We’ve had to make an adjustment to the Open Week schedule for tomorrow. The “Ask Mark” and “AppArmor” sessions have been swapped. Ask Mark is now on Friday at 1700UTC and AppArmor is tomorrow at 1500UTC. Please see the schedule for the change.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
So about half way through this cycle I moved to squid for my apt-caching needs since all the others ones would fail or be rewrites of other ones or something. Ends up squid is real easy to use and I get the bonus of caching everything instead of just .debs. It’s been real solid for me. Here’s how mine is set up if you’re looking to do a bunch of upgrades and want to save time and load on your local mirror.
1. Find a machine you want to be your server.
2. Install squid: sudo apt-get install squid
3. Configure squid by editing /etc/squid/squid.conf (Warning, this file is probably the most commented file in the history of UNIX so it’s big)
By default squid won’t accept connections from remote hosts so I modified one line to be like this (My server is not internet-facing):
http_access allow all #forgive me kees
And … add this to the bottom (I nicked this from another blog and cranked the numbers up but can’t find it now for some reason, shucks for attribution):
refresh_pattern deb$ 1577846 100% 1577846
refresh_pattern udeb$ 1577846 100% 1577846
refresh_pattern Packages.gz$ 1440 100% 1440
cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 15000 2 8
maximum_object_size 409600 KB
4. Restart squid: sudo /etc/init.d/squid restart
5. Configure your machines to use your server, either by setting it in the GNOME Proxy gui thing (squid defaults to port 3128 so make sure you specify that), or in http_proxy in your environment, or for apt in /etc/apt/apt.conf:
Acquire::http::Proxy "http://192.168.1.117:3128"
Setting it in the GUI GNOME thing is easiest for me.
6. Confirm it’s working. On the server do sudo tail -F /var/log/squid/access.log to watch the log. Now go to one machine and do an apt-get update and upgrade and the log should show a bunch of TCP_MISS lines for each deb you download. Now go to the second machine and do the same thing. This time each deb should show something like TCP_REFRESH_HIT, which means squid is intercepting the request and sending the deb directly to that machine. Rinse and repeat. This will also work for PPAs and whatnot.
Random tips:
- Use the same mirrors on every machine. If you have a mirror on one machine and the other machines don’t the debs won’t get cached. (Anyone know a fancy rewrite or something to get around this?)
- Do one machine and then do the others when that one is done, otherwise if the one machine is partially done the other ones will catch up and you’ll end up with all the machines trying to pull the last few debs at the same time.
- I haven’t figured out an easy way to have my laptop use a proxy when it’s connected to my home network, but have no proxy set when travelling, I have to do it by hand.
- I set one machine to autodownload updates in the update-manager prefs, that way when I wake up in the morning the debs are already cached, making for quick upgrades as soon as you wake up. That’s what everyone does first thing in the morning right?
Any other bandwidth saving tips? Leave a comment!
I’ll be speaking in Toronto this weekend at the Ontario Linuxfest, specifically I’ll be talking about the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, as well as showing some of the Moblin Remix hotness. Make sure you stop by the Ubuntu booth and hang out with Ralph Janke…
Can you believe it’s been five years since Warty?
Does it feel like five years? I don’t think so. I feel old! Anyway, here’s an old pic from UDS Sydney back when I was fatter and dholbach looked like he was 14:
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| From Ubuntu and GNOME |
Rick Spencer’s Quickly video tutorials are now available in a more digestible form in the Ubuntu Developer’s Blip channel, which is syndicated to the youtube channel of the same name.
blip.tv allows us to post natively in ogg video, so check out episodes one, two, and three. To download directly just click the download link at the bottom.
Alan Pope and I have now set it up that native ogg videos will be uploaded to the blip channels for both the developer channel and the screencasts channel in native ogg. Blip will syndicate it out to youtube and the Internet Archive, so that’s useful. If you’re looking at making video content that is relevant to Ubuntu people please let me know and I’ll help you get it out there.
