ChichaPlanet

August 2008 has been an awesome month for me, there has been a lot of things going on in my life on the past 28 days, a lot of good news, awesome experiences and opportunities, but 4 of them are the most remarkable:

DisneyLand:
I went for second time to disneyland, this time with my girlfriend family. It was just awesome, i had fun like a kid again, i felt like i was 7 again. I even have a photo with Mickey Mouse!

I’m a MOTU
A few weeks ago i’ve been accepted in the MOTU Team, it has been a hard, but wonderful time contributing, learning, fixing bugs, knowing people and having fun and now i get my reward, i’m SO happy with this.

I’m going to latinoware
Some days ago i was invited to LatinoWare, taking place from 30th October until 1th November, to give a talk on the Ubuntu track, and to help in the organization of that track also. It would be my first talk in an international event, i’m so looking forward into it.

I get a new work
Starting on Monday, i will be working as Security Engineer in the OEM Services Group for Canonical. It’s an amazing opportunity to work with the bleeding edge technology, and specially on security, which is what i love!

For those reason specially, 08/2008 will be a month to remember.

I need to thank to all the people who help me to start in this crazyness, all the people who checked, rechecked and point me my error (my lovely sponsors) and all my application supporters, we have something to celebrate now because… It’s official:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello everybody,

the MOTU Council is very happy with the contributions of Nicolas and is
happy to make him a MOTU!

Nicolas Nalcárcel's application:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-August/001362.html

Søren Hansen's vote:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-August/001373.html
Daniel Holbach's vote:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-August/001376.html
Richard A. Johnson's vote:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-August/001380.html

Luca Falavigna's feedback:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-August/001366.html
Emanuele Gentili's feedback:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-August/001367.html

Cesare Tirabassi's feedback:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-August/001368.html
Chuck Short's feedback:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-August/001371.html

Have a nice day,
 Daniel
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFIpFFkRjrlnQWd1esRApraAJ9h77I5nlQPy3D9/RhbL9/k/E5YugCcCMn1
3mFmIiiNQ6OWSOIFOnUBlp0=
=Fk1M
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Internet is now proved to be unsecured even if DNS are patched and i reached and unthinkable level of paranoia. Given that launchpad ppa (which are awesome for QA) doesn’t use signed packages, so i can’t actually check the integrity of them i’ve changed all my sources.list from url’s to ip’s so i can’t (at least i hope) be vulnerable to cache poisoning \o/

P.S: Please launchpad team, make ppa use signed packages!

Having one more of our europe’s morning martin pitt love conversations and jokes i was pointed to the pitti fanboys LP team, so i joined and get approved so now i’m an official pitti fanboy! What are you waiting, prove your fanboyism and make it official!

I simply love the Ubuntu community!

P.D: Should we create a ~dholbach-huggers team too?

Ok, there has been a lot of noise (again) about what should be in ubuntu planet, last time i wasn’t a member so i didn’t comment on the topic, but being that now i am here are my thoughts on the topic:

• Planet ubuntu is and should be a window to the community: Some people read planet to be up to date on the technical news, but that’s what changelog stands for, and planet ubuntu (or our blogs) aren’t actually changelogs. So the idea of limiting the what should be posted or not doesn’t seem really fair to me
• Ubuntu member represent the ubuntu community: All of us, being part of this community, an being officially recognized as members of it, gives us the representation of this community and for the people we are not just a lot of single people, we are the ubuntu community as a whole, so everything you said is taken as if it comes from the community especially if it is on one of the community’s communication channel, like mailing lists or planet. So we need to thing 3 times after post something on them since it won’t be treated as our own and personal opinion, but as the community one.
• Respects saved Respects: Before doing something it will be a good idea to think “If someone do this to me, would i like it?” If not, please don’t, everyone of us have different opinions on different topic, but it doesn’t give us the right to challenge people and be unrespectful. And said that you can say whatever you want, just need to find the right way to do it and express your opinion, is better to say “i don’t think so, i think is better like this” than saying “What were you thinking? that’s wrong!”

I don’t want to create more discussion on it, i think planet ubuntu is fine as it is now, and nothing need to be changed but the attitude of ourselves.

