planet.igalia.com

Adrián Pérez: Maintaining your LVM snapshots clean

2008-07-04T18:02:12+00:00

As I have written before snapshots is a extremely fast and convenient way of perfoming live backups which can be mounted and handled like any other filesystem. But I also told you that LVM snaphots could render themselves as unusable when they run out of free blocks. Today I hacked up a quick script which automagically increments sizes of snapshots logical volumes. Just drop the following snippet into /etc/cron.hourly and relax:

#! /bin/bash

THRESHOLD="80"
INCREMENT="15"

set -e
IFS=':'

/sbin/lvs --noheadings --units M --separator : | \
while read lv vg attr lsize origin snapp move log copyp
do
  # Check whether this is a snapshot or not
  [ "${snapp}" ] || continue

  snapp=${snapp%.*}
  lv=${lv// /}

  # Check whether the thing needs resizing
  [ "${snapp}" -ge "${THRESHOLD}" ] || continue

  lsize=${lsize%.*}
  isize=$(( INCREMENT * lsize / 100 ))
  echo "lvresize -L +${isize}M ${vg}/${lv}"
  /sbin/lvresize -L "+${isize}M" "${vg}/${lv}"
done

You can change the following settings:

THRESHOLD is the percent of usage which triggers resizing. When actual usage is greater than this value snapshots will grow.
INCREMENT is used to calculate how much size is added to the volume, it is a percent of the current volume size.

Of course the script could be improved (i.e. it could check whether there are space for growing in the volume group), but this naïve implementation is enough to make me happy and not to worry about checking status of my snapshots periodically

Enrique Ocaña: I’ve a landline phone number in USA

2008-07-04T15:35:29+00:00

I know, I know… having a landline phone number in USA isn’t uncommon if you live there. But the fact is that I don’t live there.

The phone number is offered for free by IpKall and it’s binded to my Gizmo SIP account (VoIP). That way, when you call that number, and if I’m logged into my Gizmo account, I can receive your call. Moreover, if you’ve a Skype account it should be cheap for you to call me. Yes, you’ve catched it: it’s the perfect and cheap (but not free) SIP-Skype bridge.

In fact, I’m thinking to bind the number to the SIP account of the PolyCom we’ve in the office. That way, we could set up a multiconference among some Skype users and the PolyCom.

P.S.: I’m not showing here the real phone number nor the Gizmo account for privacy reasons. If you’d like to know them, just contact me.

Adrián Pérez: Taking snapshots with LVM

2008-07-03T10:29:48+00:00

Let us suppose we have a volume group named vg. Let us suppose we have a logical volume named base which holds our precious data in a 800 MB file system which has support for freezing (e.g. XFS). So we can take snapshots at any time with a single command:

# lvcreate --size 200M --snapshot --name snappy /dev/vg/base

Now we can mount it whenever we want to recover from the saved status:

# mount -o nouuid,ro /dev/vg/snappy /mnt

The nouuid option is needed for XFS filesystems, otherwise the driver will think it is mounting the same filesystem and will refuse to mount the snapshot. Take into account that:

Blocks in the source volume are stored on-demand in the snapshot volume when they are changed.
If mounting the snapshot in write mode, written blocks will be stored in the snapshot volume.
You can make the original filesystem grow, but it cannot be shrunk.
Snapshots can be grown and shrunk.
If a snapshot runs out of free blocks, it will render itself unusable: make sure you check its status periodically with lvdisplay and grow it as needed.

Currently I am using snapshots as a quick-come-on-let’s-go backup method for the root filesystem of a Debian installation I am using for a project. If somethings goes wrong one can mount the snapshot and restore files from the snapshot… or one can even boot up from a snapshot by setting root=/dev/mapper/vg-snappy in the kernel command line…

Premio PFC con Software Libre: A xestión do copyright

2008-07-03T09:15:40+00:00

No post anterior, explicabamos os conceptos básicos a ter en conta á hora de elexir unha licencia. Neste, pretendemos explicar os distintos modos de xestión do copyright nun proxecto de software libre.

En primeiro lugar, hai que dicir que o copyright e a licencia son cousas distintas. Como xa dixemos, a licencia é o mecanismo legal mediante o que o autor declara qué dereitos sobre o programa proporciona ó usuario. Porén, o copyright é o mecanismo legal polo que se indica a quen pertencen os dereitos de explotación do código.

As principais implicacións de ter ou non o copyright:

Decidir sobre os cambios/asignación de licencia.
Manter os dereitos de explotación do software (é dicir, as posibles ganancias pola venda de licencias do programa repercutirán sobre os axentes que manteñan o copyright).

A efectos legais, pódese dicir que manter o copyright do código significa ser o propietario do mesmo.

É por esta razón, que existen proxectos e comunidades de software libre, que á hora de participar, esixen que se lles ceda o copyright. Éste é o caso, por exemplo, do proxecto Apache, da Free Software Foundation e de MySQL.

A xestión do copyright ten importantes implicacións legais, pero tamén económicas e sociais. Imos tratar de resumilas a continuación.

IMPLICACIÓNS LEGAIS: o caso Apache e FSF

Dende o punto de vista legal, que o copyright sexa dun só axente (Apache ou a FSF) simplifica o proceso relicenciamentos futuros, facilitando asimesmo afrontar procesos legais futuros (xa que grandes institucións como a FSF poder ter máis recursos económicos para afrontar un proceso legal). Así o xustifican tanto a Apache Software Foundation:

The purpose of this agreement is to clearly define the terms under which intellectual property has been contributed to the ASF and thereby allow us to defend the project should there be a legal dispute regarding the software at some future time.

como a Free Software Foundation:

In order to make sure that all of our copyrights can meet the recordkeeping and other requirements of registration, and in order to be able to enforce the GPL most effectively, FSF requires that each author of code incorporated in FSF projects provide a copyright assignment

Pero máis alá das implicacións legais, existen tamén fortes motivacións económicas que sustentan a práctica de cesión de copyright.

