The PUSK 0.9.7 is now available

What ? PUSK ? What’s that ? This is the ProLiant USB Setup Key

This is a USB key you can now use to capture a hardware configuration of your HP ProLiant server (tested with G7 and Gen8). For that you just have to boot on the USB key and type “capture” at the boot prompt. Configuration is stored on the key, with the operation logs.

Then you can modify the conf files, or just use the single one we provide for what is really specific in a server (iLO credentials and IP conf), and redeploy that hardware configuration on a new server. For that just boot the new server on the key, and voilà !!

More over to deploy, you don’t need a keyboard, mouse, screen attached to the server, so if you are working in a place where your server is just electrically and networkly connected, that sufficient, and at the end the server will shutdown once the hardware configuration is done. Just restart it, and start controlling it remotely from the iLO do perform whatever further installation/customization you need to do.

So this is an easy way to have an operator perform the operation, doesn’t need Linux knowledge, nor platform knowledge. He just has to send the logs back to the dev team in case a problem occurs so they can debug.

And more over, thanks to HP, this is all GPLv2 Free Software

Now the important part, where to download it ?

The full 0.9.7 key is available at ftp://ftp.project-builder.org/PUSK/pusk-0.9.7.img
Just use dd to burn it onto your key and boot with it (WARNING: default mode is to deploy !)

For those of you who want to hack on the code, the entry point is at http://pusk.project-builder.org/browser/trunk and the Wiki (Home page) at http://pusk.project-builder.org

Hope you’ll find it useful. Let us know what you think of it.

An intermediate 2.1.5 mindi version

It’s not very often that I separate mindi from mondo in the publication of releases. But this time it was needed as I had a customer who suffered from bugs that were only needing a mindi realease, and I thought it would help many other users ,so here you are !

Mindi 2.1.5 is there, and is principally solving kernel support detection for the type of initrd possible (solves an abort of mindi on RHEL3/4), and also reduces the number of error messages when dealing with links containing more than 2 references to .. Should help with some recent reports.

Also I had a report that the -H option and RESTORE keyword were not completely without interaction, so this is now solved as well.

Finally, this version supports better HP ProLiant Gen8 and future platforms by also using hp-rcu and hp-fm tools.

Now available on ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org for more than 120 distribution tuples ! And for those who ask why I do that: first because I like it, then because I have the tools to do it, and also because I do have users who are using Fedora 7, RHEL 3 or even Red Hat 6.2.

Meet at HP Discover next week

Hello,

I’ll be at the major HP event (HP Discover) next week in Frankfurt, Germany from the 4th to the 6th of December, delivering 2 sessions, and attenting some others which look very promising.

You may find me on the Red Hat booth or the Intel booth, if you want to talk about code and projects (MondoRescue, Project-Builder.org, UUWL), Architecture, FLOSS Governance, FLOSS @ HP or in general. Will be happy to exchange with you around these topics.

You may find more details (in french) on the sessions I’ll be delivering on the event blog site.

See you there !

MondoRescue 3.0.2 is now available

I had to make this release in order to use it today (well yesterday now already !) on a customer site. That version was needed to support correctly software Raid on RHEL 6, with re-creation of metadata and UUIDs, which took a bit of time to make correctly. This version will also be welcome by Debian and Ubuntu users, as it fixes restoration issues, as well as on RHEL 5 (tune2fs command wasn’t working for ext4, and it required to use tune4fs, only available here !). It supports now out of tree kernel modules (such as hpsa from the PSP/SPP) and improve support for latest HP ProLiant Blades.

It fixes lots of small annoyances here and there (like #616), especially thanks to a test script that I have now developed to automate regression tests. This version was tested with it for rhel-6-x86_64, rhel-5-x86_64, debian-6.0-x86_64, ubuntu-11.04-i386, fully for the first time. I plan to extend it so that in the future I can cover more cases. And fixes also came from external contributors, which is very nice to see

So, now time to rest a bit ! After project-builder.org and this version of MondoRecue, I can take a bit of time to think to the next steps, and more over, work on some other projects such as the UUWL and some I’ll announce later.

UUWL aka the Unix to Unix Wrapper LIbrary is now available

I recently receive the approval from the HP OpenSource Review Board so that we can publish a new HP and Intel sponsored Open Source project called the UUWL aka the Unix to Unix Wrapper Library, now available at UUWL.project-builder.org.

The published code is a first version providing help to migrate C code from Solaris to Linux. That’s a first step in this project. The target is to augment that with more code porting helper functions, which have not yet being developed, and also to target next other Unices such as AIX. As well we think this library may well become a must have for Linux distributions, so they may integrate it as they do with the GNU LibC, so that Linux could become the most porting friendly platform.