I’ve been writing a lot about Augeas and all the process i go through to get it included in debian/ubuntu. It seems that a lot of people was following it, but some of them don’t actually understand the whole picture and what is augeas for, so i’ve been asked to write a post explaining what it is, so here we go:

From the upstream homepage:

Augeas is a configuration editing tool. It parses configuration files in their native formats and transforms them into a tree. Configuration changes are made by manipulating this tree and saving it back into native config files.

Actually, it is a library which does all that stuff and can be manipulated using its public API. But what does this actually means? I will explain it using augtool and /etc/hosts as an example. As you might know it has the information of the host names and their IP addresses, so let’s take this hosts as an example:

127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain host.domain

After parsing it on augeas we will end with:

/files/etc/hosts/
- - - - - - - - - - - 1/
- - - - - - - - - - - - ipaddr = 127.0.0.1
- - - - - - - - - - - - canonical = localhost
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias = localhost.localdomain
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias = host.domain

So, then we might want to change some values:

augtool> set /files/etc/hosts/1/alias[2] myhost.domain

Ending with:

/files/etc/hosts/
- - - - - - - - - - - 1/
- - - - - - - - - - - - ipaddr = 127.0.0.1
- - - - - - - - - - - - canonical = localhost
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias = localhost.localdomain
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias = myhost.domain

or add new values:

augtool> ins alias after /files/etc/hosts/1/alias[1]

what will turn into:

/files/etc/hosts/
- - - - - - - - - - - 1/
- - - - - - - - - - - - ipaddr = 127.0.0.1
- - - - - - - - - - - - canonical = localhost
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias = localhost.localdomain
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias = myhost.domain

then we need to set a value since now it’s NULL:

augtool> set /files/etc/hosts/1/alias[2] myhost

ending like:

/files/etc/hosts/
- - - - - - - - - - - 1/
- - - - - - - - - - - - ipaddr = 127.0.0.1
- - - - - - - - - - - - canonical = localhost
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias = localhost.localdomain
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias = myhost
- - - - - - - - - - - - alias = myhost.domain

Then you can save it using:

augtool> save

Also you can add a new host, or whatever you want, just need to play with the tree.

Ok, but how this Black Magic work and how can i expand it to read new configuration files? Augeas uses lenses which are a Meta Data type using regular expressions that is being used for parsing, reading and writing configuration files. If you want to play around with lenses you can check this step-by-step tutorial written by Raphael Pinson (Thank you!)

As it usual when someone gets in, this is my hello Planet Debian post.

I’m Nicolas Valcárcel, i’m the maintainer of terminator and augeas and really interested on server and security topics. I’ve just started my New Maintainer process some weeks ago and hoping to put all my energies on making debian even better and easier!

I Live in Lima, Perú.

This is one more of those post with some random information and updates:

One more week for holidays!!
I’m going to travel to Orlando, Florida with my girlfriend’s family for holidays, i’m going to be after 17 years in disney world again! I’m also looking forward to know the LoCo Team (if there is any) and/or random FreeSoftware enthusiast, so if you live there, drop me an e-mail so we can get in contact to find a place and time for having some beers

Augeas is finally in!
Augeas has already reach the ubuntu and debian archive! So it’s time to write lenses and work to have it in good shape!

Config:Model
Last week (i think) i’ve been mailed about the Config:Model project, it looks really promising to me, i’m only waiting for augeas support to package it and start playing. If it gets into that stage soon (which i hope it does) we can have UCSA (or whatever i call it at the end) for intrepid+1!!

UDS in California
I’m really exited about this, next UDS will be at google offices in Mountain View California from 8th to 12th December, that’s one week after my final exams, so i won’t need to ask for permission at the university! Also i already have my visa for the united states, so there are less problems to go there (just the financial one :P). So i hope i can see you all in there!!

New Maintainer process
I’ve started my journey into Debian development. I’ve been contributing since i started with ubuntu development (really less that for ubuntu, but still forwarding a lot of stuff), i’m the maintainer of 2 packages now and i will start co-maintaining one more package, so i thought it was time to start the NM process, i founded an advocate (thank you kees!!) and i jumped in, it’s a long and not quick process but an awesome one, i still have a lot of debian in my heard, since was the distro which introduced me into Linux and i want to pay that back!

