UK Linux User Groups

The Debian Project Leader election has concluded and the winner is Lucas Nussbaum. Of a total of 988 developers, 390 developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2013 page.

The new term for the project leader will start on April 17th and expire on April 17th 2014.

As previously mentioned I was looking to package pwsafe for Wheezy, as this is one of the few tools that I rely upon which isn't present.

There are now packages available, with the source on github.

I've also been doing some minor scripting because I've run into a few common problems recently:

run-parts

run-parts is a simple utility which will run every executable in a directory, more or less.

In Debian-land run-parts is the mechanism for /etc/cron.daily and /etc/cron.hourly - and that is where I've had problems recently.

Imagine you run a backup via cron.daily. Further imagine that you run a post-backup rsync and that this might take many many hours. If your backup takes >=24 hours you're screwed.

To that end I've patched my run-parts tool to alert and exit if a prior invocation is still running.

silent-run

I think everybody has this script - hide all output when running a command, unless the command fails. Looking today I see chronic from Joey's excellent moreutils does this. D'oh.

I think I've done more, but I cannot remember. In conclusion software is both easy and hard - easy because these two trivial changes were within my reach, but hard because years after encountering GNU/Linux we still have to add in the missing pieces.

Still could be worse, I spent four/five hours yesterday evening fighting with MS-SQL server, and that is time I'm never going to get back.

The Google Summer of Code is a program that allows post-secondary students aged 18 and older to earn a stipend writing code for Free and Open Source Software projects during the summer.

For the eighth time, Debian has just been accepted as a mentoring organization for this year's program. If you're an eligible student, now is the time to take a look at our project ideas list, engage with the mentors for the projects you find interesting, and start working on your application!
Please read the FAQ and the Program Timeline on Google's website.

If you are interested, we encourage you to come and chat with us on irc (#debian-soc on irc.oftc.net), or to send an email to the SoC coordination mailing-list. Most of the GSoC related information in Debian can be found on our wiki pages, but feel free to ask us directly on irc or via email.

We're looking forward to work with amazing students again this summer!

I’ve been reading with great interest the blog posts from Michael Hall highlighting all the activity in the Ubuntu Touch developer community. It’s exciting to see people have started poking at our fledgling SDK and have already created some cool applications. Likewise, internally at Canonical developers are working hard on the infrastructure, platform and SDK to make it easy, fun and robust to create applications for Ubuntu Touch.

We’re keen to keep lines of communication between the developer community and platform developers wide open, while allowing everyone to get on with their work. From the Canonical side we’ll shortly be publishing more details of our plans for the platform so developers have a better understanding of our roadmap and can set their own expectations accordingly.

On the flip-side we’re also keen to get feedback from developers. We’ve scheduled regular check-up meetings with developers of the Core Apps which are listed on the wiki. Everyone is welcome to attend and join in, but the primary goal of each is to allow us to help Core Apps developers.

It’s great to see that new contributors, hackers and people just having a play with Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview are coming to #ubuntu-touch at all hours of the day and night to get and give help and discuss what they’re doing.

We have noticed though that sometimes people aren’t getting answers to their questions, usually because they ask when many core contributors are asleep or just busy doing other things. This is the nature of IRC, and we’re not looking to force people to only come to the channel at certain times.

We do though want to improve our communication by having a specific time when developers and other experts will actually be around, and if we can’t get an answer immediately, make a note of it so we can get back to people later.

So every Wednesday we’re also holding a regular open “Ubuntu Touch Weekly Clinic” in #ubuntu-touch on freenode IRC at 13:00 UTC. Feel free to ping myself (popey) or Michael Hall (mhall119) on IRC to get our attention

We picked a time when it seems most core contributors are available, covering European afternoon and American morning. Everyone is of course welcome at any time in the channel, this gives us a focal point for our users. This isn’t a formal “Q&A” like the Ubuntu On Air sessions, but simply an accessible-for-most slot when we can guarantee people will be around.

So come along on Wednesday to the “Ubuntu Touch Weekly Clinic” in #ubuntu-touch on freenode IRC at 13:00 UTC

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"Well I hope you live long now, I pray the lord your soul to keep
I think I'll be going before we fold our arms and start to weep
I never thought for a moment that human life could be so cheap" Elvis Costello, "Tramp the Dirt Down"
Today there is only one subject: Margaret Thatcher's legacy. To listen to the voice of her contemporaries such as Ken Clarke, you hear talk of a Britain in the 1970s in terminal decline, of a reform and rebirth that is still with us.

To talk to the young people with whom I work you can certainly find supporters of Cameron but very few Thatcherites. Of course for those aged considerably under 30 that is hardly surprising, she is not even a memory to those for whom Blair is the first Prime Minster, those who came to political maturity in 2010. 
At a funeral, I find it is often the children who have the final say on the deceased. We who grew up in the 1980s have always been 'Thatchers children'. More so those of us who grew up in the deepest south, who's parents voted for her in their overwhelming majority in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

My father bought his council house in Sussex in 1984 and told his children that is Kinnock won the next election we would end up living in the Soviet Union and the country would be ruined. Kinnock did not win and we prospered as a family. 
However I am struck that her traditional conservative side was so out of step with the cultural world I inhabited. Her frumpy dresses so far from the music my brother listened to - Culture Club, UB40, Spandal Ballet and Madness. Her mother-knows-best world view so far from the comedy I spent my youth enjoying - Ben Elton, Blackadder, Loadsamoney and the Comic Strip Presents.

As much as she was on the right side of history she was also on the wrong side of it. She helped to dispatch the cold war but she also unfailingly supported dictators like Saddam Hussein and Pinochet in the mistaken belief that the alternative was worse. The Arab Spring gave the lie to that.

That Mandella was a terrorist -she refused sanctions on Apartheid South Africa.

