Some week ago, I’ve stumbled upon a very promising font project. It’s called the Exo Typeface Family and I think this could be a valuable addition to our distribution:

The sans serif font is beautifully crafted and contains 9(!) different width as you can see in the following graphic:

Natanael, the graphic designer, wrote about his font:

Today Exo is already a very mature font family, with over 700 characters supporting most Western, Central and Eastern European languages – and it can still go further! This coverage has been reached for all 9 weights, the maximum possible on the web. Each weight has an upright style and the corresponding ‘true’ italic style. Many ‘techno’ fonts have only the simple slanted oblique companion styles, but for the highest typographic quality it is essential to have true italics that are drawn specially.

Some unique OpenType features:

• small caps
• discretionary ligatures
• stylistic alternates
• old style figures, tabular figures, fractions
• a lot more…

If this project reaches its funding goal it will be published in Google Web Fonts under the SIL Open Font License. Currently, almost 80% is pledged, but only 18 days are left. If you find this project useful, please help Natanael and make the Web a more beautiful place. I already did so. Thanks!

Hi DocBook lovers,

browsed through a book, used your favorite search engine, or posted on LinkedIn, Xing, or the DocBook mailinglist to hunt for answers to your problems?

As an additional alternative, I’m happy to announce my latest project:

The DoCookBook Project
(released  under Creative Commons License)

The tongue-twisting name is a word play and picks up the two central topic about DocBook and cookbook.

What is the “DoCookBook Project”?

This project is a collection of problems and solution towards DocBook and the DocBook stylesheets. The book contains helpful topics with step-by-step instructions.

Why another project about DocBook?

Information about DocBook can be find in books or somewhere in the Internet. However, it can be an exhausting task to extract the necessary piece which fits to your problem. This project can help you to get your work done more quickly.

Is it done?

Not yet. Currently it is a draft. However, the structure is almost complete. The book contains some useful topics and it will be improved and extended over time.

Can I see the source code?

Sure! The source code of this book is published and maintained as a Mercurial repository.

Ok, you’ll get me! How can I support the project?

• Register on the project mailinglist to influence the direction or to get updates
• Point out typos, ambiguities, inconsistencies, or errors.
• Let me know what’s your favorite topic.
  Send me your topics directly or use the project’s ticket system (see Ticket#15).
  If you want to use the latter, you’ll have to register at Sourceforge
• Write your own topics.
• Create a cool new layout.
• Support this project and donate a small amount.

Have fun!

Watching software-center code changes, this one came into my attention: an effort from Giovanni Campagna into bringing Software Center to Fedora, using the PackageKit backend I’ve been working on this summer.

It’s nice to see someone showing interest, and also picking up the code .

I must definitely get the time to fix my experimental OBS build, and see the openSUSE version running again. For the record, there is room for improvement on the performance part (especially starting up speed).

Since little more than half a year, I am in the process of installing a new virtualization Platform. One of the hardest decisions to make was if we should use Xen or go with KVM. We already have Xen in production and I know that it works well. From KVM we expect, that it will be growing faster then Xen and be the right thing on the long run.

The machines that I have as hosts are quite powerful. They are 48 Core AMD Opteron with 256 GByte of memory, and FCoE based Storage devices for the guests. We are using a converged network where both, FC and Ethernet, go over the same redundant 10GBit ethernet line. Storage is external FC storage from different devices.

The most important features that we need for such a platform are these:

• Stability
• Performance
• Tools

After doing a number of tests, it is obvious that both systems are stable. I did not encounter crashes related to the hypervisor technology.

Performance is also an interesting point. Especially the speed of block and network devices is not the best when using virtualized guests. This holds true for both, KVM and Xen. Note, that comparing CPU or Memory performance in standard environments is not very useful. Even if one of the systems performs slightly better, both are very close to hardware speed in terms of CPU and Memory. However outbound connectivity is an issue for both.

One exception is when you invest some more effort and use the new NUMA features provided with the latest Xen. The IO performance of network devices was roughly 4 times the performance without using NUMA.

