Tarballs of Ion! — zakame’s blog

This past couple of weeks saw a lot of Debian and Ubuntu work from me in (hopefully) equal measure.

For Debian, I whipped up new versions of robotour, xshisen, libmemcache, and gtklp; robotour finally installs in /usr/games as it should be; xshisen acks NMUs and finally has a sane source package (well, a little bit tipsy still, but at least it’s now fixes the NMU source b0rkage;) libmemcache’s -dev now installs its headers to the right location; and gtklp bumps to a new upstream, with touch-fu replacing AM_MAINTAINER_MODE for seamless build. Thanks a lot to my wonderful sponsors Margarita Manterola, Sylvain Le Gall, and Andreas Metzler for the uploads!

On the other hand, opendchub has migrated to testing, and its initscript failed (not to mention missing a manpage) I’ve fixed the latter, but I still have to figure out how to fix the former; I’ll probably have to consult the reference and add an unprivileged opendchub system user and configure the daemon to use that, or fix the source and allow flexible redefinition of opendchub’s working/configuration directories (currently hardcoded to $HOME/.opendchub). Either way, I have to touch the source and make patches; and I would appreciate it very much if my dearest readers can help out

On the lighter (or heavier, depending on your POV) side, I noticed that Steve McIntyre posted an RFH for cvs, and I’ve decided to help out a bit. Seeing the source, I was pleasantly surprised as the age (and design) of this package, and it would be a blast for me to study this (and fix bugs, prepare patches, and release new versions while at it. It would also prepare me better for NM as well.

As for my Ubuntu work, I’ve upgraded my Breezy Badger desktop to Dapper Drake last Monday (just in time for Flight 4,) and I’m quite amazed at the new features of this release. Like many folks I just loved xchat-gnome’s notification feature (especially when you’re moving in between workspaces very often) and was very much pleased with the speed of Gnome 2.13.91 (so much so that I’ve departed from my normal Ion3 desktop without regretting it.

But of course, since Dapper Drake is the latest development branch, there were some snags that I got to encounter. One particular bug was with masqmail, because the 0.2.21-1ubuntu1 version created a /var/run/masqmail directory, but since /var/run is mounted as a tmpfs in Dapper, masqmail will complain the next time it restarts. Another (probably cosmetic) bug(?) was with tuxpaint, since it placed a couple of launchers in the Gnome Applications menu, one on Education and the other on Graphics. I’ve yet to see if tuxpaint’s is a genuine bug or just a design decision, but I’ve fixed masqmail’s, and 0.2.21-1ubuntu2 should be on Dapper now, thanks to Daniel Holbach.

So far I’m loving the new Ubuntu release, and with FeatureFreeze finally here that means I’ll have to drag my desktop box again to the local internet cafe to do yet another aptitude dist-upgrade. Gaah, I need a laptop!

Last night, I have started the long road of NM towards becoming a Debian Developer. I’m looking forward to doing more work (and learning stuff while I work in the next 18 or so months of being in the queue. And even more Debian work after that, for sure

Thanks to Mark and Sacha I finally got to have my GPG key signed; and just this morning Andreas advocated me. Guys, rock on!

Whew! Wow! Yay!

It’s been just a couple of days since the Bicol Open Source Forum was held at the Aquinas University, but I can’t just seem to forget it. It’s been a rocking experience, and I wished it were a bit longer:

