Tag: Foresight Linux

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Standing up and being counted.

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

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HTC Hero owner

Over the weekend I was able to have my mobile contract changed and part of the deal is that I get an HTC Hero.

This has made me quite happy as I have been forced to run windows mobile on my old phone for far to long and it is refreshing that I have an android phone.

The first thing I noticed was that the box was really small, I wondered if they had actually just given me the charger by mistake.

As soon as I had opened the box the shiny new black phone was there and there was even place for the charger. In past occasions when I have taken possession of a new phone I dumped the box and manual and turned on the phone, because how difficult could it be to use it?

I went against my better nature and actually looked for a manual in the box and there was none, at first I thought that HTC had eventually realised that Men NEVER read the manual and had not provided one as it was just wasteful and well useless. I dutifully plugged the phone into the socket and waited for the phone to charge, this did not take very long as I was able to turn the phone on after only 2 hours and the battery reading said full. I was in business.

I started clicking round on the application list and found the pdf reader. I thought that would be a good thing to have. When the app opened I realised that HTC had just moved with the times and supplied a PDF user guide all 200+ pages of it.

One of the things that annoys me is that your contacts get synced to a google account. I really don’t like that at all. My contacts are MY property and I want to keep it that way.

I have searched for some time now for a contacts app that allows you to use the phone without contacting google or some other company to store your data. I have looked at what it would take to code my own one and then realised I can’t code……. say no more.

I would really appreciate any help in finding this killer app for my system.

I am really excited that we could develop an app for android or the iPhone that interfaces with our whole system and then this problem goes away. I just can’t wait. Enough for now I need to search for my contacts app.

EDIT: I just realised that I forgot to mention that there is no app I can find that will sync your evolution/thunderbird PIM to the android system. I have searched high and low but as far as I can tell nothing exists.

Boy I wish I could code

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Monsoon 0.20 Packaged

Monsoon 0.20 packaged.

I have eventually packaged the new version of monsoon for Foresight Linux. My apologies to Alan for taking so long. Life has a habit of taking over sometimes.

Well I have added the new meta tags that zodman’s new packagekit needs so it should have a short description about it.

Please test this version for me as I would love for it to become Foresight Linux’s default torrent client.

Thanks again to all the guys on the Foresight irc channel for the help when I get stuck while I build packages.

Have fun using a great tool.

As Zodman has pointed out I should add the command to install the package

so to install for testing please use  – – –

sudo conary update monsoon=foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-devel

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Bongo Appliance Users – new Bongo Experimental Packages in the rPath repo

I have been working on getting the svn build of Bongo into the rPath repo for users to try.

I have now completed that and the newest build of bongo is available in the 0.40-devel repository.

Please be aware that this version has only been tested on rPath 2 and so cannot be used on rPath 1 systems.

Please also remember that the webmail UI and admin side of things is currently broken so if you are not comfy running command line tools with Bongo please don’t upgrade.

Let me know if you find any problems

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Bongo Experimental Packages In Rpath Repo

Well,

I remember I said to myself this year I will get the svn build for Bongo into the bongo repo on rpath. It has taken a awhile but I now have the 0.4 svn version available in the repository. I will also be creating a few VM’s of the experimental new Rpath 2 version of the Bongo appliance.

WARNING!!!!!!

The Web UI is no longer working so if you use that do NOT update to this version.

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Foresight Linux Product Definitions

I have been working on the product definitions for Foresight Linux repositories which will help the different versions have a common set of details.

I will try to blog as much as possible about this so that everyone knows where I am at.

I am currently setting up a test definition on my playground repo so that I can test my changes and clarify with everyone that they are what is needed.

I will be using the gnome-media group fromthe Foresight Linux repository to create the tests against. I have hit a small issue cloning the group into my repository but I hope to fix this asap.

I will post again when I have finished the group clone

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Looking to virtualise at home

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

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Mypaint added

Mypaint has now been added to FL:2-devel.

from their website

MyPaint is a fast and easy painting application. It lets you focus on the art instead of the program.

It comes with a large brush collection including charcoal and ink to emulate natural painting. Other features are:

  • support for pressure sensitive graphic tablets
  • unlimited canvas (you never have to resize)
  • undo
  • fast
  • no layers (work in progress)
  • using pygtk with C extensions

If you want to look deeper, MyPaint is built around a highly configurable brush engine. This allows you to experiment with your own brushes and with not-quite-natural painting.