Current state of Nagios packages June 10, 2007
Posted by Tobias Scherbaum in : Gentoo , add a commentIt’s now nearly two months after Jokey’s mail to the dev-Mailinglist asking for Nagios maintainers and one month after I took the challenge of maintaining them, but first of all fixing some bugs which were added to a tracker - as a larger number of them got stuck in Gentoos Bugzilla.
Things I fixed include
- a valid home-directory for the nagios-User (for example if you want to add a custom my.cnf)
- setuid check_icmp Plugin (it won’t work otherwise)
- migration of nagios-core to econf and dropping (deprecated) gnuconfig
- check not only for jpeg but also png support when installing the web-frontend
- fixed pre-stripped binaries in nagios-core
plus version bumps of nagios, nagios-core and nagios-nrpe. I also added nagios-plugins-1.4.8 and 1.4.9, of which 1.4.8(-r1) is about to be stabled soonish (ppc64 were quite fast, thanks Markus!). For a detailed list of things which were fixed consult the ChangeLogs.
The Tracker-Bug nowadays mainly consists of minor bugs, of which 3 are requests for new packages (ndoutils, nagios_grapher, nagvis) and one bug covers a Nagios guide, which I’ll look at together while writing a nice example config - Debian already has a nice one ;)
One thing I came across while fixing some Nagios bugs was the installation layout Gentoo is using. While I really like it, it’ll need to be changed somewhen in the future to easily use Nagios with Apache and SuEXEC enabled. This requires the Nagios CGI’s to be installed inside of /var/www instead of /usr/nagios/sbin. To make this change as smooth as possible I tend to make this change together with moving to Nagios 3 which has seen it’s 4th Alpha-Release in May. If you have other suggestions how to solve this problem w/ SuEXEC feel welcome to share them with me :)
On the road - once again! May 15, 2007
Posted by Tobias Scherbaum in : Events, Gentoo, On the road ... , add a commentIt’s once again that time - one event is taking place just directly when an other one just closed its doors. In the next 3 weeks I’ll be visiting Graz (Austria), Hamburg (Germany) and the LinuxTag, this time taking place in Berlin,Germany.
Starting my Road-Trip this Friday with a journey towards Graz where we (amne, roger55 and some other Gentoo people - what about wschlich btw?) will represent Gentoo at the LinuxTage (19.05.), an event which itself is part of an larger event - the Austrian LinuxWochen. On Saturday we’ll have a booth and show our latest release 2007.0. Later on amne and I’ll hold a talk about our beloved Metadistribution. While the talk itself isn’t that spectacular or even new, it’s the first time we’ll held this talk together, I guess that’ll be much fun!
The weekend after that I’ll be visiting Hamburg to attend a Gentoo User Meeting, mainly organized by some Forums People. I’ve never been in Hamburg before, so I engaged Jokey to be my personal city-guide. Maybe we have enough time to visit at least some of Hamburg’s most famous tourist attractions.
My Road-Trip ends in Berlin where I’ve been for the last time one and a half year ago. Besides visiting LinuxTag and taking LPI exams to finally pass the Level 2 (and hopefully Level 3) certification, the most interesting part of the Berlin journey is meeting people. hollow and rbu to name some of them (what about hd-brummy, plate, trapni?), but also zypher will probably be in Berlin - and lots of other people too.
That being said - if you’re interested in meeting me (and sign keys …) on my Road-Trip, just drop me a mail!
Yet another Gentoo User Meeting (GUM) taking place March 12, 2007
Posted by Tobias Scherbaum in : Gentoo , add a commentAfter we skipped some Meetings in the past few months another (somewhat inofficial) Gentoo User Meeting is taking place this Wednesday evening at the usual GUM Ruhrgebiet location. This time we join the LUGOR (Linux User Group Oberhausen/Rheinland) who will meet at the some location we usually also do, the topic for their meeting is an “Introduction to Gentoo”. Most of the LUG people are already using Gentoo (for years!), but there are some people still stuck with that thingy called “Ubuntu” ;) You’re welcome to join and help us to show them Gentoo’s benefits and Pro’s!
If you’d like to attend you’ll find all necessary information on the LUGOR website, or just drop me an email ;)
FOSDEM report, part two - maybe the last the one? ;) March 12, 2007
Posted by Tobias Scherbaum in : Gentoo , add a commentA little bit late and mostly because of that somehow short. The reasons for this late second part of my FOSDEM report are kinda personal …
On Saturday I spent most of the morning and early afternoon at our booth, talking to other devs, IRCing, and so on - well, of course we were also talking to some visitors ;) On early afternoon GMsoft arrived at the booth, carrying his HPPA C3600 with him. Hey, I had some RAM for him in my backpack, which we immediately plugged into the box and hey, little surprise - it just worked! Around ~14 o’clock we could hijack our devroom and as we were some of the early people in there we got some nice seats in the front. Yeah!