IMPLICACIÓNS ECONÓMICAS: o caso MySQL

Dende o punto de vista económico, podemos decir que a cesión do copyright sustenta unha das formas en que unha compañía pode gañar diñeiro con software libre: o licenciamento dual. O exemplo canónico de este modelo é a empresa MySQL AB.

MySQL AB é unha empresa finlandesa que desenvolve a base de datos MySQL. Esta base de datos ten a licencia GPL, con todo o que iso supón: pódese usar e modificar libremente, pero non se poden realizar productos cerrados a partir dun código gpl.

De todos modos, MySQL AB entende que existen certos axentes que desexan realizar productos propietarios a partir da súa base de datos. É por isto, que ademáis de licenciar a base de datos coa licencia GPL, tamén a licencia coa MySQL Comercial License.

Tal e como o explican dende MySQL:

MySQL is the owner and copyright holder of the entire MySQL product, whereas Linux does not have one single entity as a copyright holder. This makes the MySQL Dual Licensing model possible.

The MySQL users benefit from this in the form of further product development financed by MySQL (with currently over 80 developers on MySQL’s payroll). While MySQL has developed most of the MySQL database itself, and continues to do so, MySQL also wants to simplify the processes for contributors to MySQL.

Deste xeito, para concluir, podemos decir que o licenciamento dual que MySQL usa, non sería posible (ou sería moi complexo realizalo) se os participantes da comunidade non cedesen o seu copyright á empresa.

IMPLICACIÓNS SOCIAIS: o caso GNOME e KDE

Por último, veremos cómo a xestión do copyright afecta á participación na comunidade estudiando os proxectos GNOME e KDE, que son dous dos principais escritorios de software libre. Estudiando o copyright de ambos proxectos, podemos observar distintos patróns de participación nas 2 comunidades.

Na seguinte figura móstrase o porcentaxe de liñas de código asociadas a cada tipo de participante (desenvolvedor particular, universidade, empresa, fundación ou grupo de desenvolvemento).

A diferencia máis reseñable entre ambos proyectos é que:

o porcentaxe de código debido ás empresas é 3 veces maior en GNOME que en KDE

Esto pode ser debido a que as librerías principais de KDE (Qt) teñen o copyright da empresa Trolltech, mentres que as de GNOME (GTK) teñen o copyright da Fundación GNOME e dos desenvolvedores individuais. Esta característica pode ser a razón principal da reticencia de participación de outras empresas no proxecto KDE.

Así, vemos cómo que o copyright sexa de autores individuais, dunha Fundación (organización sen ánimo de lucro) ou de unha empresa pode facer variar tamén o índice de participación dos distintos axentes.

Concluíndo, vimos ó longo deste post, cómo a xestión do copyright -xunto coa adecuada elección da licencia- conforman aspectos claves para a evolución do proxecto, tendo efectos económicos, legais e de participación.

Sergio Villar: Get in touch

2008-07-02T16:33:57+00:00

Seems that a lot of people are trying Modest and thus they want to report bugs and feature requests. It could be seen in Modest development page but just to clarify we have the usual couple of mailing lists

modest-devel: for development purpouses
modest-user: for Modest users

You can subscribe to both of them here.

There are many other ways to contact us like the public forum, ~~the feature request system, or the~~ ~~bug tracking system~~ (thanks Andre for pointing me out that starting today we’re using the maemo bugzilla, select “Communication” as product, and “Email” as component). So just use those channels of communication, we’ll try to help as much as possible.

Alberto Garcia: A quick one: Guadec, Vagalume and Moblin

2008-07-01T13:29:49+00:00

I’ve got a thousand things to do these days so this is going to be a very schematic post :)

On Thursday me and some other igalians are flying to Guadec-ES (Madrid) where we’ll meet the Spanish-speaking Gnome team. We have some talks there: I’ll talk about the Maemo platform, a topic which will be further extended by Mario. Victor will show his YouTube viewer and Claudio will talk about how to extend Eye of Gnome,
From there we’ll go to Guadec at Istanbul (not Constantinople). There we’ll meet the rest of the Igalia crew. Some of us will deliver talks there as well: I’ll talk a bit about the Vagalume Last.fm client, Iago will talk about the Gnome Buildbot and Juanjo about Gtranslator.
The next version of Vagalume is going to be released very soon. Among other things, this will be the first version with support for the Moblin platform (the support is already available in SVN). Here you can see a screenshot of Vagalume on Moblin (click to enlarge):
Regarding Vagalume, I was interviewed some days ago in a program called Extrarradio in the Galician radio (Radio Galega). Those interested in hearing the interview can get it from here, but note that it’s in completely in Galician Portuguese and that I talk very fast :)
Wanna see Vagalume in action ? Someone has posted a nice video here.
Our beloved Modest has finally seen its first official release !

See you in Istanbul !!

Claudio Saavedra: Tue 2008/Jul/01

2008-07-01T13:11:00+00:00

This is how A Coruña welcomes its visitors:

Claudio Saavedra: Sat 2008/Jun/28

2008-06-28T21:30:00+00:00

It's that time of the year again. Tomorrow, I'll leave for a pretty tight but extremely exciting trip in Europe, from one corner in the west, to the other in the east of the continent. Really tight, but I'm sure it's gonna be a hell of fun.

First stop is A Coruña, where I'll meet the Igalia crew for a few days, in order to get to know them a bit more personally, learn a bit more about the company and my future home, and of course, a little bit of work.

Next stop is Madrid, where I'll attend the fifth GUADEC Hispana. This year's conference will take place in the Fuenlabrada campus of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, and it really promises interesting days. I'll give a small talk on how to extend the Eye of GNOME Image Viewer, so if you are interested on having fun with images, metadata, and that sort of stuff, you're more than welcome.

You probably imagine my final destination: Istanbul, in Turkey, where most of the GNOME people will gather for GUADEC, the GNOME Conference. I'm really excited, because I always wanted to visit Istanbul, and mixing together a bunch of good friends, the project I love, and one of the most beautiful cities in the world, can't possibly be bad at all.