For the moment, only the source code and build process is available. I’ve started to work on the packaging with project-builder.org, and soon multiple packages will be available for various Linux distributions in order to ease installation and usage. We also need to release more documentation, use autoconf/automake, … It’s just a start. But as such we thought it would be worth sharing and try to build a new community interested by this topic.

We are interested by getting first feedback around this project. And if you have porting experience, you’re also welcome to join and share it with us so we could improve the UUWL and make it more useful for everybody. It’s released under a dual license, both OSI approved, the LGPLv2 and the MIT license, so it could be used in multiple context.

New Mondorescue 3.0.2 beta version available

This version will fix again some problem met by customers or community users. Among these, as detailed earlier, the crash at restore time that was affecting users of MD software raid volumes, and the fact that we are now supporting UUID for their designation such as on RHEL 6.

Also for RHEL 5 users, there was an error on “no space left on device” at restore time, due to a modification in the way we are including more tools in the initrd, leading to the inclusion of the MAKEDEV program which was creating issue on device creation leading to that error message. It turns out this is also triggered by the busybox shell, so as we need anyway bash in the initrd, we will now use bash by default as the shell to launch all our scripts at restore time.

Mindi log files included in mondoarchive.log will also now be the expected one, not the one from an intermediate run.

2 contributors also provided fixes for issues: one for correct keyboard support by SLES by Victor Gattegno (who also helped around other bug fixes in this version), another one around the support of multiple PVs by bzium.

Even if 19 bugs were closed, I still have 2 issues that I’d like to fix before releasing 3.0.2: one around SLES grub install issue, and one around duplicate hpsa driver. And there are some others that may find their way in it. But that will be difficult, as I have a training in UK from the 2nd of May to the 4th of May, so I’ll publish the new version before in order to have it available at the training time !

So please test the beta version I made available at ftp://ftp.mondorescue.org/test and let me know if you find it stable for your case, and what other remaining issues you’d like me to work on next.

Meeting at HP Discover Las Vegas

The week of the 5th of June will be quite intense on my side. Departing the 5th afternoon to start working at the EMEA Red Hat Partner Summit during 3 days. Then even before the end of it, flying to Las Vegas on the 8th of June to be at the end of that day at the HP Discover event. I’ll then deliver a session on our Migration Roadmap from RISC to Linux on Thursday. And on Friday I’ll go on with 2 sessions, one on our joint HP+Intel+Red Hat Open Source Solutions Initiative and one on MondoRescue.

Even if it’ll be dense, as I also have additional meetings planed around, I’d be happy to meet with anyone wanting to discuss Linux at HP, Open Source in general, some of the projects I’m involved in, or early music But you’ll have to do that before Saturday as I’m leaving back to Europe.

TES 2011 is now over

That was both a tiring and exciting week. Tiring, because I had not a spare minute to do anything else that being involved in the Symposium. I had 2 Labs + 4 sessions to prepare for it, I wanted to follow as many sessions as possible, interact with as many people as possible (that’s the main goal !), and in fact I couldn’t completely fulfill that goal.

Finally in order to have a clean Lab, I had to publish the version 0.11.2 of project-builder.org just before. What is still needed to be able to claim I have a 1.0 now is probably package/repo signature. Should not be too long. Also during the MondoRescue Lab, a bug was found, which had alredy been signaled on the mailing list as well, and for which a patch has been provided yesterday ! So 2.2.9.6 is not far away as well ! So interesting week for my projects

But that was also very exciting, because we got the latest news on our future ProLiant servers (no I can’t disclose that, and yes what is planned is pretty amazing ), our sponsors provided also this year lots of good technical content (it seems they now now this is what we want and not marketing presentations !). Steve Shaw frm Intel did a great job presenting around his very useful HammerOra GPL tool, simarly Olivier Renault made a very comprehensive tour of RHEL6, Vincent Untz covered in great details the OpenSuSE build service and appliance builder SuSE Studio and Nick Barcet made a summary of where Canonical is around Cloud computing.

Of course we had lots of great sessions made by HP speakers as well, such as Yann Allandit on Oracle, Fred Lherault on 3Par, Phil Robb on our OSL Governance strategy, Jean-Marc André on KVM and RHCS, Lester Wade on SLES HA, John Pruitt on SAP, Bdale Garbee on OSL@HP, Estella Jangaon, Vin Sharma, Karen Skweres and Bryan Gartner on next Generation ProLiant + all the one I couldn’t attend ! 52 speakers, for 107 sessions in total. And big thank to Eric Montaut for its wonderful organisation of a wine & cheese, and Jean-Luc Poirson for the global organization of the event !