• I met Irvin (at last) who also gave my a copy of Dapper Flight 3. \o/ Together with Rick, we gave away lots of Ubuntu CDs at the event (I practically went back home to Daet with an empty box
• I also got to chat with fellow speakers Rick Bahague Jr. of CP-Union who presented the state of FOSS and Rage Callao of ASTI-DOST who is working on the Philippines’ very own Bayanihan Linux. Both are really cool guys in their own right, and they also are Debian/Ubuntu users too! Rage was also kind enough to give me his own 16-CD Debian Sarge collection (plus Bayanihan 3.1 and Thin Client Manager); Thanks a lot!!!
• I was surprised at the number of people who attended the forum, as well as their attention to detail during the presentations, and most of all, in their line of questioning: these were mostly non-technical management people, and they all seem to use GNU/Linux in its various incarnations for quite some time now. I hope that these people would continue their adventure into FOSS; especially with (both) regional and local government support, I’m quite excited to see what holds for FOSS in Bicol in the future
• I got involved in the founding of the Bicol Open Source Society that would serve as the overseer and motivator for FOSS projects and events here in Bicol. Included in the org are folks from academe and local govenrment units, and we’re set to have an online meeting sometime next week. Of course, we’re composed of a small number of people for now, but I expect that with some additional visibility (starting with making a new mailing list) I think a lot of Bicolanos in the region and elsewhere will be very interested in joining. Hopefully there would be provincial LUGs soon, and I think this would be a very good prospect for a PLUG roadshow.
• I got to see Bulkang Mayon and the Cagsawa Ruins too with Rick and the DOST folks at the day after the event (too bad Rage had to go ahead.) A couple of van-rides later and I’m back home, trying out a Dapper upgrade, and quite tired but happy.

Thanks a lot to Joseph Cadag and Josephina Abilay of DOST/RITECC for organizing the event and bringing FOSS to the attention of many Bicolanos I look forward for another event like this soon: from what I hear there would be an even bigger one set for July. I guess I should be pinging Marilize of Ubuntu now to reserve some flyers and CDs…

…but right now, on the the Dapper upgrade! Break my Breezy and lemme have my jigsaw puzzle

Two days from now, I’ll be pushing for Legaspi to be a speaker for the Bicol Open Source Forum. I’m going to talk about general FOSS and Linux stuff. I’ll also meet up with fellow Ubuntero Irvin Piraman and give away some Ubuntu CDs together :D. If you’re anywhere near Aquinas University, drop me a line.

On the Debian side, my updates for opendchub and dbacl have hit Sid, thanks to the great Florian Ragwitz I’ve still yet to see ecb, xshisen, and rccp sponsored though I’ve seen some hope for ecb, thanks to Bart Martens, who was very helpful and put the updated URL for the latest ecb source package on the ITA.

As for the writing, I’m now doing some final school reports for the year-ender. Ooh, just a month more, and here comes summer!!! I just hope there’s something like a local Google Summer of Code…

Heh, its been more than a day now since I got back from Manila after the Ubuntu AsiaBusinessTour, and even then I have some stuff to do here (both IRL and IOL work) before I could find some time to blog

Here are the highlights of my trip:

• Feb 1 - Arrived in Manila around 6 in the evening; spent the early part of the evening looking for an internet cafe to check on mail. libmemcache got ACCEPTED, but it FTBFS on powerpc $DEITY, I sure wish I had my desktop with me! (or at least some access to a ppc Looked for someone on #debianPPC to help me solve it (and indeed got the hint by the next day Slept late.
• Feb 2 - Woke up late, checked mail only to be told by Jerome to GO HERE NOW to the Peninsula Manila for the ABT breakfast meeting. After a short tirade with some Ayala traffic enforcers about crossing pedestrian lanes, I was able to arrive (already late) to Garcia Villa, seeing Jerome, Charo, Clair, and Dom, providing a nice representation for both PLUG and Ubuntu-PH. The Inceptions folks (who I met last time at LinuxWorld) were there as well. Mark was already talking when I arrived, while Hande and Malcolm from Canonical were at the back with the local media; and after that, I got to talk with the SABDFL, of all things, about my Debian packaging adventure last night :/ After lunch, we then transferred to the National Computer Center at UP Diliman (Canonical in the chopper, Ubuntu-PH and PLUG in Jerome’s Picanto) to continue the Tour for government representatives and CIOs (which didn’t go quite well in my opinion; imagine crickets signing in the night), NGOs, and academe (which was much better, especially since Doc Pablo Manalastas asked the last question regarding backports.) Mark and company had to leave early, which left us PLUG/Ubuntu-PH people going to the UP Shopping Center for snacks, some talk, and an early wrapup. I however still slept late. Photos by Charo are visible.
• Feb 3 - After doing some errands in the morning, I went to Makati to meet up with Shelley, Markku, and Rommel of Inceptions. I will be doing a project with them

I’ve adopted opendchub, rccp, and xshisen from Grzegorz Prokopski too Heh, I’ll be quite busy this coming week…