open-source Notes

It’s been a long time since I posted something new here or on  one of my other sites, but I’m currently busy with work an some other stuff related to my websites. For example: I’m searching for a way to expand this blog to a german/english bilingual website but the plugin I want to use (Gengo) is still in development (very early alpha stage atm) and not available soon. As I don’t want to switch to another blog engine or another plugin I have to wait until Gengo is available.

Another thing I’m looking for is a nice open-source CMS to use with my private website. The candidates I tested so far are very good but there was always one point that resolved as a showstopper so I’m still searching.

But there is also one positive thing to say: I’ve created a new VMware image for the BOINC project. It’s based on Debian 4.0 with no graphics available this time. Information on how to download can be found on the Debian 4.0 image page.

So long for this short personal update. I hope you’ll here from me more often.

Today I searched for a way to delete orphaned packages on my Ubuntu box and stumbled upon a nice explanation for the apt-get program available on most Debian and Ubuntu distros. Thanks to ubuntuusers.de (german).

Here is how to get rid of orphaned packages with Edgy Eft (6.10) or higher:
$ sudo apt-get autoremove
But what I also found is this nice little command. It allows you to install a bunch of packages listed in a text file. That comes very handy if you want to set up a BOINC server. Just copy the package list for Debian 4.0 to a text file on your Linux box called packages.list and run this comand in a shell:
$ cat packages.list | sudo xargs apt-get -y install

That’s probably a question everyone is going to ask when using BOINC. And here is the ultimate answer to this. A list of several sources where you can find some advice regarding BOINC. But please have in mind that BOINC is only a framework for distributed computing and you always have to attach to a project that does the actual scientific work.

places to find personal help:

• BOINC online help via skype (many languages available)
  you have to install skype on your PC but you don’t need a microphone or headset to communicate

• BOINC help via an IRC channel (mainly English)
  Server: irc.freenode.net
  Channel: #boinc
  You can use ircatwork.com, any other IRC client or an IRC java-applet. You can also use the ChatZilla plugin for Firefox.

places where frequently asked questions were answered:

• Unofficial BOINC Wiki (English)
• BOINC FAQ Service (English, German, Dutch)

places where you can ask your own questions:

• BOINC message board (English)
• the message boards of the projects you participate

place where you can find links to other useful sites:

• Web resources for BOINC participants (many languages available)

I’ve recently converted my WindowsXP machine at home to Kubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon and tried to set up my boinc client to start at boot time. Since I don’t need some fancy startup script I tried to write a short and plain one for myself. The official AutoStart documentation is not very helpful with latest releases, so I searched some help from other ubuntu users and, after some fiddling, I got a working startup script. It’s not very secure cause it’s running with root rights from startup. Perhaps I’ll find a way to circumvent this in the future. But here is how I’ve done it:

1. Install the latest client available from the download page at berkeley. I’ve installed to /opt/BOINC and changed permissions for this directory so that I can read/write without using sudo.
2. Create a script called ‘boinc’ within /etc/init.d/ with following content

   #!/bin/sh
   # /etc/init.d/boinc
   # Start/stop/restart
    
   test -x /opt/BOINC/boinc || exit 0
    
   case "$1" in
   start)
   echo "Starting BOINC."
   cd "/opt/BOINC" && exec ./boinc >>stdoutdae.txt 2>>stderrdae.txt &
   ;;
   stop)
   echo "Stopping BOINC."
   killall boinc
   ;;
   restart)
   killproc boinc
   sleep 2
   cd "/opt/BOINC" && exec ./boinc >>stdoutdae.txt 2>>stderrdae.txt &
   ;;
   *)
   echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/boinc {start|stop|restart}"
   exit 2
   esac
   exit 0

   You should replace /opt/BOINC/ with the path you installed BOINC into.

3. After that you have to make this script executable.
   $ chmod +x /etc/init.d/boinc
4. And after that you have to generate symlinks for each runlevel. This command will do it all by itself:
   $ sudo update-rc.d boinc defaults
5. That’s all. Now you can restart and check if it’s working.
   $ ps -A | grep boinc
   should return a line like:
   5182 ? 00:00:00 boinc

This should work an all other Ubuntu 7.10 distros also (like Xubuntu, Edubuntu, …), but I haven’t tested.

If you ever wondered what I’m doing if I’m not trying to set up BOINC projects, here is the answer:

I’m coding websites and online shops as a freelancer in my spare time. Till now I’ve stored my code in a local svn repository, which is very risky in my eyes. If my hard drive gets corrupted or I can’t access my Windows© system all my work is gone. So I needed something with svn or cvs support like SourceForge.net but with closed source support also. So I stumbled upon Origo.

Based in Switzerland and run by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich this website has all I was searching for. There is a svn repository, wiki pages, ticket system (bugtracker), forums and a blog for each project. You can decide whether your projects are open or closed source, you can even switch from closed to open source once you’re ready for the public. If you want to set up your own Origo at your company or at home you can do so because Origo itself is Open Source software.

I already have two projects there. One place to develop plugins for phpComasy (a Swiss CMS) and one to develop a fork of the xt-Commerce online shop called amwCommerce (customized shop for Amway-Partners).