The recently stared ADMS.F/OSS project is described as :

ADMS.F/OSS is an XML and RDF vocabulary to describe software, in
particular free and open-source software (F/OSS), making it possible to
more easily search and discover software. The ADMS.F/OSS specification is still under development.

It is developped in the frame of an EC (European Community) programme for interoperability between public administrations (more on the page above).

I’ll try and participate to the working group, bringing in some feedback from the efforts on similar issues conducted during the (now over) COCLICO project.

Hope this helps.

However, it relies on unmaintained technology, (Gnome 1.x I think), and will be removed from lenny, so I envision to switch to another more recent tool for managing the passwords of my various systems, accounts, application setup passwords, etc.

I have reviews revelation which seems to fit some of my needs, but I’m afraid it is unmaintained at the moment. As it is written in Python, I could probably live with that, but I cannot end-up becoming a contributor to any program I use, can I ?

Other alternatives may be keepassx… but it’s C++, and crossplatform… and I’m not fan of these features anyway (QT or windows look, bah). Also it has less import/export options than revelation.

One of the advantages of FPM was that even if it was a GUI program, the format of password store could also be managed with Kedpm (Ked Password Manager), a command-line tool. I’m afraid I’m losing a feature with the switch to revelation, then (still, command-line interface seems on the TODO list of revelation).

So we’ll see what happens… in the meantime, I’ve filed a couple patches for revelation in Debian’s BTS, just for the fix of the bugs I encountered during the quick import of FPM passwords.

Dear lazyweb, any suggestions on how to find a maintained, python based, Gnome password management tool with a command-line interface ?

En l’espèce, le bug #444188 a mis 75 jours (entre le 21/09/2007 et le 05/12/2007) pour être intégré dans une release du package sympa dans Debian (testing).

Et oui, c’est pas si simple, ni rapide de faire en sorte qu’un fix, même trivial, se propage rapidement…

Update 07/12/2007 : J’ai détaillé un peu cet exemple précis dans un petit document, screenshots à la clé.

Voici l’abstract :

Collaboration avec des projets libres – enjeux, difficultés et bonnes pratiques
Christian Bac, Vu Dang Quang, Olivier Berger

Résumé

Nous souhaitons proposer quelques pistes permettant d’affiner des stratégies de collaboration avec des projets de développement de logiciels libres, pour les organisations basant le développement de leurs systèmes d’information sur l’intégration et la customisation d’applications libres existantes.

Mots clefs
contribution, logiciel libre, open source, meilleures pratiques, debian, packages, maintenance

Update 2007/11/21 : les slides sont en ligne sur le site des JRES 2007.

| View | Upload your own

Update 2007/12/06 : le papier est aussi en ligne sur le site des JRES 2007.
Update 2007/12/19 : l’enregistrement vidéo de ma conf est maintenant également en ligne sur le site des JRES 2007.
Et le plan :


1 Introduction
2 Tirer parti des logiciels libres
2.1 Qu'est-ce qu'un logiciel libre ?
2.2 Panorama d'un écosystème
2.3 Qualité particulières d'un logiciel libre
3 Conduite de projet
3.1 Degrés d'interaction avec les communautés
3.2 Sélection d'un produit
3.2.1 Ne pas confondre vitesse et précipitation
3.2.2 Sous-traiter ce qui peut l'être
3.2.3 Identifier les éléments critiques et monter en compétence
3.2.4 Préférer les solutions déjà packagées
3.3 Maintien en condition opérationnelle
3.3.1 Réactivité pour les mises à jour
3.3.2 Diminuer l'adhérence dans les composants spécifiques
3.3.3 Choix du système de packages
3.4 Développement
3.4.1 Gestion des divergences
3.4.2 Méthodologie d'intégration
3.5 Déploiement
3.5.1 Support de certains matériels
3.5.2 Virtualisation
3.5.3 Savoir packager
4 Contribuer : une nécessité
4.1 Pourquoi contribuer
4.1.1 Cercle vertueux des contributions
4.1.2 Quasi-obligation du fait des licences
4.1.3 Externalisation de la maintenance
4.1.4 Se faire plaisir et apprendre en vraie grandeur
4.1.5 Se faire connaître et reconnaître
4.1.6 Influer sur le pilotage d'un projet
4.2 Comment contribuer
4.2.1 Il n'y a pas besoin de savoir coder
4.2.2 Assurer une veille régulière
4.2.3 Beaucoup d'effort même pour des choses simples
4.2.4 Minimum légal : faire vivre la base de bugs
4.2.5 Communiquer avant tout
4.2.6 Accepter des usages sociaux différents
4.2.7 Jouer le jeu selon les règles
4.2.8 Eviter l' « abandonware » non déclaré
4.2.9 Abandonner tout espoir de planifier
4.2.10 Publier un nouveau module
4.2.11 Publier un nouveau logiciel libre
5 Conclusion


