For a while I've had a little project for debugging the desktop. Basically it starts tracking all of the DBus events on the user session startup so that you can figure out what's going on. This is especially an issue for indicators, where they're started at login, and sometimes it can be hard to track what is happening.

Previously it was pretty hard to inject into the startup of the session. Getting in the middle of building a very long command line was risky and pretty fragile. Not proud of what I had to do. Now that I have Upstart user session running, I took the opportunity port this debugging script over to Upstart.

Now I have this one simple configuration file that can be dropped in /usr/share/upstart/sessions and gets started immediately after dbus:

description "Bustle Boot Log" author "Ted Gould " start on started dbus stop on desktop-end script rm -f ~/.cache/bustle-boot-log/boot-log.bustle mkdir -p ~/.cache/bustle-boot-log/ timeout -s INT 30 bustle-pcap --session ~/.cache/bustle-boot-log/boot-log.bustle & end script

The beauty of this is that I can inject this small little script in, and have Upstart figure out all the startup mess. I also have minimal impact on the natural desktop boot which is critcial for testing. Simple things to make debugging easier.

Time for the first PyGObject release for GNOME 3.9.x! This release brings the performance optimizations (thanks to Daniel Drake), quite a lot of internal code cleanup, and various bug fixes.

Thanks to all contributors!

• gtk-demo: Wrap description strings at 80 characters (Simon Feltman) (#698547)
• gtk-demo: Use textwrap to reformat description for Gtk.TextView (Simon Feltman) (#698547)
• gtk-demo: Use GtkSource.View for showing source code (Simon Feltman) (#698547)
• Use correct class for GtkEditable’s get_selection_bounds() function (Mike Ruprecht) (#699096)
• Test results of g_base_info_get_name for NULL (Simon Feltman) (#698829)
• Remove g_type_init conditional call (Jose Rostagno) (#698763)
• Update deps versions also in README (Jose Rostagno) (#698763)
• Drop compat code for old python version (Jose Rostagno) (#698763)
• Remove duplicate call to _gi.Repository.require() (Niklas Koep) (#698797)
• Add ObjectInfo.get_class_struct() (Johan Dahlin) (#685218)
• Change interpretation of NULL pointer field from None to 0 (Simon Feltman) (#698366)
• Do not build tests until needed (Sobhan Mohammadpour) (#698444)
• pygi-convert: Support toolbar styles (Kai Willadsen) (#698477)
• pygi-convert: Support new-style constructors for Gio.File (Kai Willadsen) (#698477)
• pygi-convert: Add some support for recent manager constructs (Kai Willadsen) (#698477)
• pygi-convert: Check for double quote in require statement (Kai Willadsen) (#698477)
• pygi-convert: Don’t transform arbitrary keysym imports (Kai Willadsen) (#698477)
• Remove Python keyword escapement in Repository.find_by_name (Simon Feltman) (#697363)
• Optimize signal lookup in gi repository (Daniel Drake) (#696143)
• Optimize connection of Python-implemented signals (Daniel Drake) (#696143)
• Consolidate signal connection code (Daniel Drake) (#696143)
• Fix setting of struct property values (Daniel Drake)
• Optimize property get/set when using GObject.props (Daniel Drake) (#696143)
• configure.ac: Fix PYTHON_SO with Python3.3 (Christoph Reiter) (#696646)
• Simplify registration of custom types (Daniel Drake) (#696143)
• pygi-convert.sh: Add GStreamer rules (Christoph Reiter) (#697951)
• pygi-convert: Add rule for TreeModelFlags (Jussi Kukkonen)
• Unify interface struct to Python GI marshaling code (Simon Feltman) (#693405)
• Unify Python interface struct to GI marshaling code (Simon Feltman) (#693405)
• Unify Python float and double to GI marshaling code (Simon Feltman) (#693405)
• Unify filename to Python GI marshaling code (Simon Feltman) (#693405)
• Unify utf8 to Python GI marshaling code (Simon Feltman) (#693405)
• Unify unichar to Python GI marshaling code (Simon Feltman) (#693405)
• Unify Python unicode to filename GI marshaling code (Simon Feltman) (#693405)
• Unify Python unicode to utf8 GI marshaling code (Simon Feltman) (#693405)
• Unify Python unicode to unichar GI marshaling code (Simon Feltman) (#693405)
• Fix enum and flags marshaling type assumptions (Simon Feltman)
• Make AM_CHECK_PYTHON_LIBS not depend on AM_CHECK_PYTHON_HEADERS (Christoph Reiter) (#696648)
• Use distutils.sysconfig to retrieve the python include path. (Christoph Reiter) (#696648)
• Use g_strdup() consistently (Martin Pitt) (#696650)
• Support PEP 3149 (ABI version tagged .so files) (Christoph Reiter) (#696646)
• Fix stack corruption due to incorrect format for argument parser (Simon Feltman) (#696892)
• Deprecate GLib and GObject threads_init (Simon Feltman) (#686914)
• Drop support for Python 2.6 (Martin Pitt)
• Remove static PollFD bindings (Martin Pitt) (#686795)
• Drop test skipping due to too old g-i (Martin Pitt)
• Bump glib and g-i dependencies (Martin Pitt)

For a project of mine I created a small app based on webkitgtk that talks to a SSL server.