New Mentoring Model
Last week we have been discussing a lot inside the mentoring reception team and with other MOTU’s on improving the mentoring program, we start writing a draft, making changes, discussing more, and finally we released it!

I think this was all the random stuff going on in my life this last days!

All my life i have been wondering where in the world 2 neighbor timezones have 24 hours difference. Today i finally start thinking about it with an internet connection near and found them! Just where i thought they will we!

Finally! Augeas reached the archive! So now you can install it on intrepid, and break it on the way you want (and report the breakages on LP). Also you take a look at the list and write some lenses! This is your shoot to start contributing to ubuntu and specially the server team.
Have a nice hack!

As i said on my previuos post augeas got it’s 2 acks in ubuntu, so it’s on the new queue waiting for an archive administrator to review and include it on the archive. Today i got it also sponsored in debian (thank you kees, you rock!) so it’s waiting on it’s new queue also waiting for an ftp master to review and include it! So anytime from now on you will be able to play with it! It’s awesome.

I have also uploaded it to my ppa for those who cannot wait until it’s included to play with it (and start writing lenses). So if you are one of those you can’t wait and/or want to contribute on the lenses writing stage yo just need to add this to your sources.list in hardy:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvalcarcel/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvalcarcel/ubuntu hardy main

Then you can install augeas-tools and play with it!

The first step for UCSA is already done! Augeas finally got it’s second ACK! So we just need to wait until the archive admins include it on the archive! I’ve been working on it’s packaging and resolving a really disturbing Bug, but given the help i have received from the really lovely, patient and helpful reviewers it’s already accepted (Thank you all guys! :D).
Now we need to focus on the next step of it, where i will appreciate really much if you want to help on it. It doesn’t need a lot of knowledge, so if you want to get involved on ubuntu and don’t know how, this is your shot!

How you ask? I will answer this question later, first a little description about augeas:
Augeas is a configuration editing tool. It parses configuration files in their native formats and transforms them into a tree. Configuration changes are made by manipulating this tree and saving it back into native config files.

But, how does it recognizes all the native formats of the configuration files? It’s not black magic, well it’s almost black magic, but it need some recipes for it, and those area called lenses.

Great, but, what are those lenses? Lenses are the building blocks of the file < -> tree transformation; they combine parsing a file and building the tree (the get transformation), with turning the tree back into an (updated) file (the put transformation).

Sounds awesome, but also really hard… You know what? It’s not hard, they are just a list of regular expressions and directives in a really easy format, don’t believe me? Give a look at the official documentation on how to write them. It’s not hard, you just need to know (or learn) the syntax of those config files and the POSIX regexp syntax (man re_syntax).

Awesome i want to help! Tell me how!! Ok, i have create a wiki page with the lenses we have now and the ones we want, so you only need to give a look at it and start working on the lense you want after assigning it to yourself. Once you have it, please file a Bug against augeas with the following format:

Summary: Please add lense for $PACKAGE
Description: Augeas doesn’t support $PACKAGE configuration files.
And attach your lense to it.

Also if you feel like you want to, send it to upstream using their list (augeas-devel AT redhat DOT com), or just let me send it.

So, let’s work on this little things to have UCSA as soon as possible and make ubuntu even better!

P.D: If you write a lense also add a comment on it with your name an e-mail to have track of who wrote them like this:
(* Written by Joe Hacker <joe.hacker@isp.net> *)

Yesterday i saw Kung Fu Panda, which i found really amazing since it’s content messages, but there it was an specific quote from Grand Master Oogway which i found really true and wonderful:

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
But today is a gift,
and that is why it’s called the present

So, live now, be happy and don’t worry about the rest!

Today at work (where i can’t use linux) i was asked to do a really easy and repetitive task: Take screenshots from an e-learning course and paste it with the content text on a text document.
It sounds easy (not fun, just easy), well it wasn’t for several reasons:

1. Cntrl+Alt+$ARROW doesn’t go to any other desktop: there are no virtual desktops on windows, so you can’t change from one document to other just changing desktops, you need to search the application you need in the ones you have open.

2. A screenshot means a picture of the whole screen: You can’t take a screenshot from just the application you want, you need to shot the whole window and then edit the picture to just include the application you want.

