February 2, 2007
12:20
I normally enjoy listening to LUG Radio, but they appear to have taken the stance of bashing Novell and all things related to them including SUSE/openSUSE as a result of the announcement with Microsoft. As it was the last episode for 2006, they had a "Predictions" segment, one of the predictions was that there will be only 2/3 major community distrobutions - Ubuntu (surprise, surprise!), Fedora and Debian. They reckon that openSUSE will dissapear as Novell's focus is purely enterprise related.
As they like to say on the show CHIN! Do they forget that SUSE has been around since about 1996, and has a huge community attached to it. They also reckon that if Novell ceased support for openSUSE the community would not be able to pick the baton up and and run with it. Sorry but a definate pile of crud.
So Novell ceased sponsorship of Hula, that doesn't mean they are moving away from community projects, they have managed to get Messaging Architects to take on the sponsorship role and keep the project going albeit in a slightly different direction that some would have liked.
Bongo has managed to pick the baton up when Novell couldn't give a quick enough response to requests, as a new fledgling project I think Bongo has done pretty damn well. We now have a superb looking Wiki - thanks to Sebastian for the final artwork and Luis for making some good comments on the initial work; Michel for setting up the forum; Jonny for doing the documentation; Alex and Patrick for hacking (more hackers required
); Alex for his leadership; but most importantly ALL parties involved regardless of their technical abilities.So in a nutshell LUG Radio - Kiss your chin as you're spouting so much bull!
February 8, 2007
08:42
of distros to be built against! This couldn't have come at a better
time as my FC6 virtual machine managed to annoy me so I wiped it in a
fit of rage
So to summarise the avialable distrobutions available for Bongo from the OBS are:
One thing to note is that currently openSUSE 10.2 doesn't work (builds but doesn't run) due to Python 2.5 - a bug
has been filed with a possible solution, and Luis and Alex are
assessing what route is best to take for a fix. The other distros will have to wait until the libcurl issue has been fixed.
If I could ask users of the packages to file bugs with regards to issues, that would be most helpful, you can also shout on the mailing lists and IRC. I will be more active on IRC as of next week as I'll be back in the office, and not galavanting around.
February 12, 2007
16:11
In total there are now 10 binary packages + 1 source package. These can be obtained from the following places:
-
Mandriva 2007
-
Fedora Core 5
-
Fedora Core 6
-
SUSE 10.0
-
SUSE 10.1
-
openSUSE 10.2
-
SUSE Linux Enterprise 10
There are currently issues with the x86_64 builds, which I'm trying to resolve so please be patient. I'm also going to start looking at getting CentOS 4 builds done this week, and hopefully Debian/Ubuntu builds.
The issues with building on Mandriva 2006, SLES 9, and SUSE 9.3 are still outstanding but are being worked on. As always any problems/issues log a bug, and try and get me on IRC or the mailing lists.
February 16, 2007
19:44
The reason for dropping them is: SUSE 9.3 is no longer supported as of April and Mandriva 2006 has an outdated gnutls. So we have a total of six distros being built by the OBS and one manually. One thing I noticed today is that the OBS provides RSS feeds for your project
So I have also updated the Wiki with RSS feeds for the OBS packages in the "Feeds" section - Funny that eh?!The latest release is M1RC1, as the name suggests this isn't the final M1 release but that should be out on Monday (hopefully). This release is based on r25. The url for the downloads will hopefully be changing soon, I have requested from the OBS that Bongo get its own repository and that way all official packages can be sourced from there and my project page can turn into a bit of a play ground
So to get the latest package subscribe to the RSS feed that corresponds to your distro, I'll be updating the wiki with regards to installing from packages soon - honest.
22:33
Alex has mentioned doing a BOF (he did one last year for Hula) which I think is a pretty good idea. Hopefully we can get some shirts made up prior to going there. So far Alex, Jonny and myself are thinking of going - I just need to convince the wife to let me go, I'm currently getting a good ear bashing
If anyone else is serious about going either jump on IRC or mail into the mailing lists and let us know if you plan on
coming and also if you have any ideas other than doing a BOF.
February 20, 2007
13:30
. The wiki will be updated shortly to
reflect the addition, but for now head on over to here to get the goodness that is
Bongo.On a slightly less chirpy note, RHEL4, SLES9, CentOS4 and Mandriva 2006 builds are pretty much a no-go at this moment in the space-time continuum. This is mostly down to GNUTLS' API changing and the aforementioned distros have the "old" one. Alex and Pat are working away trying to get it resolved as soon as possible, thanks go to Michel for troubleshooting and finding the issue.
February 25, 2007
19:28
1. Welcome to the Bugle
2. News from the Bongoverse
3. Tips and tricks
4. IRC and Mailing list discussions
5. Bookmarks
6. Next Issue
--
1. Welcome to the Bugle
As this is the launch edition of the Bongo Bugle things will change (hopefully for the better) as feedback is received from you, the benevolent reader. The aim of this delightful publication is to provide an insight into all that is related to the Bongo Project, hopefully mixing the serious with the humorous - granted the humour may be lost in some spots. I will endeavour to get some sort of release schedule, but for now it is going to be very much it's released when it's ready
To assist the development of this publication, comments are appreciated. You have a few options, comment against this article, mail into the Bongo Users mailing list (see the Bookmarks section for details), voice your comment on IRC (again see the Bookmarks section for details) or e-mail me..
--
2. News from the Bongoverse
So what is new in the Bongoverse, actually what the heck is a "Bongoverse"? Well if you haven't worked it out, a Bongoverse is made up! Bongo + Universe = Bongoverse, get it?! Good, now we can continue.
