Annvix Development Blog

The first beta release of 2.1-CURRENT is now available. This is the first release of the install image that will be the forthcoming 3.0-RELEASE.

It would be fantastic to get some good testing on this one. This is the first install image with the new 2.6.22 kernel, and the new kernel that will cover all “flavours”. In other words, there is no longer a -BOOT, -up, and -smp kernel. The -BOOT kernel has been removed; the installer uses the standard kernel. As well, the -up kernel has been removed in favour of simply using an SMP-aware kernel.

The installer itself hasn’t changed much other than providing support for the new IDE drivers in the kernel, and setting up the default email address for all security alerts to go to. Other than that, the installer is largely identical to that for 2.0-RELEASE and I don’t anticipate making any changes to it unless bugs are encountered (hence the call for testing). Please report all bugs to bugzilla.

It would be appreciated, due to the changes in IDE controller support, if the install CDs could be tried out on various hardware. Even if you don’t plan to do an install, if you can afford to take a system down for five minutes just to make sure it correctly detects your hard drives and then reboot back to your normal OS, it would be highly appreciated.

I found a powered-by icon as part of a tarball full of different Linux distribution powered-by icons yesterday. I wish someone would have told me about this! It looks really sharp (better than the one I had, at any rate!). You can download the tarball from gnome-look.org. Looks like the icons were designed by a fellow named Rene Bernhard. Thank you!

Annvix is now being tracked on CIA. You can view the project page at http://cia.vc/stats/project/Annvix. Not much there, but it’ll be interesting over time as it fills out.

Haven’t had too much time for Annvix this past little bit despite branching 2.1-CURRENT. Just lost my main man Stew over on the Mandriva side so I’ve been quite busy over there. Hopefully I can get back to some good Annvix work soon.

Oh, the issues with ibiblio have been corrected for a bit now so all is good there.

I’ve just setup our very own Annvix Pastebin where you can post code snippets, text configs, etc. I like the idea of pastebin, and it’s proven quite useful for other stuff (usually Mandriva work), and since it was pretty easy to setup, I’ve set it up so we can use it for sharing things for Annvix development.

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.