist-git to bugzilla uses the "mailing list address" field in the group’s settings.

This means that the email address associated with the group will be notified of every bug reports opened against all the packages the group maintain, including security sensitive reports.

In consequence, it is highly recommended that the email set in the "mailing list address" in the group’s settings in FAS be something that does not have publicly accessible archives.

A simple answer to this is to create a new mailing list when creating the "pkgdb" group. This list can then be made private and invite-only.

When requesting a pkgdb group, please let us know if you need a new mailing list to be created or not.

How to create a group?

  1. Log in to IPA interface

  2. Click on the Groups tab

  3. Click on +Add button

  4. Fill in the Group name, description (optional)

  5. Tick the FAS group checkbox

  6. Click Add

  7. Click on the newly created group

  8. Add group sponsors (<group_name> member managers → Users on the right) using +Add button

  9. Add members (if requested) using +Add button in <group_name> members → Users

pkgdb groups

  1. Add group to fedora-contributor group. In group view click on User groups +Add button

  2. In case of "pkgdb" group you need to also create a mailing list. See Creating a new mailing list for details

  3. Create a group in dist-git. See How to create a group in dist-git for details

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