I also had invited external Open Source projects to present their activities to our HP community. I was particularly interested to promote to my colleagues FusionInventory and iTop, and have them in the same room presenting to create some synergy between the projects, as I think there is great benefit from their association. Too bad I was presenting at the same time. It seems it worked well, and I think it’s beneficial for both HP people and external projects to have the opportunity to interact.

I can not thank enough my HP US colleagues for their venue. Bdale Garbee, Phil Robb, Estella Jangaon, Vin Sharma, Karen Skweres and of course Bryan Gartner just did an incredible job with their presentation, and re-invigorating our OSL energy. It’s great to see the power HP has internaly with them at the command.

Now time to consider the next HP events: The HP Discover one in Las Vegas will be as usual a giant proof of HP capabilites, while the next Tech Tour could well be very OSL focussed again with even more on next generation of ProLiant, and possibility to touch them for us OSL Advocates ! Can’t barely wait till then !

MondoRescue.org and Project-Builder.org infrastructure update

I took the opportunity of a Data Center planned shutdown to do a task a reported way too long: migrating my existing old TC4100 NetServer which was hosting the projects I’m working on in our Solution Center to a much less obsolete ProLiant system with much more capacities.

I also updated the underlying distribution to the latest Mandriva 2010.2 (Mageia is still not ready for production usage), and seeing that trac, my main tool of choice for helping e manage these projects, was still at version 0.11.x, I decided to look at cooker, take the latest 0.12.1 and backport it on to my system (python-genshi was also needed).

Was not too complicated, as long as you follow the upgrade guidelines for trac. In short do upgrade, wiki upgrade and repository resync ‘*’. I also took that opportunity to have a single instance of trac to manage the 3 projects in a consistent way, sharing at maximum what could be. Notice the new [inherit] possibility provided in the trac.ini file as an easy way to do it.

Lots of new features are provided now ! Inerface is still very nice and performant (well new HW helps as well Once the WebAdmin plugin has been installed and the trac.ini files cleaned up, I was at work again, with a much more maintainable environement. So kudis to the trac team here !

The Web sites and FTP services are working just fine, but I still need to work on re-enabling Sympa to be completely operational.
Last item I really need to look at is a way to reduce spam in tickets and wiki pages, so the captcha method seems to be the way to go. Other ideas welcome !!

So most of my Debian friends or Fedora friends would argue with me why I’m still choosing Mandriva for that ? Well the answer is for me simple: it provides all the tool I need to do what I have to do on that machine. Which means in addition to the services already mentioned, creating yum repo (createrepo is there), or for dpk (dpkg-scanpackage and apt-ftparchive are also there) or for urpmi (genhdlist is also there. And except Mageia, I don’t know of any distribution that would allo wme to do that.

And anyway, if it’s not in it, I just have to add it And the Mandriva/Mageia ecosystem is still IMHO the most friendly to receive contributions. So, even if the future may be seen as uncertain, it’s still fo me the way to go.

Services are nearly all back online, so thanks should go to my HP colleagues, the Solution Center for hosting, the trac, vsftpd, Apache, Sympa and Mandriva teams. Please use the projects, report bugs, write documentation, share and enjoy !

HP ProLiant and Linux users ? You should look at SDR

As with every big corporation, sometimes you dislike what is being done in it. But sometimes, you really feel the power of what it is to belong to the #1 in IT, and feel really proud of what some of your colleagues are achieving.

The Linux on Proliant engineering team lead by Estella Jangaon really got it. And what is said in this HP magazine, page 31 is true: They improved a lot the ProLiant integration into the Linux ecosystem, as well as Linux support on ProLiant.

Not only do they have the right approach to publish all drivers they can under the GPL, and to integrate them upstream, but they also modified the way ProLiant Support Packs were delivered from a compressed tar file containing packages installed with a script, to a real repository of packages, that you can point to with
and use as easyly as doing yum install hp-smh. Isn’t that great !

So I’m seeing my Debian/Ubuntu friends ranting and thinking, that everything is always rpm based and done for RHEL/SLES only. No, it’s just wrong ! You’ll recognize here the clever touch of Bryan Gartner, the man behind communitylinux.org and LinuxCOE. So indeed, yes, you can ™ just type as well apt-get install hp-smh and enjoy the possibility to become a member of the ProLiant ecosystem and check by yourself that “Linux simply runs better on ProLiant”

So if you dream to test it, just read the SDR web page in order to know how to proceed.

Now I just need to improve project-builder.org enough so that this team can use it, and deliver also Mandriva packages and urpmi support

And the best in that story, is that they remain accessible and open, as true deep technologists. So even if it’s not usual in corporation to distinguish individuals, be sure that without these individuals we, HP Open Source and Linux community members, would not be able to be proud of where we are today. So kudos to Estella and Bryan, and keep up the excellent work.