It's gonna be like nine flights in less than 15 days. Not bad, uh?

Iago Toral: New look for build.gnome.org

2008-06-27T12:12:55+00:00

Thanks to Frederic Peters, who’s kindly worked on providing a new design that’s more integrated with the Gnome Website look and feel, and Alejando Piñeiro, who’s been working on actually making it work with our Builbot installation.

You can check it out here. Hope you like it!

Adrián Pérez: Tip: Faster remote shells with multiplexed SSH

2008-06-26T17:37:25+00:00

Edit ~/.ssh/config (or /etc/ssh/ssh_config for sitewide configuration) and add the following snippet:

Host *
   ControlMaster auto
   ControlPath ~/.ssh/socket-%r@%h:%p

This will create a socket for each set (user, machine, port) when the first SSH session is opened. Further sessions will see the socket and use it instead of opening a new connection, multiplexing all concurrent connections via the same connection. The same goes for scp and sftp.

Nice side-effects of this:

No functionality is lost at all.
SSH sessions will open faster, as there is no need to establish a connection.
You will not need to enter you password everytime (but note that maybe you should be using public-key authentication).
You can open several sessions to servers which put a limit on the number of simultaneous connections.
If you are a sysadmin, you can limit the number of SSH connections to exactly one per user

Hope you find this tip useful

Adrián Pérez: More btrfs goodness: snapshots

2008-06-25T22:42:04+00:00

As I am currently working with KVM KVM and I will have some big disk image files hanging around, I thought it could be a good opportunity to give a try to the btrfs snapshot and subvolume support. You can take a look at my previous post

First of all: snapshots and subvolumes are the same to btrfs. To be fair: snapshots are subvolumes with initial content. The nice thing about btrfs is the Copy-On-Write (COW) semantics: snapshots do not take physical space until blocks are overwritten, and only new versions of overwritten blocks are allocated from free space. This is a lot similar to KVM/Qemu snapshots when dealing with images in the qcow2 format. The difference is that you can mount a btrfs volume: you get features designed for virtualization right on the filesystem level! Once again old technology is applied in a novel way

I have a btrfs volume mounted at /mnt/misc, and a 1GB Debian “Etch” image and a file with some notes about the image:

# ls -l /mnt/misc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1000000000 2008-06-24 20:44 etch-base.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root         60 2008-06-24 18:35 etch-base.txt

Now let us create a snapshot named snappy:

# btrfsctl -s snappy /mnt/misc
# ls -l /mnt/misc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1000000000 2008-06-24 20:44 etch-base.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root         60 2008-06-24 18:35 etch-base.txt

Hey! Wait a second! Nothing seems to happen!… This is due to all subvolumes and snapshots hanging from the filesystem root, and the default subvolume is mounted (you guessed it) by default. Let’s remount another subvolume:

# umount /mnt/misc
# mount -o subvol=snappy /dev/hda1 /mnt/misc
# ls -l /mnt/misc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1000000000 2008-06-24 20:44 etch-base.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root         60 2008-06-24 18:35 etch-base.txt

Nothing impressive… now for the fun part we will add some garbage, and mount all the subvolumes at once:

# touch /mnt/misc/hello-btrfs.txt
# echo 'btrfs rocks' >> /mnt/misc/etch-base.txt
# umount /mnt/misc
# mount -o subvol=. /dev/hda1 /mnt/misc
# ls /mnt/misc
default  snappy

Now the mount point shows a directory for each subvolume, and the files are really there:

# ls /mnt/misc/*
/mnt/misc/default:
etch-base.img  etch-base.txt

/mnt/misc/snappy:
etch-base.img  etch-base.txt  hello-btrfs.txt

Now please run df -h /mnt/misc by yourself and get surprised: only about 1GB of physical space is really in use. In fact that can even be less than 1GB, as btrfs supports sparse files as well (if there are “gaps” they do not take physical space). Final remark: you can also make snapshots of snapshots.

Enrique Ocaña: A safe upgrade to Diablo

2008-06-25T09:53:22+00:00

At the end, Maemo Diablo release for N810 is out. But if you have valuable information, programs or configuration on it maybe you’re worried about what you’ll loose in a reflashing. In fact, if you’ve done the upgrade yet you’ll notice that the main part of the apps from Extras repository are missing in Diablo for the moment. Fortunately, there’s a way to install the apps from the old Chinook repository.

Here are six simple steps to perform the upgrade process and restore all your current applications:

Backup your /home/user to a safe place by hand. Standard backup tool won’t
backup every file you’ve at home and maybe you could need them later…
Do a backup using the backup tool.
Reflash the device with the new image using the flasher tool according to the reflashing instructions
Restore the backup. Some old apps will remain grayshaded because the backup
tool can’t find them in the now current Diablo repository.
Open Application Manager. Menu, tools, application catalog. Maemo Extras,
edit. Distribution: chinook, uncheck the “disabled” checkbox, Accept. Close.
Menu, tools, restore applications. Accept.

That’s all. Enjoy your updated device!

Sergio Villar: Modest released!

2008-06-25T07:41:24+00:00

Great day for Modest, in which it became the official email client of the Maemo platform. After a lot of months of hard work, I’m very proud of people that worked with me in this amazing project. Use it, test it and tell us what you think

Now I only have to convince Rufo to use it…

Premio PFC con Software Libre: Elexindo licencia para o código

2008-06-24T16:47:50+00:00

Unha vez teñas decidido participar no Premio ó mellor PFC de Software Libre , debes elexir unha licencia adecuada para o teu PFC. Esperamos que a seguinte información che axude a toma-la decisión.

A única diferencia legal entre un código considerado software libre e outro propietario é a súa licencia. A licencia é o mecanismo legal mediante o que o autor declara qué dereitos sobre o programa proporciona ó usuario. Pódese dicir que é un contrato entre o autor do programa e o usuario final, onde se declara cómo e para qué pode usalo. Porén, a autoría do software non cambia, ésta sempre é do programador e está garantida polas leis de copyright.

