Friday, October 31, 2008

SPR720 reviewing

Reviewing a Fedora package.

NAD710 lab 5

A bit about SAMBA and xinetd ...

Once again Professor Chan took us through a 'hands-on' installation and configuration of an industry standard software product within the very brief two hour lab period for our networking course. He does this every time and while responding to both related and unrelated questions and coaching individual students in anything network related. His ability to deal with distractions while maintaining the direction of his students' focus toward the desired goals is remarkable - almost as remarkable as his mastery of the subject he teaches.

As sys admins samba is something we need to be aware of. At one time it would have been mandatory to have a working kowledge of this hybrid network product (hybrid in the sense that it is a link between Linux and Windows). Even though modern windows systems have moved away from the model where this product works so well, it remains a viable simple solution for organizing older networks that remain in place in some sectors due to lack of funding for newer equipment. I am not going to say anything on the details of samba just a link to the samba site.samba

xinetd is an interesting daemon. It is an interesting approach to managing server process in an uniform way. Choosing to introduce this 'server of servers' in the samba lab really drives home the point of what it is for. The real beauty of this lab lies in the fact that I came away having completed installations and configurations such that if I never look back at them, I still have a solid general and practical understanding/experience to draw on in amy real work situation.

In short, I have had a chance to reflect on the learning experience in my program and find the Lecture/Lab combination a really powerful combination in that we are given enough knowledge and practical experience to easily embrace a subject and take it as far as our own needs dictate. It leaves me with a sense of accomplishment.

SYA710 automated installation and breaking barriers

I'll fill this in later but a few headings now

1. isomaster
2. kickstart
3. trying to figure out boot loaders

isomaster - I thought of an .ISO file as a finished product something that could be copied but not altered. That is my misunderstanding. This lab had the intention of having us automate a linux installation. One side-effect was an introduction to isomaster and using it to modify our iso file to automate the installation. This tool is very powerful.

kickstart - this is the Fedora way to set up an automated installation. As I learn about Wubi (Ubuntu installer for windows), and its 'preseeding' approach to automating a linux installation, I see the kickstart approach as parallel thinking in different open software communities.

The lab had us download an iso file for fedora installation and modify the generic kickstart file that is created specific to each installation to copy it to the iso: thus creating a new iso that repeats our basic install with need for human intervention. This is one of those barrier breaking moments: a very enabling lab.

boot loaders - sitll a mystery to me!!

wubi weekend

1. figure out how to build wubi - i.e. come to grips with the python installer and its makefile setup
2. build it without making it compiled code
3. single step through an install (windows side only)

Needless to say I'm still figuring out how it all works.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

open source


FSOSS was great. For me Friday was it. The two workshops I attended were very high calibre, two dynamic presenters and content that was itself an eclectic mix of dumming down to meet the audience needs and then the real thing once people were 'getting it'.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Wubi port project


This is my Fedora project. Port Wubi to Fedora.
I've been dragging my feet on this soooo, time to turn the page. I just got the source code for the new Wubi/lupin builds. Pure python. That surprised me - I had expected it to be a combination of C++ and python (with python replacing the earlier NSIS stuff) - even though I was told it was being written in python. The new code will be part of the Ubuntu 9.04 Just to make it very clear - I have no part in the Wubi Ubuntu installer project.

I will be using the new code - I am very grateful to Agostino Russo, the head of the Wubi project for giving me access to this code, I feel privileged. So far, I'v just set up my XP environment - I guess I didn't really need those compilers anyway :) well they are still useful for compiling the older Wubi which I will also need to learn from.

Anyway, thanks alot to the Wubi team!

SPR720 Lab, RPM creation sqlite exit 0

Finally, couldn't believe the solution to my problem. error: Installed (but unpackaged) file(s) found:

I reread the Fedora book package chapter and the Fedora site info
PackageMaintainers/CreatingPackageHowTo

ONly thing i didn't do was run out and the Maximum RPM book (I may do that yet).

I simply copied/pasted the list of files under the error message under the %files section and it built. This was a very useful exercise. I want to look for something I can package and try to submit to Fedora (will need to find something I already know so it won't take too much time). It would be good to go through the whole process even ifit is not finally accepted the insight on how this works would be very useful for the future.

I guess the spec file is redundant since it will be in the other rpms anyway.

sqlite-3.6.3-1.fc9.i386.rpm


sqlite-3.6.3-1.fc9.src.rpm

Sunday, October 5, 2008

gettin back on track


Ohhh too many distractions - got unix in a nusthell at the second hand shop 49cents
and a bunch of stuff out to the way so now ill get down to work

Just replaced the hard drive in my vaio and for 60 bucks it is working again (great I even have some screws left over) put a 20 G Ubuntu partition, the only thing I had handy, and put the RPM package on so I can work on RPM a bit before our guest speaker (Andrew Overholdt - he coming at Red Hat) tomorrow. I'll try to get Fedora on it too before his talk so I won't miss anything.

My Eee Pc is back running Xandros - I'll look at their wiki and figure out what I need to do (wifi drivers) to get Fedora going on it - later. Going through Chapter 5 on the Fedora Linux (tyler, 07) book now. I'll run a bunch of rpm commands trying out the combination of package queries and output options and put the results on a wiki here . Once I get the idea I'll start on the lab for the scripting class... more later

The presentation by the Red Hat package maintainers was great. I'm glad I am doing this after their presentation. There is a lot to it but they went through the whole process and explained everything as they went. Not just that though, they went through an example of submitting a package for review using a real world example (the package author was in the room) and even using the koji build system. There was a lot of information for a one hour session: my own focus was on their detailed analysis of the .spec file (that specifies the packaging build process). I regret that I didn't take advantage of the question period though, should have had some dumb question on hand since they were there and willing. Maybe, should have asked "what happens if you are building for both Solaris and Linux?", but I was too timid - well next time!

OK, so I am building and RPM for sqlite. That is the cool little database that doesn't require a server in the traditional way that mysql does. I pick this program for all my examples as I want to become really familiar with it - this one is important.

All the gory details are on my RpmLearn page

Here is the description of the source from the README:
The README: This package contains:

* the SQLite library amalgamation (single file) source code distribution,
* the shell.c file used to build the sqlite3 shell too, and
* the sqlite3.h and sqlite3ext.h header files required to link programs
and sqlite extensions against the installed libary.
* autoconf/automake installation infrastucture.

Following the advice from the PackageMaintainers pagepage, I installed sqlite from source on my Fedora laptop. I put all the guck here so I don't lose it

you know the routine: ./configure, make, make install

gonna hang this on matrix soon as i have time
http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/641 that is a little php/mysql tutorial that works



Now back to making an RPM. Specfile sqlite.spec here.