I have for some time now been wondering how many people actually use Bongo.

The reason for this is that we have had images available for a while and I am still non the wiser as to how many people actually use them.

I faithfully spend hours and hours building packages and getting them out the door but have no markers to see if they are being used.

While reading the docs for the ESVA appliance (http://www.global-domination.org/esva) I noticed that they have a cronjob that downloads a file and immediately deletes it. This allows for roughly seeing who is using their appliance .

They have documentation that tells people how to remove the cronjob which effectively turns off this tool.

I propose that the Bongo project perhaps use something similar to allow us to know how many people use the products we produce. it would be nice to know how many people are using Bong while the Web-UI is not working and then once we release something if that number increases and at what rate.

I am really  interested in ideas as to how we can achieve this with or without having some kind of phone home too.

Please leave a comment on this post if you like, or send an e-mail to the user or devel list or even come and have your say on the IRC channel.

I have also added a simple poll on the left

Thanks in advance

I have just upgraded to 11.2 from ubuntu 9.10 on my IBM / Lenovo T61 laptop. ( I will post a better blog about that later)

What I wanted to mention here is that the current vMware workstation 6.5.3 does not want to run on my system.

I have found this post http://k—–k.blogspot.com/2009/09/install-vmware-workstation-653-on.html

Which has teps for compiling the modules yourself but by the look of things is based on 32bit openSUSE.

I will see if I can get it working here on my 64bit machine

I have great news about the images on the rPath system.

I have been able to get Bongo 0.6.1 to build on the rPath system with a json patch from Alex.

I have promoted it to the QA and RELEASE repo’s so it should be available for you guys.

Please test and let me know if you have any issues.

You can find the images here

Bongo Images and the 0.5 release

I have been working on the images for the 0.5 release of Bongo and I have now completed them.

They can be found here http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/bongo/latestRelease

There is a change however in how we will be implementing the images from now on.

I have decided that to make it easier on you guys and also to limit the number of hours I have to work on them I will create a version 1.0 of the images which I will not change for the foreseeable future.

What will now happen is that we will just update the packages that apply to Bongo and release them for consumption.

I have also decided that I will start using the built in features of the rPath rbuilder system to start developing changes or updates to the bongo packages in the -devel branch and then when I am happy that they are ready for general consumption I will promote them to -qa which is an image I will be running permanently I will make this image available to anyone who would want to help test the bleeding edge stuff from Bongo.

Once the -qa has been completed I will promote to the release branch which will be bongo.rpath.org@rpl:bongo-1.0.

This will automatically make the changes available to you guys and so we will become a rolling update project. So you will never have to re-install your server again unless you have to upgrade your hardware.

I hope you find it easier to use. We are now well on our way to making Bongo a great mail server.

I have been able to rework the Bongo images to make them work.

I would appreciate any testing that could be done as I do not have all the vm technologies to test.

So I hope you have fun .

Here is a link to the downloads

Due to a server error where the images get built an error has crept in that make the images useless.

This error has been prevalent for some time and so it has caused the images to break.

I have therefore pulled the images and will try to fix the problem as soon as I can.

I will post again when things get better

This evening Stu Gott dropped a bombshell on me, not literally but it had a similar impact. The guys at rPath have run a report on our little project and I was shocked to say the least when I found out that the Bongo appliance has been downloaded 0ver 7000 times. I seem to remember thinking this is a nice small project for me to help the Bongo-Project with, it will never take off as much as the packages that Andrew and the others are creating but will allow me to do my part.

Well to say the least I was sceptical as you can guess but then he pasted these stats for me to look at.

+——————+
| ReportforProject |
+——————+
| Bongo            |
+——————+
+———–+—————–+
| Downloads | ImageType       |
+———–+—————–+
|   2917    | INSTALLABLE_ISO |
|      4    | LIVE_ISO        |
|   1002    | MICROSOFT_VHD   |
|      1    | RAW_HD_IMAGE    |
|   1090    | VMWARE_ESX      |
|   1891    | VMWARE_PLAYER   |
|   1040    | XEN_IMAGE       |
|      1    | XEN_OVA         |
|   7946    | NULL            |
+———–+—————–+
+———–+——-+——+
| Downloads | Month | Year |
+———–+——-+——+
|     15    | 08    | 2007 |
|      4    | 09    | 2007 |
|     40    | 10    | 2007 |
|    384    | 01    | 2008 |
|    821    | 02    | 2008 |
|    732    | 03    | 2008 |
|   1048    | 04    | 2008 |
|   1249    | 05    | 2008 |
|    938    | 06    | 2008 |
|    961    | 07    | 2008 |
|    812    | 08    | 2008 |
|    634    | 09    | 2008 |
|    308    | 10    | 2008 |
+———–+——-+——+

I had to add up the totals myself as I could not believe it was that much. But true to form the total was 7000 which is a great achievement.

I cannot continue on without mentioning the guys who keep this project going I am not going to mention names as I my memory is so bad that I would forget someone. THANKS GUYS!!!!!!!

I feel like I have won and Oscar or something like that.

This has not been a chore to do as I have been learning as we have gone along and without Stu Gott’s help I am sure I would still be pulling my hair out. What shocks me more is that people are downloading us even though we say that it is not quite ready for use yet.

I am sure we will break all types of records when we release version 1.0 and it is something I look forward to. There is still many hours of programming and packaging ahead of us and we will continue doing what we do best looking after our baby as it were.

I almost forgot to add that I want to that all the people who have downloaded The Bongo appliance and also the other packages for being interested and also for trying us out. We are getting better and better.

I have run out of words to say………

Thanks

I have been running the release version of VMware Server 2 and I must say I am impressed. the only problems I had were with existing VM’s and upgrading the tools on them. And also VM’s that have open-vm-tools installed.

After updating the tools the systems all have been functioning just fine over the last few weeks and the host system has been under less load with more vm’s installed.

I might create a post on how I did it , but work is taking a load of my time and so that will have to be later.

I did try the new ESXi server but my hardware is not supported and I don’t have the cash to buy new stuff.

http://www.novell.com/communities/node/6070

Seems like everyone is loving linux

Ever since vmware made ESXi a free download I have wanted to install and run it at home so I can P to V my systems at home. And save money on electricity. And before you ask I have looked at the Xen and Virtualbox and Kvm solutions but have found them not quite ready fro my prime time.

I had been running vmware server in the past with reasonable success.

I downloaded an iso of the ESXi installer and dutifully copied all my VM’s to an external disk. When I tried to install esx it complained about not finding a device to install the image on-to.

I initially thought it was the SATA problem so installed an IDE drive to see if that would help but it did not.

I even tried a full ESX3.5 install CD but that also did not work.

So I downloaded Opensuse 11 mini and installed that and vmware server 2 which is actually quite decent and the new web based management is actually quite usable.

I will continue my quest however. But it looks like I will have to get some new hardware. The prerequisites for this is that it must be quiet as the machine stands in out lounge next to the TV and the missus does not want to hear it. I also need 64bit support as I do some dev work for foresight and need that for packaging.

We will see how it goes.

The links below are the ones I currently have looked at. And will add more to the post as I find them or they are suggested.

http://vinf.net/2008/01/14/vmware-esx-v35-on-cheap-pc-hardware/

http://www.theinquisitivegeek.com/2006/11/esx-on-whitebox-as-many-of-you-know-i.html

http://www.techhead.co.uk/building-a-low-cost-cheap-vmware-esx-test-server