Linux Czar

As Current so often prints out as an error “Bad Week.” Indeed it seems that everything I’ve done this week as been pretty simple and something that should or could have been handled by an underling. However, this has been a bad week so the very simple things have completely blown up and either left me stumpted or taken hours to figure out.

By the way, the last update to tar broke RPM on at least Fedora Core 5 and RHEL 4. None of the -t options to rpm-build currently work. I really like how the error message from tar ends up written in your SPECS/ directory as a file name. That’s just icing on the cake.

So, RPM does this:

[slack@narsil current]$ rpmbuild -ta current-1.7.6.tar.bz2error: Name field must be present in package: (main package)error: Version field must be present in package: (main package)error: Release field must be present in package: (main package)error: Summary field must be present in package: (main package)error: Group field must be present in package: (main package)error: License field must be present in package: (main package)

and I find a filename “tar: Pattern matching characters used in file names. Please,” where I should find the spec file for the package.

This all boils down to line 159 in build.c in the RPM source code.

sprintf(cmd, "%s < %s | tar xOvf - \\*.spec 2>&1 > %s",          zcmds[res & 0x3], arg, tmpSpecFile);

Which explicitly tries to pull the spec file out of the tarball. However, the recent tar update changed how tar handles litteral ‘*’ and other characters that can be used as pattern matching characters. You get the above error. Actually, you really get something that looks like this

$ tar xf foo.tar  '*.c'tar: Pattern matching characters used in file names. Please,tar: use --wildcards to enable pattern matching, or --no-wildcards totar: suppress this warning.tar: *.c: Not found in archivetar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

See the changes in recent versions of tar for the full details. This has been Bugzilla’d as 206841 and 207751.

This past week I released a new snapshot of Current’s development as version 1.7.5. There are some screenshots of the web interface on the project website. Things are progressing well toward the goal of having a widely scalable package management and deployment system. There is even support for Yum clients via a Yum plugin as well. Managed Yum clients, definitely exciting.

I’ve been enjoying using TurboGears for the web interface. It actually works very well. However, I’m not much for web design and am looking for someone that would like to contribute some work on the TurboGears interface or the Kid templates. If you are interested please contact me or the developer’s list found on the Current website linked above.

I was hoping that the GNU General Public License would protect my work and insure its freedom in the Open Source community. Alas, I must report that there is someone taking advantage of Current. They are not technically breaking the GPL but I believe they are violating its spirit.

There is a fellow in the Netherlands who runs a website called BlackOrion. He would like to make some cash by supporting a Linux distribution tied in to a package management system that is very much like the Red Hat Network. By his own admission, his package management tools and interface are based on Current. To quote:

I have designed the web interface/user administration fully isolated from ‘Current’ as a totally separate project. In addition I made tailormade changes to Current for my specific internal purposes.

The GPL allows anyone to make modifications and not distribute them. That’s what this guy is doing. However, the GPL FAQ indicates that such modifications should be for private use and that running a modified GPL program that provides network services for sale to the general public is hardly private.

The Plone/Zope based web interface that this guy has written is also interesting. He doesn’t have to distribute it, but if he does it no doubt uses Current as a library of some sorts to get and set information. The GPL requires this code to be licensed under the GPL if it is released.

What’s my grief? If folks want to make money directly with Current I don’t have a problem with that. However, there are two problems I have with BlackOrion. First, he explicitly asked me to keep Current a text-only tool. In his words, “The Current project remains text based and freely available open source (GPL) and will be further improved.” I’m tempted to think that he wanted to orchestrate an agreement so there would not be an open source competitor to his services.

Secondly, this person has clearly made extensive modifications to Current itself. My code base is no where near providing the features his web interface makes use of. On top of that is the web interface itself which is something the Current project has sought after a long time. I’ve not seen a bit of this code. By taking advantage of the liberty of the GPL he profits.

I don’t blame the guy for not liking my attitude about this. But I’ve got to interject that if your business model is based on keeping code secret, code based on GPL’d projects, then your model is not going to be successful in the long term.

I’ve just been able to convert my blogger account to the Google’d up beta. Its not too different from before, just has liberal Google spice. Although, I’m sure under the hood it is quite different. I look forward to using the tool to graphically alter my blogger template as well. Of course, it did break the feed I had setup to my website, linuxczar.net.

To test out Blogger, I shall moan about how embarrassing it is to be an American at times. I do not agree with this war in Iraq and even our President has finally admitted that it has nothing to do with terrorism. (Jon Stewart had some fun with that clip.) The countries that we have invaded have been left in far worse condition. This week I’ve read reports on CNN of the increase in violence/deaths of Iraqis and a 60% increase in opium production in Afghanistan. What does it take for our administration to admit that something is wrong and attempt to put matters right?

Oooh…the spell checker is a lot better too.