The best part about this tool is, while I have been working on it, almost all of the remaining SRPMS have been imported and the majority of them have been built on our koji server. Right now, we’re on the last batch and I expect it to finish sometime late Friday or early Saturday (12/10/2011). This ends our first major hurdle to getting an Alpha release of GoOSe Linux 6.0 out the door.

Another huge tool in this process is Grapple, written by python master Nafai, (aka Travis Hartwell). He spent a good bit of time getting this github hook in place that will record all git commits and help to process them automatically. I spent a bit of time and added a client script to grab the recorded commits and send them on to koji automatically with the proper dist value and url. No more guessing! This is the ‘automagic’ corollary to skein build.

Next up, I plan to rebuild the failed builds and push them through koji again, using skein build. Possibly doing this a few more times until we get things pared down to the packages that don’t just have dependency problems. I hope to have most of those fixed up and in place by Monday or Tuesday next week (12/12/2011).I’ve also noticed a few builds that will never build for our arches, so I will have to figure out what to do with them for now.  I don’t want to waste koji resources trying to rebuild them when I know they will never work.

The first Alpha ISO is getting close enough to taste it now! We’ll have to make sure to have a grand celebration upon our first Golden GoOSe Release :)

Cheers,

Herlo

The project I’ve been working on does require a bit of thought around enterprise Linux versions run by a community. There is the ever amazing CentOS, Scientific Linux and a few others who have been around the block a time or two. The work that they have done has been immense and very helpful to many, including me.

For my project, the work was about building a fully binary compatible, enterprise-ready, community version of Linux, very similar to what CentOS and others have done. The question always comes ‘why?’ which will be addressed later on in future posts. Suffice it to say, the work we’ve been doing has paid off in both a individual and community sense.

In the beginning of this project, it was clear that we needed some tools to make things work the way we wanted. Luckily, there were tools out there to do a good portion of our work. Tools like koji, mock and of course Linux to bring it all together. But other tools seemed to be missing and I went on a quest…

The first tool that seemed to be missing was a way to import src.rpms from the most popular upstream vendor. These packages needed to be rebuilt by koji in some fashion, but just taking the srpms and rebuilding them had been done before, and seems to be the preferred way to date. In my mind however, it seemed that we were missing a step. Enter skein.

While skein is still very green and will need quite a bit more work, it accomplishes the goal of extracting the srpms into two parts. This tool basically sets up two things; a git repository on github.com (for now) along with a location and verifiable way to store the archive stored inside the srpm, called a lookaside cache. If one looks at the way the Fedora Project maintains their source, this process is very similar.

Once the srpm is imported with skein, it can be built with koji. At the moment, this process is fairly manual, but the plan is to improve skein to also allow building from the repositories. However, another bit more automatic way to build would be to use a git hook. Luckily, github provides several ways to accomplish this, including a custom URL to which an HTTP POST can be sent. At which time, koji would download the spec file and source from the appropriate locations and build a srpm.

Koji completes its task by building the binary RPM(s) and appropriately tagging the successful builds. Once complete, mash can be used to generate custom repositories to prepare for composing actual iso images. Mash is a command-line tool, again used by Fedora.

Once the repositories are generated by mash, pungi takes over. The process of building an iso is actually very simple, just a kickstart file, some repositories and pungi are used to create a fully installable DVD or multi-CD iso image.

Here’s a bit of my excellent artwork to better describe the process.

A couple things to note about this process is that while it is starting to become clear how to build an OS from an upstream vendor, there are parts that still haven’t been addressed. Currently, we can import with skein and rebuild the SRPM and build the binary RPMs with koji. We yet to have enough binary RPMs to actually construct a buildroot, but we are getting very close.

Automating the builds with git hooks and a skein build process is a nice big step toward making our own Operating System possible.

The other big piece of the puzzle is dependency resolution. Now this has been mostly resolved by tools and apis like Yum and RPM, but I still feel very much like a n00b when working with them. My hope is to figure out that process in the next week or so, and update skein to make building faster and easier overall.

