Kris Buytaert's blog

Oct 05 2007

Drupal RPM's

Dag is creating Drupal packages

So I`m wondering if I should look into packaging different drupal modules. Certainly would help me
Anyone interrested ?

Oct 05 2007

Links of the afternoon

Lots of new and interresting stuff on the web these days.

First of all the Centos community has a planet.centos.org now. Were I ran into the brand new feed of Field Commander Wieers Dag was long overdue setting up a blog but he finally made it and he already pointed me to interresting stuff :)

Then there is Peter Vandenabeele who also decided to start up a blog.

And last but not least I ran into Dev2Ops , upon sending that link to a collegue he asked me if I was behind that site .. I`m not :)

Dev2Ops clearly is tackling the stuff I`m involved with on a daily base. How do you deploy and upgrade software and it's configuration for different similar machines in the field.
The have a couple of nice polls on their site which interrest me:
How do you disribute software releases for in-house developed applications? and How do you maintain
system configuration files?
. Just go a head and vote . I`m interrested in the results.
My votes were on using pacakges (rpm/deb) using apt or yum and off course Puppet ! ;)

BTW.. It makes me wonder .. who is NOT using Drupal these days :))

Oct 05 2007

Inuits

Its pretty funny when you announce that you have left your job what kind of ideas people have about your next venture.

The first number of guesses were pretty obvious. Different people tought I was heading to Xensource, other people tought I was heading for Qumranet.
Other people tought I was heading to the US.
I'd love to spend some time abroad working in a different culture so who knows one day..

But I`m pretty much not moving that far yet
Our new venture is called Inuits. I write our as there are different familiar faces at Inuits

Our website isn't ready yet .. we have other priorities.
But as soon as it's ready I`ll let you know

So now you know :)

PS. And for those dissapointed.. yes there is more where this came from :)

Oct 01 2007

Dear Dopplr

Dear Dopplr,

A couple of weeks ago I mailed you folks to ask for a feature to change my email addres.
You never got back to me so I'd figure maybe a blog post would help.
Only to figure out that you actually implemented the feature but didn't tell anyone.

thnx !

Sep 30 2007

Akademy 2008 will be in Belgium

So I`m not the world largest KDE fan but I think the fact that Akademy 2008 will be held in Belgium is great news .

Finally some other Open Source event to visit our little country besides Fosdem. I should probably try to spend some time in Mechelen next year in August learn what those guys are doing...

So when Philip started asking for more integration and even joined conferences here is his chance .. no travel requirements just a 30 minute cartrip to Mechelen , at least for him :)

Sep 30 2007

Don Marti on Qumranet and IT Decision Making in General

Don Marti is bloging on Linuxworld how he thinks Qumranet has a future, just not the future they might be looking at now.

Don claims that a software project will fail if someone orders a tool to be used that he himselve is never going to use, as he will never figure out what features are important and which ones are just irrelevant. People who actually use the software should be able to decide.

He gives a good pointer to where MySQL is heading and where they came from. Typically an organisation did't decide on using MySQL after a zillion meetings an a couple of purchacing procedures before to run out to the shop and buy it. No, people just needed a working rockstable database, they took what they had available, started using it and were pretty happy about it.

That's where opensource easily gained acceptance over the past decade, but how will the future go when more and more incompetent mangers will have to decide on keep throwing money out of the window for licenses of products that their people don't use or as an alternative have their people choose , waste less money and go home with a bigger bonus at the end of the year. We'll nobody has ever been fired for buying useless software right ?

I've read people claiming that Qunranet is going to compete with Xensource, I wonder how, Yes they are both in the virtualisation market, but for me they are in two totally different but complementary areas At least Don understands that I wonder, does he know what they are up to or is he just really or has he just a smart guy with some good ideas on the future.

Sep 27 2007

I love my new email address

The biggest advantage of moving to a new place and leaving your old email addresses behind is the fact that you leave all the spam behind also.

Wondering how long it will take..
Also wondering if I should disable trackbacks because of all the spam I get there :(

Sep 26 2007

Oracle installer didn't speed up in 8-9 years

Seklos just posted a story on his Oracle blog on how he installed Oracle 10something in less than an hour.

I found the story hilarious. why . because about a decade ago .. when I was still into database & webdevelopment, Oracle first started shipping Oracle for Linus (somewhere in 99)
Back then some collegue had been struggling for a couple of days already to setup up Oracle on a Windows box and was thinking to just use SQL server.
So I went home found the famous CD with the typo (or did I really get the CD that should have been shipped to Finland ?) in my mailbox and as I had a new Siemens Server sitting in my basement, I installed a fresh RedHat and on a machine I never had seen before (that's the ninetees I`m talking about so no fancy just install it on most common hardware and it will work like we have these days) and then went on installing an Oracle version I had never seen before and guess what .. I completed that task in about just less than an hour.
So when I arrived at the office the next morning with an up and running Oracle on Linux server the crowd didn't believe me untll they fired up their SQLPlus clients and started creating their tablespaces and tables.

So now about 8 years later it still takes an experienced Linux and Oracle guy about an hour to install a basic Oracle ? What have they been doing ?

I bootstrap a fully operational MySQL server from blank disk to replying to queries in about 5 minutes.
Maybe I should move back to Oracle because as a consultant I get paid by the hour and if a similar job takes me about 10 times as long as I`m used to .. can you imagine ..

Now all joking aside .. the problem isn't with Oracle, the problem isn't with RedHat and not all the solutions are with MySQL, the problem is with people with little or no system experience trying to do a job they should grow in to over time, and failing to get proper help or guidance their first time.

Just one final thought.. with Unbreakable I really would have expected Oracle to go one step further not requiring the runInstaller thing anymore but just providing their customers with cleanly packaged software so a yum or apt-get install oracle would actually work.

Because as Luke learned us . If your computer can't install it .. the installation procedure is broken.

Sep 26 2007

Qumranet exited stealth mode

So Qumranet is out stealthmode , they have news on their website regarding their product.


Qumranet is a leading provider of virtual computing solutions and offers the industry's first truly integrated desktop virtualization solution, Solid ICE. Solid ICE enables enterprises to host Windows and Linux virtual desktops in KVM virtual machines on servers in the corporate data center, and allows users to connect to them via a remote protocol called SPICE. The benefits for IT include centralized provisioning, management, policy enforcement and compliance for desktops. In addition, due to the KVM and SPICE combination, Solid ICE delivers a superior end-user experience, especially with respect to graphics and multimedia.

Sep 26 2007

Zatoo

I've just been Zattood, meaning that I can now watch real time local TV on my computer.

There is both an OSX client and a Linux client and some weird OS client for those who care too
I just tested it and it seems pretty fast an usable for someone who has an IP connection and sporacdially wants to watch TV.
However I couldn't care less .. I have cable and I never watch realtime TV anymore.

MythTV does that for me .. and I watch the shows weeks later :)