One of the drawbacks when using NUMA on Xen is, that you have to use the tool “xl” instead of “xm”. For some unknown reason, you can dump configurations from “xl” only in SXP format, but “xl” won’t let you start a guest from such a configuration. This renders the tool quite useless in a production environment.

This brings me to Tools. For me, Xen has the tools that are easier to operate than KVM. Especially life migration syntax is way easier on Xen. On the other hand, both are simple enough to be operated by experienced people. For those that do not like the command line, “libvirt” offers a number of graphical tools that can cope with both, Xen and KVM.

One thing to mention is, that with Xen you can enable a locking mechanism that prevents you from running the same guest on different Hosts. I have yet to find similar functionality on KVM.

Now let me add some words about issues I encountered. As I already told, we have Xen running productive and it works quite well. I also found the Xen developers being relatively responsive when some bug occurs. From my other blog entries you can see, that Xen also offers a number of debugging capabilities.

With KVM, there are two major issues I have right now

• Life migrations are not safe in KVM. I repeatedly encountered block device corruptions when doing life migrations. This also holds true when using “cache=none” for the qemu configuration. Simple migrations still work without problems.
• The networking inside a 10GBit environment behaves strangely. When connecting a Guest to a remote server I get connection speeds at about 30-40kByte/s. All the connections between the respective hobs in this environment work as expected (Guest -> Host, Host -> Server).

Resume:

Both, KVM and Xen are usable if you do not need life migrations. OTOH life migration is an essential feature in a production environment. It enables you to service a Host without taking down the guests. If the life migration feature is not fixed until SLES11-SP2, I will have to return to Xen.

For the moment, KVM is not on par with Xen. However, in the long run I expect that KVM will gain momentum and eventually be the platform of choice. If I had to select a platform in a critical business environment today, I would go with Xen. On the long run, it might be better to go with KVM, but this depends on the further development of KVM.

The major development areas that will influence my decisions in future will be

• IO Speed
• Support of NUMA architectures
• Support for HA features like “Remus” or “Kemari”

The race is still open…

This is my fourth journal entry for openSUSE 12.1 and it has been two weeks of operational use on both my Thinkpad and home PC.  Here are some additional minor frustrations and some workarounds... and yes, I have posted on the openSUSE forums (just in case you'd ask).

Boot 12.1 using the old System V init
In my first journal entry, I complained the lack of "chattiness" during boot since the adoption of Systemd.  You can easily switch to the old System V init on boot.  At the grub boot loader screen (usual 8 seconds delay) and before you hit Enter to boot, press the F5 button to switch from default to System V.  Now, press Enter to boot and press the Esc key during the splash screen to see the familiar System V init messages.

[Update on 6 Dec 2011]: Tired of pressing F5 every time on boot? Append the following to the end of the line:
init=/sbin/sysvinit
For example, in /boot/grub/menu.lst, at the end of the line starting with "kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.1.0-1.2-desktop...", append the line above and save the file.  On the next boot, you can verify the change in the Boot Options field.  Press Enter and you will boot up 12.1 under the old System V init.
Read more »

As KDE3 is again part of the official openSUSE 12.1 repositories (thanks to all who made this happen), I took the chance to create an installable livecd. Besides a preconfigured KDE3 desktop, it contains additional software like Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice. YaST2 is available for administrative tasks like system configuration or software management. The media does not contain all language packs due to size limitations, but they could be easily installed. The KDE3 language packages are named kde3-i18n-$LANG, e.g. kde3-i18n-eo.

In order to to emphasize the feeling of good old times, the artwork is based on SUSE 10.1. The kde3-gtk-qt-engine is included to give a unique experience over GTK and QT applications and KDE4 applications make use of the Plastique widget style and Plastik colors.

The x86_64 and the i686 iso images have been created using the kiwi tools. You can download the kiwi description and build your customized version. Just make sure you have kiwi and kiwi-config-openSUSE-12.1 installed and run create_livecd.sh from the archive. (You can adjust the image_arch variable within the script according to your build architecture)

If you got any further questions concerning KDE3 on openSUSE, please take a look at the openSUSE KDE3 wiki page and join the mailinglist.