And I almost forgot about the libsoup default behavior for SSL certificates checking. By default libsoup and therefore webkitgtk will not do any SSL certificate checks. You need to put something like the following snippet into your code (adjust for your language of choice):

from gi.repository import WebKit session = WebKit.get_default_session() session.set_property("ssl-use-system-ca-file", True)

If you don’t do this it will accept any certificate (including self-signed ones).

This is documented behavior in libsoup and they don’t want to change it for compatiblity reasons in libsoup. But for webkit its unexpected behavior (at least to me) and I hope the webkitgtk developers will consider changing this default in webkit. I filed a bug about it. So if you use webkitgtk and SSL, remember to set the above property.

I started off yesterday detailing the first four reasons why you’d want to consider deploying with Ubuntu Server. Here are today’s four.

Juju and its charms

And this is where it starts to comes together. You’ve got your OpenStack running with tons of nodes, exabytes of storage on Ceph, now what? No one builds a cloud for the sake of building one. You have work to do, and that’s what Juju is all about.

Juju takes all this infrastructure you just set up and makes you… not care about it. Juju bucks the trend of thinking about machines and instances as a whole. We back you up and show you a higher level view of your deployment and get you to think about what’s really important to your business, deploying services.

So now you think of your deployment as environments, like Hadoop, Cassandra, MongoDB, or $your_application. You tell Juju how to model your deployment, and it uses all the things I just mentioned, MAAS, OpenStack, your public cloud provider, to make your environment. You manage things at the service level. Just assemble your blocks and the juju scripts (we call them charms) do the rest.

So what’s that mean for you? Here’s an example of how you can deploy your node.js app or your rails app. What you see there is our end goal for everyone who wants to deploy anything to the cloud - you should be able to do so with a few commands or a couple of mouse clicks. We’re well on our way with over 120 services available for you put together, and plenty more on the way. All of them are Free Software, ready to be improved upon and shared with the wider community.

Here’s an example of setting up sharding with MongoDB if you really want to see how Juju takes the complexity out of service orchestration.

Hardware Certification

We’re certified to run on hardware from the top names in servers. Dell, HP, Lenovo, IBM, and Acer are just some of our certification partners. There’s not really much else to say. This bullet seems really boring, but it’s certainly not boring for the people in our hardware labs, this is just something most sysadmins will expect to work out of the box.

ARM

We’ve been building Ubuntu on ARM as a fully functional, well tested OS that can support multiple SoCs (Calxeda, TI, Marvell Armada XP, and anything Ubuntu Touch/Client uses) – and have been doing so for over 4 years.

We’re working with Calxeda on their ECX-1000 EnergyCore Products (Highbank). We are going to be using the ECX-1000 as our ARM server reference platform for 13.04.

And we’ll be working with them on their “Midway” product refresh when that hits.

Ubuntu Guest on Public Clouds

Whether it’s like Amazon Web Services, HP Cloud, Rackspace, Internap, or Microsoft Windows Azure, you’ll find official Ubuntu images, and you’ll find that the per-hour cost to you is $0.00.

The nice thing we do in the public clouds is that we work closely with the cloud providers to give you a great experience. Our images are directly published into these clouds as part of the release process, they’re not made after-the-fact. And since it’s Ubuntu, it’s the same on every cloud, you won’t find different behavior from your local servers or from vendor to vendor, it’s important to us to provide you a consistent experience.

On the certified public clouds you’ll not only find regularly refreshed and supported images, you’ll find other goodies, like built-in local mirrors so that your updates are LAN speed in your cloud deployments. And since we partner with these providers and continually work with them to improve on this experience you’ll always be getting the best available service.

Stay tuned for part 3 tomorrow!

Working on Ubiquity, the Kubuntu installer, is not trivial, or at least it was not for me. This article describes the setup I ended up using, so that I do not waste time on my next Ubiquity hacking session. Hopefully it will be useful to others interested in working on Ubiquity.

This article was originally a part of my previous Ubiquity article, but I decided to split it as the audience is not the same.

Setting everything up Intro

I learned the hard way the preferred way to test Ubiquity is to run your code from within a live Kubuntu session. This is necessary because the installer needs the ISO file system to complete, otherwise it fails when you are done answering questions.

