From Sep 12 to Sep 13 we will have a power outage in the Nuernberg office.

Downtime is planned from 2009-09-11 20:00 CEST (18:00 UTC) until 2009-09-14 10:00 CEST (08:00 UTC). So it might become a long weekend especially for developers – but we plan to avoid restrictions for endusers during this downtime.

So far, the following services are affected by this downtime:

• Build Service
• Mailing lists
• …and more

Please have a look at the “downtime” wiki page to see the full list of affected hosts.

Not affected:

• news.opensuse.org
• <lang>.opensuse.org (all opensuse wikis)
• forums.opensuse.org
• irc.freenode.net/opensuse* channels
• bugzilla.novell.com
• download.opensuse.org (replacement host in place)
• static.opensuse.org (replacement host in place)
• software.opensuse.org (search will not work as the buildservice is down)

We plan no replacement for the other services as the downtime is not too large.

We will try to reduce/disable building on build.opensuse.org on Thursday, so all mirrors should have “up-to date” packages over the weekend.

With kind regards,
Lars (on behalf of the openSUSE-Admins)

From Sep 12 to Sep 13 we will have a power outage in the Nuernberg office.

Downtime is planned from 2009-09-11 20:00 CEST (18:00 UTC) until 2009-09-14 10:00 CEST (08:00 UTC). So it might become a long weekend especially for developers – but we plan to avoid restrictions for endusers during this downtime.

So far, the following services are affected by this downtime:

• Build Service
• Mailing lists
• …and more

Please have a look at the “downtime” wiki page to see the full list of affected hosts.

Not affected:

• <lang>.opensuse.org (all opensuse wikis)
• forums.opensuse.org
• irc.freenode.net/opensuse* channels
• bugzilla.novell.com

The discussion to host at least download.opensuse.org and static.opensuse.org somewhere else is work in progress. We plan no replacement for the other services as the downtime is not too large.

We will try to reduce/disable building on build.opensuse.org on Thursday, so all mirrors should have “up-to date” packages over the weekend.

With kind regards,
Lars (on behalf of the openSUSE-Admins)

From openFATE’s launch in January ‘09 the addition of a new feature was limited to openSUSE members. Due and thanks to several requests out of the openSUSE community we changed this and are happy to announce today that openFATE now allows feature requests for non-members as well. This will lower the bar again to participate directly in the project and in the development of openSUSE, openSUSE Build Service and openFATE itself.
We’re looking forward to receive more qualified feature requests to make our openSUSE distribution and the project itself fit your needs better from day to day. To use openFATE please check first here

Have a lot of fun!

Good news, everybody! iFolder client packages are now available for openSUSE 11.1 from the openSUSE update repositories. This means you can install iFolder client on openSUSE 11.1 using YaST or zypper, without any modifications to your installed system.

Like openSUSE, iFolder is an open source project sponsored by Novell. iFolder is a simple and secure storage solution that can make syncing and sharing files easy. You can back up, access, and manage your personal files from anywhere, at any time. Once you have installed iFolder, you simply save your files locally and iFolder automatically updates the files on a network server and delivers them to the other machines you use.

To install iFolder, just fire up YaST’s Software Manager and search for “ifolder3″, or open a terminal and type the following:

sudo zypper ref

sudo zypper in ifolder3

The iFolder server is available in the openSUSE Build Service. Just search for “ifolder3-enterprise” at software.opensuse.org/search.

For more information on iFolder, see the iFolder site. Want to run an iFolder server without having to set up a server from scratch? Stephen Shaw, Mario Carrión, and Andrés G. Aragoneses created a openSUSE-based server appliance using SUSE Studio. Just download the VMware image and fire it up in VMware or VirtualBox.

To get involved with iFolder, see the how to contribute doc and join real-time discussions in the #ifolder channel on Freenode.

We do a number of software and hardware updates this week for our openSUSE servers. That means that some services will not be available for some time.

Tuesday 10:00 UTC
Maintenance of our content delivery infrastructure for about 1 hour. That means the following service will not be available:

• download.opensuse.org
• stage.opensuse.org

Wednesday 12:00 UTC
Maintenance of our Build Service infrastructure for about 1 hour. That means the following service will not be available:

• software.opensuse.org
• build.opensuse.org
• api.opensuse.org
• users.opensuse.org

Thursday
We will update the Factory development projects according to the new discussed list. So Build Service packages should expect a high load on the system, it will most likely not really usable at this day.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but lets hope that a larger and stronger infrastructure will offer the services to you afterwards

The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the 1.5 release of the openSUSE Build Service. This release takes developers beyond just building packages. You can now build your own distribution using the openSUSE Build Service!

