SF Personal   Stefano Forenza - Personal Blog

Having a few issues with the previous theme, I just adapted the “Andrea” from Lucian Marin to fit my needs. I am still far from being done with it, but the resulting theme is good enough to be published.

Since the original theme was released under the GPL, I am able to release my changes as well under the same license. In the case you’re interested in my changes you can find the theme source here:

• https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~tacone/+junk/andreahuman

Comments and suggestions are welcome, but keep in mind it’s still work in progress.

Some days ago I sent one letter to the ubuntu-devel mailing list. I’d like to post it here to, to further elaborate.

I am not sure I was in topic with the thread, by the way you can find the thread - “Disappointed with Ubuntu Server, could be used by such a wider audience” - here and here.

I am posting it here too, to get some comment from you and hopefully to further elaborate in the next posts. Let me know what you think.

(ps: bad grammar down there, beware! )

Scott Kitterman, on Thu Jul 31 17:38:30 BST 2008

> Generally you can do any server things from a desktop if you install the
> needed things.  For easy Apache configurations there is:
>
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rapache
>
> There’s a pending request to have it backported to Hardy.
>
> What’s needed are people who understand the under the hood part of servers
> well enough to write such a thing and also care enough about the GUI
> experience to do it.  Ubuntu Server is a young project and is headed toward
> being able to support such things, but it won’t happen overnight.
>
> What we lack isn’t ideas or understanding of the need, but people to do the
> actual work to provide it.
>
> Scott K

Hello, I am one of the developers of Rapache. I subscribed this ml
just to answer ScottK and drop my 2 cents on the topic. I am likely to
keep my subscription for the next week, if you like to reply.

Disclaimer

What follows may be a little delirious, but took me hours to put it
together, so I am sending it straight away.
I’ll post a more lucid rewrite on ubuntuweblogs when I get the time.
And maybe open a blueprint about this. I really don’t know if I am
allowed to post on this mailing list, so bear with me if I am out of
place.
In what follows, I’ll take Rapache as an example, but the point I’d
like to make is, of course, general.

I’d like to respectfully disagree with ScottK.
Linux in general (as well as Ubuntu) generally lacks the understanding
of the need of such desktop-to-server applications.
The proof is, more than the lacking of such applications, the fact
that Ubuntu lacks a related workgroup/team. Did I miss it ?

Resources are of course limited and all things have a priority. The
lack of a workgroup dedicated to ‘develop guis to configure server
things’ just show they don’t seem important enough at the moment.

Have you ever seen a comment like this ?
http://www.reddit.com/comments/6ncun/rapache_is_a_simple_apache_administration_tool_it/c04cxa1
I guess you have, and someone of you could even agree.

As Bud Roth points, the point raised by Scottk doesn’t seems really a
lacking of ubuntu-server group itself.

Let me elaborate: I had the pleasure to quickly present Rapache to the
ubuntu-server meeting. They were really kind to me but became evident
that a Gnome gui to configure Apache was not something inherently
related to the #ubuntu-server workgroup.
I then asked what was the right irc channel / workgroup to discuss
this kind of application.

The answer was Rapache seemed to be something in between ubuntu-server
and ubuntu-desktop.
Who’s going to care about taking care of this kind of applications in Ubuntu?

My experience

What do I agree with ScottK is the wider audience thing. I used to
work in a non-tech savy environment (a computer magazines publisher,
lol). Some facts about it:

1) I could get permission to use Ubuntu as local network
web-development server, as long as I provided to perform the actual
installation myself.
2) The only thing I got shouted about in the whole career there was..
daring to install ubuntu on my workstation.
3) Our (windows) sysadmin installed Ubuntu on a computer to be run
Vmware machines on it. It choose Ubuntu because
a) some colleague dropped some installation cd’s on our desks, one day.
b) I could help him with ubuntu related issues much better than with
fedora/suse/whatever related ones.
4) Sysadmin had to configure Samba shares to connect to a given domain
with certain permissions. He was shocked by the fact to not having a
gui to perform the operations. After a while he found some gui utility
in synaptic and felt quite happy with the result. He felt much more in
control with a gui than with command line thinkering.

Conclusions:

People do fear what they don’t know.

