[Linux-aus] [Fwd: Call for participants for a panel on Geek Parenting]

[Martin Visser]

We built our first package nearly 19 years ago. We were able to fork and
compile another 3 packages in the space for 4 more years, which is going
pretty well from what I have heard.

So far they are all operating as expected, the level of sysadmin work to
maintain them hasn't been too bad. The two packages with "-xx" architecture
have been the least trouble.I don't believe I have quite got to the stage of
wanting to send a SIGTERM to the "-xy" packages, but sometimes they push
you. They all occasionally send unexpected SIGs back to us. most of which we
have had to develop handlers for, so things are pretty well in control. The
oldest "-xx" package is undergoing certification testing next year, so that
is likely to be a challenge.

Our first package, an "-xy", is very much in the open-source mould, and is
adding lots of language bindings. In fact I think it is getting pretty close
on improving on my own source code, so I am pretty happy with that.

One thing is for sure though, is that the operating cost of running packages
is always on the increase - the vendors keep on pushing new hardware
platforms. At least one isn't all that happy with the music input interface
I bought last year, and I think would have rather I got the latest one from
Cupertino. Funny thing though, mainly due to my "-xx" package I compiled
with,  is that all have developed their own very good music output plugin
capability which I am very happy with. The 3 oldest packages network
regularly with other similar packages to produce a collaborative music
output which they enjoy greatly. (Unfortunatetly the cost of providing and
developing the music output plugins, as well the networking aspects thereof,
seems to take most of our spare funds.)

One other annoyance is that 3 of our packages have had to have their food
processing peripherals straightened. I am pretty sure that the technical
specialist doing the work has at least two trips to Tahiti out of the fees
he charged.

Anyway despite all this, I am looking forward to see what forks from our
packages in the future.

Regards, Martin

MartinVisser99 at gmail.com


On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Steve Walsh <steve at nerdvana.org.au> wrote:

> Paul Shirren wrote:
> > I need to file a launchpad bug because ours didn't arrive with a man
> > page. Did anyone get a man page with theirs?
> We haven't even started thinking about compiling one, but I have heard
> from a lot of Developers that there is quite a bit of hard work to get
> the source package to even start to compile, often involving yelling,
> groaning, swearing and techniques from the pair-programming school of
> thought...
> > Trying to communicate with it is like fuzz testing. There must be a
> > source package somewhere to understand how this thing is supposed to
> > work.
> Apparently this gets easier the more you build, but stay away from tools
> that do distributed compiling, that can get you in some legal hotwater.
> > Also the installation really could do with more automation of
> > housekeeping tasks. I have to manually clean up logs. Why isn't there
> > a cron script for this?
> This is something we are definitely lagging behind in the closed source
> world on, but their solution just involves throwing money at addons to
> make the root cause go away...
>
> --
> --==--
> Steve Walsh
> RHCE
> Vice President / SysAdmin Team member- Linux Australia
> Networks and Technology - Linux.conf.au 2008
> perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'
>
>
>
>
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> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/listinfo/linux-aus
>
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