She bought in section 28 which was predicated on the mistaken homophobic view that a if a left wing gay teacher was in a school he was there to proslytise. I have no doubt that she would have hated gay marriage, I don't know what her view was on civil partnerships, but it was probably not affirming.

She also would not give and inch to the Sinn Féin or the IRA yet by talking to them we may have achieved a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

Though many of my parents' generation admired her and many of today's young people vote for her party. I do not know many of her children who would vote for her if she were leading the conservatives today.

Of course as I always note when preparing a funeral, the only problem of building the service around the memories of the children is that they only really knew one side of the person who has died. 

A couple of years ago my good friends Chris and Heidi set up their own theatre company, Boffo Theatre. As well as their own productions, they also run acting and musical classes for young people.

A few months ago I spent a hectic Saturday photographing the three members of Boffo, Chris, Heidi and Carly, as they taught their classes. They certainly work hard but all their students seemed to have a great time.

Afterwards we spent some time making new headshots for the Boffo crew and then we got to have some fun, coming up with new images for them to use in their marketing materials. It was great to have the time to experiment and be creative. Having access to an entire theatre including a well-stocked wardrobe helped too! A handful of the photos accompany this blog post.

So if you are looking for acting and musical classes for young people in the Kent area, check out the Boffo website or Facebook group.

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The GNOME Foundation started the Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women, OPW, in 2010. In the January-April 2013 round, many other FOSS organizations joined the program. We are happy to announce that Debian will also join in the next round from June-September and we'll offer one internship.

You can find more details about Debian's participation in the program at Debian OPW page.

Call for mentors and projects

OPW allows applicants to work on any kind of project, including coding, design, marketing, web development... The Debian Google Summer of Code projects will be offered also as possible projects for OPW, but GSoC only allows coding projects. If you have any idea of a non-coding project and you want to mentor it, please contact us in the soc-coordination mailing list adding [OPW] in subject.

OPW works in the same way as GSoC except Google doesn't play a part here. The same advice that is provided for GSoC mentors works for OPW mentors.

Call for participants

The main goal of this program is to increase the number of women in FOSS, so all women who are not yet a Debian Developer or a Debian Maintainer are encouraged to apply. There are no age restrictions and applicants don't need to be a student.

If you want to apply, you must follow three steps:

1. Choose a project from this list. There are two lists, one for GSoC and another with non-coding tasks that can be only offered by the OPW. Those lists may change and add or remove more projects in the next few weeks.

2. Make a small contribution to Debian. Projects will add a task the applicant must complete as part of the pre-selection process. If no task is provided, you are welcome to ask the mentors of the project. You can also make a different extra task of the one listed to show your skills and interest.

3. Create a page in the Debian wiki with your application. You can do so under pseudonym, but in that case, please give us information about yourself privately by email to the coordinators listed in the Debian OPW page!

We are pleased to announce the 15th annual Debian Conference (DebConf14) is to be held in Portland, Oregon, USA in August 2014, with specific dates yet to be announced.

Portland is an open source hotspot in the Pacific Northwest of the US. It is a technologically savvy community, home to Intel and the adopted home of Linus Torvalds. The city plays host to many Free Software conferences including OSCON, and is where Linux Plumbers originated.

The local team has been involved in mulitple DebConfs in the past, and is excited to bring their experience and ideas to fruition in a city well-positioned to host such a prestigious event.

I look after a bunch of servers, working for Bytemark that is not a surprise, but I only touch a very small number of desktop systems.

precious - My desktop

This is the machine upon which I develop, check my personal mail, play my music & etc.

steve - My work machine

To keep the working from home separation going I have a machine I only use for work purposes.

travel/travel2 - EEPC box

I have two EEPC machines, a personal 701 and a work-provided 901.

Honestly these rarely get used. One is for when I'm on holiday or traveling, the second for when I'm on-call.

Yesterday I got round to upgrading both the toy EEPC machines to wheezy. The good news? Both of them upgraded/reinstalled easily. Hardware was all detected, sleeping, hibernation, wifi, etc all "just worked".

Unfortunately I am now running GNOME 3.x and the experience is unpleasant. This is a shame, because I've enjoyed GNOME 2.x & bluetile for the past few years.

The only other concern is that pwsafe appears to be scheduled for removal from Debian GNU/Linux - the list of open bugs shows some cause, but there are bugs there that are trivial to fix.

For the moment I've rebuilt the package and if I cannot find a suitable alternative - available for squeeze and wheezy - then I will host the package on my package repository.

In conclusion: Debian, you did good. GNOME, I've loved and appreciated you for years, but you might not be the desktop I want these days. It's not you, it's me.

Thanks to a generous donation by Bytemark Hosting, Debian started deploying machines for its core infrastructure services in a new data center in York, UK.

This hardware and hosting donation will allow the Debian Systems Administration (DSA) team to distribute Debian's core services across a greater number of geographically diverse locations, and improve, in particular, the fault-tolerance and availability of end-user facing services. Additionally, the storage component of this donation will dramatically reduce the storage challenges that Debian currently faces.

The hardware provided by Bytemark Hosting consists of a fully-populated HP C7000 BladeSystem chassis containing 16 server blades:

• 12 BL495cG5 blades with 2x Opteron 2347 and 64GB RAM each
• 4 BL465cG7 blades with 2x Opteron 6100 series and 128GB RAM each

and several HP Modular Storage Arrays:

• 3 MSA2012sa
• 6 MSA2000 expansion shelves

with 108 drive bays in total, mostly 500GB SATA drives, some 2TB, some 600GB 15kRPM SAS, providing a total of 57 TB.

57 TB today could host roughly 80 times the current Debian archive or 3 times the Debian Snapshot archive. But remember both archives are constantly growing!