3. Middle click doesn’t paste the selected text: You need to explicitly Copy and then paste, why!?

After i started with those problems i started thinking: is that what it feels for a windows user to use Linux? Why to people say Linux is harder if i’m finding so hard use windows? Is that Linux has make me lazy? Why do people prefer to use the slow and horrible mouse over the keyboard?

The good thing: Now i have some complainings to say to windows user when they start saying: “You need to make it that way in linux?”

P.D: If you are going to leave a comment saying: “You can use $3th_PARTY_APPLICATION in windows to do that” just don’t because then i will say: “Why do i need to make a research and install 3rth party applications if i can do it in linux out of the box?”

So, as i promise in my previous post i’m posting an update of the state of my project.

I have already packaged augeas, it’s a mixed package including a binary, a library, development files, and some extra files, i have already uploaded to my ppa to use it for testing, if you want to play with it feel free to include my ppa on your sources and mail me if you find some bugs

I’ve also uploaded it to revu so if you are a reviewer please check it, comment and Ack it when ready (if you are DD you can also check it on mentors.d.n and sponsor it for debian).

But what is augeas? Taken from the long description:

Augeas parses configuration files into a tree structure, which it exposes through its public API. Changes made through the API are written back to the initially read files.

The transformation works very hard to preserve comments and formatting details. It is controlled by “lens” definitions that describe the file format and the transformation into a tree.

So as a summary it is a cool, fun and easy way to manage config files!

You may have read already about Ubuntu centralized server administrator since it has been mentioned on the lasts server meetings and as you may have noticed i’m not present on them, so i will start giving the status of the spec from here, but first, as this is the first time i blog about it i will start describing what is ucsa:

On the last UDS i talked to some people about making a tool to control and manage services easily and without pain for new sysadmins. The first thing really painful about service management tools is that you have limited options on it, and if you edit your config file by hand it will simply break the tool, so you can or use the tool or edit config files, not the 2 of them at the same time, so one of the goals was to have some way to edit the config files by hand and not destroy the management tool, but how? You can’t! You must be out of your mind! Well, it might be, but we got some ideas on how to do this:
Ignored zone:
We first talk about making the tool read until some stop point, so the sysadmin can edit after that point without breaking anything because the tool wasn’t going to read it.

Augeas
After UDS someone send some links to the server team list and one of them catch my attention, it was a tool that parses config files and present them as trees so you don’t need to care about the config file itself, just edit the tree and save it, it was the perfect backend for ucsa!

Also, i wanted a tool that doesn’t depend on any service (as a web browser), since i want to care only about the services, so we need a user interface different from CLI, since it’s “hard” from the new linux sysadmins (now i love it, but remember when you start!). Gtk? plz! who wants Xorg on his server, maybe for home servers, but not as initial UI, Curses! That’s perfect! We can use it from command line without needing anything extra! Yay!

So what’s the progress? I’ve already packaged augeas, i’m just waiting for someone to review it and give me feedback or upload it.

Find this a cool idea? Stay tunned, there is more!

It has been a really busy week, lot’s of news and things to share with you, so as always let’s start:

Software Freedom Day
Ubuntu Perú is placed to announce that is going to be in charge of the Software Freedom Day here, we are trying to run a different but amazing event, we have some ideas for that, we are trying to run a Lan Party using OpenArena, and have an inter university contest of FOSS related projects so we can promote and some how wake the students of the local universities up to be more active on the FOSS, and some other also, but everything on his time.

Global Bug Jam
We are also going to be part of the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam!! I’m very sad that we are just going to run it on Lime, but i’m trying to move some people from other towns to run a Bug Day there and just triage some Bug Reports and help, but we will see what happens.

Packaging Jams
Last Friday i run a packaging jam on my university it was really nice to see some students going, and more impressive to see a teacher in there! It was awesome, we only package ed from source because we run out of time, but i will patch some bugs this Friday, it seems that they want some workshops every Fridays so i will try to get them involved in ubuntu!
Also i have been invited to run a packaging Jam next week, i think, on other LUG’s place they need to confirm me the date, but it’s almost a fact i will be there!

CONASOL
This weekend i have been on Chimbote (6 hours by bus from Lima to the north) giving a talk on a congress they have there, i talk about the Ubuntu Behind the Scenes (thanks pedro for the presentation) and they were very happy, i hope to see people involved in the project soon, they were really happy and interested.

