Source Guru

So … after finally getting everything ready for ifolder - I’ve finally actually made an apt repository for it

I have limited bandwidth however, so until Novell decide to mirror it - it’ll be restricted.

However, if you wish to grab a copy of iFolder, please feel free to email me and I’ll send you the details of the apt repository.

Please note, that this is currently only for ubuntu dapper. I will however, be adding sid, etch, sarge and breezy repositories soon … well - if they build

oh yeah - mez _AT_ ubuntu _DOT_ com

I must say - I love the Open Source Community. Only in a place like this could you blog about weird problems with your web server and get a fix commented to your blog post

Is it bad that when watching a program about Triplets last night, and a photographer was taking photos of baby triplets that my first thought  was “how cool an “ubuntu circle” photo would that be?”

So, not too long ago - I moved to a different webhosting provider, thinking it’d provide me with everything I needed and more.

Now, I’m sort of wishing I hadn’t. It’s getting to the point where I’m just thinking that the support people are complete and utter dumbasses.

Now, to start off, I used to use Bazaar … which is a great Revision Control System - though slightly ancient. Well - back in those times - I was using webdav to post my stuff to my webserver!

Great you might say, except for the fact that to use webdav I had to use my main FTP login. Not good… for security reasons. Meaning I’d have to find another way - or setup webdav slightly differently. So - going onto the support site, I looked through everything, and it seemed that I’d be able to use webdav with Frontpage extensions enabled, using the username and password for that. Did that work? no… so I email support, telling them my situation, the problems, how to get round them usually, what wasn’t working, exact errors, debugging info etc. What do they do? send me to the same thing I read before. So I email them back telling them that I’ve read all that, and I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work, and that I’d actually told them that in the previous email that I’d done so. I get a reply back sending me to random stuff that has nothing to do with webdav at all.

So, I give up on that line.

I then start using Bazaar-NG - hoping that the next generation stuff would be useful for me. After managing to set it up and get it all running over the slow sftp connection provided… I then get people reporting that they can’t get the archive. After a lil chat with the bzr people, I finally find out it’s because my webserver is being over zealous - for a file called bla.bla.bla.sig that doesn’t exist, it’s returning an error 300 saying “bla.bla.bla.sig doesnt exist, but bla.bla.bla does”… meaning that Bazaar-NG doesnt know what to do… and falls over.
Yay I say to myself. Yay.

I’ve just emailed support asking if they know how to switch that off… because technically it can be a security
risk. If anyone knows - please tell me! It has to be done through a .htaccess though..

*sighs* lets hope the fact that this is on a couple of planets saves my ass and gets me through
this nightmare, because I doubt that the support will come up with anything useful

Ever since I first got involved in iFolder - I’ve never managed to get Simias to build properly inside a chroot.

A sense of overwhelming achievement came across me today when I finally had this happen

dpkg-genchanges: including full source code in upload
dpkg-buildpackage: full upload (original source is included)
Copying back the cached apt archive contents
-> unmounting dev/pts filesystem
-> unmounting proc filesystem
Current time: Tue Feb 14 00:22:51 GMT 2006
pbuilder-time-stamp: 1139876571
-> cleaning the build env
-> removing directory /scratch/cache/pbuilder/build//21686 and its subdirectories

Ok, so everything may not be cool - I’ve just realised there are some thing in libsimias0 that should be in libsimias-dev - but hey - that’s the smallest issue I’ve ever had.

You have NO idea how … relieved this has made me feel. To finally have an actual fully built simias package. I’m really hoping that this is the final step - that I don’t come across anything else. Because, for those of you who’ve been following my struggle with iFolder over the past x months will know it hasn’t been a pretty one. Much to the fact that the Novell Code/my packaging have always been at a stage where they disagree with each other… but now they finally agree… now - onto iFolder itself… which is currently building nicely… lets just hope it’ll build in a chroot

*crosses fingers and hopes*

I was browsing through launchpad and came across this beauty

What? it made me grin - ok?

So, the last couple of days I’ve hopped back onto the iFolder train - and have been doing a lot of work.

It’s quite a scary program really… It’s got so much stuff in it.

I’ve found that to have a basic iFolder Server install it’s 36Mb … big eh ?

Anyways - things are going good - I’ve got libflaim (new and open sourced) built and well - the other package (log4net) seems to being wubbed in debian - so will appear for dapper+1 in ubuntu - and debian pretty soon (theres no way I can get iFolder into dapper easily - so I’m not going to try!)

But yeah - hopefully we’ll see some nice iFolder packages being made in the near future - and it’s going to add 4 packages to my list of packages I maintain in debian - yay! (and erk!)

Hopefully - I’ll get a sponsor pretty easily for it - the debian mono team are uber people - and have helped me a lot - plus - It seems a DD is already interested in packaging it - so well - should be able to work with him.

Kudos to the iFolder people though - they work hard on bringing you the best they can - and well - they’re alot better at working with the community than some other projects are

Anyhoo - well - I hope Jorge will be happy about all this.

Gah - now I just need to get my website sorted out