Stuart Herbert | Gentoo

http://www.flickr.com/groups/gentoo/

Whilst sat here this morning waiting for the NX packages to build, it occured to me that we don’t have our own group on Flickr. Bit odd really, when you think of how many of us enjoy photography as a hobby.

Well, we do now

So, if you’re a Gentoo dev, come join the group, and share your photos with the rest of us Let’s see if, between us, we can build a rich and varied view of the world that we live, work, and play in.

Just one request … please, no screenies. Let’s keep this to photography.

My focus this week isn’t on the LAMP Server seed, but on our NX packages. Unfortunately, I’ve lost my proxy maintainer, and I’ve allowed these packages to become quite a mess.

Time for some sorting out.

The plan is to get FreeNX (and maybe 2X too) working against the NX-1.5.0 libraries first, and then to get the NoMachine nxserver-2.1 release working against the NX-2.x libraries. To save lots of time, I’m going to be working in the Gentoo NX Overlay; I’ll bring the packages across to the main Portage tree once I’m happy with them.

If you’re interested in helping to test these packages on amd64, ppc or sparc (which is where older versions are keyworded), give me a shout. The older packages are junk, and need removing from Portage; I’ll be dropping keywords if no-one’s available to test the newer packages.

I’ve revbumped the seeds-config/lamp-server-portage package this morning, to change some of the USE flags that it sets in package.use. Doing so made me realise that bumping all the package.* files under seeds-config/lamp-server-portage/files just for a one line change takes too much work.

Instead, I’ve switched the seeds-config/lamp-server-portage to hold the package.* files inside the ebuild itself. Bumping the ebuild is all that you have to do, whenever we need to change the settings.

This has made me look at support for package.use in profiles from a different angle. I’m still in favour of that feature, but I’m no longer so sure that making heavy use of it is right for the Seeds project.

If we change the contents of the profile (e.g., we change the USE flags listed in package.use), but we don’t give the profile a new name … then we’ve changed the behaviour of the profile itself. It’s not like changing a package, where a user gets to choose whether he wants the change or not (he chooses by upgrading to a later version of the package or not). Changing a profile means that we’re forcing a change on a user; the only way they can avoid the change is to avoid syncing, or by versioning their own tree.

In the back of my mind, I’m aware that one possible outcome from the Seeds project is that we might choose to build it against a slower-moving copy of the Gentoo package tree (i.e. the so-called ‘enterprise’ tree). (We’re not doing any work on this atm, btw, before anyone gets their knickers in a twist). If that happens, then the LAMP Server packages and profiles are likely to have a much longer shelf-life than your average Gentoo package. LAMP Server users (if we ever gain any ) will want to be able to roll out identical installs across their web farms. Reproducability (something that the wider Gentoo tree makes difficult) could become an important factor.

So, at the moment, when per-profile package.use comes along, I’m not sure whether or not to switch the seeds-config/lamp-server-portage package over using it or not. It’s going to require a bit more thought.

If we don’t switch, then that’ll probably force our hand, and make us have all the seed packages pin their deps down to exact versions of packages (e.g., explicitly require net-www/apache-2.2.3, instead of just net-www/apache).

The LAMP Server’s base-system will now pull in the network-tools package.

As with all the LAMP Server packages, I’m sure we’re missing a few tools that folks’d like to see included. Let me know what’s missing, and I’ll take a look at it.

Before heading into work this morning, I split up seeds-extra/misc-admin-tools; we now have separate packages for disk-tools and fs-tools.

I’m sure there are plenty of tools we should be including (but currently aren’t), so let me know what we’re missing - and why it should be included - and we’ll take a look.

I had a little accident at home over the weekend, and managed to break one of my little toes. I’m not in plaster or anything - the break doesn’t need it - but I’ll be taking it easy for a couple of weeks to give the bone the best chance of healing.

Hopefully, it won’t interfere too much with my contribution towards Gentoo, but if you’re looking for me and I’m not around, this’ll be why.

http://ossec.net/

One of the things that we need in the LAMP Server seed is a host-based intrusion detection system. It’s not the sort of tool that I’ve played with before; it’s nice to get to learn something new for a change

One of the packages I’m evaluating is ossec-hids. I’ve put together a basic package for this in my overlay (layman -a stuart-server). If I decide to take on the responsibility of maintaining this package longer term, I’ll move it across to the main Portage tree.

Samhain is also on the list, as is rkhunter. Any other packages I should be looking at?

If you want to see for yourself just how long the request to retire Patrick has been open, you can see for yourself in this bug. Given that Patrick’s brought his case to the court of public opinion, I think it’s worth your time to give it a read.

I for one don’t think that the bug backs up Patrick’s comments on Planet Gentoo, sorry. I think Bryan’s been very clear: if you want to be a dev, be a dev.

I think it would be nice to see a monthly “these devs are inactive and at risk of retirement”-type email on -dev, to make things a little more open (just like we announce dead packages before they actually get removed), but that’s a nice-to-have, not an essential announcement.

Oh, and whilst we’re dealing with wild claims on Planet Gentoo … for the record, it’s Daniel we have to thank for Planet Gentoo, not Patrick. He’s the one who took the Planet Gentoo idea and worked with Infra to deliver it.

Here is a link to the LWN article about allow_url_fopen that Robin was referring to. This link works for non-LWN subscribers too.

(Although, why do you need a link for non-subscribers? You’re subscribed to the Linux world’s finest news site already, right? )

I’ve added two new pages to the Gentoo Seeds Wiki this morning. We now have a page listing the roles where we know we need help, and a page listing the folks who are working on the project.

Please make sure you add your details to our team page

One of the things we’re looking for is someone who fancies creating a post-install configuration tool for seeds. The tool will need to be flexible - it must work on the console and in X (some seeds will not include X at all), it needs to support both configuration common to all seeds and per-seed configuration, and it needs to be scriptable too. As the tool is definitely post-install, it’s not intended to be a replacement for the Gentoo Linux Installer. If you’re interested in designing such a tool, come and talk to me