The quick and dirty way to get stuff done is to edit files in /usr from within the live Kubuntu session, then copy them back to your checkout of Ubiquity source code. Quick but dirty, and error prone.

The setup I ended up with looks like this:

1. Start live ISO in a VM, tweak the VM environment
2. Edit code on host
3. Push changes from host to VM
4. While broken, goto 2
5. Commit changes, file merge request

Get the code and tools

First, setup a base dir. This dir is going to contain 3 repositories: the source for Ubiquity itself, the source for Ubiquity slideshow and a set of scripts I put together.

mkdir src/ubiquity

Get the repositories:

cd src/ubiquity bzr clone lp:ubiquity code bzr clone lp:ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu slideshow bzr clone lp:~agateau/+junk/ubiquity-scripts scripts Setting up a VM to accept our code

I use VirtualBox to run this live session on my development machine. I push code from the host to the VM using rsync over ssh, because I can never get VirtualBox Shared Folders to work on development versions of Ubuntu :/.

First, download a live ISO from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily-live/current/.

Then, create a Virtualbox VM, adding the live ISO as CDROM.

Now start the VM and after it has finished booting, select "Try Kubuntu".

At this point, we can start to tweak the VM environment.

Note: In the following sections, terminal commands prefixed with [VM] are meant to be run inside the VM, while commands prefixed with [HOST] should be run on the host.

Open Konsole and create the folder which will contain the code to test:

[VM] mkdir src/ubiquity

Setup ssh:

[VM] sudo apt-get install openssh-server

For some reason, sshd does not start automatically for me and running sudo start ssh does not help.

Running sshd by hand shows it misses the /run/sshd dir. Here is my ugly workaround.

Create the missing dir:

[VM] sudo mkdir /run/sshd

Start sshd by hand.

[VM] sudo /usr/sbin/sshd

Note: One must use the full path to the sshd binary, otherwise it does not start.

Now we need to set a password for the kubuntu user, otherwise we can't ssh to it:

[VM] sudo passwd kubuntu Enter new UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password:

Before going back to the host, write down the IP address of the VM:

[VM] ifconfig

Go back to the host and install your ssh public key in the VM so that you don't have to enter the password of the kubuntu user every time you want to test a change.

[HOST] ssh-copy-id kubuntu@$VM_IP

Check it works:

[HOST] ssh kubuntu@$VM_IP

You should get logged in the VM without entering the password.

Initial installation of our code in the VM

Time to push our code. From the host:

[HOST] ~/src/ubiquity/scripts/rsync-to-vm $VM_IP

Now, switch back to the VM and let's do some final setup. We are going to rename some of Ubiquity dirs to append "-distro" to their name and replace the original dirs with symlinks. Our development version gets its own symlinks as well, suffixed with "-dev". We will then be able to switch from the distro to the dev version and back.

For example, in /usr/lib/ubiquity, the following changes will be done for the plugins dir:

• plugins is going to be renamed to plugins-distro
• Two symlinks are going to be created:
  • plugins-dev, pointing to /home/kubuntu/src/ubiquity/code/plugins
  • plugins pointing either to plugins-distro or plugins-dev

There are a few dirs to alter, so I created a script to do the work:

[VM] cd ~/src/ubiquity [VM] scripts/setup setup

Note: no need to call scripts/setup with sudo, the script uses it when necessary.

All symlinks have been created. You can check the status with:

[VM] scripts/setup status lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 mars 25 17:22 /usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins -> plugins-distro lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 mars 25 17:22 /usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity -> ubiquity-distro lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 mars 25 17:22 /usr/share/ubiquity/qt -> qt-distro lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 mars 25 17:22 /usr/share/ubiquity-slideshow -> ubiquity-slideshow-distro

To switch to our development version, run:

[VM] scripts/setup dev

Symlinks look like this now:

[VM] scripts/setup status lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 mars 25 17:23 /usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins -> plugins-dev lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 mars 25 17:23 /usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity -> ubiquity-dev lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 mars 25 17:23 /usr/share/ubiquity/qt -> qt-dev lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 mars 25 17:23 /usr/share/ubiquity-slideshow -> ubiquity-slideshow-dev

We are now ready to work! We can run our version of Ubiquity with:

[VM] ubiquity -d kde_ui

The -d switch turns on debug output, which can be found in /var/log/installer/debug.

Getting some work done

Hack on the host and whenever you want to test your changes, run:

[HOST] scripts/rsync-to-vm $VM_IP

Then switch to the VM and run Ubiquity:

[VM] ubiquity -d kde_ui

Note: Since the setup relies on the code being in /home/kubuntu/src/ubiquity/code and /home/kubuntu/src/ubiquity/slideshow, using Bazaar branches can be problematic. I recommend the bzr-colo plugin to switch branches in place.