It’s that time of the year folks. Ubuntu Open Week, the IRC workshop that’s taking the world by storm. We’ve got a great schedule of talks for you from some really great people from the Ubuntu Community. The wiki page has all the information you need to participate. Hope to see you there!
Update: Speak Spanish? If so, there’s an entire week of Spanish Open Week goodness available as well, thanks to the people who put that together!
I remember once hearing a radio interview with Kirk Hammett where he mentions that he’s still waiting for the band’s greatest record and song to be written. That’s because he’s never satisfied and in his mind perfection is always one step away. It’s the pursuit that matters right? I am surrounded by these kind of people every day.
It’s been a stressful few weeks for a bunch of us. October and April always suck because the release is coming up, we’ve got Jams, release parties, planning for UDS, and all sorts of crazy shit going on. I was kind of sucking a few weeks ago. It was one of those bad days where I felt like I didn’t get anything done, I was having empathy problems so I was having crashers and missing IMs, and just when I would get it working Ken Vandine would ping me and have me break it more for the sake of testing. I just couldn’t get a break because everyone was GO GO GO. So I was feeling a bit down, but let’s not dwell on that. Today when I logged in and saw what we have accomplished this cycle I want to take a moment before crunchtime to thank some people who have done a really awesome job.
I am going to thank some really hardworking people who make Ubuntu awesome. And since I can’t possibly name them all it’s up to you, Planet Ubuntu, to add to this list, consider this your meme for the weekend. I am going to touch up on my favorites:
- The Ubuntu Community Team – and I don’t mean just the four horsemen. Alan Pope, Nick Ali, Mike Basinger, Amber Graner, Lyz Krumbach, Nathan Handler, Rich Johnson, Christophe Sauthier, Jacob Petticord, Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre, Laura Czajkowski, Dave Walker, Greg Grossmeier, Jono Bacon, James Westby, David Planella, Daniel Holbach, Dan and Chris down in Florida … wow, the list is endless.
- Upstreams – This list is waaaaaaaay too long for one post.
- Xavier Claessens and Guillaume Desmottes for being rocking upstreams with empathy, in fact, the entire crew at Collabora rocks.
- I’d like to thank Ryan Paul for working on Gwibber for Karmic despite not having enough time.
- Sandy Armstrong (Tomboy), who was really a great sport working along side our Ubuntu One folks on note syncing. (yeah yeah Brad, you rock too). Also thanks for being so patient with regard to our SRU policies.
- Seif Lofty – the Zeitgeist crazyman is unstoppable. I don’t know whether I should be feeding you more caffeine or shooting you with a tranquilizer, it’s all good.
- Paul Cutler – I’d like to thank you for recharging my GNOME battery. I still owe you an article. :-/
- GCDS People (omg crossdesktop) – The folks at KDAB, couch.io, codethink (Rob and crew), Yorba, imendio, lamendo…etc. Also I don’t think Guy Lunardi at Novell ever got props for paying for dinner for like 30+ some people on the last night.
- Puppet – Shout out to Luke Kanies and Andrew Pollock.
- Dan Nurmi and the crew at Eucalyptus.
- Debian – Thanks to all the Debian folks who continue to rock and roll. Thanks to Uncle Steve, all of debian-uk, Lucas Nussbaum, Martin Krafft, Bdale and Edale Garbee, and John Wright.
- The entire Boot Experience Team – I remember a few months ago Mat Tomaszewski showed off a demo of what the boot experience would look like. I kind of shrugged it off as “just a demo, it’ll never really look like that.” But it does. Kudos to Mat for the design, and Cody Russell for making alot of that happen. Underneath it all is Scott James Remnant’s plumbing.
