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How polite!

I’m testing the Prosody XMPP server package I’d mentioned some time back (I’ve worked with jabberd/jabberd2 and ejabberd, figured a new tinker toy was on the cards) and got this when trying to check the service status – as a non-privileged serf/peon

mfleming@pong ~]$ /etc/init.d/prosody status
Prosody is not running

Note:
You will also see this if prosodyctl is not running under
the same user account as Prosody. Try running as root (e.g.
with ‘sudo’ in front) to gain access to Prosody’s real status.
[mfleming@pong ~]$ su –
Password:
[root@pong ~]# /etc/init.d/prosody status
Prosody is running with PID 17701

If only more software packages were that polite and helpful 🙂 (looks in the direction of some larger software concerns that shall remain nameless)

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Experiences in both success and failure

I did my bit:

I really do like where things are headed and I’m sure the good work will continue 🙂 There’s been some lively debates on the mailing lists of late, but it’s worked out smoothly and courteously in this humble hacker’s opinion.

All the tested LiveCDs and pre-releases of F11 I’ve tried have been painless which bodes well, as the certainty of me finding something broken / failing / misbehaving with a freshly distribution-upgraded system is often close to 1 🙂

Speaking of breakage on the other hand…

I tried to convert my home ejabberd server from the standard mnesia backend to MySQL. using “ejabberdctl convert2odbc” to output the data to flat SQL scripts which you can then import into almost any server (ah, simple, standard transactional SQL, how I love thee :-))

This went really well until I found that I had no MySQL driver for Ejabberd/Erlang installed, and there’s none packaged (ProcessOne has one in their ejabberd-modules Subversion repository, but finding out after the fact is of little comfort, *sigh* )

Oops. Might have to fix that little oversight before retrying. Mea Maxima Culpa

Fortunately I took a backup of the mnesia database before all this (when in doubt, take a backup; when you’re certain – still take a backup!) and I needed it as even after reverting my configuration changes and restarting ejabberd it still wanted to connect to the MySQL service (there were references still in the spool/ on-disk database to it). The restore fixed it in minutes though, fortunately.

I’m planning to release an updated PyICQ transport once Leonidas is out and things have settled (and I have time to test a local scratch build). I also had a look at the python-based Yahoo! Transport, which isn’t very good in my opinion and I already have the MSN Transport packaged here; it’s good and works with the current MSN servers with a little patch. It’s upstream development is slow/”undead”, however which makes me a little hesitant to push it to Fedora proper.

Twitter Fail: Even mentioning Yahoo! tongue in cheek / in passing gets you retweeted by the Yahoo! News bot. Really, if you’re going to let loose any form of artificial intelligence (I use the term loosely) the “intelligence” part is important, yknow. 🙂

(On a slight tangent I’m fairly certain a Markov/MegaHAL style bot, if set loose on Twitter, will post more interesting content than most “celebrities” using it to pimp themselves, Stephen Fry being an exception)

I’d advise folks interested in signal to try an open, laconi.ca based solution (like Identi.ca) instead 🙂

PS. Yes, I thought about PostgreSQL as the driver is there. Alas WordPress is tied to MySQL only

PPS. Laconica seems very fail-whale free 🙂

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Result may be fit, social with an open messaging standard on top.

Techie Happenings:

I’ve been tinkering with more XMPP (Jabber to you oldies) messaging in general, as it happens. I’ve had a look at the python Yahoo transport and found it a little lacking – it’s config is a little too different to the python MSN / ICQ / AIM transports than I’d personally like, which I’m already packaging and running plus it tends to die/misbehave at unusual times. It has been worth a look though and if enough people would want it, I’ll make the RPM available – but be warned it’s not really to my usual standard.

Speaking of which, there’s a persistent room for chatting around the packages generally – just as an experiment and because I can – at thatfleminggent-rpm@conference.thatfleminggent.com.

I’m still tinkering / debugging my publish-subscribe nodes for thatfleminggent.com (Ejabberd for those interested). I’m sure I’ve configured it right with PEP (Personal Eventing) but I wonder how strong support is client side? Gajim does some PEP (Mood/Activity/Tune for instance) but it updates sporadically if at all.

(Which leads me to wonder how widespread support for that and Service Discovery protocol are client-side, as aside Gajim/PSI it seems sparse and many XMPP goodies are unseen without it. I’d be keen to know more from those in the know)

I’ve signed up on identi.ca (as “thatfleminggent“) and liking it – there’s less noise and spambot followers than Twitter and some very nice XMPP/OpenID integration too.

Better support from the Windows clients would be nice (twhirl does but it’s in the minority, and I’ve preferred TweetDeck or TwitterFox when on a Win desktop) but the Linux clients have been fabulous, especially the current Gwibber version in Fedora.

While there’s been a few “oh no, a slip!” comments being bandied around the tubes regarding the Leonidas release, it’s being done for good reasons. Your august poster here has seen his share of *ahem* “Gold” releases from commercial vendors (no, not just Microsoft but I’ve seen lots of theirs over the years) that many FOSS devs would regard as paper-bag. There’s nothing worse than that corner case bug that inevitably bites us (because Murphy loves a systems tech) so it’s good to delay and get it right than get it out quick and brace for a mess.

Oh, and a protip for those converting local shell accounts to LDAP (or similar) – be prepared to get some uid/gid mismatches unless you’ve been REALLY careful :-). I just did and thought I had consistent ID’s before, but no such luck. It’s trivial to reorganize though.

Life In General:

My girlfriend, bless her heart is a fitness buff and that means that of course yours truly will be convinced to give her current “hey here’s an idea to improve our health” ideas a go.

Thursday’s “let’s go for a good walk” turned out to be a marathon, possibly literally. I’m not sure if I covered a complete 25miles (~42km for those of us on the metric system) on Thursday but it felt like it. This was followed by Friday’s “just a bit of a jog up some stairs” – a 30 degree incline and a 200m stretch! (colloquially known as “The Hill” at Teneriffe in Brisbane) a half dozen times with minimal rest..

Of course I can’t feel anything but lactic acid from the knees down now (I’m not in possession of a runner’s build – I was a weightlifter / shotputter in my youth)

My better half is of course as good as gold 😀

Went to see Angels and Demons (the inner UNIX geek keeps wanting to write it as “Daemons”) on Wednesday night. Not as good as The DaVinci Code, but still better than a lot of the fluff in my local cinemas at the moment. It also helps my local cinema is licensed; a bottle of wine helps get through some poorly chosen movies..

I’m headed back to the office on Monday – feeling better after a break, knowing nothing’s gone amiss in my absence, with a few ideas on how to improve things (equals “make my job easier”) in the back of my mind 🙂