I got shouted because my coordinator never tried how good it feels
like to work on a ubuntu workstation (no more putty, nautilus ssh
integration etc). (a)

The sysadmin was actually happy to have guis to configure local
network things (4). It’s only complain is not having Gui for
*anything* like it happens on Windows 2000/NT.

People don’t know about linux, they won’t try it if it doesn’t allow
them to get their stuff done. What the reasons are for a sysadmin to
use (paid licensed) Windows instead of Linux ? GUI. And things they
feel in control on (when they don’t, point 2) happens)

Ignorance has reasons behind it

- people don’t want to learn. Bad, but we could get them as users
anyway. Why not ?
- people has stuff to get done, and no time to learn.
- people has to take responsibility on any choice they make. They
would like to switch but they have delivery-schedules. With a gui they
can do things easily and follow best practices at the very same time.
(i.e. Rapache detects if you have virtualhosts .conf present only in
sites-enabled and offers the user to normalize the situation). And
they will be able to learn more throughout the process.
- no one is guru by born. We need to lower the entry barrier.
- we shuold not discriminate, ever. Women from men, black from
white, beginners from gurus.

Why people hate command line (they do, yes they do)?
- they don’t feel in control enough.
- they are forced to use that.
- if they didn’t need it so often, when they really need it, they
will be happy to have such a powerful command line environment.

What are others doing ?

Redhat: Augeas websites reports augeas as “Redhat emerging
technology”. That could be for a reason.
Suse: they already have already a Yast Apache Configurator plugin (and
various other things i guess). They are not really Gnomish and they
presume prior knowledge.
- we should strive to make things easier and let the user to learn
while he’s doing.
Apple: my sysadmin came back from an Apple conference and kept talking
about the guis apple did for Macosx server. They were so nice, so
easy.
Microsoft: the only reason I can’t see to set up a WAMP stack is..
being able to configure IIS with a gui.

We need to lead this kind of momentum. If we lead, who will we steal
market from ? Microsoft and Apple, mostly. People that already use
linux could switch to ubuntu, but that’s much more unlikely.

What do we need ?

A group of people to spoof inadequacies and propose gui solutions.
Finding an existing, semi-obscure project and making sure it runs
properly on ubuntu would be fine. Upstream developers would feel
encouraged when they see Ubuntu people supports them.

Just as Apple don’t have good offers for medium-sized workstations we
don’t have any good offer for non-gurus who need to go further the
web-browse/mail/write-letter habits.
A good offer for that segment would boost either server and desktop
environment adoption.

We need gui coverage. It’s hard to do. But we do. And we *do* need to
aknowledge that we really need it. I encourage everyone of you who
don’t feel the same to say that, and discuss it.

A server with a Desktop Environment installed ?

Sometime ago I filed a bug against Launchpad. I am happy to see today that it has been marked as confirmed and the whole thing is recognized as a potential missing feature to Launchpad.

What I am talking about ? I really think Launchpad needs a wiki for every project. Just like Google code has. This would help independant projects teams to get rid of unuseful own sites setup just for keeping blueprints and documentation. And would help to avoid further time loss setting up an own wiki, an access list etc.

While I have nothing against an open source team to open up their own site, this brings a fair amount of uncertainness for the future of it.

Suppose I write a nifty lib, and then waste my 10$ on a domain just to keep its documentation. In 3 years I could just loose interest in the whole thing and let my domain go down. Every existing/prospective user would be left without a project homepage to consult.

Hasn’t ever happened to you to look for the homepage of a project and find just a parked domain page ? It happened to me today, while checking the xmms2tray (it’s a pygtk present into ubuntu’s repositories) homepage. A site like Launchpad, on the other hand, is much less likely to go down anytime soon.

As a developer I wish my projects stuff to stay around as long as possible, even after I cease to work on it. That would help existing users or people willing to take over in the project.

I filed a brainstorm idea, linked to the bug. If you agree with me, go and vote for it !

Today Celeste made a very good point.

The problem with the current GNOME implementation is that it doesn’t support users who make errors.

Very true. That’s because we (Gnome users) don’t make mistakes. Never ever.

Working on Rapache, it’s been a while I wanted to add syntax highlightining, but I didn’t dare too loose time on a “side feature” like that. Last night though, Jason came in chat, and pasted me the code to do that straight away. That was nice, I only needed to paste that code in the source and make little adjustments.