- The “Is it a Store or a Center People” – In 20 years there will be a TV show about Matthew Paul Thomas and Michael Vogt and how they were roomates and how they get into wacky adventures. It will be epic. I’ve got a whole angle for it and everything; it’ll be like a kid’s cartoon, and one guy will be the funny ‘out of control’ one and one guy will be the straight man. I have no idea who the straight man will be. Stay tuned.
- I’d like to thank the entire server team for just brutally chomping through EC2, Eucalyptus, and the 39,847,592,348 things they need to do.
- Anyone who had anything to do with 100 papercuts gets a hug.
- The ubuntu-news team is just awesome.
- Bazaar – Great job reaching 2.0, and Emma Jane’s website redux is \m/
- Launchpad – off the hook, way too many people to thank, I’ll let someone more awesome do it.
- I’d like to thank Eric Hammond for shining a light on an entire area of computing that I knew nothing about.
- Thanks to Ken Vandine who constantly forces me to help test shit. I hate the work you make me do, I want to punch you so bad sometimes.
My final hug is reserved for Kyle Rankin, my partner in Linux Crime, for his heartfelt acknowledgement in the Ubuntu Server Book; There aren’t metal horns brutal enough for you bro. Well, that’s my SHORT LIST. Add your own, blog it. Go forth and hug. Who are your heroes?
PS – Ken Wimer, you are fucking awesome.
Thanks to SRT Solutions for hosting us!
I will see you all tomorrow and Saturday at THE Ohio Linuxfest. I’ll be floating around tomorrow, probably spending time in the Hackathon area with other ubu-maniacs. If you’re around consider dropping by, I am keen on having an impromptu bug jam or if you need some Ubuntu tips or something.
Thanks to Alan Pope’s great work there are now two Personal Package Archives available for Tomboy. One day in IRC Sandy Armstrong asked if I could help them get the ball rolling on their own PPA and that Alan was all ready to go. Here is the announcement of the PPA. There’s some things I like to recommend to upstreams when they create a PPA that I thought I would share with you.
- PPAs get popular and posted over the web so it’s important that you think about namespace like all URLs, this is why I usually create a team and make a team PPA rather than individual PPAs. Plus it looks more professional to have a PPA named after your project rather than an individual. This leads to point two:
- Using a team PPA helps with the bus factor. Even if the team has one person when they move on (because people invariably move around) someone else can just be added to the team as opposed to making users follow which PPA tomboy is supposed to be in depending on who is around at the time.
- Make as many PPAs as you want. If you want testing on a new version make a development one but keep a stable one around. Throw some dailies up if you want to, the infrastructure is all there. PPAs have a copy feature so you can “predeploy” .debs to a PPA to test with, and then just copy them over to the “production” PPA, this helps reduce brown paper bag errors.
Reminder! Tomorrow will be the last “How to Run a Jam” tutorial session in IRC. Join me at 1500UTC in #ubuntu-classroom for tips and tricks, and don’t forget to join us for the Ubuntu Global Jam the weekend of 2-4 October!
Chris Jones, creator of Terminator has been working on a small little tool that you might like. It’s called Lifesaver. It’s a small screensaver that searches for “ubuntu” on twitter and identi.ca and then presents it on your screen all slick-like. Here’s what it looks like on my dual monitors:
Cute huh? Chris has a PPA for Karmic here. Unfortunately the version of goocanvas in Jaunty is too old to do what he needed to do to get a PPA working for Jaunty. So if you’re feeling like contributing, you might want to check out the code and see if you can make it work on Jaunty to give Chris a hand, patches in this area are very welcome.
Ubuntu Local teams, if you’re participating in the Ubuntu Global Jam please don’t forget to add your team to the participation list!
Greg Grossmeier has announced the time and place for the Michigan Team’s Global Jam session. Hey, if a State fan can go to Ann Arbor in October then anyone can participate! Looking for a place to Jam? Check out the list, and if your LoCo isn’t on there, then plan one! More information here.
Go Green, Go White! errr, I mean … go Ubuntu.
