As you know, RPM (and DEB and ...) package building is a repetitive process and you would want to automate it as much as possible. In the context of the Open Build Service(OBS), source services can help you with exactly that. Over the time, the OBS community has implemented a whole range of source services. … Continue reading OBS: Introducting the “refresh_patches” source service

Lets start with the happy stuff we have in Gentoo.

Andreas (dilfridge) created the binary package for 4.1.3.2 which means we have latest upstream provided as binary for stable users. He also managed to get Patrick (bonsaikitten) to provide HW where we can build the testing tree based version too. So stay tuned the binary will soon TM arrive for testing tree.

There seem to be some issues with portage lately wrt subslots and tracking the rebuilds so if you have build collisions while emerging this just try to mess with –backtrack option and put there some value bigger than 30.

I spent some time updating the dependencies and prepped the switches for 4.2 release so we should be on good track there. But as always it would be nice to have more people in the team working on individual bumps (it is just copy from one version to another most of the time) but I can’t be everywhere and sometimes I overlook things. So if you are interested just drop by #gentoo-office irc channel and we can get you hooked. Later on the run you can became also developer as this position is suited for contributors who want to get involved more.

Now the other half about openSUSE state

Here goes the sad part. As libreoffice team moved to collabora it left openSUSE without any packager for the suite. Part of the libreoffice team responsibility was also maintaining the hunspell dicitionaries which is even worse as it impacts everybody who uses the hunspell for spellchecking (kde/gnome/…).

So we need people interested in maintaining all the stuff updated and working. Most of the tasks now are quite complex as the packages are written with compatibility for sle10 in mind. We can finally give up on that and start cleanups (which I intend to do during my free time at some point) but I could use help a lot. So if you are interested in libreoffice future on openSUSE and know how to write “bit” complex spec files just drop me a mail or ping me on irc so we can talk about it.

Some sort of plan I have with this:
1) Reduce the repositories used. As I am all alone working on this I will remove all the stable/unstable stuff and provide only :Factory repo which will be built against Factory and supported openSUSE versions (12.2/12.3/13.1). Unstable will be utilized only for testing of beta releases before next minor bump if needed (4.1.0 -> 4.2.0).
2) Cleanup all the stuff in the libreoffice package to have it maintainable with less dificulity (now it takes quite few hours just to bump from 4.1.2 to 4.1.3 which is bugfix release and that is not optiomal).
3) Probably solve the dictionaries situation for good by using only the dictionaries from libreoffice repo. Where we can say to people if they want support they just need to git commit it to libreoffice git repository. Which has nice sideefect of improving spellchecking for english and others.

Aloha fellow Geekos! I was fortunate enough to have been elected to the Board two years ago, and as always when you have fun time flies. As such my current tenure on the Board is due to end this year. As the openSUSE project is something that I value, believe in and enjoy I would like to stand for re-election. I will not present my campaign yet but will do so as of the 18 Nov, but what I will say is this:

As a Linux administrator, I can change any user's password, assuming I know the right magic incantation. Here are two: one traditional and another based on the usermod command:

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The short answer, for SLE11: rcapache2 config -S

The short answer, for SLE12: start_apache2 -S

In SUSE/openSUSE, the httpd command is renamed to httpd2, but don't use plain httpd2 -S because it doesn't look in /etc/sysconfig/apache2

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For years when I needed to search for something in 'vim', I would use the '/' command and type the search key. Usually this would be inefficient, because I would be typing the name of a function that was right there on the screen (sometimes I would use the mouse to copy-and-paste to save a few keystrokes, taxing my brain with yet another keyboard/mouse context switch and exacerbating my "mouse finger" syndrome). Imagine my surprise to learn that Vim has a '*' command to search for whatever word happens to be under the cursor! And then there are the 'n' and 'N' commands which search forwards and backwards, respectively, for the last search key.
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As you may know, there is an ongoing effort to rearrange and adjust the openSUSE KDE repositories. In line with the previously announced deletions, and more recent adjustments, a number of changes went into the organization and layout of the KDE repositories:

• KDE:Distro:Factory and KDE:Release:4xy will now hold the “core” KDE packages: this means the base Development Platform, Workspaces and Applications, and additional applications for a basic desktop experience. Other, non-core packages have been moved to KDE:Extra

• “Extra” packages that qualify as non-core are now in the KDE:Extra repository. If you are a previous user of KRxy or KDF, you might want to add the relevant Extra repository

• KDE:Unstable:Playground is no more, replaced by KDE:Unstable:Extra

In addition, the repository page on the openSUSE wiki has been updated to reflect these changes. If in doubt, take a look there.

Should you have any additional questions, feel free to hop on #opensuse-kde on Freenode, or use the opensuse-kde mailing list.

Port forwarding is a networking technique that can be used to give limited outside access to a machine that, due to its location behind a firewall or NAT setup, would not otherwise be accessible from the outside.
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I occasionally need to install a pattern, or see if I have a pattern installed -- things like that. Until now, I've been using Yast -- a great tool -- for this purpose. But all along I've had this nagging notion that I could do the same thing from the command line . . .
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So you want to do a pull-request to a LaunchPad project?
Stop right there! The content of this blog post has been migrated to this question in stackoverflow. Move on, nothing to see here.