É por iso que é imprescindible que os nosos programas teñan una licencia de software libre, xa que, por defecto, as leis de propiedade intelectual non garanten ningún dereito ó usuario. Así, á hora de elexir licencia para o noso programa, debemos ter en conta algúns dos seguintes aspectos:

¿QUÉ É SOFTWARE LIBRE?

Para que un software sexa considerado software libre debe cumplir as 4 condicións da Free Software Foundation (ou, similarmente, as 10 directrices da Open Source Initiative):

Liberdade para executar o programa, con calquera propósito.
Liberdade para estudiar o seu funcionamento e adaptalo ás túas necesidades (unha condición a priori para isto é ter acceso ao código fonte).
Liberdade para redistribuír copias, axudando ó teu veciño.
Liberdade para mellorar o programa e publicar as melloras, beneficiándose así toda a comunidade (tamén é condición a priori para isto ter acceso ao código fonte)

Calquera licencia que cumpla estas 4 liberdades é considerada software libre. Porén, existen distintas tipoloxías de licencias a considerar.

LICENCIAS ROBUSTAS VS PERMISIVAS

Unha vez que decidimos licencia-lo programa como software libre, debemos escoller unha licencia das múltiples posibles (lista da OSI - lista da FSF). Pódense destacar polo menos 2 categorías principais de licencias libres:

Licencias Robustas (tipo copyleft): impoñen que os traballos derivados se deben redistribuir coa mesma licencia, sen engadir ningunha restricción adicional. Exemplos de licencias robustas: GNU General Public License (GPL), LGPL, MPL.

Licencias Permisivas: permiten a creación de traballos derivados cambiando as condicións orixinais da licencia (por exemplo, colle-lo código e crear a partir del un produto que non sexa software libre). Exemplos de licencias permisivas: Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), X11/MIT License, Apache.

Logo de coñece-los requisitos de robustez da licencia, é preciso valorar outro aspecto decisivo: con qué código podemos mezclar o noso código. Para esto estúdiase a compatibilidade das licencias.

COMPATIBILIDADE DAS LICENCIAS

Pódense analiza-las licencias según sexan ou no compatibles entre sí (é dicir, o código licenciado cunha determinada licencia pódese mezclar co código licenciado con outra distinta). Un exercicio ilustrativo neste sentido pode ser estudiar qué licencias son ou non compatibles coa GPL:

una licencia se considera GPL-compatible cuando no añade ninguna restricción adicional a las impuestas por ésta. Como consecuencia práctica se tiene que el código con una licencia no compatible con la GPL, no puede integrarse con código GPL.

Tanto as licencias robustas como as permisivas das que antes falabamos, poden ser (ou non ser) gpl-compatibles. Probablemente, un dos casos máis famosos é o da licencia BSD. A BSD original, tiña como restricción adicional á GPL que:

3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.

Sendo así, o código BSD non era GPL-compatible e non podía integrarse con ningún código dese tipo. É por isto que se creou a licencia BSD modificada, que elimina esta restricción, facéndose así GPL-compatible (dando soporte legal á integración con código GPL).

A continuación mostramos un cuadro coas liberdades/restriccións que teñen as principais licencias de software libre:

En resumo, a elección de licencia é o único distintivo legal entre un programa de software libre e outro que non o sexa.

Analizar qué se necesita en cada caso, dependendo dos requisitos presentes e futuros do proxecto é primordial para non verse envolto en posteriores e costosos procesos de relicenciamento, como foi o caso de KDE e da Fundación Mozilla.

Adrián Pérez: Simple XFS and btrfs timings

2008-06-24T11:20:55+00:00

Last weekend I was able of emptying a partition and had the opportunity of testing btrfs for first time. I made some simple timings using the Bash time builtin. The test was building a Linux kernel with the default configuration (make defconfig). I timed the time needed for unpacking kernel sources, building and removing the tree afterwards. The results against XFS are as follows:

Phase	XFS (usr/sys)	btrfs (usr/sys)
Unpack	115.2 / 6.3	38.6 / 10.3
Build	758.6 / 90.4	667.5 / 110.1
Remove	0.07 / 3.6	0.07 / 6.3

All measurements are shown in seconds, so smaller numbers means better performance. I was surprised with how fast was unpacking kernel sources on btrfs, so I was expecting a slightly better build time. The reason for the similar build times can be the fact that the tools (compiler, linker, etc) were running from a XFS partition, and that it was a CPU-bound. Both test over XFS and btrfs were done after a clean system boot and freshly created filesystems.

What I loved about btrfs was the ability of growing and shrinking the filesystem while mounted and being accessed, which makes it a perfect candidade for its use over LVM. I still have to try out subvolumes, live writable snapshots, and making some serious testing. Even so, btrfs looks like a Good Thing™ to me.

Javier Fernández: What could we do with Clutter ?

2008-06-22T14:24:07+00:00

These last months i’ve been working with Clutter project as part our GNOME R&D project. Firstly, for who don’t know what Clutter project exactly is, i would like to briefly introduce you this technology.The Clutter project has created an open source software library for creating fast, visually rich and animated graphical user interfaces. Clutter uses OpenGL (and optionally OpenGL ES for use on Mobile and embedded platforms) for rendering but with an API which hides the underlying GL complexity from the developer. The Clutter API is intended to be easy to use, efficient and flexible.

Basically, Clutter provides a Canvas for drawing complex graphics and effects. This Canvas could be inserted inside a Gtk context, using the Clutter-Gtk library.

The second part of my post will be focused on my work during last R&D project iteration and what were my thoughts about this new and promising technology; there were several discussions in the gtk-devel list about the new GTK 3.0 evolution and what would be the role of Clutter project.