Dinosaurs and Open Source! You know, for those days you want to read a review on a EEE PC and ankylosaur tail club function on one blog. Speaking of dinos, Dinosauria is coming to a close, and I will miss the hat …
Photo by Craig Maloney
Andre Klapper would like to pass along his highly detailed infographic for bug triagers on where the URL field is in GNOME Bugzilla. Ubuntu GNOME bug triagers, take note!
Behold, my first screencast, it’s about linking bugs to upstream trackers. I am having a hard time figuring out how to do the <video> tag in wordpress (it keeps removing(!) it when I do a publish), so if you know how please post a comment so can add it to the docs.
(Yes, I know I speak way too fast, it’s kind of how I roll. :-/ )
At the end of every work day I check the wiki’s RecentChanges for cool new stuff. I mean, who doesn’t do that. I ran into some of James Westby’s work on daily builds, specifically this page on BzrBuilder and I was able to make a daily build of an upstream in about 5 minutes, that includes reading the docs! Here’s what I did. First off, pick a project. I picked Quickly, since it’s the new black.
Then install the bzr plugin like in the instructions. Then I created a recipe file like so:
jorge@bojack:~/dailies$ cat quickly.recipe
# bzr-builder format 0.2 deb-version 1.0+{revno}+{time}
lp:quickly
Then it’s ONE command:
bzr dailydeb quickly.recipe --key-id FFC27DD0 --dput ppa:jorge/ppa
Booyah, that’s it. Now, we got lucky here since Quickly is all in launchpad already and has a debian directory already in there. For other projects I suspect that grabbing them from vcs-imports and then merging in the packaging branch will also work, however I have not done this yet, but if you want to try it, the instructions are available. So if your project is already in launchpad you can start making dailies right now. Make sure you read up on more docs.
More than one way…
James isn’t the only person looking into dailies. The now-famous Fabien Tassin has been working on this as well, but taking a different approach. His scripts are available here:
https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~fta/+junk/ppa-scripts
https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~fta/+junk/ppa-confs
Fabien’s daily builds have been insanely popular, the chromium PPA alone has over 10k users (and that’s just the fractional popcon numbers). Also, odd that people keep the wine build around, but whatever.
He also has them for the various mozilla projects, gwibber, and has just set up one for network-manager. Other people are using it as well. Since they were announced in February the Mozilla daily builds have about 10,000 users of Firefox and over 1000 of Thunderbird. (Sorry no graphs for that, but look at numbers.
Great Power, Great Responsibility
Alexander mentions in his blog post on the ideal type of person to use daily builds.
- All advanced users that run the current ubuntu development release (e.g. karmic for now) that also want to focus their testing efforts on network-manager
- Users that have filed a bug against NM which then got fixed upstream can verify the fix by trying our daily build.
- Since we are targeting 0.8 for karmic the dailies reflect what will go into karmic soon. So if you like to run the bleeding edge and like to report issues right when they happen, this PPA is meant for you too.
- We also have jaunty builds, but those are not yet fully tested. If you want and run jaunty please try them and report your findings back (of course, be sure that you know how to recover from not having network-manager network)
And James points out: “Obviously, as there is automation involved in the process the resulting packages can be risky as they haven’t had human verification. This means that there has to be some care taken with them, and the project and packager should do there best to ensure that the risks are minimized. They are also not something that an average user should be using. With due diligence the benefits can certainly outweigh the risks though.”
My view is that people will always want crack, and the availability of things like PPAs certainly lowers the barrier for users to use your software. But those people aren’t necessarily capable of giving you the kind of bug reports you need to fix problems, or things might be in a state where you know things are broken and don’t need bug reports spamming you every day. Chromium even tells you “Don’t file bugs without doing the work!”
I am interested in how upstreams perceive the idea of daily builds, I’m sure there are plenty of plusses and minuses to having them. However, I am convinced that Chromium’s spike in popularity in Ubuntu is because of the ease in which it is to use them. So the real question becomes, do the benefits of getting more testers outweigh people arguing in circles?