Testing the greeter

The greeter is the screen which appears when you boot the live ISO. It asks you your language, and let you pick between trying or installing Kubuntu.

To test this screen, set the UBIQUITY_GREETER environment variable:

[VM] UBIQUITY_GREETER=1 ubiquity -d kde_ui Testing OEM config

Ubiquity can be run in "OEM" mode. In this mode, the installer is split in two steps:

1. The installer installs Kubuntu on the hard disk without creating a user.
2. When the user boots the system for the first time, he is prompted with user configuration questions.

To test step 1, set the UBIQUITY_OEM_USER_CONFIG environment variable:

[VM] UBIQUITY_OEM_USER_CONFIG=1 ubiquity -d kde_ui

To test step 2, create a symlink named oem-config on the ubiquity script, and start Ubiquity from this script:

[VM] ln -s /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity oem-config [VM] kdesudo ./oem-config -d kde_ui

Note the source of the link is /usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity, not /usr/bin/ubiquity. The latter is just a wrapper around the former.

Wrap up

If you read this far, then either you are interested in hacking on Ubiquity and I hope this article helps you, or you are an Ubiquity developer and I hope you did not spot too many mistakes. If you find some, please point them out.

Linus Torvalds released Linux 3.9 and many websites published summaries what’s new in it. One of common entries is support for ChromeOS laptops. But what that means for Samsung ARM Chromebook users?

Let’s start with Kernel Newbies summary which lists 5 commits:

• Platform: x86: Add Chrome OS Laptop driver
• Platform: x86: chromeos_laptop – Add Acer C7 trackpad
• Platform: x86: chromeos_laptop – Add HP Pavilion 14
• Platform: x86: chromeos_laptop – Add Pixel Touchscreen
• Platform: x86: chromeos_laptop – Add Taos tsl2583 device

None of them are for ARM Chromebook. But that does not mean that nothing was done for it. Touchpad driver was merged, many Exynos platform changes were made but yeah — still lot to do.

But that’s a curse of ARM platforms…

UPDATE: Arnd Bermann wrote a comment on my Google+ post that Olof Johansson has “linux-next” bootable on ARM Chromebook. YAY!

Related content:

1. Ubuntu 12.04 ‘precise’ and cross compilation of ARM kernels
2. Linux 3.0 under Ubuntu ‘natty’ 11.04

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Linux 3.9 and Chromebook support was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Now Raring Ringtail (13.04) is firmly out of the release door, we must once again begin to switch our attention to the next development series - which will become 13.10, and is codenamed the Saucy Salamander.

We experimented with a mid-point virtual UDS during the raring cycle just gone, and it was a great success. We will therefore be conducting this

From the perspective of blueprints, there is very little variance to that of a previous in-person UDS. It will be held the week commencing 13th May 2013 - in a pure online/virtual manner. It is useful to register for the event, even if not planning to attend. The details are best described on the dedicated site[0].

There will be two vUDS's during the cycle, to help with greater collaboration. This one's primary objective is to set NEW work, with the next one, being a review and potential course correction on blueprints - with the expectation that some new variance will be introduced.

As with Raring, this is a non-LTS (Long Term Support) release - but it is the final one before the next scheduled LTS release. This means that, in line with Ubuntu's spirit, we want to continue the trend of strength through innovation but also work on polishing existing feature set. This will help to help create a solid base for the next LTS.

If you wish to raise a blueprint, I would ask that it is first submitted to the ubuntu-server at lists.ubuntu.com mailing list for discussion. Ideally following this abstract example:

... To: ubuntu-server at lists.ubuntu.com Subject: [vUDS blueprint 13.10] Scale out 'sl'

I would like to make the popular command line larting utility fully lart 2.0 compliant, by levering some of the recent developments in scale out lart technology.

This can be implemented in a number of ways, such as upstream multi-threading support, xinet or upstart event based initialisation. I think it would also be interesting to explore if 'sl' can be better leveraged using cloud-init.

Note: I would be willing to volunteer to draft this blueprint, and potentially work on work items created.

---- Using the following template is also encouraged, as that is what will be required on the blueprint ----

Summary [GOAL] The quantifiable and “tangible” deliverable [RATIONALE] Why are we doing this work.

Whiteboard [USER STORIES] As a [PERSON], I want to [DO SOMETHING] so that [SOMETHING HAPPENS] Be sure to link a persona with a role (ie Andrew is a OpenStack Dev) [ASSUMPTIONS] State any information that is a prerequisite, needs to be done, or how development will occur. [RISKS] Any issues that may block development [IN SCOPE] Work that is achievable (given current information) for this cycle [OUT OF SCOPE] Work we know that is not accomplish this cycle [USER ACCEPTANCE] How we know when this feature is complete [RELEASE NOTE/BLOG] What would you say about this when it’s done ...