It’s pretty easy… well… doable at least

The trick is to launch the CVS commands with a “ssh” script in the PATH, which will be something like this :

#! /bin/sh

export SSH_ASKPASS=/whereveryouwant/my-ssh-askpass
export DISPLAY=:0
unset TERM
exec setsid /usr/bin/ssh $*

and where the my-ssh-askpass script will simply do :
#! /bin/sh
echo yourpreferredpassword

Hope this helps

• standard linux kernel with proprietary nvidia driver
• and Xen to allow developping/testing in a hosted dom-U Debian distro, in which case I switch back to the libre nv driver

When using the proprietary nvidia driver, I may use two kind of configurations :

• having several screens in “clone” mode, i.e. replicated view on screen and beamer, for instance (classical use of Fn+F8 clone display)
• or having both screens assembled into one to use twinview with dualhead, which provides (through Xinerama) and being able to switch windows from one to the other

This means I configured several layouts in the same xorg.conf file, which will describe each a different Xorg configuration.

Update 2008/02/10 : reorganized that post to be able to manage kernel-passed LAYOUT variable

Now, I want to have the correct layout automatically detected at X startup (launched by GDM), and/or being able to switch layouts manually at boot.

I adapted the howto HOWTO: Choose Xorg layout automatically based on ddcprobe in order to use the following script as /etc/gdm/startx-custom :


#!/bin/sh

# if no LAYOUT variable is defined in the environment (coming from kernel parameters ?)
if [ "x$LAYOUT" = "x" ]
then

# try to detect automatically
uname -r | grep -q -i xen
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
LAYOUT="-layout XenLayout"
else
LAYOUT=""
fi

else
# use the LAYOUT variable content
LAYOUT="-layout $LAYOUT"
fi

# run the X server with the eisa entry as layout (if it was defined in
# xorg.conf)
exec /usr/X11R6/bin/X $LAYOUT $*


Then, I configured GDM to use that one instead of the default X startup, adding this to /etc/gdm/gdm.conf :


# in [servers]
#0=Chooser
0=Xen

# then, bellow :
[server-Xen]
name=Standard server for Xen
command=/etc/gdm/startx-custom -br -audit 0
flexible=true


Due to the way Debian configures GDM, I couldn’t use a custom GDM conf file as stated in the docs, and had to modify /etc/gdm/gdm.conf (see
bug #360377)

Now, I modified my grub menu.lst config file so that my kernels can be invoked with LAYOUT=DualLayout or LAYOUT=CloneLayout parameters, for instance. So rebooting, I will select different layouts.

Also, it’s possible to do LAYOUT=NewLayout /etc/init.d/gdm restart commands, for instance.

Hope this helps.

I’ve been trying to make one with GNU/Linux of course, but it’s not been an easy task.

My main concern was to be able to preview the future results in real dimensions, i.e. being able to print various A4 sheets, then assemble them together to see a real size representation of the future poster. This would help notice readability issues that wouldn’t be obvious on the lower scale representation on-screen.

There’s a nice tool called poster which can be used to convert an EPS A0 (for instance) document into a multi-page A4 document (16 pages for A0) which will have cutting marks, and partial overlap of borders so that it’s easy to cut and assemble the sheets to form a full size poster.

I’ve also tries and follow the rules of our institution communication department to keep with their graphic charter. I tried and reuse their PPT example presentations.

The obvious path meant using OpenOffice, then… but the problem is that OpenOffice Impress (at least in the 2.0 version I used on my Debian lenny system) would not produce a EPS result that poster would understand

Believe me, these tests on several hundreds of megs (or a couple of gigs) documents were quite long

After several hours lost in testing, I changed my mind and tried Scribus. And guess what ? It will export nice PDF or EPS that can be converted with poster to what I need to preview my poster !

Of course, Scribus was designed to create the kinds of documents, more than OpenOffice Impress module

So my advice is :

• make an A0 document with Scribus
• export to EPS
• convert the EPS to PS with poster. Something like : poster -v -iA0 -mA4 -pA0 -o poster-multisheet.ps poster-A0.eps
• check the results with a little bit of cut and paste, in full size

Now, I have to check the last steps : generate a 600 DPI PDF and try and have it printed on A0 by some printing shop… Hopefully it’s OK. I’ll keep you informed of the results.

Update 2007/11/27 : the poster was printed by the JRES organisers, and renders quite nice. More details here.

Some testing would be greatly appreciated.

More details on the packages : in the picoforge wiki.

More details at the dedicated page.

PhpMyadmin allows you to backup the database, but you may like to do it in an unattended way.

I’ve written a shell-script which will use CURL to do so.

I couldn’t find any such script… so I hope I didn’t reinvent the wheel

Update 2008/04/15 : I have made some modifications to the script, and it is now in SVN. You may grab a copy from the picoforge project’s websvn.