Archie installer, take 2

Although life has been keeping me busy, i worked hard on finishing the Archie installer – basically i recoded it from scratch… i used most of the inner functions, but the layout and gui functions were completely recoded. so, here are some screenshots :

its 99% complete – some minor tweaks here and there are left, but nothing major. i’m pretty much satisfied with it

i also tested it under qemu and except for one problem (setting the appropriate vga=xxx parameter for bootloader) it works flawlessly. so…

im still waiting for iphitus (James) to finish up the squashfs-lzma patch and put it into the ‘beyond’ kernel so we can release Archie 0.6 already… i just hope it won’t take TOO long…

update time

For the ubuntu users, there is a great site to generate sources.list file, but you need to obtain each GPG key manually for every entry in the file. So, here is a quick oneliner to obtain the GPG keys automatically, for all ubuntu lovers out there (copy and paste in 1 line in your terminal):
for KEY in `grep "GPG key:" /etc/apt/sources.list | awk {'print $4'}`; do gpg --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys $KEY; gpg --export --armor $KEY | sudo apt-key add - ; done

and some quick update about Archie – i finished 99% of the gui installer, tested it, and all seems to work. i also redesigned the layout from scratch after hearing some ppl saying it “doesn’t look professional enough”… so i hope the new design does.

Also, our congregation (Messianic Jews) had lost one of our dear members from Cancer. She was an amazing woman, with ALWAYS a smile on her face, regardless of what she’s been up with. She always shown her love to everyone, and we won’t forget her. She left behind a husband and three children.

Archie, yet again…

Well, i’ve resumed work on Archie, and it sure is about time… it was a LONG pause (4 months or more…) but i’ve decided to finish the 0.6 version, and then i’ll see how to continue. Maybe hand over the driver sit to dtw which done great work with Archie, and i think he’ll be a great project leader.

I’ve messed with the archie-scripts for a few days now, fixed, updated, and upgraded lots of stuff. i even finally fixed some bugs which caused lots of pain before, so it might be a good thing to leave the project for while and resume work with a fresh mind

Im building a personalized iso for a forum member from whatsup.co.il who asked for a java development live-cd. both sides (me and him) will enjoy the fruits of that since he will have his live-cd, and i will get to work on Archie, see where more work is needed – sharpen here and there, etc.

ok, im back to testing stuff… will update soon. but hooray for Archie!

Hello world!

I’ve finally decided to join the club. if you can’t beat them, join them… So, here’s my blog.

Since i do lots of different computing tasks, although mainly involved around linux, you can assume most of the blogging will be computer related – ie, geeks stuff. Also, since i’m lazy with capital L, most chances i wont update the blog too often, but who knows, maybe i will… miracles DO happen.

Well, the first post im putting down is related to Samba – i’ve spent last 4 days on 1 problem – couple of months ago i’ve installed ipcop+samba in the congregation offices. it was 3.0.22 version, everything went smoothly. this week i thought of upgrading to latest 3.0.24d – and the problems began. no user could login – windows gave a “can’t authenticate” error and went back to the login screen. so i reverted back to 3.0.22, and installed samba under qemu while trying to login into the qemu server (with “net join”) from my box. took me 4 days, tons of readings material (which none proved useful… but at least i learned a lot about samba options…) and finally one command as a solution… “net user add nobody”. 4 damn words in 4 days. thats 1 word per day! anyway, as always, i enjoyed it, although im not sure this “fix” is 100% “security smart”, but at least all works, so the congregation people are happy, and so am i. Thing is, i didn’t find anywhere someone having same problem as me, and nothing even related to this “add nobody” fix. maybe it’s all one big plot against me… iono. but again – my dad taught me, not to complain if everything works, so i won’t. hear me dad?

On another note, i have this project i got from some company (sorry, can’t reveal too much info…) which involved linux station, as/400 (my pet computer…) server, and uclibc. sounds fantastic, ea? the thing is, this company is a “money driven” company (capitalist world, ea?) which everytime i get a project from them (i have a long “romance” with them ,dated a few years back, but this is only the 2nd project im doing specifically for them) they drive me nuts. After having a meeting with them concluding the basic stuff, and who-does-what, i started working on the project although they asked me not to start yet (since they wanted to have a technical draft 1st) since a) it was very interesting, b) they had a very short deadline. anyway, after i finish like 70% of the project, they tell me they not gonna pay for anything i did till now, since i did it on my own will, and “not been asked to” start yet. well, no problem, i told them, don’t pay me at all – im gonna give the project for free then. obviously their hair jumped, and now they want to talk royalties. so, we’ll see how that goes, since i REALLY need the money…

Another open-source project i’ve been working on is Archie – the live Arch Linux project. it’s something i started a long time ago, did everything from scratch (init scripts, hw recognition, etc) and lately started getting bored by it. The last version (0.6) was supposed to be released couple of months ago, but im just too lazy and bored to actually package and release it, although tons of work had been put into it, and not by me only – some other members had joined to help out, but i just don’t see whats the point – theres so many “live” distributions right now, so one less won’t change a thing…

well, thats it for now, i think thats more than enough. On sunday im on an evangelizing seminar (every sunday for 5 weeks) but except for that i think my week will be more comfortable than the last… so i might actually blog again!

ta ta.