To be able to have greater scale out support, there will be two track leads. These will be myself (Daviey Walker) and Antonio Rosales.

If you have any questions, or would rather not raise your topic on the list but would still like it considered for inclusion - please email Antonio Rosales & Daviey Walker (dave.walker at canonical.com).

[0] http://uds.ubuntu.com/register/ [1] https://launchpad.net/sprints/uds-1305

Thanks

Kind Regards,

Dave Walker Engineering Manager, Ubuntu Server

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #314 for the week April 22 – 28, 213, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) Released
• The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.
• Pablo Rubianes and Marcos Costales appointed to the Loco Council
• Welcome New Members and Developers
• Community Acknowledgments and Success Stories
• Ubuntu Stats
• LoCo News
• Ubuntu Cloud News
• Ubuntu Classroom: Ubuntu Open Week for Raring: Call for Instructors
• David Planella: Upcoming Qreator release – call for translations
• Jorge Castro: Join us for a virtual Charm School!
• Canonical Design Team: Responding to orientation
• Ted Gould: Indicators in Upstart
• Sergio Meneses: My testing activities in Raring Ringtail
• Adolfo Jayme Barrientos: Please don’t add pointless comments to bug reports
• Benjamin Kerensa: Ubuntu Documentation: Call for Contributors!
• Colin King: Firmware Test Suite New Features in Ubuntu Raring 13.04
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• In Other News
• Other Articles of Interest
• Featured Audio and Video
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security for 8.04, 10.04, 11.10, 12.04, 12.10 and 13.04
• And much more!

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Jose Antonio Rey
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #314 for the week April 22 – 28, 213, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) Released
• The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.
• Pablo Rubianes and Marcos Costales appointed to the Loco Council
• Welcome New Members and Developers
• Community Acknowledgments and Success Stories
• Ubuntu Stats
• LoCo News
• Ubuntu Cloud News
• Ubuntu Classroom: Ubuntu Open Week for Raring: Call for Instructors
• David Planella: Upcoming Qreator release – call for translations
• Jorge Castro: Join us for a virtual Charm School!
• Canonical Design Team: Responding to orientation
• Ted Gould: Indicators in Upstart
• Sergio Meneses: My testing activities in Raring Ringtail
• Adolfo Jayme Barrientos: Please don’t add pointless comments to bug reports
• Benjamin Kerensa: Ubuntu Documentation: Call for Contributors!
• Colin King: Firmware Test Suite New Features in Ubuntu Raring 13.04
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• In Other News
• Other Articles of Interest
• Featured Audio and Video
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security for 8.04, 10.04, 11.10, 12.04, 12.10 and 13.04
• And much more!

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Jose Antonio Rey
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

A few weeks back my friend Lucy sent me a message asking if I would be prepared to spend some time talking about photography and sharing some techniques. Lucy studied photography at GCSE (proper “wet” photography) and has been getting into digital photography recently. Of course, I said “yes” and on Sunday we met up on the South Bank. It’s a great place to explore, with plenty of colour, shade, textures, areas and angles. That’s even before you look at the collection of street performers, which on this particular day included a fire-belching euphonium and a man stood in the Thames playing electric guitar.

I’ve never tried to teach anyone photography skills before, even in an informal setting like this. I’d been thinking through what I wanted to talk about beforehand, but kept feeling overwhelmed by how much detail I found myself including. It was reassuring to me that I understood all the technical stuff in that depth, but an interesting challenge to pick and choose the most important bits. Lucy wanted to focus on the technical stuff, so we didn’t talk about interacting with people too much. Hopefully next time!

We started by working through the “exposure triangle”, the mixture of shutter speed, aperture and ISO that gives the perfect exposure. I made Lucy take photos of me (poor thing!) until we had a good exposure, then varying one setting and adjusting the others to compensate. We also talked about the artistic impact that each setting has on an image, using aperture to separate a subject from their background and shutter speed to freeze or harness motion. Oh, and I also managed to blather on about direction and quality of light, metering, white balance, focal length, composition, angle, patterns.

Lucy posted some great images after our walk. Hopefully my witterings were of use, but I enjoyed catching up with Lucy and talking about my favourite subject with her.

Pin It

Today, Ask Ubuntu crossed a major milestone in the history of the site. Yes, there are now over 100,000 questions asked on Ask Ubuntu.

This would be our 100,000th question:

What Unity Lenses and Scopes are available to add?

*Funnily enough, this question is actually a duplicate of another question already asked.