- Key components get hosted, the homepage/wiki is hosted by Oregon State University Open Source Labs,
subversion and mailing lists are provided by GNA! and the forum is provided by OpenSource Nieuws Nederland.
- Unified look on the ether with a homepage/wiki, forum and planet (again see the Bookmarks section for details)
- We hit the first key stage in development, the M1 release.
- There are packages for seven distrobutions of which there are actually three "real" distrobutions - the remainder are made up of versions of the "real" distros.
- The openSUSE Build Service is used heavily in the creation of RPM packages.
- More developers are jumping into the fire to help out the venerable duo of Alex and Pat (we still want more hackers!)
- We want a Google SummorOfCode a dedicated page has been set up over here
--
3. Tips and Tricks
Well the first tip is how the heck do I get hold of this lovely thing called Bongo?
Simple, honest
You have two choices,
Source or Binary. As not all distrobutions have packages available you may need to build Bongo from the "elemental goo". To do so, you need to ensure you have a package called subversion
installed "subversion" (yes I know it might sound a bit gagagoogoo to you old timers, but we aim to cater
for everyone!); once you have verified that you do indeed have what is commonly referred to as "svn" installed you may proceed to get the gooey goodness by running the one of the following
commands (it maybe wise to create a directory called Bongo-Source or something and ensure you are in it before running your command of choice):Checkout over SVN protocol - TCP 3690 (may get blocked by some firewalls):
svn co svn://svn.gna.org/svn/bongo/trunk bongo
Checkout over http (less likely to be blocked):
svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/bongo/trunk bongo
Once you have done that it may be nice to see what has changed in each revision:
svn log bongo > bongosvnlog.txt(This creates a text file called "bongosvnlog.txt" containing the log)
From there it's a matter off following the guide to install or hacking at the files
--
4. IRC and Mailing list discussions
There has been a reasonable amount of traffic on both IRC and the three mailing lists, details are in the bookmarks section.
- Pat has slaved away getting the SMTP service cleaned up
- Lance has taken his first steps to becoming a hacker, by first resolving why the init scripts weren;t working correctly, then by determining the mod_python line in the bongo.conf file for
apache was no longer required, but his 'piece de resistance' is his work on changing the way the bongo-setup program configures Bongo. Hopefully very soon you will be able to specify the url
you use to access your Bongo server, and therefore end the annoying certificate warnings.
- Alex and Nick had a very interesting conversation about calendars, which then led onto timezones.
- Lionel is attempting to resolve some issues with bongo-standalone.
- Alex has voiced his hopes of getting Bongo to provide OpenID.
- There has also been the obligatory inane drivel that always makes IRC that much better than MSN
--
5. Bookmarks
As the title may suggest, this section is all about the links. We will hopefully have one of the most up to date collections of Bongo associated links available. Don't forget that on any of the three official sites (homepage/forum/planet you can easily browse to another official site from the top left):
-
Bongo homepage and wiki
-
Planet Bongo - An aggregation of Bongo contributors blogs
-
Bongo Forums
-
Developer Section - One for all you hackers out there
-
Bug Tracker
-
Bongo's place on GNA!
-
Mailing list - bongo-commits - Commits on the Bongo Project repositories. No
direct posts allowed.
-
Mailing list - bongo-devel - Discuss development of the Bongo system
-
Mailing list - bongo-users - General user support and chat
-
#bongo - The IRC channel on irc.oftc.net
-
IRC Logs - A great way of following the discussions that have been going on
--
6. Next Issue
This is the bit that comes down to you, tell us what you want. As it stands now the intention is for nothing. Oh sorry do you want more? You should really see a shrink, but ok; the next fine instalment of the Bongo Bugle will hopefully bring a new feature with it - "You're Nicked" an interrogation of a contributor. More Bongoverse, more tips and tricks and hopefully more developers and users
Thanks for your time patience and insanity, this has been a party political broadcast on behalf of the Bongo Project. Downloadable copies can be obtained in odt or pdf formats, please "right click" and select "save as".
February 27, 2007
21:40
If you are planning on going, and would like to tout Bongo check on IRC or the mailing list first. I'm not sure what could be done off the top of my head, but it could use some of the material for LRL - yes I know there is nothing yet, so come up with some ideas I'd love to be proved wrong
.
February 28, 2007
17:41
Linux:
- Opera 9 - Fine
- FireFox 1.5.8 - Fine
- FireFox 2 - Fine
- Konqueror 3.5.5 - Works with issues. Login screen not very clear, login labels scrambled, colours not what they should be, log out doesn't work
- Epiphany 2.16.1 - Fine
- SeaMonkey 1.1 - Fine
- Lynx 2.8.6 - Failed no JavaScript support
- Links 2.1 - Failed no JavaScript support
Windows:
- Opera 9 - Fine
- FireFox 1.5.8 - Fine
- FireFox 2 - Fine
- Internet Explorer 6 - Fine
- Internet Explorer 7 - Fine, but favicon doesn't display correctly
It would be great to get results from other browsers/OSes. If anyone has OSX or any other OS could you try as many browsers as possible and just make sure that full functionality is there as there is in Linux.
UPDATE:
I've tried connecting from a couple of mobile phones without any luck, both of them have modified browsers based on Opera
- SonyEricsson M600 - Login page is garbled and reports a lot of Mochkit errors
- SonyEricsson K800i - Fails to load the login screen with a complaint of "Page is too large, try another link"
