Utah Open Source Blog

This Sunday I was given a call by our VPS provider.  There was a power outage at the colo where the virtual machine was housed.  I still have a few questions about why it wasn’t on a UPS (or if it was) and why it took so long to get power restored.  I guess I’ll get to those soon enough, but it caused some unintended outages and is probably a good test for all the system stuff we have running.

Specifically, the Utah Open Source Planet failed to update for two days, which, if you are following our feed, is probably why you just saw a bunch of posts come through.  It turns out the software I use, planet, was working fine.  However, it appeared to be the problem due to the misleading errors it was getting.  The error code was:

ERROR:planet:Error 500 while updating feed <url://to.planet/rss.feed>

This error would appear for each of the entries we have in our planet.  However, the error was not the planet’s fault.  At first, I grabbed one of the url’s and tried it in my browser, no problem.  The rss feed would load up just fine.  After a few minutes of digging, I started researching the network.  What I discovered was that I wasn’t able to resolve any hostname.

Because we run our own dns servers, we also point our machines at those servers.  However, when the power went out on Sunday, it appears we didn’t have the dns server set to automatically start on boot.  A quick chkconfig command to fix that and we’re back up.  Thus, the consequence in this case was lack of planet updates for a while.

However, I feel we were lucky (and good).  For the most part, things worked, that’s a good sign, but I think this goes back to one key principle in a system administrator’s repertoire.  Make sure to test your systems to validate that they come back up correctly.  Lucky for us, this was a minor service, but a service nonetheless.  I’m glad that everything else worked and it’s been a good testing day for that reason.

Cheers,

Clint

Last night, at the crack of 7pm, a new era of development in Utah began.  It began with 11 people in a room, talking about the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, how it came to be and about the new partnership between UTOS, Fedora and Sugar Labs.  It was a night to be remembered.

A short presentation (thanks to Karlie Robinson for the slides) about the XO Developer project was given.  Everyone seemed interested and awake, so that was good.

We pulled up the list of activities and went through some of the 4th Grade math curriculum.  It’s a bit irksome that the activities aren’t well-defined.  Basically, all you get is a short description of an xo activity.  It’d be nice to have the components defined a little better.  This discussion led to the possibility of pulling in a few 4th grade teachers from around the local community.  We’ll see where this goes.

Finally, after narrowing down our list of activities, we settled on 3 activities for now, and started defining components to develop.  It was agreed that we’d first create some command line applications, then return next month to put a GUI on them, and sugarize them.

All in all, it was a fun evening, food and friends.  I look forward to next months OLPC meeting.  Watch this blog for more news about upcoming UTOS OLPC hackfests.  After the event, I created a wiki page for the UTOS-XO team, as well as a local mailing list for discussions to be had.  If you are interested in participating, please feel free to join the list and get yourself an XO.

Pictures are available on flickr.

Cheers,

Clint

This month’s Geek Lunch is going to be at Teriyaki Express on Friday, April 10 at 12:30pm.

Address below:

The Utah Open Source Foundation is pleased to announce its 2009 Conference: October 8-10, 2009 at the Salt Lake Community College – Miller Free Enterprise Center in Sandy, Utah.

The Utah Open Source Conference 2009 will be focusing on the developer, but we also have presentation tracks that apply to the beginner and the business person”, stated Clint Savage, founder of the Utah Open Source Foundation.

The conference, now in its third year, is designed to help developers strengthen their skill and to teach them about the latest open source technologies.

See the official press release:  Utah Open Source Conference 2009 Dates, Venue and Theme

To keep up-to-date on the latest news, visit the Utah Open Source Foundation at these locations:

http://blog.utos.org – Utah Open Source Blog
http://2009.utosc.com – Utah Open Source Conference 2009 Website

In addition, feel free to follow Utah Open Source on these social networks:

#utos on irc.freenode.net
http://identi.ca/utos – Utah Open Source on Identi.ca
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=3406&trk=anet_ug_hm – Utah Open Source LinkedIn Group
http://twitter.com/utos – Utah Open Source on Twitter
http://www.flickr.com/groups/utosc/ – Flickr photos from previous years

The Utah Open Source Foundation, in its goal to promote Open Source throughout Utah and beyond, is proud to promote the following events.  These events are generally related to Open Source and Technology in Utah.  If your event is not listed below, please contact clint@utos.org to get it added.  In addition, each of the events below was pulled from the Utah Tech Events calendar, feel free to subscribe by clicking the link below (or adding the following feed to your calendaring program)

• Utah Tech Events Calendar – Google Calendar: http://tinyurl.com/ute-calendar
• Utah Tech Events Calendar – iCal Feed: http://tinyurl.com/ute-calendar-ics