Some little glitches arose though, so I eventually had to work a little more on it. I just thought I’d share what I had to do with other people.

My problems:

• I had to put together a language definition for Apache config files, since no one currently exists
• I had to find out how to read if from a non system dir (ie. from my program data directory)

This is the Apache .lang file (needs more love, but that’s a start) ended up with.

Here’s the code:

import gtksourceview2

custom_langs_path = '/home/myuser/mydir/datafiles'
bufferS = gtksourceview2.Buffer()
manager = gtksourceview2.LanguageManager()
manager.set_search_path( [ custom_langs_path ] + manager.get_search_path() )
language = manager.get_language('apache')
bufferS.set_language(language)
bufferS.set_highlight_syntax(True)
sourceview = gtksourceview2.View(bufferS)
sourceview.set_show_line_numbers(True)
#TODO sniff gnome default monospace font
sourceview.modify_font(pango.FontDescription("monospace 10"))

This is how the final result looks like:

Everything looks nicer now !

It’s been a while from the last post about Rapache. So I thought time has come to make our last progresses public.

For those who doesn’t know Rapache is a GTK utility that tries to ease the configuration of Apache on Debian alike systems.

This night was a long night :). It’s 6.48am here, so I’ll just get to the point: features !

Not so fast, baby !

• Thanks to Qense, Rapache now detects if Apache is not installed and refuses to run.

What’s new in the Main window

• Rapache now features two handy buttons, one to open a VirtualHost URL in the default browser and one to browse the DocumentRoot folder with Nautilus
• We moved the problem handling (for now just virtualhost not conforming to debian guidelines) in a separate tab, which appears only when its needed.

Edit window completely redesigned

• This guy, other than helping tremendously in other parts of the software, completely redesigned the VirtualHost creation window
• Rapache now allows to specify any number of aliases to be associated with the virtual host.

We has modulez !

• Module enabling/disabling was put in place. Things are not perfect, but works nicely.
• Many modules show a brief description just under the module name. I love this one :-).
• We also detect the dependencies (and that work is misspelled in the screenshot above and in the actual program - deep apologies) of every module.
• Modules .conf files editing is in the works. Not available at the moment, sorry !

How to get it

Beware, this is still an alpha release and it took a fair amount of refactoring, so you’re likely to find little glitches here and there. Despite of that, we are likely to package it today or tomorrow on our PPA. If you’re not prone to wait, you can check it out right now with bzr:

#install bazaar if you don't already have it
sudo apt-get install bzr
#to get rapache
bzr branch lp:~rapache-devel/rapache/rapache-stage0
#to launch it
cd rapache-stage0
./rapache

If you prefer to wait to get the old version from the repository and just wait for updates you can add these lines to your repository list and then:

#install it
sudo apt-get install rapache
#run it
rapache

Lending an hand

You can always lend us an hand.

• If you’re interested in the project, just checkout the Launchpad Page, or drop to say hi in #rapache-devel on freenode. Feel free to branch the last revision, play with it and propose it for merge.

• If you have any suggestion please open a bug in launchpad, we’d love to hear from you !
• Let you friends know about the project, this could help us get some contributors. Digg or share the link of this page and/or project page, or post it in your favourite forum.

…to my wallet.

Wandering for the net today,  I had the luck/misfortune to follow a Google advertising link about some Ubuntu certification courses. The ad recited something like “Ubuntu Certification Corse for only 3100€ !”. Holy crap, I really had to click.

See the original web page.

While I am happy about Ubuntu growth, I really think the cost is an overkill. Please keep in mind the place we’re talking about, Italy is one of the nations with lower average incomes of all Europe (difficult here to get more than 900€/month if your at your first work experience. You’re likely to get even less)

The program of the courses follows the Canonical’s for Ubuntu Certification (translated at hand from that italian page)

Ubuntu Linux Professional - Corso 1

• General overview of Ubuntu community (where to find help, etc)
• Basic installation of Ubuntu
• GNU & UNIX commands
• Hardware & architecture
• Installing and managing Linux package
• Devices and filesystems of Linux. Standards of Linux filesystem hierarchy
• X Window

Ubuntu Linux Professional - Corso 2

• Il kernel - Managing, reconfiguring, building, installling a personalized kernel
• Printing - Local and remote management
• Documentation (???)
• Shells, scripting, Programming (???) & compiling
• Amministration duties (?)
• Networking foundations
• Networking services
• Security

Achieving an Ubuntu Certification is ultra nice, but I highly doubt many people will ever think about donating 3100 to the cause. Ten days of course are unlikely to give you any real knowledge and business owners know that - so.. what is going to be the return of your investment ? Unhappy to be said, this configures itself as yet another bland attempt to get money out of unemployed people desperation.