Check out the schedule. This year will be awesome. Nuff said.
I am one of the “weird” people who moved from an iPhone 3G to a G1. The people at the T-Mobile store couldn’t even believe it. Now that I have owned both handsets I figured I would present the pluses and minues of each, and why, despite it’s many flaws, I still plan on keeping my G1.
Executive Summary for the Lazy: The features that are important to you will determine what you want.
Why I ditched my iphone:
- I wanted a real keyboard again, what’s the point of a smart phone if you can’t type on it.
- No normal syncing solution, requires iTunes, and on my 3ghz Core2Duo with 8GB of RAM it’s too slow (seriously). Plus I wanted something I can sync with on linux.
- I use alot of Google services, and I wanted better integration (read: native apps).
Things I like about the G1:
- The set up: You fire it up, put in your gmail address, and you’re done, no tedious setting up calendar, mail, etc, it’s all just done at once.
- Real keyboard!
- The native apps for the google services are all there, so I get real labels, I can star messages etc, automatic syncing of my contacts with gmail, etc.
- Google Voice integration (this has become a must-have for me now)
- T-mobile’s way cheaper – for the price I was paying AT&T I can now pay for me and Jill.
Things that kind of suck about the G1:
- I wish the mp3 player UI was friendlier to my car mount use case, I’d like big buttons and stuff so I can skip a song without getting into a car accident.
- Some marketplace apps are full of ads and spam you.
Things that infuriate me about the G1:
- The battery life is a joke. I have three floors in my house, and I have a charger on every floor AND one in my car. The 3G was pretty bad too, but the G1 is actually worse.
- It’s slow.
- T-mobile’s network. This is great because everyone you talk to at T-mobile talks about how awesome their network is. When you go to buy one they even print a map of your local area that’s all “green”. It’s all a lie, you will be on EDGE so often you just will stop caring about surfing the web. It wouldn’t suck so bad if they just told you “hey we’re way cheaper than AT&T, deal with it”, but instead they just point to a picture of Catherine Zeta-Jones. (EDIT: So apparently it really depends on where you live. Gabriel and Sandy probably live underneath a T-mo tower or something.)
- You will make up lies to yourself to justify this, like “oh, it’s all push anyway so it doesn’t matter that it’s slow, I always have my gmail on me…”
Those are the major issues but overall I like it. I like the Android platform, it just needs a little bit of help. Here are some tips for our friends at HTC, T-mobile, and Google:
- Please attempt to make an attempt to attempt to compete with Apple. The iPhone 3G is $99, the G1 is still $149. The G1 can barely compete with a 3G on performance, let alone a 3GS.
- Will you please sell a phone in the US that is faster? Renaming a Magic to a MyTouch 3G isn’t competition. How about the Hero in the US? Oh wait, by the time THAT makes it to the US we won’t care.
- “3475345 new Android Handsets by the end of 2k9″ – I don’t want a bunch of crappy handsets, I want one good one and right now we have a crappy one with a keyboard, and a crappy one without a keyboard.
- People actually like the Palm Pre. I find this part of the story hilarious. Google takes it in the chin from the Alta Vista of mobile companies. We live in interesting times.
Internets,
I am interested in a home server to replace my aging POS. I need something that can hold a bunch of disks and have eSATA and a bunch of USB ports and some gigabit ethernet. The hp and acer “home server” models look ideal except they come with only Windows Home Server and one of them doesn’t even have a VGA port, and I don’t want a weekend project to deal with these things to make them work.
Surely there’s a vendor out there putting together atom-based home servers for enthusiasts who just want to put ubuntu-server on a bunch-o-disks and shove it in a closet?
I’d just like to do a shout out to the folks behind the latest Ubuntu Weekly News. The amount of detail in each issue continues to improve and it’s becoming more invaluable as the community grows. It’s really becoming a life saver. Great job everyone!