Here’s a rough graphical representation of how Ask Ubuntu has fared since its launch in terms of questions asked:

Clearly, there are still tons of questions that are unanswered. To be accurate, there are about 25,000 questions yet to be answered. Unfortunately, bringing this number down cannot be achieved without help from people like you. If you think you have what it takes, please consider taking a look at our list of unanswered questions and answering them as you see fit.

(Part 1 of 4)

Sometimes people ask me why they should use Ubuntu Server. It’s an understandable question, after all, Ubuntu gets a bunch of attention on the desktop (and more recently mobile), but people tend to forget that Ubuntu is an excellent server distribution, quietly humming along helping to run some of the world’s coolest companies at scale.

So I thought I’d document why you should choose Ubuntu for your organization. Paul Hammond from TypeKit has said “No startup has ever failed because they picked the wrong Linux distribution.” TypeKit’s Linux of choice? Ubuntu. Why is that? So I started to think of reasons why you would choose Ubuntu, and to celebrate the release of 13.04, I came up with 13 major reasons you would choose to go with us. Let’s get started, in no particular order! I’ll split this post over the next few days so you can digest it easier, and more importantly, go play with the things I talk about!

OpenStack and the cloud archive

As I said a few weeks ago, shipping a well tested and robust OpenStack is one of our primary missions. We’ve been shipping OpenStack in Ubuntu for over 3 years now, and every cycle we get better at it. We do daily and per commit automated testing of OpenStack. Maybe that’s one of the reasons Ubuntu is the reference OS for OpenStack.

We’re committed to backporting the latest OpenStack releases to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Long Term Support). That means if you want the fresh upstream goodness of OpenStack but want a stable platform, you can get that with Ubuntu; no one else is doing anything like this.

How ready is OpenStack and Ubuntu for production? It’s there, and we know that because we’re running OpenStack in production. Moving from a traditional IT setup to “devops” using the cloud is tough, and we’re still in the process of doing it, we learned a bunch of best practices that we’ve shared with the community, see Robbie Williamson’s talk: OpenStack in Production: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Ceph

Ceph is a massively scaleable distributed file system that runs on commodity hardware. And it comes with Ubuntu in main and is fully supported by Canonical and Inktank. Here is the blueprint of the usecases we are enabling out of the box. We’re also working on getting per-commit and daily automated testing of Ceph as well.

I am doing Ceph a disservice by only mentioning it in one paragraph. The sheer capabilities of Ceph and it’s scalability can take up pages, so if you’re looking to get started with Ceph, check out this tutorial from Inktank on how they deploy Ceph with Juju and check it out for yourself.

MAAS

On the local server front, we provide a provisioning tool called MAAS, which stands for Metal-as-a-Service. MAAS not only provisions bare metal machines for you (on demand), but we like to say it “brings the language of the cloud to physical services”. Sometimes you just want the ability to horizontally scale as demand comes in, and have machines turn on, install the OS, and then get to work, all automatically.

We use MAAS to deploy OpenStack, or you can use MAAS to deploy whatever servers you need, e.g. Hadoop or Ceph, on whatever scale-out hardware you have, e.g. Intel, AMD, or ARM, all programatically. It’s a simple but powerful tool to deliver provisioned servers to you.

Hardware Enablement Stack

Ubuntu provides what we call an LTS Enablement Stack.

Simply stated, we provide newer kernels for the Long Term Support release, that means if you end up with newer hardware that needs newer hardware support you can still use an LTS release and have a stable userspace. The enablement kernels then provide you an upgrade path for the next LTS.

For more tips on how to use these stacks, check out this blog post.

Four down, and 9 to go! Stay tuned for more.

Linux is new anymore, there are many custom Linux operating system that was designed for ham radio operators. Here are the list of famous Linux operating system for ham radio usage

1. KB1OIQ - Andy's Ham Radio Linux DVD - This is a remastered version of Ubuntu Linux. As of version 13, there are 32-bit and 64-bit versions available.

2. hamOS - A Debian based Live and Installable operating system for radio amateurs. hamOS contains many preinstalled ham radio applications as well as a custom menu. This respin is geared toward the newer linux user. hamOS uses the lightweight LXDE desktop environment and is therefore suitable for older hardware. Check out the GetExtras folder on the desktop to run some custom scripts that will automatically grab flash, codecs, and other non-libre software.

3. Ar-knoppix

4. Harv's Hamshack Hack

5.  Digipup - based on puppylinux (lightweight linux distribution)

6. Shackbox - Shackbox provide linux AND windows software like the famous ham radio deluxe, trunking software and a lot of other software related to electronics, antenna design and else.