The best way to understand a technology, after read carefully all related documentation, is to implement a proof of concept. For that purpose, i’ve chosen the YouTube client applications domain to develop new UI concepts, in order to test the powerful of Clutter as toolkit.

The first thing i’ve realized when i read the Clutter project documentation is that Clutter is not actually a toolkit, as it’s mentioned in Clutter project web page. With my understanding of the toolkit concept, it should be a set of tools for implementing user interfaces. However, user interfaces are not only graphical elements, but window management, theming support, advanced graphical components, translation support, applets and icons management, shortcuts, toolbars and menus or similar ways of activating user actions, … In that sense, Clutter lacks of several important features required to be considered as UI toolkit. I think that, at least at this moment, Clutter could be just considered as a graphical engine or scene graph tool. This point was also mentioned by some people inside gtk developers community who are considering the approach of using Clutter as scene graph concept for the next GTK 3.0.

When finally i began to develop my test application i had assumed that it actually wont be a functional YouTube client application, just an user interface proof of concept. Who knows what will happen in future, but for this project i’ ve focused the development in just one use case: querying for videos and show the results. For implementing the communication with YouTube web services i’ve found a very interesting implementation of YouTube GData API: libgdata and libgdata-google.These libraries, also used inside evolution-data-server as static libraries, are also provided as independent libraries, at least, in Ubuntu hardy. These libraries, implemented using a GLib GObject approach, provide Client access to google POA through SOAP interface.

During the implementation of this YouTube client application i’ve implemented several UI for showing YouTube top_rated query results. The first approach was obviously a GtkTreeView view.

The first and simpler clutter approach would be to show results in a square grid. I have to say that the square grid its also possible to implement in Gtk, although Clutter provides more fancy effects.

After this first UI proposals, and after understanding better advanced operations with Clutter, i tried to define new ways of showing information, always thinking about how to improve the end user experience.

The most interesting questions i’ve made to myself at this point have not been about Clutter technology capabilities, but what new UI concepts we want to achieve. I think there are several graphic technologies today providing new ways of drawing user interfaces, the important point is to define precisely how to present information and services to end users in a more intuitive way.

Claudio Saavedra: Fri 2008/Jun/20

2008-06-20T20:47:00+00:00

Since a few months, my dad has been using Ubuntu in his new desktop computer. And he is a happy user.

He had been using Windows 98 in his old computer for quite a long time, so it wasn't a difficult task to convince him that Ubuntu wouldn't be difficult to learn for what he was used to do: write documents, prepare spreadsheets, play Tetris and Freecell, and listen music. So, when we got his new computer ready, I downloaded and installed Hardy Heron on it.

The experience has been really pleasant. Now he fully understands what GNOME is, and what do I do with my free time. He also jokes a lot every time something doesn't work immediately for him and tells me he is going to call Pedro to complain. I laugh everytime at that.

He now listens to his music with Rhythmbox. He was used to the good old Winamp, but once he understood the library organization of music in Rhythmbox, he told me that this is far superior. I've also helped him to set up a Last.fm account, and now he scrobbles his listening habits. Also, he listens to the Last.fm streams with the Last.fm client. Last but no least, he is an avid Gnometris player.

During the first weeks, I had to help him installing the software updates. I insisted to him that it was important to run them regularly, so that his system becomes more and more stable. Yesterday I realized he hadn't asked me for assistance in a long time, and asked him about it. It was really pleasant to hear him tell me that he's been doing all the software updates without needing my help at all.

When I think of all this, I realize how far we've come. People may think that GNU/Linux is only for geeks, but seeing my dad, enjoying using his computer without worrying about viruses, without being afraid of messing with the system, and actually being able to do his daily routine at the computer, makes me feel proud. We all should feel proud.

So, what's your story? Does any of your non-computer-literate relatives/friends/significant other uses GNOME or other Free Software environment? I would love to read others' experiences.

Manuel Rego: gl_transstat: translate pages and records in an easy way on TYPO3

2008-06-20T10:41:36+00:00

gl_transstat is a great TYPO3 extension developed by my workmate Diego that allows create translations of pages and records on TYPO3 very easily and keep track of translation status of them.

This extension is very useful for multilanguage websites improving work efficiency in tasks related with internationalization and localization.

Last days I’ve been working on this extension, and I’ve done some changes to add new features that make this extension more powerful. The main modifications are:

Added the possibility to create translations for more than one page or record at the same time.
Support to translate records of any table.
Use generic configuration variables.

You can download the last release 1.2.2 directly from TER or if you like you can download the source code from the SVN repository:
svn checkout https://forxa.mancomun.org/svn/gltransstat

Andrés Gómez: A Coruña proposed to hold GUADEC and aKademy 2009

2008-06-19T10:30:24+00:00

As this will be my first post at planet GNOME, first I would like to thank Jeff for giving me a place between all of you, and I will introduce briefly myself.

My name is Andres Gomez, I’ve been using free software for 8 years, and I’m a free software developer since 2003, when I joined Igalia. As most of my mates, I contributed to project Fisterra, a free software framework for developing enterprise applications, and I’ve been lately involved in some projects related to Maemo technologies.

Now the interesting part of the post

As my mate Chema has published recently in his blog, people from GPUL, Igalia and University of A Coruña have presented a proposal to co-host GUADEC and aKademy next year in A Coruña. The intention was to show all the possibilities that our city and team have in order to organize such a great event to the community.

The proposal’s main idea is:”We want to organize a conference by community people for community people“. Here, in A Coruña, we have the facilities, a passionate team and a lot of ideas after attending several conferences and organizing lots of events (DudesConf 2008, GUAdemy 2007, Guadec-ES 2005, …). We know how important the details are, as well as having second options in case the first one could eventually fail. The main goal is to invest a big effort in achieving that people can come here next year. Because of this, the main expense in our budget will go for helping people to attend the event through sponsoring as many people as possible. That will be feasible thanks to the contribution of the University and volunteers. They will provide, almost for free, all the basics needed to run these two conferences. Also, our regional government, Xunta de Galicia, has an important commitment with this proposal and great confidence in our work at every level. So here it is the final proposal:

GUADEC and aKademy proposal for 2009 in A Coruña

Xunta de Galicia Support to GUADEC and aKademy 2009 in A Coruña

University of A Coruña support to GUADEC and aKademy 2009 in A Coruña

Faculty Support to aKademy and GUADEC 2009 in A Coruña

BTW, if these events are finally going to be hold here, I will volunteer on them so I will be able to give you advices to visit this beautiful Galician city placed in the north-western coast of Spain .

