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Fresh & Fruity

July 28th, 2009 by

Available today as part of the SUSE Appliance Program is SUSE Studio 1.0 based on the  image creator technology called kiwi. When creating an appliance with SUSE Studio you also have the possibility to export the appliance description to your local computer and use the kiwi backend directly to understand more about image creation and deployment

A professional linux distribution should be able to work as an appliance which is an ll-in-one solution including the application and the operating system. A basic appliance to start with is the JeOS – Just Enough Operating System. kiwi provides these as examples in the kiwi-templates package. To create your first SUSE 11.1 appliance just type:

kiwi --build suse-11.1-JeOS -d /destination/path

The primary image type of a JeOS template is a virtual disk which you can run in a virtual machine like QEmu, KVM, Vmware, VirtualBox, etc… To do this with qemu just call:

qemu /destination/path/LimeJeOS-openSUSE-11.1.i686-1.11.1.vmdk

and here you go with your first appliance. You want to know more about kiwi, just take a look at the wiki here:

KIWI Cookbook

or read the full system documentation as PDF here:

KIWI System Documentation

Remember to have fun 🙂

Posted in Virtualization | Comments Off on Fresh & Fruity

Cutting-edge LTSP

June 17th, 2009 by

openSUSE 11.2 development started a while back, now that we have passed Milestone2, development work on KIWI-LTSP using openSUSE 11.2 base has started, with that we get a host of new features.

The highlights of new packages:
– Uses clicfs for NBD/AOE root image. clicfs: Compressed Loop Image Container is a file system created by Stephan Kulow. So we do not need squashfs and aufs anymore for LTSP images. Clicfs gives better compression, image size is about 10% smaller than same image created using squashfs.
– Kernel 2.6.30
– New look by Samyak Bhuta
– New xorg, CONFIGURE_X in lts.conf no longer necessary

The packages are available in server:ltsp repository.

Follow these instructions to test the development packages on already configured LTSP server:

#Take backup so system can be restored as it is if something do go wrong
mv /srv/kiwi-ltsp/i386.img /srv/kiwi-ltsp/i386-squashfs.img
mv /srv/tftpboot/boot /srv/tftpboot/boot-old
#remove current images
rpm -e kiwi-ltsp-prebuilt kiwi-ltsp-bootimages --nodeps
#add repository and install development packages
zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/server:/ltsp/openSUSE_11.1 server:ltsp
zypper in kiwi-ltsp-bootimages-unstable kiwi-ltsp-prebuilt-unstable

Bugs, feature requests go here. See http://en.opensuse.org/LTSP#Communicate for more ways to give feedback.

Happy testing…

Posted in Education, Server | Comments Off on Cutting-edge LTSP

Transcoding/Ripping Cluster using KIWI-LTSP

June 11th, 2009 by

We had a bit of High Performance Cluster (HPC) setup already to do distributed build using Icecream on KIWI-LTSP, now Mathis has written a “howto” use KIWI-LTSP for clustered ripping and transcoding, another kind of HPC use of LTSP network. Ready to run LTSP server is integrated in openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e DVD making it very easy to do such setups.

“Since the transcoding process can take a long time, the work can be split into several fragments which then can be processed by other machines on a network. The best way to accomplish this is to set up a server which controls the transcoding process, from which the (diskless) clients can boot.”

So why openSUSE KIWI-LTSP for this job? This is what Mathis had to say: “well, I just needed some OS to boot from the network, luckily it was LTSP,  so I saved some time gathering parts for an OS since openSUSE also provides the dvd::rip and transcode packages and KIWI-LTSP automatically resolves the dependencies, this is an extra point for it…”

It could  serve digital  studios as well or convert your DVD collection to use on home media center PC very quickly 😉

Posted in Documentation, Education, Server, Wiki | Comments Off on Transcoding/Ripping Cluster using KIWI-LTSP

Coming soon on the servers near you: Easy-LTSP-NG

June 2nd, 2009 by

Easy-LTSP, an easy to use GUI to configure LTSP‘s lts.conf file was developed as a part of Google Summer of Code ’08 by Jan Weber. It was written in C#, it was decided to use C# at that time to accomplish a complex task in a very short period of time given for GSOC. Thanks to it setting up LTSP on openSUSE is just a few mouse clicks.

