European Wafaa

With the upcoming openSUSE 11.0 there was due to be a slight gap in GNOME on the , no bittorrent client included in the install. A slight issue that jpr wanted to resolve, so he threw a request out to the community looking for suggestions as to which GNOME client to include. Several suggestions came back on the mailing list, but nothing really definitive. So insteps yours truly offering to take all those suggested and do a simple review (I use that word very loosely ). The reviewed applications were all written in a form of Gtk, either Gtk+ or Gtk#. You can read my findings here.

One of the suggestions was for a new app called Monsoon written by Alan McGovern, and I like it (that may have shown up in my little piece). This fine thing is written in Gtk# and is starting to pick up momentum, and before anyone mentions it - No, GNOME is not being taken over by Mono!!

You can get monsoon from the GNOME:Community repo or by the usual

If you have any views on which bittorrent client should be included, you have until this weekend to make your voice heard, either by IRC but preferably by mail on the opensuse-gnome mailing list.

I just remembered that I had uploaded a copy of the Lightning Talk I gave at FOSDEM this year to enable people to view it online, for all you that wish to please see the video below:



If you cant see the video please click here to view it online

That would be a DragonFly into an Avocado by the way.

This weekend sees the start of a hackfest being undertaken by our very own Alexander "halex" Hixon, yes the same one that has been getting praise for fiddling about with some fandangled Media Player, and our illustrious coxswain Alex "so_solid_moo" Hudson to transform our old clunky (code wise) DragonFly WebUI into the sleek, sexy and functional Avocado WebUI.

They are aiming purely at the web stuff for this, so if you have any python, JavaScript, CSS, html knowledge/experience please do drop by #bongo on oftcnet even if you are only just learning to hack please jump in - every little helps . Tasks will probably involve finishing off the XHTML/CSS design, and doing some of the backend work as well as hooking up the two together with the JavaScript. A simplistic view of the architecture is something along the lines of

bongo + agents <--> python/webserver <--> xhtml + css + js

It is the latter two chunks that are getting the makeover. The plan is to start from scratch and not regurgitate any of the old code, and the outcome will hopefully make it into the M4 release. You can have a peek at the code so far from http://svn.gna.org/svn/bongo/avocado/ .

So come one and all and bring all your web hackery skills to the party

Tweet that is!

I unfortunately succumbed to Twitter, after a call for help from Justin Haygood to test his Twitux package; and to be honest it isn't that bad. Yes it has been called blogging for retards, but I find it useful as a means of blogging something that doesn't warrant a full post here on my blog. You can follow my inane ramblings at http://www.twitter.com/awafaa should you wish.

I also came across a lovely little script from Guillermo Antonio Amaral Bastidas to tweet from the command line:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Twitter Update
#
# Requires: cURL http://curl.haxx.se/
# By Guillermo Antonio Amaral Bastidas < gamaral@guillermoamaral.com >
#

### CONFIGURE ###

declare -rx USERNAME=”YOUR_USERNAME”
declare -rx PASSWORD=”YOUR_PASSWORD”

### DONT MODIFY ###

declare -x STATUS=”$@”

curl ‘http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml’ \
-u ${USERNAME}:${PASSWORD} \
-d “status=${STATUS}” > /dev/null 2> /dev/null

# EOF

You can download it from Guillermo here. I downloaded it to ~/bin added my username and password and then added a link so i can tweet from any directory easily ln -s ~/bin/twitter /usr/bin/clitwitter. Yes the name is intentional as I resisted for so long to join Twitter that I feel a bit of a "CU Next Tuesday" as I do actually like it.

When it comes to Blog or CMS software the bulk of them are written in PHP with some written in Python and a couple written in Perl. As I'm no programmer I just pick one that I could setup and use without too much hassle. The problem is that there is so much choice, and I'm a bit of a dufus at times and like to be different and not follow the norm.