Cheers,

herlo

If you have never been to a UTOS Project Day, you just might want to attend. There have been 3 previously successful Project Day events and this one looks to be as awesome! In fact, just for attending and working on your project, there will be a raffle for a Motorola XOOM!

But really, that’s not why you should attend.

I will be there! :)

Oh, that’s not enough? Here are 5 excellent reasons to attend!

1. It’s Software Freedom Day and what better way to come down and work on a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) project
2. There will be a bunch of other folks there too, working on interesting projects
3. Many will be willing to collaborate with you and discuss your project
4. Free food and snacks throughout the day
5. Helping out the Utah Open Source Foundation with its efforts for UTOSC 2012 next spring

Add your project

If you would like help with your project, it’s a good idea to add it to the list. If you are looking for a project, check out the entries and see if there is something there that interests you. Either way, there will likely be more projects than what is currently listed.

So come on down!

I know quite a few folks who will be interested in staying later as well at a local coffee shop or similar and hacking well into the evening. Don’t let the draw of a football game get you distracted, there will be plenty of time to watch it on DVR on Sunday afternoon!

Cheers,

Herlo

Wedding on Friday the Thirteenth

On May 13, Jennifer and I were wed at a wonderfully pretty chapel downtown in Salt Lake City. The Holy Cross Historic Chapel, inside the Salt Lake Regional Medical Center is very pretty. Although a bit hot in the chapel that day, it was a beautiful ceremony. I was very excited when Jennifer walked down the aisle. So beautiful! And when she said ‘heck yes’ to the question of marriage, I was very excited.

The reception was even more awesome and the best part of the whole day. All of our good friends and family came and enjoyed some of the most awesome food at the Wild Rose in South Jordan. If you have not been to this restaurant, I suggest you check it out. Awesome food, awesome environment and Ken Rose, the owner-chef extraordinaire went above and beyond on everything!

The Honeymoon

On Sunday, May 16, we flew to Miami. As we left the Salt Lake airport, Jennifer was a bit misty-eyed as we left AJ behind. Monday, we boarded the Norwegian Sky and enjoyed a 4-day cruise to the Bahamas. This being the first cruise for Jennifer and I, it was a ton of fun, but definitely not the culture we were expecting. Again, amazing food and great sites every day.

On Tuesday, we spent a good day out and about on Grand Bahama Island. Snorkeling and a deserted island with lots of good drinks and new friends. I really enjoyed the conch demonstration and later on, conch fritters at a little bar at Port Lucaya. Almost missed the last bus, but such a fun time.

Overall, quite an enjoyable time.

UTOS Project Day

Today was the UTOS Project Day. We’ve been planning on having a few more of these and today’s was no different. Quite an excellent event for those who made it out. Tons of hacking, snacking and collaborating. I had to run out to my niece Tanja’s 1st birthday part, which was excellent and tons of fun, for part of the day. Overall, lots of good geeking out was had today!

We’re planning another Project Day for August 27. Make plans now to come out and hack. More details to come very soon!

South East Linux Fest (SELF)

If you are going to SELF this year, or have heard about it just here, I recommend you all try to get out to this amazing event. It’s a great weekend conference in Spartanburg, South Carolina, June 10-12.

Unfortunately, I was trying to work out attending this event, but will not be able to make it due to many reasons. I went to the first SELF, and am sad that I haven’t been able to make it sense. It’s on my list for 2012 again, so here’s hoping.

The Future

Well, as you might be able to see, plenty of good things have been happening. Wedding, Honeymoon, Project Day and more work than I can handle is coming right along.

Recently, I announced the Silver project, an easy-to-use development environment for web development. I’ve been busy improving and should be able to release v0.3 by the end of June. Several good bug fixes and new features should bring more and more functionality, making it easier to do QA and deploy to live environments using Silver.

In the near future, another project I’ve been working on will be announced. I’m hoping it will happen in the next month or two. It’s the project that has been filling in the gaps while I wasn’t busy with the wedding, honeymoon or working. I am very excited to announce this project soon, so keep an eye out in the next little while!