Claudio Saavedra: Wed 2008/Jun/18

2008-06-19T01:20:00+00:00

A few weeks ago I was invited to give a talk about the GNOME Desktop at the Primera Jornada Linux in the Instituto DuocUC, Plaza Oeste. Sometimes I feel that it may become boring for people to attend this kind of talks, but in this talk, when I asked the crowded audience to raise their hands if they had ever used GNU/Linux or GNOME, only a very few did it. That means that there's still a huge amount of people who doesn't know about what we do and who could be potential users – enough motivation to give advocacy talks again and again.
I'm loving my work. Still need to organize better my time – working at home can prove to be really challenging if you don't set your work hours responsably – but I'm improving.

Adrián Pérez: Oh Yeah! Consoles everywhere

2008-06-18T19:04:29+00:00

Cannot live without a terminal at hand? Maybe you already know about other drop-down terminals, and I have been using Tilda myself for a long time. But let us forget about them and enter yeahconsole:

Animation is so smoooooth~~
Has full-screen mode. Also, full-screen status is remembered when you close and re-open it.
Binary is only 15kB (on AMD64).
Only depends on libX11 and an installed xterm (works with rxvt, too.)

I tuned up yeahconsole to fit nicely with the Gnome desktop by adding the following entries in my ~/.Xdefaults file:

yeahconsole*toggleKey: Control+Escape
yeahconsole*keySmaller: Control+minus
yeahconsole*keyBigger: Control+plus
yeahconsole*keyFull: None+F11
yeahconsole*restart: 1
yeahconsole*handleColor: orange

Favourite colors for the terminal can also be specified, but if you already have configuration entries for xterm (as I do) they will be reused. The only feature I miss is support for consoles on multiple tabs; even so I hardly use tabs in my drop-down terminals, so I can live without them.

Premio PFC con Software Libre: Premio PFC Sw Libre: unha FAQ

2008-06-18T15:38:11+00:00

O primeiro post deste blog debe ser necesariamente explicativo, é por iso que empezamos publicando unha FAQ, as nosas razóns para levar a cabo este evento.

¿Por qué este premio?

Co Premio ó Mellor Proxecto Fin de Carreira (PFC) con Software Libre pretendemos fomenta-lo coñecemento do Software Libre entre os estudantes universitarios galegos, ó tempo que se visibiliza o traballo que xa se está facendo na universidade neste eido.

O obxectivo que nos motiva é que moitos dos PFCs que se presentan cada ano nas diferentes escolas e facultades de Galicia sexan desenvolvidos como Software Libre, premiando o mellor deles con 1,000 €.

¿Quen pode participar?

Descripción xeral

O concurso consiste na presentación e desenvolvemento dun PFC que cree un novo proxecto de Software Libre ou ben mellore un existente, utilizando unha implementación libre de calquera linguaxe de programación.

Requisitos para a participación

Os concursantes deberán estar matriculados nalgunha das tres universidades galegas e os seus PFCs deberán ser defendidos, cunha nota mínima de 5.0, nalgunha das convocatorias (ordinaria ou extraordinaria) do ano académico 2007/2008 (entre febreiro e outubro do 2008).
O código deberá estar baixo calquera das licencias de software libre así consideradas pola Free Software Foundation (FSF) ou a Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Cómo participar no evento

Cubri-lo formulario de inscripción.
Rexistrar-lo proxecto na forxa de mancomun.org, no tópico “Concursos > Premio ao mellor PFC con SwL > 2008“, aínda que se utilicen outros repositorios de código e listas de correo.
Entregar unha memoria (5 a 10 páxinas) do PFC explicitando as tecnoloxías de software libre utilizadas así como o proceso de interacción coa comunidade.
Realizar unha presentación do PFC o día de resolución e entrega.

Criterios de avaliación

Calidade do proxecto: deseño e implementación.
Nivel de actividade pública do traballo. Valorarase a publicación continúa do traballo e resultados que se vaian acadando, sexa utilizando as listas de correo dun proxecto existente, as da forxa de mancomun.org ou calquera outro medio web, coma por exemplo blogs persoais.

Premio

Concederase un único Premio de 1,000 €. Se o xurado o considera adecuado, podería ser entregado un accésit de 500 €.

O Premio poderá ser declarado deserto no caso de que ningún dos presentados reuna a calidade mínima necesaria.

Calendario

Período de inscripción: ata o 31 de outubro de 2008.

Resolución e entrega:

Realizarase no salón de actos da Escola Técnica Superior de Enxeñería da USC, en Santiago de Compostela, durante a segunda semana de novembro de 2008 (data exacta por confirmar).

Xurado

Igalia Free Software Engineering (2 persoas).
Universidades galegas (3 persoas):

Alberto Bugarín, como subdirector da ETSE da USC.
Enrique Barreiro, como director da EI de Ourense.
Alberto Valderruten, como decano da FIC da UdC.

mancomun.org (1 persoa):

Suso Baleato, como coordinador do Centro de Referencia e Servizos de Software Libre.

Chema Casanova: A Coruña 2009, GUADEC and aKademy, the proposal!!!

2008-06-17T17:28:33+00:00

Last weekend Emilio, José Millán and me were working hard our proposal to co-host GUADEC and aKademy next year in A Coruña. In our bid we try to show the community all the possibilities of our city and our team to organize such a great event, but we are better working hard than writing long documents. We try to do the best.
Our proposal main idea is:”We want to organize a conference by community people for community people“. We have the facilities, we have a passionate team and a lot of ideas after attending several conferences and organizing a lot of events. We know how important is that details do not fail and having always prepared a second option.

