Annvix Development Blog

I posed a question on the users@ and dev@ mailing lists regarding funding to obtain third-party hosting for an FTP site. The service costs about $170USD for a 2-year agreement for hosting, and it allows for 2TB/mo of bandwidth which should be more than sufficient for the main Annvix FTP site (I’d do it on my own server but would probably end up paying through the nose for it as there’s no way I can match 2TB/mo of bandwidth usage for $7USD/mo).

At any rate, as a result of this request, Ying stepped up and made a fair sized donation so we’re over half-way to that goal. I very much appreciate Ying’s donation, especially in light of the fact that he’s also a contributor to Annvix, despite using it in production for a few servers. So for that very generous donation I think you, Ying.

To date, Annvix has received less than $400 in donations which, for about 3.5 years of development, works out to about $115/year or roughly $9.50/mo. If you take away Ying’s donation (which I’m using exclusively for this FTP hosting once the rest is covered), I’ve been running at a deficit of about $183/mo (in terms of money I’ve invested in the project out of my own pocket; this doesn’t count my time).

I very rarely ask for money or try to push donations in people’s faces, but I am completely unable to pay for this hosting deal, so am asking for donations to help cover that cost. What I’ve spent on Annvix I’ve already spent; I can’t take it back, and while I’d like to recoup those expenses one day, this “drive” isn’t for that. I’m expressly looking for donations to cover the cost of anonymous FTP hosting for the rpm repository and ISOs so people can download Annvix at a decent speed and also obtain updates for their system at a decent speed.

In other words, if you like Annvix and feel its worth parting with a few dollars for, now would be a good time so that I can get this hosting deal and provide better access to the ISOs and packages. I know there are quite a few people using Annvix, and it would be fantastic if you could take the opportunity to invest a few dollars in something as practical as better file access (being able to get updates (i.e. security and bugfix updates) can have a very tangible impact on your running system). Of course, if you feel like rewarding the developers for their time, feel free to donate in that regard as well.

Thanks.

On a side note, I’d still love to get testimonials from people using Annvix so I can post them here for others to look at. I know there are quite a few people using Annvix, and I don’t mind if you’re the quiet/shy/whatever type, but it would be awesome to hear about *why* you’re using Annvix and not something like Engarde or OpenBSD or RHEL, etc.

The documentation on the wiki has been updated so most of what’s there should be current for 2.0-RELEASE. There are still some missing bits that need to be written and a few things that probably need to be added. Suggestions are welcome in that regard (if there is something you feel is missing, please add a comment here or on one of the mailing lists). The documentation that is there should (again, for the most part) be current and consistent with the 2.0-RELEASE.

As well, users can create their own accounts on the wiki if they are so inclined now (before it was completely restricted). It’s still very much restricted; regular users can edit the talk/discussion pages associated with existing documents, but cannot create new documents or edit existing documents. This is to prevent spamming and defacing of the main site. If you wish to have edit access to the main documentation on the site, please ask and I’ll consider it. Otherwise, you can comment on existing documentation via the talk pages.

Alright, its my turn to upgrade:

I have just updated one of my production server handling source controls and bugzilla:

overall, the migration scripts works! but I did have couple scary moments that we need to
improve:

1. I only get the full annvix/releases/2.0-RELEASE tree from the server,
and it turns out to be NOT ENOUGH, since the upgrade script is also
looking for annvix/release/i586… and other places, this cause the
upgrade script to fail. (good thing i have other windows open that can
do a quick sync from the web and have the script ‘retry’ to avoid the catastrophic failure.)

2. after upgrade, swap doesn’t get turned up automatically, its kindda
weird, /etc/fstab did include the swap, and when i do swapon -a, it
works..did you forget to put swapon in the init script?
3. named is broken by default, /etc/rndc.key is causing the problem, I
just remove the content from this file, then named works again.

4. I did have some weird dependency problems that apt-get is claiming i
have multiple version of openssh running (I had to manually remove the
extra ones from other terminals to make it happy)

anyhow, this machine is pretty much working again (bugzilla just works! i was surprised that all the modules still works)

took me about an hour on that fairly fast machines

PS. I noticed that sshd daemon is on during the whole process.. this is
very good, and i am glad the upgrade script didn’t fool with sshd daemon
(at least i didn’t noticed) because during the upgrade, 3 windows are
simply not enough…. i keep opening more terminals….)

4 more to go….. =)

Annvix 2.0-RELEASE (Surtr) is now available!

Today marks the fourth public release of the Annvix Linux distribution. It was exactly 50 weeks ago when 1.2-RELEASE was made available; this version is the fruit of almost a year’s worth of hard work. We believe that 2.0-RELEASE is the best version of Annvix available. It is recommended that everyone using 1.2-RELEASE upgrade, as it is no longer supported.

Some of the new features you can find in 2.0-RELEASE include:

- 2.6.16.39 kernel with RSBAC and AppArmor support
- updated services including PHP 5.2.0, MySQL 5.0.27, PostgreSQL 8.2.1, and Apache 2..2.4
- a greatly enhanced installer; it’s still the same great text-based installer, but with many new features and enhancements to make installation even easier
- a completely overhauled init system; the traditional SysV init system is no longer used — the new system is very similar to Gentoo’s approach
- the use of the tcb suite for authentication; by default passwords are stored using tcb rather than shadow, and encrypted with blowfish rather than md5
- the use of apt-rpm as the default package manager

Version 2.0-RELEASE can be downloaded from the mirror sites listed at:

http://annvix.org/Download

Read the full release notes for 2.0-RELEASE as well, especially if you are upgrading from 1.2-RELEASE:

http://annvix.org/Release_Notes/2.0

If you use and like Annvix, please consider making a donation to the project.