Linuxers March 2008

linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

59 participants
67 discussions

[ Cross Post ] Google Summer of Code '08
by Pradeepto Bhattacharya 19 Mar '08

19 Mar '08

Hi, Its time for Google Summer of Code '08. Many of you are already following it. But just a reminder and a friendly poke incase you forgot all about it. Of course, KDE will be there like previous years. Check [1] for more details. As a student, all you need is some enthusiasm, willingness to contribute to KDE and Free Software in general. Knowledge of C++ is almost taken for granted in KDE GSoC. Knowledge of Qt/KDE/PyQt framework and programming is a definite ( huge ) plus. If you are already a contributing code to some KDE application, firstly you r0ck, nextly you did yourself a huge favour and have HUGE PLUS-PLUS :). It also works if you have been sending in patches regularly. So if you are one of them, DO submit a proposal. There is a nice *idea* page on the KDE techbase page [2]. Feel free to browse through that and find something that you like or you might be able to pull off. *Strong recommendation* - Please be creative and write your own project proposal. Nothing impresses mentors more than your own enthusiasm to do something uber cool for the project. It is million times better if you write your own project proposal - may be even your own idea that is not there in the idea page which you think might be a cool feature / addition to KDE - instead of copying something from the idea page. Its a idea page after all and not a proposal template page ;). Please read [3] about certain instructions of participations in KDE GSoC. I repeat, please read [3] before applying. It is very detailed and will mostly answer a lot of your questions and will help you frame your proposal in much better way. Last year KDE GSoC participation [4] [5] was really wonderful. It got 40 projects sanctioned by Google which probably was the largest allocation among all the participating projects. There were 213 proposals submitted to Google and 40 were allocated. 3 of those 40 students were Indians, you have ask them about their experiences. I am very sure that they have good things to talk about the same. Since I have met Piyush and Sharan many times in recent past after the SoC '07, I know for sure that they ( and Anirrudh, the third guy ) loved the whole experience and had a blast. Looking forward to your proposal. Good luck. [1]http://code.google.com/soc/2008/kde/about.html [2]http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Projects/Summer_of_Code/2008/Ideas [3]http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Projects/Summer_of_Code/2008/Part… [4]http://dot.kde.org/1176336589/ [5]http://code.google.com/soc/2007/kde/about.html Cheers! Pradeepto -- The KDE Project : http://www.kde.org KDE India : http://in.kde.org Mailing List : http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-india

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[OT] Avoid Intel motherboards
by Rony 19 Mar '08

19 Mar '08

Hello All, If anyone of you is planning to buy a system or a new motherboard then avoid Intel original ones like plague. They take more than a month to simply pick up boards in warranty and their communication channels are pathetic. My colleagues and I have some warranty boards lying with us for more than a month and they have yet to be picked up by Intel. Their service is too bad. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

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FLOSS in schools... a syllabi for the Third Standard (eight/nine-year-old) student from India
by Frederick Noronha [फ़र ेदरिक नोर ोनया] 18 Mar '08

18 Mar '08

Free software in schools. Download this from here http://www.divshare.com/download/4053521-61e From Farida Umrani <mailtofarida(a)gmail.com> I am working with Prof. Sridhar Iyer at Dept of Computer Science, IIT Bombay on content development for school computer science based on Edubuntu . We will have the content for elementary class ready in 2008. I am sending you a draft of a textbook for class I (the file is bulky; hence split and send in two mails). [DOWNLOAD FROM URL ABOVE] At present, I am implementing this curriculum in one of the pilot schools. We have included Scratch as a programming language for students in Grade 3 & 4. Currently we are focusing on elementary classes and plan to scale it up in the next academic year. We are facing difficulties in getting the teachers familiar with open source. Most schools do not have a system administrator or even a regular Internet connection to get the regular updates and prefer an installable CD that gives them everything. But to a windows user, this does not appear intuitive and hence they are put off by it. I wanted to know about your experience with Goa schools? I have read that GCSP trained engineering students and teachers. Did these students help the local schools? We announced a training program for school teachers, but got poor response and therefore deferred it. Did you face similar problems? How did you deal with them? I myself have a Psychology background... and it has taken me several hours of work and reading up the forums to understand the installation and getting all the dependencies right. However, what is encouraging is that students have received the open source applications very well. I hope to learn from your experience at Goa. -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | Ym/Gmailtalk: fredericknoronha http://fn.goa-india.org | fred(a)bytesforall.org Independent Journalist | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9970157402 ----------------------------------------------------------

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] [LIG] [LONG] [RANT] Ubuntu and Quality
by Debarshi Ray 18 Mar '08

18 Mar '08

> As for using Ubuntu on a server, I concur with other posts. Ditto for > the "community" versions sponsored by the commercial linux distros. Leaving aside Ubuntu, what other distributions are you (that can be anyone on this list) referring to? Specific bug reports, Bugzilla or GNATS entries? Cheers, Debarshi -- "From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life." -- Arthur Ashe

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] [LIG] [LONG] [RANT] Ubuntu and Quality
by Arun Khan 17 Mar '08

17 Mar '08

On Monday 17 Mar 2008, linuxers-request(a)mm.glug-bom.org wrote: > Message: 2 > Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:05:30 +0530 > From: Rony <gnulinuxist(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] [LIG] [LONG] [RANT] Ubuntu and Quality .... snip ... > I have used Ubuntu's many versions, from 5.10 onwards and they do > whats expected of them. I hardly update them and if so, just after > the installation, when the system is still fresh and not customized. > Another way is to keep the net running so the latest packages get > installed during the main installation itself. After that the door is > closed for further updates. I never upgrade a distro. I prefer to > clean install a newer version if necessary. .... snip ... The above philosophy may work for a desktop setup in a "closed" LAN. For a server visible on the 'Net this is not an option. If it is running a service that needs to be patched with a security fix - it needs to be patched. Otherwise face the consequences of a compromised box. As for using Ubuntu on a server, I concur with other posts. Ditto for the "community" versions sponsored by the commercial linux distros. -- Arun Khan