Cheers,

Herlo

Come on down this Saturday, May 28 and hang out with other geeks. We’ll provide you space to hack, snacks, lunch and plenty of projects to come and learn!

Date: May 28
Time: 12pm to 5pm
Where: Open Source Technology Center @ Novell (map)

More information available on the UTOS Project Day website and the UTOS Blog. UTOS is looking for operational volunteers. Stop by between 9-11am and volunteer to help out!

Always free admission, free software and free food.

We’ll see you all there!

Cheers,

Herlo

Today, I released version 0.2. Silver is a full-fledged development environment built on one machine built purely in Python. Silver (formerly PyCamps) is inspired by the Perl based DevCamps project created by EndPoint. The idea is simply to make it easy for developers to have their own little environments to build web applications.

Silver is built to enable work on several projects in small, reusable areas, called camps. Focused on web applications, Silver helps to make quick and easy-to-manage environments. Each camp uses version control, and gives the developer ultimate control. Silver enables an easy workflow for quality assurance, integration testing and deployment to production for each project in similar workflows.

Building a camp is simple, easy and very flexible for both corporate and community projects. I’d like to get some feedback on Silver and am looking forward to continuing work toward more power and flexibility.

More information can be found by reading the documentation at http://projects.purpleatom.com/silver/0.2/index.html. Silver also has a github repository if you’d like to try to set it up.

Tell me what you think! It is of course open source, with an MIT license, and I am hoping some of you will join up and help the project grow!

If you are interested, please join the Silver Project google group and let’s build the awesomest development environment of the future, with Python!

Cheers,

Herlo

My point…

PASTEBINS ARE EVERYWHERE

One of the pastebins that has been in use for a very long time is http://fpaste.org and the focus of my post today. Essentially, the Fedora community tends to use fpaste.org over other pastebins as it has a bunch of nice features and it’s Fedora branded. About 2 months ago, I was asked by Jonathan Steffan (aka daMaestro) if I would be interested in packaging fpaste.org’s code and get it into Fedora infrastructure (FI). I accepted that challenge.

As Jonathan will tell you, the code was hacked together over a weekend at a coffee shop. Thus, it needed a bit of clean-up to make things work without including libs from other projects (a big no-no when packaging a Fedora rpm). After a few weeks of clean-up and back-and-forth with Jonathan, fpaste-server was born. That was the first big step to get fpaste-server into FI.

Fpaste-Server is comprised of many other packages. Since I wasn’t the maintainer on many of them, I worked with the amazingly awesome Dave Riches (dcr226) to get django-mptt, django-tracking, django-simple-captcha and django-dpaste into the EPEL repositories for both EL5 and EL6. Dave was not only helpful, but went above and beyond to complete these builds. Thank you, sir!

Over the past month, I’ve been really busy, prepping for my wedding and what not, but found some time recently to finish the package builds of fpaste-server. The packages are all approved, save for el5 which was submitted this morning. This was the second big step to get fpaste-server into FI.

This week, and after my honeymoon, I plan to finish up the work to get fpaste-server into FI. All that’s really left is to get django-tracking into EPEL6.

If you haven’t tried fpaste-server yet, you should. It’s a pretty cool and stable pastebin, it’s also very hackable. Changing out the background to fit your own logos and such is very simple. Please comment here if you find any bugs or issues, have questions or comments.

Cheers,

Herlo

However, my pitch was a bit different than the rest.  Throughout the rest of the sessions from now until Sunday noon, I’ll be in room BYAC 190 to record your talent.  What I mean by this, is that I want you to come by and do a 5-15 minute presentation on your Fedora system that we can share with the community.

As an goal, I’m working to make videos that can help other Fedora contributors work toward gaining a larger skillset.  For example, a presentation on configuring a DNS caching server, configuring a simple smtp server, using Scribus, how to configure NetworkManager or SELinux basics could be good simple presentations.  As you can see, these topics could become very complex, but I’m mostly interested in the basics in these areas.