Easy-LTSP was designed to work on any distribution, but unfortunately it is not integrated anywhere other than openSUSE, discussing with the upstream LTSP developers suggested the slight reservation could be due to it being written in C#. We wanted to add new features to the GUI to take care of all the exciting new development we have in KIWI-LTSP so it was felt that the rewrite will be much better option than to extend the current code, as it is anyway being written from scratch why not use something like Python which would be easier to attract more contributors and increase possibility that users of all distributions running LTSP server can benefit from it inclusion in their prefered distro.

Here are the screencaps of the “Next Generation” Easy-LTSP(click image to see full album):

The code is in very initial stage, many things do not work yet, these screenies would give some idea where the design is going. If you are a developer interested in hacking get the source from here, drop us a line if you want SVN commit access. If you are a user and have some suggestions or an idea how this tool should be like file an enhancement request on devzilla here.

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Posted in Education, Server, Usability | 1 Comment »

Kolab on its way back

May 7th, 2009 by

After a long time, with lots of not visible activity Kolab, the groupware server build with many known open source components, is slowly getting back into openSUSE. For a year or so it was not possible to use Kolab on openSUSE versions newer than 10.3. That was due to the move from openldap 2.3 to 2.4. The latter does no longer support slurpd as replication mechanism, but uses syncrepl instead. Hence, kolab had to be extended to be able to work with new replication protocol. After that the way the webclient horde was packaged, changed from (to make a long story short) 1 big package, to many small packages. This in preparation for horde4. Today, the following message was posted to the kolab-user e-maillist:

after a lot of tests on a virtual system I finally upgraded my
productive Kolab server to 2.2.1 with the Suse packages.

Now you should now, that kolab-2.2.1 was released about month in April 2009. Although we (Marcus Huewe, Alar Sing, and the author of this article) are not there yet, seeing this message means a lot to us. We’re making good process!

Posted in Packaging, Server | 3 Comments »

ARM support in openSUSE Buildservice – fixed

April 27th, 2009 by

The issue caused by the OBS worker update on arm builds is fixed by a new qemu.

This new qemu version also has fixed the Fedora 10 @ ARM build problem.

So we have the following working ARM target distros available for ARM: Fedora 10, Debian 5.0 and Ubuntu 9.04.

Have fun.

Posted in Base System, Build Service, Packaging, Quality Assurance, Server, Toolchain, Virtualization | 1 Comment »

ARM support for openSUSE Buildservice and openSUSE – Status update

April 26th, 2009 by

Its a while since I posted the status about the ongoing work for ARM support in the OBS and for an openSUSE port. It all started with my participation in the OBS development as an external contributor. Then, on Hackweek 2008, we had the idea to enforce a new solution other than the traditional methods of compiling code either natively or via a cross compiler on a host system. The idea was to give build scripts as much of the target enviroment as they need to just work without changes in the packaging definition – in order not to change thousands of package descriptions which define a linux distribution.

A lot happened in the meantime. And I can now report some significant progess in bringing the joys of OBS and openSUSE also to all the ARM users:

  • I held a talk about cross build in OBS on FOSDEM 2009 – documenting the solution
  • ARM support is in the source tree for OBS and the publicly available packages
  • ARM support is activated in the public OBS
  • OBS 1.6 release is currently in beta – this release is the dedicated version for ARM
  • The Linux foundation will bring the joy of OBS to an even wider audience
  • Some preparations have been done for porting Base:build to ARM – we can mix cross compilers an native emulated code now
  • A Summer of Code project will be done to accelerate the development of an openSUSE @ ARM port

    • To accelerate the openSUSE @ ARM development itself, we want to involve more people of the community. We have an IRC Channel #opensuse-arm for OBS and openSUSE @ ARM – i invite you to visit us there. We will also find a solution to bring the needed changes into the openSUSE Factory codebase so regular build for openSUSE can take place once the base system is working. I will inform you once we have a working base system that can be used to port many other packages. The soon starting Summer of Code Project “Porting openSUSE to ARM platform” is intended as the starting point here.