UCSA
As i focus my work on the server team of ubuntu i have been focusing on a new tools to manage services and configurations. I have seen some people interested in this idea asking what was about it: It’s not dead, i’m still working on that, i have been evaluating Augeas, and it seems that it’s really useful this days i will play more with it and package it for further development, so stay tunned or send me an e-mail if you want to help with this.

I’ve got my visa!
Now it’s a fact, i will be on Miami from 28 July to 6th August, i’m going to be in orlando (yes, i’m going on vacations to Disney) and one night in Tampa so if you live in there i’m looking to meet with some LoCo’s and have a good time, so send me and e-mail to talk about the details!

Ok, i think this is it for now, i will try to post more now that i’m not so busy as last week!

Terminator 0.9 Feature Freeze has come, i’m really excited to see the new features working, they are awesome, but what are this new exciting features?

• Tabs: Now terminator supports tabs, you have different tabs with splited terminals on each one.
• Drag & Drop: Now you can reorder your terminals, you just need to press Cntrl + right click and drag and drop your terminals wherever you want!
• Terminal zooming: This is one of the more exiting ones, have you expect problems when using splited terminals and one of them turns to little for some seconds? Now you just need to press ctrl+shift+z to have this terminal on the whole window and then use the same key combination to put it back on it’s place! It’s awesome!
• Terminatorrc: Don’t like gnome environments? Now you don’t depend on gnome-terminal to configure your terminator, you can use ~/.terminatorrc to tune your terminal as you want it to be
• Titles: kind of confused when using ssh connections inside terminator? Now we support titles, so you always have a title on each splited terminal to know where you are working on

It’s really awesome to see al this changes comming, they make terminator really usefull, want to try them? Help the terminator team to test it, just add my ppa to your sources.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvalcarcel/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvalcarcel/ubuntu hardy main

Download it:

$sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install terminator

And report bugs if you find some: https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator

Excited? Digg it!

It has been a while since i don’t post, since i’ve been traveling on europe and then kind of busy in the work and adapting to the correct timezone, so i have a lot of things to talk about.

Memberships
I’m really proud to anounce that i’m not the only ubuntu member any more, this week 3 new Peruvians have been approved by the regional board, i’m very happy of that since i work with them in the Peruvian LoCo Council managing the LoCo team and i know the hard work they have been doing. Also i’m really happy to see our server team documentation leader been approved as member also!
So i want to congratulate Andres, Dante, Michael and Adam! Keep rocking guys!!

Peruvian LoCo team
Yesterday the Peruvian LoCo team has been finally approved as an official LoCo!! We have work a lot on this so i was very happy when i start seeing the “+1″ from the LoCo Council members!! Rock on Peru!!

Global Bug Jam
I was very happy to read about the Global Bug Jam! It’s a wonderful idea, i’m already coordinating with the Peruvian LoCo team to run one here in Perú. Sounds like a good idea to you? Digg it and help spreading the word!

Software Freedom Day
On Prague there was a nice guy who talk about the Software Freedom Day, it looked as a good idea to me, so we are coordinating on the LoCo team to run one (or some) in Perú. If you don’t find any in near your place, start thinking on running one.

Server Team Blog
That’s a great idea, i’m proud to announce that mathiaz has started the Server Team Blog, where a lot of news about the server team will be posted, so stay tunned.

Ubuntu Centralized Managment Console
Since this week (today) was the deadline for presenting the blueprints for the server team i have been working on the specification of the proyect i talked about with some people on Prague i’m kind of stucked with some ideas and since i haven’t have time, since i need to recover the lost time at work on the last 2 week i kind of haven’t finished it but i will still work on that, the goal is ubuntu 10.04 so i have some time, if you have some ideas, please send them to me to nvalcarcel AT ubuntu DOT org

Conasol
Next week i will be on the National FreeSoftware Congres in chimbote, i will talk about the ubuntu backstage, how the full process behind the nice release are (thanks pedro for your presentation!!) and maybe run a Packaging Jam in there if have some time and a place where i can i hope to see people from there involved on the project, i promise to post some pictures of them if i can, so stay tunned.

Did you want to see Free Software on the Guinness World Record? Help firefox to get in!! How can you help you ask? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it’s that easy!