——————————————————————————————————-
Utah Technology Community Announcements

• Utah Open Source announces 2009 conference theme – http://tinyurl.com/utosc2009-theme
• Utah Open Source announces 2009 conference venue – http://tinyurl.com/utosc2009-venue
• Utah Open Source announces 2009 conference dates – http://tinyurl.com/utosc2009-dates
——————————————————————————————————-

Upcoming Activities for April 2009

Sat, April 4th, 1pm
Utah CodeAway
Link: http://codeaway.org/
Where: Rocky Mountain Pizza Company, 3977 Wasatch Boulevard, Holladay, Utah 84124

Wed, April 8th, 11:30pm – 1:00pm
SLLUG: Daytime SIG Meeting
Link: http://sexysexypenguins.com/2009/03/24/sllug-daytime-sig-cooking-with-pam-april/
Topic: Cooking with PAM by Thad van Ry
Where: Salt Lake Public Library – Conference Room A Lower Level

Wed, April 8, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Provo Linux Users Group
Link: http://plug.org
Topic: Home Automation by Ryan Erickson
Where: Omniture

Thu, April 9, 6pm – 9pm
Utah Mobile Developers Group
Where: STG Dev Center, 555 South 300 East, Salt Lake City, Utah

Thu, April 9, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
UtahPython User Group Meeting
Link: http://utahpython.org
Topic: Pygame by Jeff Shipley
Where: University of Utah, Emma Eccles Jones Medical Research Building, Room 1200. (map)

Fri, April 10, 12:30pm
UTOS/UPHPU Geek Lunch
Link: http://utos.org/geek-lunch
Where: Teriyaki Express, 1898 W 5400 S Taylorsville, UT

Sat, April 11, 6pm – 8pm
Ubuntu-Utah Meeting
Link: http://utah.ubuntu-us.org
Topic: Conky by Mike Basinger
Where: University of Utah – Merrill Engineering Building (MEB) Comp-Sci Labs Rm 2555 – http://tinyurl.com/2k8px2

Wed, April 15, 7:10pm – 8:10pm
Salt Lake Linux User Group (SLLUG)
Link: http://sllug.org
Where: University of Utah, Warnock Engineering Building (WEB) room 101 (Previously known as EMCB)

Thu, April 16, 6pm – 9pm
Utah Java User’s Group (ujug.org)
Link: http://ujug.org
Where: SelectHealth (IHC), 4646 West Lake Park Blvd., West Valley City, UT (map)

Thu April 16, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Utah PHP User Group (UPHPU)
Link: http://uphpu.org
Topic: SSL + Apache presented by Lonnie Olson
Where: Bill Good Marketing, Draper, Utah

Fri, April 24, 8:00am – 9:30am
CTO Breakfast
Link: http://www.windley.com/cto_forum
Where: Novell Cafeteria

Thu, April 23, 6pm – 8pm
Logan Dev Group
Where: Room 208 (Faculty Seminar Lounge), Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, UT (map)

April 24-25
LinuxFest Northwest
Link: http://linuxfestnorthwest.org
Where: Bellingham, Washington

Tue, April 28, 7:30pm-8:45pm
Ogden Area Linux User Group
Link: http://oalug.com
Where: Weber County Main Library, Board Room

The Utah Open Source Foundation has been working very hard this year. We’ve got a lot of fun things in store. In fact, we’re starting this year off with a new theme that really builds upon the foundations of open source and free software. We really believe that with this year’s theme for the Utah Open Source Conference 2009 we’ve hit the current trends on the head.

Now that you have seen the theme for UTOSC 2009.  Let’s talk about the three tenets of the UTOSC 2009 theme.

Affordability

Affordability doesn’t just mean cost, it also means value. Free and open source software (FOSS) provides this value. Not only in it’s low costs (aka free as in beer), but in it’s maintenance costs being only those of expertise. No contracts to sign, no company to ask for improvements, and value added because you can make the change yourself. In addition, because expertise is generally the only cost, companies that use free software won’t feel locked in when looking for support options.

Scalability

Scalability means many things to many people: flexibility of costs, software load management, ability to grow without complication, and many more. Scalability makes things better. Free and open source software provides solutions in every area from customer management to security, and simple applications to complex environments. Because code is so easy to view and change, FOSS has the most flexible, scalable solutions around.

Reliability

Reliability is among the most important components in free and open source software. The number of eyes looking at the code, and the community that helps make the software, provides a paradigm which sets FOSS apart. Being able to make changes and have a community willing to test the software makes it more reliable and solid. If you want reliability, you go with free and open source software, its community of developers, testers, and users.

These three components of the Utah Open Source Conference 2009 will excite the mind, challenge the soul and ultimately improve free and open source software. We at the Utah Open Source Foundation look forward to seeing your presentation, thoughts and enjoyment of this theme during the upcoming UTOSC 2009.

See you all at the Utah Open Source Conference 2009. Watch for the announcement of the venue and conference dates in the next couple days.

Cheers,

Clint Savage
Founder, Utah Open Source Foundation