Once I get these recorded this weekend, I’ll process them on Sunday and Monday.  My goal is to get them up on the Fedora website somewhere (more details to come) by early next week.  Watch for another blog post when I get them online.

I’d like to thank you in advance for coming by and spending 10-15 minutes sharing your knowledge with Fedora and the free software community.

Cheers,

Herlo

But I kind of have a few problems…

1. The icecast streaming server we previously setup on talk.fedoraproject.org appears to be off.  I’m hoping to get a hold of someone who knows what happened to it and see if we can get that turned back on in time.  Unfortunately, I’ve been busy with a million other things this weekend, so it’s not been top priority.
2. I used to have access to my own icecast server at stream.utos.org, but that server recently crashed, and I don’t have it back up as of yet.
3. Arizona State University technical staff, as amazing as they are, didn’t know of my request for a wired connection until today.  Again, my fault for springing it on them last minute.  It’s still possible they’ll get it done, here’s hoping!

Essentially, if these three things work out tomorrow, I still have to reconfigure my little PC to make streaming work.  That should be less painful and much more simple.

BUT

Just in case streaming doesn’t happen, do not despair! As an alternate, I do plan to have the audio of Jared’s talk recorded.  Once I have it cleaned up as best I can tomorrow, it will get pasted on the FUDCon Tempe page and I will blog a direct link for your consumption.  It should be up by noon MST.

AND

In lieu of streaming the sessions, don’t forget to logon to #fedora-fudcon on irc.freenode.net tomorrow and follow the transcripts of each session.  This started at FUDCon Toronto last time, and should be a good resource for watching the event from afar.

Now, to get some sleep!

Cheers,

Herlo

I have never attended Agile Roots before, nor have I been a big part of the Agile community, but I have to say that spending time listening and learning has been very intriguing and I can see the definite value of using agile methods.

The morning keynote was pretty awesome, sharing how to collaborate and improving processes by letting others, including customers be involved.

Also, the afternoon keynote was incredible, Diana Larsen is a really bright and eloquent speaker who can really get you excited.  It seemed to me that she was really interested in solving some serious deficits with Agile methods.

I attended a great session on user experience design (UxD) and branding.  One where we branded a flavor of popcorn.  We had a cinnamon popcorn and branded ours with Jessica Rabbit driving a candy red convertible Volkswagen Rabbit to a Speakeasy in Toon Town.  The presenters really drove home the concept about branding and making sure it all made sense.  Very well done.

But I won’t say it was a perfect day of presentations….

The first half hour of the first presentation of the day (after the keynote) started out interesting and promising.  I really enjoyed the idea of playing Dracula vs Humans and the idea that the oppressor (management) actually felt relieved when they became oppressed.  I also enjoyed the idea that the oppressed (employees) were generally nervous about becoming the oppressor.    It’s an interesting concept to understand and valuable lesson learned.

The next hour of the workshop however, was confusing and frustrating because it didn’t make sense at all.  Why would making a sculpture of what you feel during certain work situations and then resolving them by making short simple movements in rhythm solve anything?  I just didn’t get it.  I’m sure there was value to some, but not to me.

Lightning Talks and the Food Rocked!

At the end of the day, we spend a bit of time doing lightning talks.  I really enjoyed the Su-Ha-Ri talk, the Architecture Haiku, Pigeon Sign Language (though I couldn’t keep up) and several others as well.  That was one of the best hours spent at Agile Roots.

As for the food, you cannot go wrong with Pat’s Barbecue!  One of the best choices the conference team could have made for a dinner.  Everything was excellent and I enjoyed a very nice conversation with a fellow from Version One.  He was from Atlanta and had never been to Utah before.  As usual, he thought it was very beautiful, and we spent a bunch of time talking about the need for a coach to help get Agile started in a large company like Backcountry.com

Agile Roots Day 1: Success!!!

Cheers,

Herlo