Our main goal is investing all our efforts so that people can get here next year. So the main expense in our budget will be helping people to attend the event by sponsoring as much people as possible. That will be possible thanks to the contribution of the University and volunteers. They provide almost for free all the basic for running these two conferences and our Regional Government, the Xunta de Galicia, has an important commitment with this proposal and a great confidence in our work at all levels. So here it is by GPUL, Igalia and University of A Coruña:

GUADEC and aKademy proposal for 2009 in A Coruña

Xunta de Galicia Support to GUADEC and aKademy 2009 in A Coruña

University of A Coruña support to GUADEC and aKademy 2009 in A Coruña

Faculty Support to aKademy and GUADEC 2009 in A Coruña

Adrián Pérez: Hello world!

2008-06-16T15:51:18+00:00

So… brand new Igalia worker: brand new work mates, brand new office, brand new experiences at Arbo, brand new coffee machine… and brand new weblog. Here I will be blogging about my experience while ensuring all works at the systems area, but maybe some code kicks in, as I also enjoy programming. As this is just a presentation post, let me say «Hello, world!» in a multi-language fashion:

C=0;/*Hello_World 2>/dev/null
#! /bin/bash
*/
#define echo main() { printf(
#define exit "\n"); }
echo "Hello, world!"
exit
/*
#! perl
print "Hello, world!\n";
__END__
_*/

This snippet works as C, Perl and Bash programs, just save it to a file and try to run it:

$ perl -x source.c
Hello, world!
$ bash source.c
Hello, world!
$ gcc -o hello hello.c && ./hello
Hello, world!
$

Do not try too hard to understand it… your brain could melt as mine did while trying to add support for AWK

Chema Casanova: GUADEC and aKademy 2009, Coruña, why not?

2008-06-15T23:37:40+00:00

Last two weeks we have been working hard preparing a proposal for hosting GUADEC and aKademy in a Coruña next year. After organizing GUADEMY last year we decided that this could be the moment for writing a good proposal for next year, and I feel that we have done it.
The following organizations GPUL, Igalia and the University of A Coruña are proposing together the organization of the most important Free Desktop event in the world, all GNOME and KDE developers together in the same Venue going ones to aKademy and others to GUADEC.

This would create the possibility of organizing cross-desktop global meetings, following the spirit we wanted for GUADEMY.
I would like to thank all the organizations that supported our bid including the Regional Goverment of Galicia Xunta de Galicia, AGASOL, ASOLIF, GNOME HISPANO and other organizations and people from KDE and GNOME that give us really interesting comments to improve our proposal.

In the proposal is the mandatory Queimada and as almost all the people that attended to different events organized by us we can organize a lot of amazing surprises. Excellent food, almost-proffesional organization (lot of years of experience), fantastic volunteers and a lot of love for Free Software. Hope see you next year and we hope you want to come to Coruña.

Javier Fernández: We are the champions !!!

2008-06-13T17:12:43+00:00

Nobody had bet for us at the beginning of this season, even though i had a special feeling about this year. This could be my last season in the highest level of Galicia’s hockey league and i was strongly decided to work hard to achieve the best classification. There was several powerful teams (HC Liceo, A.C Ordenes, Domincos HC, …), all of them designed always to win, and sometimes, hring professional players.

Everybody in my team (H.C. Borbolla) was just thinking in enjoy playing hockey. However, we won almost every match during the first round. We only lost against H.C. Liceo, the best team in my opinion, with some very young player from Argentina and Portugal (the son of Jose Querido, the HC. Liceo Vodafone coach). This first position in the general classification makes us to start dreaming was possible.

Only the champion of Galicia’s hockey league would have access to the “Fase de Ascenso” tournament, which gets access to the 1º National division (the first professional hockey league in Spain, just under the highest category). We had an advantage of 5 points at the last two matches of this season. The 20 of April of 2008, H.C. Borbolla won his first Galicia’s hockey championship.

Two weeks after the Galcia’s championship, we attended “Fase de Ascenso” tournament. There was also three teams more: R.S.T. La Magdalena de Santander, FM Oviedo Roller, Siena Oberena Pamplona. The FM Oviedo Roller was the best team, formed with professional players hired from the “Division de Honor” league and of course, they were playing at home.

Finally, we lost the three matches but we fought like lions.

It was a great experience about personal effort to improve every day, team cooperation and strong competition.

Mario Sánchez: Vagalume: D-Bus support for its desktop version

2008-06-13T15:56:15+00:00

As you can check out in the vagalume-devel@garage.maemo.org mailing list archives:

https://garage.maemo.org/pipermail/vagalume-devel/2008-June/000151.html

…today I’ve finished the implementation of a new patch for Vagalume which will enable D-Bus support in the desktop version of this nice player, since so far D-Bus interaction was only allowed in the maemo platform (due to using functions from libosso for RPC methods, instead of dbus-glib).

So, this is how the vagalumectl script (formerly known as vagalume-dbus) would work from now on in a “regular” GNU/Linux machine:

mario@bender:~$ vagalumectl
Usage:
vagalumectl
(Vagalume will be automatically started if not already running)

COMMAND:
play:              start playing the current radio
skip:              skip to the nex song in the current radio
stop:              stop playing the current radio
love:              mark the current song as ‘loved’
ban:               mark the current song as ‘banned’
tag :         change to a ‘global tag’ radio.
artist :   change to a ’similar artists’ radio
group :     change to a ‘last.fm group’ radio
loved :      change to a ‘loved’ radio for a specific user
neighbours : change to a ‘neighbours’ radio for a specific user
personal :   change to a ‘personal’ radio for a specific user
playlist :   change to a ‘playlist’ radio for a specific user
playurl :     just play the specified URL on Vagalume
volumeup [INC]:    increase playback volume
volumedown [INC]: decrease playback volume
volume :    set the playback volume to a specific value
start:             start Vagalume (if not already running)
close:             close Vagalume (if not already closed)
help:              print this information

Double quotes are REQUIRED when specifying parameters to some commands,
such as TAG or ARTIST, because of the white spaces they might contain, e.g:

$ vagalumectl tag “hard rock”
$ vagalumectl artist “Led Zeppelin”

mario@bender:~$ vagalumectl loved homemaxico
Command ‘loved’ successfully executed
mario@bender:~$

Well… perhaps not a too much useful ’screenshot’ after all… but believe me, that’s the proof that D-Bus is working fine on my GNOME desktop from now on.

