Older blog entries for parkerc (starting at number 16)

I put together a modified version on jhbuild that builds e17 from cvs. It *should* allow you to build e17 from cvs without interfering with a current jhbuild install (It uses its own configuration file and renames its version of "jhbuild" to "ecvsbuild").

There is also an installer for the application - "ecvsbuild-installer", which walks you through configuring ecvsbuild.

Get it here

jhbuild is a really cool framework - it allows you to easily handle dependencies and pull from multiple repositories.

Well, I guess that e17 cvs build scripts are already all over the place.

So, I put together a jhbuild moduleset for e17 that is available on ecvsbuild.berlios.de.

jhbuild has dependency tracking.

Right now I am building e17 with the moduleset. If it works, I will put a release up on berlios.de and maintain it.

Just released a little bash script that builds e17 from CVS and installs it in your home directory.

Get it here.

It assumes that you have a pretty recent version of bash and a C compiler.

I have tested it on my ubuntu breezy system, and most things build right out of CVS.

Please send feedback or patches through the berlios.de project homepage.

Anyone confused or having trouble - I will put docs up on the project site in a day.

Bah. My wife just for a purse that she ordered from eBay and it was a fake. The seller had a great rating, and from her research it seemed like it would be an honest sale. Boy, were we wrong. Well, I think that I will stop using eBay.

I have been hearing about problems with items purchased, but I assumed that if we checked the backgrounds of the sellers we would be in good shape. I wonder now how many items on eBay are really what they say they are. How can some one get a good rating and still provide fake items? And this purse was really fake - a really, really bad fake. How can someone have sold hundreds or even thousands of items with no strikes against them and then send out something that they know is a bad replica? Plus - the return address on the shipped item does not even exist.

Directory Administrator / GTK2
I have been getting emails on my initial port. I lost the original code, but I started over again with the code today and I got pretty far porting it over. When I did the first port, I stopped because the code had too many gtk1-isms (I posted that I did not intend to finish the port because of this), but it seems like a lot of people really want a gtk2 port. So, I will finish porting Directory Administratorr to GTK2 this time - I swear. So far, I have it up and running but it crashes at random intervals. Give me a week (July 1, 2005) and I will post the first alpha.

Is it just for me, but is the Directory Administrator site is down?

Kommander is a killer app

Kommander is so cool. I have been writing all sorts of little utilities with it. Why is this application not being used like crazy? If you have never used it, it allows you to build a gui then right click on any item in the gui and create a bit of code that executes an action when the gui item is selected or clicked. I am not giving it the credit it deserves, but it integrates really well with KDE and lets you access any KDE program though DCOP. Oh, and you do not have to compile anything to actually run the programs you write in it. Enough of my crappy description - check it out

It is a whole lot like PeopleSoft Application Designer, which is a killer app in its own right. Once database access is incorporated into Kommander, it will get a whole lot like Application Designer. And - since I am mentioning PeopleSoft I wrote a bit of code that allows PeopleSoft developers to access remote databases from PeopleSoft - XmlDbQuery. It is released under a BSD-style license and is written in Java.

My wife is in New York with a friend on a shopping trip for the weekend. I can't sleep, and I am not used to having her away. I have gone a week at a conference before without her, but sitting at home alone (my daughter is asleep) while she is away is really hard - a lot harder than being out of town myself.

So, with beer, I thought that I would update my experiences with LDAP and share some thoughts on starting a business.

LDAP

LDAP on Red Hat/Centos/Fedora is pretty damn easy to set up. I have been using authconfig and pam tp authenticate users and automatically create home directories. RH has a nice frontend with authconfig (and authconfig-gtk), so that all I have to do, after setting up LDAP, is add one line to /etc/pam.d/system-auth:

session required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_mkhomedir.so skel=/etc/skel/ umask=0022

I add this above all of the other session information and any user that logs in automatically gets a /home directory created with the default info in /etc/skel pushed over. Note that running authconfig removes this entry, so you will have to enter it again every time you run that tool.

I am documenting this and more, such as setting up email with Dovecot/Postfix. Right now, I can set up a nice server in about 15 steps. Postfix, which a few years ago was the easiest part of any setup, is now the hardest part. It seems like the rest of the Free Software world has caught up and surpassed - which is a great sign.

Business Stuff

Well, I imagine that more than a few of you are thinking about setting up your own company. While I am no expert, I have learned a few things here and there and I would like to share them.

My business is still pretty small, but we are growing pretty well now. I got lucky starting up, as I had a pretty good idea what I needed from past experiences and I had a lot of friends who travelled down the same road as me who were more than willing to give free advice.

1. Get a good lawyer.
This has helped so much. Not only did our lawyer make sure that our paper work was in order, he gave us some pretty good advice on what to watch out for. He also put together templates for contracts (we are a consulting company) and made sure that all of our information was in order for the state. On top of that, he sent some business our way, and he is a good source to go to to make sure that the contracts we sign are in our best interest. Also, chances are that your lawyer has worked with business like your own and he or she can point you in the right direction.

