5 posts tagged “debian”
Down the way, where the nights are gay,
and the sun shines daily on the mountain top;
I took a trip on a sailing ship,
and when I reached Jamaica, I made a stop.But I'm sad to say, I'm on my way;
I won't be back, for many a day.
My heart is down, my head is turning around,
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston town.
He is my only one, now that my time has come;
now that my life is done, we look into the sun.
"Seize the day, and don't you cry;
now it's time to say goodbye.
Even though, I'll be gone;
I will live on, live on."— Dream Theater, A Change of Seasons
I just sent a mail to the Dosage mailing list announcing my retirement as maintainer; and this marks another step in the internal reorganisation of my personal project "workspace", as referred to in my previous post. Other projects going back on the shelf include Kali (the replacement services package being developed for Shadowfire), Eridanus (an IRC bot based on Mantissa and Twisted to which I haven't contributed much besides design advice), txAWS (a Twisted library wrapping Amazon Web Services APIs), txSmug (a Twisted library wrapping SmugMug's API), and FlyingCircus (an IRC quote database based on Mantissa).
What does being "shelved" entail? Well, firstly, it doesn't mean that I'm giving up completely on any of these projects, burning the source code, or refusing to ever work on them ever again. It does mean that I won't actively be thinking about or working on any of these projects; I might be persuaded to help someone out who's interested in taking over from me, but otherwise they're getting kicked out of my mental space to make room for working on other things.
This isn't necessarily the kiss of death for any of these projects; Dosage will slowly degrade over time, I guess, but maybe someone else will step up to the plate. Eridanus never really got any contributions from me, and the existing functionality isn't going to suddenly break. txAWS and txSmug are far from complete, but if you don't need anything beyond what they already provide, they're perfectly usable, and txAWS has other developers that may provide further contributions. Finally, FlyingCircus is pretty much "complete"; there's always room for improvement on any piece of software, of course, but it's perfectly usable as-is.
So, what am I going to be working on? Well, as always, most/all of my projects make use of Twisted and Divmod, and I'll continue contributing changes to those projects based on requirements of my own projects. Methanal is another project that falls into this category; and as a dependency / spin-off of the code base I work on for my day job, it'll probably keep ticking along. I'm not planning to package any new software for Debian, but I'll probably keep maintaining the software I'm already involved with, since there's not a huge amount of effort involved.
The "big one" is probably going to be EdgeVerse. In case you couldn't make any sense of the useless description on the website, or were too lazy to visit it, EdgeVerse is a project that's basically all about tracking media: books, movies, music, TV series, whatever. This includes tracking what you already own and have watched, tracking new releases that you're interested in, and of course tracking all of your friends too. It's ultimately a pretty ambitious project, and I'm not at all confident that it'll be able to succeed, but for now I'm going to be giving it a try (hopefully).
I'll no doubt be posting more about EdgeVerse in the days and weeks to come; if you're curious about the status of any project I haven't mentioned here, feel free to inquire in the comments, or by email / IRC / FriendFeed / whatever.
And the hope I had is dying;
and what we had has come undone;
then your smile, it melts away again.— Caribou, Melody Day
As part of my new effort to actually start making progress again on some of my projects, I'm going through all the ones on my metaphorical desk, and deciding which ones to put back on the metaphorical shelf. One of those projects is the Debian New Maintainer process (and then more generally, being a Debian Developer); unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that this is one of those projects that needs to be shelved. Some of the delays in my progression through NM can be attributed to waiting on my AM and so on, but largely it has been a matter of not having the time to spend on NM. As time rolls on, it seems even less likely that I'll have the time to finish the process off, much less actually doing real work as a DD; there's just a handful of packages I've ever cared about, and I'm starting to care less and less about all of this in general. I'm not sure yet whether I'll keep maintaining the packages I'm currently involved with, or just cut them loose (almost all of them have co-maintenance, or no longer matter much).
This decision has been a bit more disturbing than I thought it would be, and I'll probably think about it a bit more in the days to come, but for now it looks like this is the end of the road for me.
Stay tuned for more news about what other projects are going on the shelf, and which ones may be seeing some real activity on my part.
Please find enclosed an updated version of Mike Taylor's FAQ, "Why Debian Is Not My Favourite Operating System".