I hope you can enjoy the patch soon (as soon as Berto applies it to the SVN trunk)… perhaps in Vagalume 0.7 , who knows…

Andrés Gómez: Wanted: Dead or Alive

2008-06-13T00:39:45+00:00

As you should know by the time being, since another Igalians have talked about it recently, Igalia has hold its fourth summit, last weekend in Pontevedra. There has been a lot of new blood since the last summit I attended, almost two years ago, but some others have gone. We wish good luck to them.

In this summit we have fit to the usual schedule, having a lot of time to talk among all the Igalians, get a better knowledge of the mates we work with, and also from those we don’t see so usually, as we are splitted in two locations, one in A Coruña and the other in Pontevedra. Also we spoke about the past, present and exciting future of the company .

We have had a lot of fun and everything has gone quite well due to the good work done by the organizer and new brand HR promise, Eva María Loureiro (I’m writing this just to embarrass her ).

As you probably know, there is not plenty of girls here in Igalia, probably because computing and moreover, Free Software, is not very appealing for them, but the three we have here give sense to the well known Spanish song “Las chicas son guerreras”. If you don’t believe me, just take a look to the fierce look in the Wanted banner on top of this post, taken just before The Arbo War we hold here between the red and green teams. Just herself alone beat a whole green team batallion bringing the flag we were competing for to the red campsite.

The Arbo War was not matter of joke. Almost all of us got injured. Indeed, I got my knee severely injured and, while I’m recovering for the next battle, I have had the idea of taking advantage of the amazing photos taken by Mario and, the war journalists, Antia (the third and last great girl in Igalia) and Javier Muñoz, so I’ve been creating some “Wanted banners”, inspired in the old west.

If you are an Igalian and want to be hold in the walls of the towns from here to Pecos river, just tell me and I’ll try to do my best

What do you think?

Mario Sánchez: The Arbo War: the teams

2008-06-11T07:53:49+00:00

I know three posts talking about the summit could be too much… but I couldn’t stand without continuing Javi’s last post showing to the world the two fierce teams which fought in the Arbo War. So, here you are them:

The Arbo War: red team

The Arbo War: green team

They seem quite fierce, don’t they?

Javier Muñoz: The Arbo War

2008-06-10T15:48:57+00:00

This weekend we enjoyed our first yearly summit on Arbo (great experience!) You can read the Mario’s report here Among a lot of activities we played extreme paintball too but don’t worry … We haven’t suffered any casualties

Mario Sánchez: Igalia Summit is over

2008-06-08T21:37:45+00:00

During this last weekend most of the igalians (me included) had a nice experience in a rural house of Pontevedra due to the Igalia Summit, June 2008 edition. There we were able to enjoy of the nature, perform a great Paintball match… and do several other kind of activities that always help to have some rest of daily work while keeping in touch with some mates that we sometimes don’t see very often (since we igalians usually work in our three different offices).

Also, the weather was so nice that I couldn’t find anything wrong regarding to the organization of this edition, so thanks and congratulations Eva for setting everything up in a so good way, I really had a good time there… and I think we all had it too indeed .

But now it’s time to get back to work again, so I’d better go to sleep right now, since I’m really tired. Moreover, I’ll have the opportunity to attend to more Summits in the future, so no time to be down now…

But first… here you are a picture of all of the igalians who attended to the Summit:

Igalia Summit, June 2008 edition

See you in the next Summit!

Claudio Saavedra: Wed 2008/Jun/04

2008-06-05T01:56:00+00:00

Can you trust the tracking systems of your local postal service?

I don't get how could it be possible that the documents left Curicó one hour after they arrived in Santiago.

And we pay for this kind of service. Oh, dear...

Diego Pino: More on package variables

2008-06-02T22:37:15+00:00

In general is considered a bad practice to import variables from an external file by using require or use.

#!/usr/bin/perl
package conf;
$username = “diego”;

#!/usr/bin/perl
package main;
require “conf.pl”;

print “username: $username\n“;

The example above may work but is definitely a bad approach since conf.pl could be modified to inject and execute malicious code. In case you need to import configuration variables, the Config::General module is the way to go.

Leaving that aside, this script still works. The clause require imports everything from an external Perl file. Any global variable or function defined in conf.pl will be visible from main. It is like those variables where actually defined in main.pl. Bear in mind that conf.pl is not a package but a Perl file, so there is no need to add a namespace when referring to their variables from main.

require can be useful for splitting our source code in several files. When those files have something in common, or rather say, provide a new functionality to our program, then a module is preferred. The clause use is in general used when importing new modules.

However, mixing up require and use clauses can lead to unexpected behaviours in our program. Consider this new package:

#!/usr/bin/perl
package MyPackage;
require “conf.pl”;

#!/user/bin/perl
package main;
use MyPackage;
require “conf.pl”;
print “username: $username\n“;

The result of executing main.pl returns nothing. Why? As it was mentioned before, requiring an external file from a package has the same effect as declaring all the global variables and functions of the required file as if they were first declared in the package which import them. That means, in the example above, that $username now is in the context of MyPackage, and refering to $username from main has no effect. We should instead refer to it as $MyPackage::username.

The bottom line here is not to import configuration variables by using require or use. Use the Config::General module in that case.