Category Archives: Open Source

Moving from Google Groups to Mailman

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Recently we moved our mailing list from Google Groups to Mailman Free Software mailing list manager. The decision was taken cause we need more control on our mailing list and Google Groups is proprietary software.

Setting up mailman wasn’t that hard. The hardest part is to get our whole archive transfered from Google Groups to our Mailman server.

The point was to get an mbox of all our messages, which will later be copied above the new .mbox file in Mailman. To get the messages, I used an IMAP server which has a directory with the stored threads from our mailing list, and the getmail tool.

First install getmail:
apt-get install getmail4

Create the getmail rc file in ~/.getmail/getmail.rc:

[retriever]
type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever
server = imap.gmail.com
username = username
password = password
mailboxes = ("MAILING-LIST-DIRECTORY-NAME",)

[destination]
type = Mboxrd
path = ~/your-mailing-list-name.mbox

Create the mbox file:

touch ~/your-mailing-list-name.mbox

Then run the getmail tool:

getmail -r ~/.getmail/getmail.rc

The resulted mbox file should be copied to your Mailman server (on Debian/Ubuntu I believe it’s in /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/ ), after it just run mmarc with --wipe.
mmarch --wipe your-mailing-list-name /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/your-mailing-list-name.mbox

That’s all folks, now your archives should be totally transfered.

Romania needs a legal support for Open Source. Badly!

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Due to the latest events I was involved in, I talked with a lot of people from Romanian IT. Today I was a speaker at ITBoard event, where I talked about Open Source virtualization solutions: Xen and OpenVZ (You won’t find too much information in the slides, cause I’m lazy and I preferred only to talk rather than to write and talk).
After my presentation we had another talk with some guys that came there. I must say that most of them where impressed about the features Xen and OpenVZ solutions can offer. The discussion stopped when it came to the problems in Romanian government.

I was reported that most of the companies in Romania WON’T allow you as a system administrator to opt for Open Source solutions in your infrastructure. They couldn’t explain in details what’s the reason of such “software racism”, but I assume the explication is simple: “In Romania, nobody will take you seriously when talking about Open Source in public and business institutions”.

We badly need a legal foundation in order to continue and support our position, only this way people from IT will join us among the end users.

Ubuntu rocked at eLiberatica 2009

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As you already know, Ubuntu Romanian Team was at eLiberatica 2009, and they did it loudly and crowdly.

Ubuntu

Coming from Cluj-Napoca, we joined Firebird SQL team from Mureș and ROSEdu Team from Bucharest to make the event successful. Finally in 2 days we were going to make the giveaways for about 200 Ubuntu CDs, a couple of caps, dozens of pens, several lainyards, a lot of papers and posters.

Our stand was one of the most visited stand build by the community (maybe the better was only Mozilla’s, but they were helped by other sources :D). After 2 days, there was not a single CD from those which we left for conference exhibition. We’re estimating that every second conference visitor got a CD from us (and the organizers were announcing about 400 visitors). Only several flyers left from the whole package of goodies.

We got in touch with several people that announced themselves ready to contribute with presentations and possibly sponsor invitations across the country. Those guys asked promotional goodies if possible and CDs for the event (this is what community will have to do in the next several weeks).

Guys from ROSEdu reported that their CDL courses held on Ubuntu systems were of great success. We’ll try to use their experince to achieve the same effect in Cluj-Napoca by organizing an event like that.

Ubuntu Romanian Remix and KiwiLinux were also a subject of interests at eLiberatica. Most of the people who asked about both distros are actually the people we targeted when building those distros.

Several guys came to ask about Ubuntu server edition and what new it brings in 9.04, and what are the plans for the next milestone. There were the same questions about Ubuntu Desktop editions.

In future Ubuntu Romania Team is going to be even more present at such events by all means, because we see it is the only way actually things roll in Romania. People that are able and may be helpful are looking to meet ourselves in person. Only after knowing the persons they seem to trust the idea and get into the project (which makes sense in a society where it is really hard to deliver the truth by digital means).