How can I add a package?
That's easy! Just use
aptitude install package.How can I upgrade my installation to the latest version?
That's easy! Just use
aptitude update; aptitude full-upgrade.How can I search for a package?
That's easy! Just use
aptitude search keyword.How can I reconfigure an already-installed package?
That's easy! Just use
dpkg-reconfigure package. (Sorry, this one still sucks.)How can I get cutting-edge versions of some packages?
You can upgrade to testing or unstable by replacing your distribution name in /etc/apt/sources.list with one of those keywords, and then following the instructions in FAQ 2. Please be warned that this is not, in general, a reversible operation.
How can I keep stable versions of most packages?
You can't; mixing and maxing packages from stable with packages from unstable or testing will likely result in insanity, hair loss, and result in a broken system. However, if you want to mostly stick with stable, but want updated versions of a handful of packages, backported versions of many packages are available at backports.org; these are newer versions of packages compiled against the older libraries in stable. See the site for more information on how to make use of backports.
Why is php4 deleted when I install netpbm?
It isn't. However, when trying to diagnose other issues of this kind, you can use
aptitude why packageto tell you why a certain package is required, andaptitude why-not packageto tell you why a certain package conflicts with other packages if you try to install it.Why can't I reinstall PHP4?
You can, but see FAQ 7 for more information about similar issues.
How can I downgrade my system back to stable?
You can't. While you can attempt to downgrade any individual package by forcing the package manager to select an older version (for example,
aptitude install package=version), downgrades are explicitly not supported, and trying to downgrade masses of packages at once, or downgrade a package to a much older version, will likely result in failure and a broken system.How can I fix ``also in package'' errors?
Don't downgrade. If you got this error while doing something else, report a bug.
How can I fix another, seemingly identical, error?
Seriously, no downgrades!
How can I fix yet another, also seemingly identical, error?
I mean it, no downgrades!
How can I fix all the other similar errors?
Seriously, I'm not even joking.
So how the hell are you supposed to downgrade?
You're not!
What's the relationship between apt, dpkg and dselect?
dpkg is the low level tool for manipulating Debian packages. apt is a library that provides additional functionality on top of dpkg, such as locating and downloading packages on demand, and performing dependency analysis to install dependencies at the same time. apt-get is a basic apt frontend usable from the command-line. aptitude is a more advanced apt frontend which is usable from the command-line as well as having an ncurses GUI. There are also a variety of other package management frontends, such as synaptic. dselect is an ancient dpkg frontend that basically nobody uses anymore; if you don't know what it is, then forget you ever heard about it.
Remind me again how easy Debian makes package-management?
Well, Debian's far from perfect, it's just better than everything else. *g*
Manoj Srivastava, Debian Project Secretary since April 2001, has resigned.
I'd like to disclose up front that I am not (yet) a Debian Developer, but I have been involved with the project for quite a few years now, initially as a user, then later as maintainer and co-maintainer of various packages.
Throughout my involvement with the project, I have continued to be impressed by Manoj's conduct, both in his personal capacity, and in his official capacity as Project Secretary and the duties that form part of that position (mainly running votes). Up until recently, I had thought that the rest of the project held a similar view, but apparently certain individuals disagree.
Whatever disagreements anyone might have with how Manoj has handled certain votes, I don't think someone that has faithfully served the project for nearly 9 years deserves this kind of personal, in-your-face vitriol; if you don't like the way someone is doing their job, there are far more constructive ways of expressing your disagreement than burning them at the stake, and I am ashamed to be associated with any individuals who were involved in this. I know there are many others who share my respect for Manoj, despite disliking some of the decisions he has made; they're capable of disagreeing without resorting to personal attacks, so this clearly isn't impossible.
Manoj (if you ever read this), I hope this whole affair has not caused you too much personal pain or anguish; please know that many of us out here have nothing but respect for the time and effort you've donated to the project, and I wish you well in your future efforts, wherever they may lie.
...what the fuck?! After spending around 5 hours (spread out over several sessions) trying to get this new server (Intel Frost Burg DG33FB mobo) to boot grub off the hard drive, I eventually discover that the BIOS doesn't even bother trying to boot off a hard drive if it can't find a partition flagged bootable. !@#$%!@#$%