The 1.5 release makes it possible to build entire releases within the build service. and export ISO images and FTP trees. All users can create images locally using “osc build,” and permission can be granted to build images using the hosted build service as well. A presentation on KIWI imaging with the openSUSE Build Service can be found online (PDF).

The openSUSE 11.1 release was built entirely in the openSUSE Build Service, and it’s now possible for other projects to be created in the openSUSE Build Service as well. Whether you’re creating a derivative distribution or product like the openSUSE Education CDs, the openSUSE Build Service now has you covered.

Building Appliances and Live CD Images

OBS 1.5 includes the ability to automatically calculate dependencies and create installable images, such as the live CDs and network deployment images for the openSUSE:Tools build hosts.

In addition to ISO images, OBS 1.5 can create images for installable USB sticks, Xen images, and VMware images.

Another benefit to the 1.5 release is the ability to create product add-ons, such as the openSUSE nonfree add-ons for 11.1.

Experimental Features

OBS 1.5 also includes several experimental features added by the openSUSE Community, including:

* Support for cross-architecture build support, added by Martin Mohring of 5e Datasoft as part of the work towards supporting the ARM architecture with openSUSE.

* Package download on demand support thanks to Marcus Hüwe.

* Filtering of build results via the Web monitor. This means that OBS users can view only relevant results – like failed builds or only builds targeted at specific distributions.

These features are not considered production ready, but are available for developers looking to have early access to these features

The OBS team is always looking for additional feedback and contributors to improve the openSUSE Build Service. To discuss Build Service development, subscribe to the opensuse-buildservice list (opensuse-buildservice+subscribe@opensuse.org), and see the #opensuse-buildservice channel on Freenode.

The openSUSE Factory distribution is our permanent development distribution. Currently used to develop openSUSE 11.2. We want to make the factory distribution better usable for everybody to get a better testing for next release.
One of the complaints we received in the last years is that the huge amount of newly built packages makes it hard for people to keep their system up to date, simply due to the time needed for downloading and installing the packages.

We have switched now to a new mechanism, which will reduce the number of packages which get published significantly.
To explain the new mechanism, we should look at the old concepts to build a distribution:

(more…)

Have you ever wanted to join Build Service development, but you had no idea what to implement? Would you like a real opportunity to learn Ruby on Rails? This is a great time to start!

The OBS developers have collected smaller projects on this wiki page. These projects are ideal for anyone new to OBS development. All you need is a local copy of the Web Client, which can easily be deployed on your development system.

Most of the jobs will enable functionality which is already implemented, but not available in the web client. The web client is great for browsing the content and the status of the projects. These improvements will help developers to get a better overview about their builds and sources.

(more…)

It’s alive! In an effort to bring another joy of contributing to the openSUSE distribution a new team, process and package repository just recently saw the light of day: openSUSE:Contrib

The openSUSE:Contrib repository is an extension of the openSUSE distribution. The goal is simple: making maintainership of packages in the openSUSE distribution possible for everyone. Currently with openSUSE Factory it is “only” possible to do code-contribution in the form of patches sent through the collaboration features of the openSUSE Build Service. While that is fine it is missing an important motivation bit: responsibility. Having responsibility for a piece of software inside a Linux distribution is a demanding but rewarding task and it is also the one task that is essential to the whole distribution business because that’s what a distribution is, a collection of packages. No matter if you create a nice desktop wallpaper or hack on a system service, if you want it to end up on the distribution you have to squeeze it into a package and use the whole process around that. With openSUSE:Contrib it is now possible for everyone to do that for the openSUSE distributions. So if you have experience in RPM packaging and you miss a piece of software in the openSUSE distribution join the openSUSE:Contrib team to scratch that itch. For starters you should read the openSUSE:Contrib wiki page and subscribe yourself to the openSUSE:Contrib mailing list. See you around!

Today we started an openSUSE Build Service Webclient online survey. We want to get more informations about the openSUSE Build Service Webclient users, the used hard and software and (potential) use cases.

If you use, used or want to use the OBS, please participate on the survey and help us to make a solid Webclient 2.

The survey is available via this link.

Thanks for your participation!