Getting a VGA-cable was kinda hard, as we learned. Neither the King of Tacos nor any of the other people had or could organize one. Finally SeJo got us an VGA-cable and Bryan could (somehow still in time!) start the first of this two presentations about the Gentoo Hardened project and securing systems in general. While Bryan held his second talk about SELinux I took an LPI Exam (getting there was a nice trip throughout the whole university …), afterwards I went back to the devrooom and attended the other talks. With Wolfram and Lars (and Matti? can’t remember *cough* …) we went back to the youth hostel after FOSDEM closed its doors and before joining the other people at the restaurant “Roma” for our saturday-evening-all-together-dinner. The dinner was quite nice, but somehow I thought we would’ve the dinner at a more “traditional” restaurant. Besides the dinner being somehow “unexpected” it was a very nice evening :)
Sunday morning started earlier than the Saturday one, I had another LPI exam at 10 o’clock for which I had to be at the ULB some time in advance. Also Danny (who was sharing a room with Lars and me) had his Paludis talk at the same time, so we all had good reasons to be at the university on time. After taking the LPI exam I spent the whole sunday at our developers room, sitting there, IRCing, talking to other people and of course listening to the talks ;) On about ~16:30 we had to leave the ULB to reach our train back home at Brussels Midi (which is also Brussels South and Brussels Agglo - I guess I won’t understand that a one train-station has three different names …).
Being at FOSDEM now for the second time (2004 we only were 10-15 Gentoo people) my conclusion is definitively very affirmative - I met lots of people I only knew from IRC or mailing lists until FOSDEM, we signed some GPG-keys, we had joy, we had fun and of course some beer :) See you again next year at FOSDEM 2008 in Brussels!
FOSDEM report, part one February 24, 2007
Posted by Tobias Scherbaum in : Events, Gentoo , add a commentAfter a very smooth train-ride via Cologne we (Kugelfang and I) arrived at Brussels-Midi yesterday evening at 17 o’clock. We met with hansmi, killerfox, blubb, CHTEKK and some SysCP Developers at the train station and moved to the youth hostel via Metro from there.
After having lunch at Pizza Hut we tried to attend the usual Beer-event, but the location was already more than full when we got there. So, we went back to the youth hostel. After searching for a night-shop where we bought some beverages (i.e. beer) we found out that the youth hostel also has a little bar. I tried Grimbergen Gold, Westmalle and Leffe Gold - all of them very tasty :)
We arrived the ULB this morning at about 10, Pylon and I where the first Gentoo people at our booth … As you probably notice the wifi-network is up and running, I’ll report a little bit more later on … (at least I’ll try to ..)
Linux World Expo Cologne/Germany 14th-16th November November 12, 2006
Posted by Tobias Scherbaum in : Events, Gentoo , add a comment This years Linux World Expo in Germany will open its doors next Tuesday. After taking place in Frankfurt/Main for a few years the LWE moved to Cologne this year. Christian Hartmann is again managing our booth and several developers especially from the “Ruhrgebiet” and the Cologne/Bonn area already announced their attendance - if you’re around you should visit our LWE-crew :) Also the Förderverein Gentoo e.V. / Friends of Gentoo e.V. will hold their annual meeting on Wednesday evening at the Chaos Computer Club Cologne.
Sadly I for one won’t be able to attend most parts of the LWE as I’m quite busy with preparing for my final examination on November 20th. Nevertheless I’ll once again give my “Gentoo Metadistribution” speech on Wednesday evening and attend the annual meeting afterwards. Also I’m trying to take some gpg fingerprints for keysigning with me ;) See ya in Cologne!
Gentoo/HPPA: We’re doing more Bugdays than everyone else! October 13, 2006
Posted by Tobias Scherbaum in : Gentoo/HPPA, Me, Myself and I , add a comment After the last Gentoo/HPPA Bugday just two weeks ago being a huge success (we squashed about 50 bugs, only 42 were left ..) it’s now time for another HPPA Bugday taking place this sunday . If you’d like to help with testing packages and fixing bugs join us at #gentoo-hppa on irc.freenode.net.
Note: Most Gentoo/HPPA developers are european-based, CEST timezone preferred ;)
Practical Linux in Giessen, Germany October 12, 2006
Posted by Tobias Scherbaum in : Events, Gentoo , add a comment… and now also on planet.gentoo.org … Hi everyone ;)
After being at the “Practical Linux” event in Giessen in 2003 we’ll be there again this year. Back then in 2003 the Practical Linux event happened just one day after we founded the “Förderverein Gentoo e.V.”, mainly to help with promoting Gentoo in Germany and being visible at even more events. Now, three years later, we can say: yeah, we reached that goal - at least partly. This year we only missed the “LinuxTag”, but were or will be present at nearly all larger Linux events over here. I personally attened (and gave talks at) the “Chemnitzer Linuxtage”, FroSCon in Siegburg, Come2Linux in Essen and the “Linux-Info-Tag in Dresden last weekend.
So, we’re once again happy to meet lots of folks for discussions, suggestions or just positive feedback in Giessen on the 21th. You can find more information about this event on the Practical Linux website. See you in Giessen!
Linux Info Tag in Dresden October 3, 2006
Posted by Tobias Scherbaum in : Events, Gentoo , add a commentYeah, it’s that time again :) Just after the summer holidays the fall season of Linux events started, me being part of it. In September we had a Gentoo booth at “Come2Linux” in Essen and I held three talks - two of them about Gentoo. While I was very sceptical before the event started, the organization team managed to organize a very nice event. They even had a “Gulasch-Kanone” ;) The only negative aspect about “Come2Linux” was the number of visitors, the publicity somehow wasn’t as good as last year.
Next weekend I’ll be in Dresden for the first time at the “Linux Info Tag” with my “Gentoo Metadistribution” talk. Once again flying is not even faster but also much cheaper as travelling by train - funny, isn’t it? I already talked to “Mr.Big”, a community member who I met in Chemnitz now several times, who also will be Dresden. If you’d also like to invite me for a coffee or Mate just me drop me note ;)
More events coming soon, there’s the “Practical Linux” event in Giessen, Linux World Expo in Cologne and of course the 23C3 in Berlin left on my agenda for this year.