2. Keep all of your receipts.
You can write off a whole lot. As soon as you really get your company going, you are going to need the write-offs. Taxes get messy and expensive, and being able to deduct things like your laptop, part of your house, any other computer equipment, and anything else related to your business.

3. Get an accountant.
Because taxes get complicated. Once you start a business (at least in the USA) you will start to really see how much money the government takes from you. If you can't get an accountant, at least get a Windows PC and a copy of Turbo Tax (there is a version that handles businesses like S-CORPs really well). Do not try to figure this out yourself. USA tax code is REALLY complicated. One of my partners is a CPA, and I still go to an outside source.

4. Do not get discouraged.
This might seem obvious, but discouragement leads to stupid decisions. It is okay to turn down a job that is not in your best interest - there is always more work if you have a good business model. Also, getting your foot in the right door might be hard but it is worth waiting. I know so many people that have lost their businesses because he/she felt like their business would be a loser if they turned down a job.

Thanks, hope this post is not too off topic for this site. Ignore my grammatical errors - I see a few right now but I have to get some sleep. Email me @ parkerc at i-vsn.com if you have any questions about starting your business (please, only if you have been involved with Free Software). If I can not help, I will at least try to point you in the right direction.

So far, IVSN has been using secure imap to do authentication. IMAP is simple enough that writing modules for various applications where IMAP auth does not exist is trivial (I have submitted patches/modules to the various projects where imap auth does not exist).

We need something more robust, and - being the lazy developer I am - I have been waiting for Red Hat to release their super friggin cool ldapnetscapeimplementation. I am weird, and OpenLDAP does not seem to follow a standard that I can follow and say "this is the OpenLDAP standard - this is THE way that I should install OpenLDAP".

OpenLDAP and Postfix are not trivial to set up with auth support - for me, at least.

I am now also in love with QEMU.

aarg. Can not post comments to the GNUStep article, but my old account could. Legal reasons pretty much separate me from my old self - all of the patches that I sent to various projects pretty much exist on my resume but not anywhere else. Feels like I am starting over. Can't really complain, though. Freedom is better than anything else. It was a long, hard road, though.

One day I will document how to set up a company - from the lawyers to the paperwork.

I want to note that I read the journals in advogato almost daily. It is fun to peek inside other people's lives for a but and see what makes them tick. Plus, I feel like I am not a loner in my desire to promote and spread Free Software. Thanks.

If you look at my last blog, I was a bit critical of GNOME and its use of (or lack of use of) bonobo. I was curious about why GNOME was not using their own component system, and I wanted to know about what to use to write component-based programs.

First of all, GNOME is full of really cool people. Michael Meeks and Christian F.K. Schaller answered my questions and helped me out with the questions that I had with the future of GNOME. Mr. Meeks was kind enough to answer more than a few of my rather curious and wordy emails. Thanks to both Michael and Christian!

I will be writing my code as GObjects. Really. I would like to use a component system that could be used by KDE and other desktops, but I think that right now GObject is my best bet until a COM+-type solution is ready for all Free desktops. I think that I understand GObject pretty well, but I am going over a tutorial here that is great, and very informative. I now understand why GObject seems so complex - it really wants to be able to bind to other languages easily. By the way, GObject is not hard at all if you just keep that in your mind. I may not be C++ or Java, but - hell - it is not C++ or Java. I actually still really like C.

Jabber

Also, thanks to Christof Meerwalk for updating my SQLite 2.X Jabberd code to SQLite 3.x. This was the first non-IVSN code that I wrote after starting IVSN (the imapd code was written for a client). I kept meaning to go back to it, but I never really got the chance. It was done anyways. What a great software model. I love the GPL.

So in my attempt to develop componentized GNOME software I went on a quest to find what happened to that sad project that once was seen as the core of GNOME componentization: bonobo. I read the articles (all dated), I did the tutorials (all dated), I even read through some mailing lists.

I traced it all back to a few years ago on the GNOME mailing lists where there was an argument about whether to use bonobo-config or gconf. It seems that there were two definite camps, one that liked bonobo, and one that didn't want to go anywhere near it. The people that liked bonobo were constantly telling the people that did not like bonobo how great it was, while the people that did not like it were constantly telling the people who liked it how much they did not like it. This went on for a few months, till the two sides agreed that they did not agree at all, and nothing seemed to happen.

The camp that liked bonobo seems to have moved onto mono, while the camp that did not like bonobo seems to now not like aspects of mono. Same story.

Personally, I like bonobo - but I am not going to go anywhere near it. It seems like a dead project to me. And, I will probably stay clear from GNOME for the time being. I am just an outside developer, but I see no direction of how I should develop GNOME applications - and whether they will be future-proof. I think that GObject is really cool, and I love the way that they worked out OOP with C, but all they stuff on top confuses the heck out of me.

By the way, if I am wrong, please email me. parkerc@i-vsn.com