As the cost includes exams price, a overall cost of 1000 euros for both courses would have been more than appropriate. If you have 3000 euros to spend for a 10 days course, my honest advice is to go to some LUG or Loco looking for a private teacher to hire.

I have nothing against Canonical’s partners, but there are many better suited charities causes to donate money for. I wonder if it’s the same in other countries (keeping in mind different costs of life and average incomes, obviously). Did anyone have related experiences ?

Disclaimer: what follows below is just chit-chat oriented, no serious assumptions down there

Playing with Google Trends I settled for doing yet-another Linux distro competition. Here’s the results:

So the question is: does Ubuntu success help Linux ? Sure as smurfs ! (you believe in smurfs, right ?) From the graphs, anyway, seems like people interest in other distribution actually decreased. Gosh, one would expect them to be slowly growing, just because of last times general Linux success and hype.

Even worse, net’s interest in Debian itself seems uninfluenced or deteriorated.

This is not to say Ubuntu is detrimental to Debian. Ubuntu contributes patches back to debian, for example. (while the quantity of the contributions has been disputed sometimes).

While the above is obviously disputable, one thing I know for sure. Ubuntu hurted Britney Spears popularity. See yourself:

Sorry Britney, we love you.

The moment has come ! Firefox 3 is out. If you have some  computer still running firefox 2 it’s time to upgrade !

It’s been 2 busy days. I didn’t really expected to receive any response on my previous post about Rapache and that was cool. Some of the received suggestion have been  already implemented, so, if you’re still interested in Rapache, pull it from stage0 branch and check it out.

Shhht! Don’t tell anyone, the secret command to get the code is:

bzr branch lp:~rapache-devel/rapache/rapache-stage0

Some people asked how to help.

Well, the first way to help is to open new bugs (even for feature requests, just open a bug and explain your idea). You can do it at https://launchpad.net/rapache .

The second way is actually… to solve bugs, or indicate a way to solve them. I’ve tagged a bunch of them as ‘need-help’. You cand find them here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/rapache/+bugs?field.tag=need-help. For this kind of bugs, we don’t need a full patch, you can just send a proof of concept indicating how to solve the bug. That would save us a nice amount of googling :-).

I forgot to say: thank you thank you thank you.

Thank you thank you thanks to you all for having told me that rapache gui sucked. Shame on you :-). I tried to re-organize the main window at the best of my skills. We also had to wake up Luana and ask her to revamp our application icon.

Here is the result of all the effort:

As you can see Rapache can now take care of vhost definitions only present into /etc/apache2/sites-enabled and not present inside sites-available (the correct way would be to create the vhost configuration file inside sites-available and then link to it from sites-enabled in order to enabling it).

How do Rapache and Ubuntu relate ?

My very first aim with Rapache was to help webdev beginners and webdesigner (oh, they hate configuration files so much) to quickly be able to handle apache in the correct way. Giving support in ubuntu irc support channels I noticed many people came there asking how to set up apache and, even easy as it is creating a new virtual host, helping them required a lot of time each.

As for now, the primary goal of apache is to get in a decent shape soon enough to be proposed for Intrepid universe repositories. In order to be able to accomplish such goal, we should focus on a realistic set of features and test them enough to make everything working smoothly. It’s of course better a small working program than a big buggy ball of mud.

That said: which features do you think we still miss in order to make sense for a repo inclusion ? Would you open some bug in launchpad and tell us about what we need to do ? Help us hit the duck :-).

Come say “hello!”

Last post I forgot to tell we have an irc channel on freenode. Feel free to drop in #rapache-devel to greet us and talk to us.