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[COMMERCIAL][JOB] JAVA / Perl Engineers, Programmers
by Krupa 17 Mar '08

17 Mar '08

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[LONG] [RANT] Ubuntu and Quality Control
by Raj Mathur 17 Mar '08

17 Mar '08

First thing yesterday morning: urgent IM message from Suresh Ramasubramanian (hoster of this mailing list): Mailman is down, can you help? OK, so we start investigating his box. He has upgraded Python2.4 to Python2.5, and applied a Mailman security patch package. However, whenever we try to access the page, the server barfs. On to server logs -- syntax error in one of the Mailman support files. Right, I can understand an upgrade causing logical errors, but a SYNTAX ERROR!??!? Nah, I must be missing something, so I look all over the 2 upgrades. Switch back to Python2.4 from Python2.5, no joy. Recompile all the Mailman files from scratch, no joy. Recompile the Ubuntu Mailman package from source and reinstall it, no joy. Bang head against wall, no joy. Finally, desperate, I start comparing Mailman files on Suresh' server against Mailman installed on other servers. While they are different versions of Mailman, I do notice one anomaly: where one file has: mlist.subject_prefix = Utils.canonstr( val, mlist.preferred_language) <- *** Note this line *** elif property == 'info': Suresh' server has: mlist.subject_prefix = Utils.canonstr( elif property == 'info': Saying, `no, no, it can't be!' I insert the missing line into the file on the broken machine, cross fingers, eyes, legs, etc and restart Mailman. It works! [Shift to today] Ubuntu issues a security notice that says, in effect, ``We screwed up with the previous Mailman patch, so here's the latest and greatest version of Mailman, and this one really, Really, REALLY works! Believe us!''. I don't believe them. In the past 6 months Ubuntu has issues 80 new security advisories. For those 80 advisories, they have issued no less than SEVEN regressions (a regression is a patch to fix a broken patch). A near-10% regression rate sends only one message to me -- we can't be bothered with doing any quality control before we release packages. Before Ubuntu came onto the scene, I didn't even /know/ what a regression was. Today it's a common word in my lexicon, because of Ubuntu's pathetic testing and quality control process (or lack of process, more likely). An operating system vendor who issues a package with a syntax error (so that the package doesn't even start up, leave alone do something wrong), is a pure crap snake oil vendor in my book. So, the question: will I trust Ubuntu on an Internet-connected system? Nah. Will I trust Ubuntu on a server? Er, please excuse me while I finishing laughing hysterically! Use Debian or CentOS or any of those reasonably tested other distributions for your boxes, and when someone asks you to use Ubuntu, in the immortal words of Fancy Raygun, ``Just Say No!''. Regards, -- Raju -- Raj Mathur raju(a)kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ Freedom in Technology & Software || February 2008 || http://freed.in/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves

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script to start process automatically
by Agnello George 17 Mar '08

17 Mar '08

i am trying to write a script on my *test machine *to check if the process are running , and if they are not need to start them any idea why this is not working ?? #!/bin/sh -x SERVICES= `ls -la /etc/init.d/ |awk '{print $9 }' |sed -e 's/[^[:alnum:]]//g'` for i in $SERVICES do if [ $(ps -aux|grep -v grep |grep $i |wc -l) != 0 ]; then . /etc/init.d/$i start else echo " the service $i is running " fi done -- Regards Agnello Dsouza

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] [LIG] [ilugd] [LONG] [RANT] Ubuntu and Quality Control
by Raj Mathur 16 Mar '08

16 Mar '08

On Sunday 16 Mar 2008, Justin Moore wrote: > Why are you using Ubuntu for production servers? Look how many major > releases they have had vs. Debian, or RHEL. They push out the latest > version of the software as fast as possible because that is what > their user base wants. That's why I use Ubuntu on my desktops. But > they can't possibly keep the same quality control on such a release > cyle. For production servers I use Debian, except when a client > requires enterprise support, then I use RHEL. I suggest the same. It's possible that Ubuntu isn't meant to be a server distribution (but in that case they shouldn't have a Ubuntu server version). Regardless, it is completely irresponsible to make a package available for download that did not get even one command's worth of testing after packaging. A simple /etc/init.d/mailman restart after installing the new package would have shown that mailman wasn't working. Please note that this is not some error condition that only surfaces under some weird combination of environments or events. Whatever your hardware or software configuration, whatever applications you are running, whatever network connectivity (or lack) you have, merely starting up the newly-installed mailman would have failed. Whether desktop or server, a distribution that permits the release of an Internet-service package without even that one, basic command is broken beyond repair IMNSHO. Ubuntu needs to make a package testing and release policy real quick. The next time it could be a security patch to Firefox that gets messed up, and then we'll have millions of cracked Ubuntu systems merrily spamming away. Before something like that happens, it would be better if Ubuntu just withdrew gracefully from the list of Linux distributions. Regards, -- Raju -- Raj Mathur raju(a)kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ Freedom in Technology & Software || February 2008 || http://freed.in/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves

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GSoC GNU project
by Nagarjuna G. 16 Mar '08

16 Mar '08

GNU is participating again in the GSoC project. we encourage free software hackers to consider contributing and spending this summer mentoring or joining this event this summer. project ideas are listed at: http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/ideas.html -- Nagarjuna G. http://www.gnowledge.org/

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Linuxers March 2008