7.  Hamux - CentOS based repository with ham radio software.

However, you can choose any linux distro you like and install any ham radio applications that you desired. Since linux is opensource operating system, you can hack the source to suit your taste. Google, Yahoo also powered by linux operating system and small hardware such as switch, routers, acces point also powered by linux nowadays. Most of websites running on linux webservers. Happy Hamlinux-ing!

 

This week's episode talks about introspection and assessing where we stand in terms of participation. A rough transcript is included below.

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Welcome to the Burning Circle. For release on Monday, April 29th, this is episode 112.

Well, where do we start? We had the conference call aborted last week as nobody showed up. Yeah, the exercise proved successful for Erie Looking Productions to be ready for the event and to come online for it. Notwithstanding how low the friction level was for this, the event failed. This will be assessed. We do have the capability to try this again and it is merely a phone call away.

Yes, e-mails continue to happen and I do seem to send something out at least once per week. The current e-mail that has gone out is for members to check that they have in fact signed the Code of Conduct on Launchpad and to ensure they're up to date. In response to that e-mail there have already been a couple membership deactivations in response.

Membership within this community gets interesting. We have many people who claim affiliation but quite a number of folks who are quite marginally attached. As a community, activity is hard to spur. When you look at it, how do you spur activity when people shut out the mailing list, don't participate at the forums, may or may not listen to the podcast, may or may not be aware of the LoCo's presence on social media, and more?

In terms of lurking, you at least have a passing notion of what is happening. You might see what the mailing list says or occasionally pop in on the IRC channel. What we have is a bit of anti-social membership where people declare geographic affiliation but do not want to be involved and do not want to be contacted at all. That's not good for a community's health.

Where are we going? I know there have been rumbles of discontent for a while. People have felt very disconnected from being able to participate in decision-making within the Ubuntu project. However I also note that a majority of people have not taken steps to become enfranchised to do so by gaining status as an Ubuntu Member let alone developer membership. I have voting rights on confirming the Community Council along with six other members of our community. That leaves 410 members of our community as of time of recording who do not. Our Ubuntu Members are mostly found along an arc with Mansfield, Cleveland, and Ashtabula as points along it.

As we head into the Saucy Salamander cycle, I'm kinda torn. I know we would be expected to take time to prepare for Ohio Linux Fest. I am not so sure that that is a good idea. We need to spend some time on introspection and building up our community. I may need to put in some mileage to run around state for this but there are issues that continue to fester.

What is it you want out of your local community? Are you feeling it is time to move on and you just didn't shut down your Launchpad account neatly? Did you already move on and we're just left with your digital ghost?

I don't know. I know many people feel disconnected relative to what they feel is top-down dictation of decisions by Canonical. I understand people have grave reservations over Canonical cooperating with the People's Republic of China. When it comes to the Ohio community we must remember that that is all external. We move ever onward and spread to our fellow Ohioans another view of what computing could be like. We have the various flavors so we're not just stuck with vanilla Ubuntu to share either. Just because you feel like you are disconnected from where Ubuntu may be headed does not mean you are then disconnected from where things go in the real world here in Ohio.

I wish I had easy answers. Right now I'm throwing things out there to think about. Contact me via Launchpad if you want to discuss this further one-on-one.

From the south shores of Lake Erie in the border port community of Ashtabula Township, this program has been brought to you over the facilities of the Internet Archive and Ubuntu Ohio by Erie Looking Productions. Our owner, engineer, and acting producer is Mike Kellat and I am the head writer Stephen Michael Kellat. Aggravated circumstances continue to impact production. Thank you for joining us and we'll be seeing you.

I admit to a paranoid streak and have been confining my users with selinux.

I confine almost all users as user_u

/usr/sbin/semanage login -a -s user_u $user

Users who need admin access I confine as staff_u

/usr/sbin/semanage login -a -s staff_u $user

There are 2 minor annoyances with this method.

First I like regular users to be able to ping. This is enabled as a boolean.

setsebool -P selinuxuser_ping on

And second, although staff_u can use sudo, they are still restricted by selinux. To allow unlimited access, add or edit /etc/sudoers.d/sudo to read

%user ALL=(ALL) TYPE=unconfined_t ROLE=unconfined_r ALL

Change “%user” to the user name you wish to allow unconfined root access.

Another wallpaper to add to your Ubuntu 13.04 gallery from VladStudio.

Download Link

Enjoy :)

The post Raring RingTail Tail appeared first on j-Baer.

With recent kernels the sound on my netbook skips.

Sound card:

Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) HD Audio Controller [8086:811b] (rev 07)

After many attempts and much google searching, the solution has been to edit /etc/pulse/default.pa and add tsched=0 to the line load-module module-udev-detect

load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0
load-module module-detect tsched=0

Yesterday was organized the Flisol, a latinoamerican event where people get together and install free software, and I couldn’t stop myself to feature Ubuntu Raring =), so I printed some flyers and took a nice walk around the city.