    The next steps are to bring in all the useful applications into OBS, so you have the wide range of applications that is already available for x86 or powerpc then also on ARM. You will see interesting things happening during the next time here. To support this, more and more of the tested ARM targets will be made available also on the public OBS. I will follow up with status updates.

    Posted in Base System, Build Service, Distribution, Packaging, Server, Toolchain, Virtualization | Comments Off on ARM support for openSUSE Buildservice and openSUSE – Status update

    ARM support in openSUSE Buildservice – currently broken

    April 26th, 2009 by

    With this message I want to make you aware that the ARM builds inside OBS are currently broken. This is due to an update of the buildservice worker code on Friday. This update removes the limit of 2 GB for the build results from the buildservice. Also, the performance of the buildservice backend code has been improved for high loads with lots of new events.

    We are now faced with an incompatibility of the underlying QEMU emulator with this new code to extract the build results in the combination of XEN and QEMU user mode. You can in fact see in your build logs for ARM error messages like:

    … saving built packages
    /usr/src/packages/DEBS/dsme-tools_0.6mer3_armel.deb
    Unsupported ioctl: cmd=0x0002 (0)
    FIGETBSZ: Function not implemented
    Unsupported ioctl: cmd=0x80041272 (4)

    We are working on a solution already. A new QEMU with this and another issues fixed is already under test and has been dropped to openSUSE:Tools:Devel/qemu-svn. I will inform you when we have this fixed in the public build service.

    Posted in Base System, Build Service, Packaging, Server, Toolchain, Virtualization | Comments Off on ARM support in openSUSE Buildservice – currently broken

    Low bandwith for openSUSE-Education

    March 1st, 2009 by

    Since July 2008, there’s a known problem with the sponsored server hosting the frozen openSUSE-Education repositories: our provider limits the bandwith for up- and downloads if more than 1 TB data is transfered per month. …and this is the case around the 25th of each month since this time.

    People using HTTP requests to download packages are sadly very affected by this limitation at the end of each month, and I apologise for the trouble caused. Thanks to the FTP-Server Admins of openSUSE, we’ve already a place to host our ISO-Images, containing the same files as the frozen repositories. We’ve also a FTP (ftp://ftp.opensuse-education.org/) and a RSync-Server up and running (rsync rsync.opensuse-education.org::download/) – which should make it a bit easier until we’ve the final decision from the new openSUSE-Board, if they can provide some space for us.

    Until then, feel free to offer additional space for our repositories. We’ve already an offer from Peter Poeml to help us configuring a “Mirrorbrain” setup.

    Tags: ,
    Posted in Distribution, Miscellaneous, Server | 1 Comment »

    Build maemo-apps with openSUSE BuildService ? – It works !

    January 27th, 2009 by

    build serviceThe openSUSE Build Service is an open and complete distribution development platform. It’s the infrastructure for a development of the openSUSE distributions. But this powerful tool can do much more! The upcoming version 1.5 will also have cross-build support and thus be able to build e.g. ARM packages on x86 hardware .

    maemo.org loko Maemo is the platform for mobile devices like the N810 and has been developed by Nokia in collaboration with many open source projects such as the Linux kernel, GNOME and many more. (more…)

    Tags: , , , , , ,
    Posted in Architectures, Base System, Build Service, Distribution, Hackweek, Packaging, Toolchain, Virtualization | 3 Comments »

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