I have been reading the Monologue for a while and trying to keep up with all the stuff that those monkey loving folk are up to, and I noticed that there was a CMS that uses mono - mojoPortal. So I thought okay you don't hear of many folk using mono to power their sites (there may well be a reason, but I don't know it ), and I decided to give it a go. Well it works, and it works IMHO pretty well. One plus is that for the lazy folk (yes I'm one of them) there are packages all ready to roll sitting in the Mono:Community repo.

There are some configuration steps required, but they aren't too difficult, honest if I can do it so can you Just to prove how easy it is here is what I did to get it all going on openSUSE 10.3, this is assuming you are using a dedicated server built using the "Minimal Text" install option:

1. Add the server:database repo from the "Community Repositories" in YaST or
zypper ar -r http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/server:/database/openSUSE_10.3 && zypper mr -r Apache
2. Add the Mono:Community repo and also the Mono repo
zypper ar -r http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Mono:/Community/openSUSE_10.3 MonoCommunity && zypper mr -r MonoCommunity
zypper ar -r http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Mono/openSUSE_10.3 Mono && zypper mr -r Mono
3. Install mojoPortal and all of the required dependencies
zypper in mojoportal
4. Start the postgres server
chkconfig postgresql on
rcpostgreql start
It may well be worth you taking note of Pascal's little guide on setting up a PostgreSQL server
5. Create the target database
su - postgres
createuser -A -d $USERNAME --pwprompt
psql template1
CREATE DATABASE "$DBNAME" WITH OWNER = "$USERNAME" ENCODING = 'LATIN1';
\q
createlang --dbname=$DBNAME --username=postgres -W plpgsql
6. Copy the apache config file to the correct directory
cp /usr/share/mono/asp.net/conf/mojoportal-2.2.4.6.b/mojoportal.conf /etc/apache2/vhosts.d
You may edit it if you wish, I just left it as is because it worked fine for me
7. Enter the PostgreSQL details from Step 5 into the mojoPortal config file (yes you may use your preferred editor here)
vi /usr/share/mono/asp.net/apps/mojoportal-2.2.4.6.b/Web.config
Around line 84 you will have something similar to add key="PostgreSQLConnectionString" value="Server=localhost;Port=5432;User Id=test;Password=test;Database=mojoportal;Pooling=false;Encoding=UNICODE;" you need to change the values of User Id, Password and Database. If your database server is not on the same machine as your Apache installation then you need to change Server.
8. Still in the Web.config file you need to change the details of the SMTP server to use on line 169 and 821
9. Change the e-mail address for the system and webmaster on lines 177 and 178
10. Point your browser to http://your.new.server/mojoportal/Setup/Default.aspx and then off you go you now have an ASP.net powered site running on Linux and it's completely and legitimately free.

You can skip Steps 8 & 9 if you wish, but I wouldn't recommend it just from a general housekeeping point of view if nothing else.

So now that mojoPortal is installed what next? Play around with it and get a feel for it, there are loads of built in options. One point that I feel it is slightly lacking in is that of Skins/Themes, the bundled ones are a bit on the dull side but I know that Joe Audette (he's the bright spark that created mojoPortal) is working on putting some new skins into the next release. There is a forum available for support etc, and Joe is pretty quick of the mark to answer your questions and provide advise - a real bonus.

I realise I may have hit a raw nerve by using ASP.net, but to be honest I was looking for something different and it also proves that on Linux everything is possible and we can have whatever we want almost, and on openSUSE it is easier than on others

Well seeing as it's coming up to the end of spring I've done a bit of house keeping with the Bongo related RPMs in the glorious Build Service. Yes that does mean a repository change (again)! I'll try and update the wiki later today, but for now here are the details:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/FunkyPenguin:/Bongo/<$VERSION>

You will ofcourse have to substitute $VERSION with your distro version

Further to my earlier post I've done a bit of spring cleaning with all of the packages that I maintain, I have also made sure that all of them have lovely 1Click buttons and functioning YMPs. So without further ado here they are:



















If anyone finds an issue with the YMPs please let me know.