In the end I must say that I was very disappointed to see that for projecting the presentations organizers used a Windows machine. Thanks to Greg who solved somehow this issue when Danese was doing Lightning Talks.

Anyway it was cool to get ourselves together. Looking forward to see you on our IRC channel for more discussions and question regarding Ubuntu’s eLiberatica participation.

eLiberatica – Day 1

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I was writing on GSL blog about some of the things that happened at eLiberatica today.

The most important thing is actually the fact that we finally gained all together, Diacritice, Firebird, Fedora-ro, GSL, ROSEdu, Mozilla-ro and Ubuntu-ro. I must say it was a fantastic day for me.

Of course there were some details that might be done better, but this is only my opinion and I might be wrong.

The most valuable presentation I think was the one by Georg Greve, this guy is at fsf-eu, and later, after his presentation, we discussed some points that can help GSL in one or another way.

I must bring credits to the guys from ROSEdu, which IMHO are some really open-minded hackers which rocked all day by helping us out and creating this day really special for all Romanian FLOSS fans/visitors.

I’m hope I’ll get some time tomorrow to talk the guys from Ceata, S. Buraga and Teo Teodorescu.

The event itself is worth to be visited, tomorrow speakers presentations are to be even greater.

Some pics in my photo gallery.

P.S.: I came there with my colegue, Raul OPRUȚA whom I should also help for his patience, time and contribution. :D

Chișinău Jaunty Release Party

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Last weekend we held Ubuntu Party Chișinău, Moldova. I must say it was a lot of fun. New people, new places, new opportunities.

Get some pics here.

The whole party was driven by LMZ, and there was presentations about:

We did some coffee/coke breaks between presentations during this time I met a lot of new people, which in my opinion are ready and wish to become part of a local Ubuntu LUG (and maybe in nearest future a LoCo).

There are some credits to be given, especially to Technical University of Moldova, Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, linux.md, fedora.md, bsd.md and of course GSL.

I must say that Ubuntu Moldavian community was started! Keep an eye on them, they’re going to become more and more visible soon. :)

Everybody can join the Ubuntu-MD mailing list, ubuntu-md IRC channel.

Soon there will be announced the forum, website and other details.

No more googlecode, say hello to git

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I was using for a while Google’s Code hosting (on svn), worked well for a while. Until I wanted more control on the repository I was using.

I talked with some friends, so they pointed on Git.

Now I have my own Git repository: code.nerd.ro

I must say creating a full featured Git repository for multiple projects wasn’t that easy. I almost couldn’t find some good documentation on how to deploy such a project, so I wrote it. Ubuntu users rejoice, now you have a cool wiki page on how to get things done.

And stop crying for Ubuntu sake :)

Chestii de la WordPress

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Maya de la, DA, Automattic, a trimis niște chestii (presupune stickere, insigne, tatoo și creioane) comunității WordPress din România :)

WordPress Romania Schwag

WordPress Schwag for Romania

Eu nu am ce face cu toate de unul singur, și normal că aștept să mă împart!
Dan, Mădălin, echipa CNET, dar și alți contribuitori la WordPress din România, dacă îmi trimiteți un mail cu o adreșă poștală, vă trimit o parte din de toate.

Cei din Cluj, dacă mă vedeți pe stradă, cereți poate am o insignă (Da, mă recunoașteți pentru că port un hanorac WordPress deobicei). =)

Maya, mersi!
Automattic team rocks!!!
:)

rdiff-backup using a non standard port on remote’s machine ssh

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I had to create a backup system across a network, where I thought using BackupNinja! The tool is really impressive, I mean it! Although it’s features are mostly created for standard working environments and settings, it can be hacked very easy!

The greatest problem I had using it was, yes: “rdiff-backup using a non standard port on remote’s machine ssh“!

The bug actually is not a bug at all, after I found this.

Create a file config in your .ssh directory in the homefolder. It’s structure should look like this:

host name
hostname name.domainname.tld
user an.active.users
port yourport

Guess what, this file saved me a lot of time I would use for searching and debugging through BackupNinja’s code!

Thanks to RiseupLabs for such a great tool!