The flyer features an impressive mockup of Nick Rutledge.

This was a nice warp-up for the next UbuConLa, which will be in hosted in Montevideo Uruguay next June 7th, hope to see many of guys there =)!

Linux Fest Northwest Expo Hall before opening!

Welcome to the first daily recap of LinuxFest Northwest 2013 (LFNW). I’m up in Bellingham, Washington evangelizing Firefox OS, WebFWD and Mozilla Reps. Just in the first few hours we had close to 50% of LinuxFest Northwest attendees visit the Mozilla booth and a majority of those people who visited the booth said they are long time Firefox users many of whom also use Firefox for Android and many of them have heard about Firefox OS but had not had the opportunity to actually get more information. This presented an excellent opportunity to let visitors check out Firefox OS running on one of the developer handsets and then educate them about the platform and how to get involved.

 

Mozilla Booth

Me showing attendees the Firefox OS platform

We were lucky to be in a nice area of the expo floor and just to the left we had folks from the EFF and just across was the Ubuntu booth ran by the Ubuntu Washington LoCo and the Greater Seattle Linux User Group (GSLUG). Lanyards and buttons were really popular and we gave almost all our lanyards out during the first few hours of the expo hall opening.

Geeksphone

Although I do not yet have a Geeksphone but instead have another handset running Firefox OS one of the most popular questions I got asked was “Where can I buy a phone running Firefox OS?” This started the discussion about the recent Geeksphone launch and in turn people were really surprised to hear how affordable those phones were.

Highlighting MoCo Session and Other Tidbits

LFNW Attendee shows Firefox shirt he won.

I want to suggest to those who will be at LFNW tomorrow that they try and make it to Spencer Krum and Ben Kero’s session about Git on the server. Ben Kero is a Mozilla Systems Administrator and well known in the Pacific Northwest Open Source community and his session should be informative for those who are interested in getting started with Gitolite.

One other thing I got to do today was to sit down with Thomas from Slashdot to do an interview about Firefox OS. I also went on Linux Action Show live to discuss Firefox OS and even discuss Ubuntu for a bit.

 

The post LinuxFest Northwest 2013: Recap of Day 1 appeared first on Benjamin Kerensa dot Com.

For quite some time I have been trying out different to do applications that will integrate with my Android phone and Ubuntu computer. Before I had a smart phone I loved Emacs OrgMode. However I recently switched to vim.

I tried Remember The Milk and Toodeldo. Both are very good apps. I use a form of GTD and their are several guides to use these apps as a GTD system. However I found myself spending more time setting up to do items then I would of liked. I guess my impatience got the best of me.

Since I use so many Google services GTasks seems liked an obvious next choice. I like that I can create different lists. I have a  personal-actions lists, school-action lists,work-action lists, reference. and tickler file. This is my modified GTD system. I also like the easy integration with Google calendar. Gtasks does not have an overwhelming amount of features, which I kind of like. However I continue to look at different to do apps in case their is a real jem out their i am missing.

Lately I have been trying out an app on my Android phone called Catch. You can have up to 5 spaces(notebooks/lists) for your free account and sync your to do list online. You can add more space if you go Pro. Some of the features I like is the ability to take notes via notes – obviously, checklists, audio notes, and pictures. Also Catch is a collaborative note application. You can share your space with anyone who has a Catch account – and even if they don’t you can invite them via e-mail.This is great for collaborating on projects.

Another app i really like is Evernote. Packed full of features it is very useful. I use it to take photos of brainstorming sessions off grease boards at work or school. By the time I am back at home the picture is there waiting. I also use it to clip things off the web.  Evernote has a set of organizational tools: tags, notebooks, and stacks. It has a ton of features. I use it a lot but not as a to do application. I need something a little simpler to get my to do tasks down quick. Maybe if I buckled down and got through the learning curve of some of these feature rich apps I would love them as to do apps.

When Google Keep came  out I was excited. I like the less is more approach. Too simple, maybe. I know, I know I am a  paradoxical creature. I am anxious to use it for a little while and see how it fits in my work flow. I have started using it for some of the things I used Evernote for, like taking pictures related to my to do items.

Just today I started using Taskwarrior on my Ubuntu box. I really like this app. I have a certain fondness for command line apps. I was pleasantly surprised at the features available. A quick read of the tutorial and I was up and going. They have a thirty second tutorial and a more detailed tutorial. It has features that allow a GTD type system to be used. Only problem with Taskwarrior is no Android app. However their is hope on the horizon. I read on the Taskwarrior site their is an Android app being developed. They are looking for Android developers to help with development. If this sounds interesting to you please check it out.

Please let me know what you use?