Anil Gulecha's Musings

So I’ve been working on Nexenta for a fortnight now, and have picked up a lot of things. Below is a short introduction/guide on how you can join the project.

Introduction

First a little bit of background. The debian project was started in the early nineties to be a one-stop package repository for Linux applications. It has been a fairly popular distribution. However, it was the Ubuntu distribution that made the most use of these packages. Ubuntu is a debian derivative, with focus on the desktop. It makes use of the debian’s packages, on top of the linux kernel.

The solaris kernel is very well regarded for its rock solid stability. When solaris was open sourced as opensolaris in 2005, many possibilities emerged.. what if we could combine Solaris’s famed stability with Ubuntu’s famed user experience. And this is the aim of the Nexenta project.

So that is the backstory. Nexenta = Ubuntu – Linux kernel + Solaris kernel. Nexenta is currently focusing on the Nexenta Core Platform, which is a starting point for any type of focussed distribution; ncp will allow for easy addition of packages, and you are free to develop any distribution on top of it, by adding any packages you want. Which brings us to how you contribute to the Nexenta project: Packages.

Ubuntu/Debian currently have 20000 packages. We need help from the community to port these to Nexenta. A sizable portion has already been done. And a sizable portion remains.

Getting Started

To get started.. these are the documentation a newbie would have to to pursue:

Nexenta uses the Debian/Ubuntu packaging model. This is thoroughly explained in

• Debian policy manual
• Debian Maintainers/developers guide
• Debian developers reference
• Apt packaging system

A majority of the open source applications use the GNU autotools to compile and build programs. This autotools tutorial should help you get started.

Platform

Locally: As NCP is a command-line only environment, the ideal setup for developing would be running NCP VMWare server on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04. NCP 2.0, the upcoming release is based off this Ubuntu release. You can however install this on baremetal or on Windows/ OpenSolaris.

Remotely: Another option is to use the build machines at gnusolaris.org remotely. get onto IRC, and request for a login details. We’ll setup a development zone, and give you the login details. Further details on the hackathon page in the “How to get started” section

Machine requirements

• If you are going to work remotely on the gnusolaris.org development machine, all you need is an ssh client like putty on Windows or your garden variety ssh on your favourite *nix distro.
• If working on NCP locally, the recommended specs are:
  • Processor: Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz or equivalent
  • Memory: 1Gb minimum, 2Gb recommended.. you’ll be using a VM.
  • Space :10Gb for the virtual hard disk.

Installing Nexenta Core Platform

A step by step guide with screenshots is available at http://www.nexenta.org/os/Getting_Started

If you run into issues setting up VMware with bridged networking, you can take a look at my previous entry.

Getting help

The nexenta project has a very helpful community, that answers your queries quickly.

• Drop in on IRC at #nexenta on freenode, or use the web-based interface at nexenta.org/chat.
• Signup for the developer mailing lists
• Web-based forum

[The next part will take a look at the important commands used in porting packages]

I had a little trouble setting up VMware to share the host’s (Ubuntu) nic interface eth0 (with static ip) with the guest ncp2.

Follow the instrucions here to setup a VMware install: http://www.nexenta.org/os/Getting_Started

When you need to pass network settings, for a static IP configuration on the host, follow the below steps.

Lets say the guest is setup as

IP:192.168.1.2, with netmask 255.255.255.0 and router 192.168.1.1

Then host needs to be

IP: 192.168.1.3 (or 4 or 5..), with netmask 255.255.255.0 and router 192.168.1.1

I figured I’d write this guide for those who have certain needs to setup a blogging infrastructure for an organization.

I’ve joined the Nexenta project and one of my first tasks was to setup blogs and a planet. The requirements were thus:

• Ability to blog (yes!)
• A place to aggregate feeds (aka “Planet”)

My first choice was WordPress Mu, given that I already had experience with WP. Setting it up was easy.. below is a quick overview of what I did:

• Login to ssh.. and create a directory for blogs.nexenta.org.
• Setup the apache virtual host config for the above.
• Create a mysql database and a username/pass to access it.
• Get and extract the wpmu latest into this directory.
• Add a couple lines to /.htaccess
• Launch via the browser, and enter db and blog details.. and you’re done

Now to setup the planet.. install the following

• Plugin Commander (To easily manage plugins sitewide)
• FeedWordPress (For our planet feature)
• Did you pass math (To scare away the nasty spammers)

Set FeedWordPress to post feeds directly, and check for new content every 10-20 minutes. When you give it feed links of services like blogspot, be sure to pass RSS feeds rather than ATOM.

Add a few themes and your blogging platform is ready to serve.

Been some time since I last blogged. Here are a few quick updates:

* I’ve graduated (rather under-graduated).

* I’ve joined the Nexenta project fulltime.

* I intend to start blogging a bit more.

That about sums it up.

PS: Ow.. and Belenix 0.7.1 was released. Go try it!

In the flashy age of Web 2.0, a browser has evolved to be an entire platform in itself. Makes sense that the extension community of Firefox thrives. I’ve been working on some session persistence stuff on Opensolaris, and the first thing I required a liveCD/USB to support was firefox addons. So without further delay below are a list of extensions you cant live without.

1. DownThemAll : The age of Flashget/got is over. DownThemAll supports suspend/resume, multipart download, and sequence of files using regex like syntax.
2. Noscript : New Javascript and XSS vulnerabilities and are discovered everyday. Get noscript and save on dumb nags and bandwidth. (Note however that this is still for users with a technical bent of mind.. you’d be constantly switching it on/off for dumbly created sites.
3. AdBlockPlus : No more ads! Anywhere..
4. Download Statusbar : This improves upon the default download manager of firefox by making the download dialog non-intrusive. (Firefox developers: this need to be a part of Firefox by default.)
5. Greasemonkey : Play around with the looks of webpages using the hundreds of pre-written scripts. (Again, this is for the techy users.)
6. FireFTP : Nothing like an intuitive, small and cross platform FTP browser. This is a must have.
7. Sameplace : A jabber IM implementation. Chat using your jabber (and gTalk) account right from Firefox.

Are you viewing this from another browser? Why not give Firefox a try?

Foss.in 2007 is here. And I’m looking forward to a lot more of techiness this time around. Are you in bangalore in the first week of December? Then do plan on attending the event.

Heres the link: foss.in

See you there