PS: And please don’t forget to vote for me

In short, Air Video is a client-server product that streams, via live conversion, videos of many formats to any iOS device (eg iPhone, iPad etc).  The server software is free-of-charge but only runs on Mac OSX and Windows.  The client is also free-of-charge for iOS devices but "crippled".  If you like the solution, you pay for the client.

Since the Air Video Server is written in Java and uses a customized version of FFMPEG, it would be possible to run it on Linux.  The folks behind Air Video though supportive but are NOT offering official support for Linux. 

I have been successful in making Air Video Server (AVS) work on openSUSE 11.3, 11.4 and 12.1.  Here are the steps:

Read more »

Το δημοτικό συμβούλιο της Βάλμιερα, πόλη της βόρειας Λετονίας, έχει “εφεύρει” τον τρόπο εξοικονόμησης χρημάτων και ενέργειας μέσω της μετατροπής των διακομιστών, από φυσικούς(physical) σε εικονικούς(virtual). Ο τρόπος αυτός επικεντρώνεται στο γεγονός της χρήσης εργαλείων εικονικοποίησης (virtualisation tools) ανοιχτού κώδικα. Σύμφωνα με τον Kaspars Urbāns, επικεφαλή του τμήματος τεχνολογίας πληροφοριών της πόλης, “ Θα εκπλαγείτε, ευχάριστα, όταν παρατηρήσετε τον λογαριασμό του ηλεκτρικού ρεύματος. Με τέτοιο ποσό που εξοικονομεί η Βάλμιερα, χρησιμοποιώντας τον συγκεκριμένο τρόπο, θα μπορούσε να αγοράζει έναν νέο διακομιστή κάθε έξι μήνες!”

“Η πόλη αυτή, που χαρακτηρίζεται ως πολιτιστικό και διοικητικό κέντρο της Vidzeme, κατέληξε σε αυτό το αποτέλεσμα με την μείωση του αριθμού των φυσικών διακομιστών από 8 σε 4. Η μείωση αυτή περιλαμβάνει και άλλα οφέλη, όπως το επίπεδο των παρεχόμενων υπηρεσιών για μετατροπή μέσω διαδικτύου, τη δημιουργία αντιγράφων ασφαλείας, τη διαχείριση των πόρων και την γρήγορη δημιουργία των εικονικών-πραγματικών περιβαλλόντων.”

Την Πέμπτη 17 Νοεμβρίου στην πόλη της Ρίγας, διοργανώθηκε ένα συνέδριο από τον Όμιλο Ελεύθερης Τεχνολογίας της Λετονίας(Latvian Open Technology Association), όπου ο Urbāns έκανε μια παρουσίαση σχετικά με τα εργαλεία αυτά και την χρήση τους στην Βάλμιερα. Τόνισε επίσης, ότι η εστίαση σε εργαλεία ανοιχτού κώδικα βοηθά την πόλη να παραμείνει ανεξάρτητη από τους πωλητές της εικονικοποίησης (virtualisation).

“Η εικονικοποίηση (virtualisation) υποβιβάζει την σημαντικότητα του ακριβού υλικού με την αντικατάστασή τής από πλεονάζοντα εξαρτήματα. Απλά με το λογισμικό γίνεται εφικτή η πολύ υψηλή διαθεσιμότητα.” Ανάλογα και με την διαμόρφωση, όπως λέει και ο Urbāns, πολλά επίπεδα περιορισμού των θέσεων εργασίας και διαθεσιμότητας είναι πιθανά, και μπορούν να υλοποιηθούν με τα διαθέσιμα εργαλεία ανοιχτού κώδικα. “Τουλάχιστον για έναν θεσμό τόσο ισχυρό όσο του δημοτικού συμβουλίου της Βάλμιερα.”

Ένας καλός συνδυασμός…

Σήμερα, η πόλη λειτουργεί περισσότερους από εβδομήντα εικονικοποιημένους διακομιστές. Τα KVM και OpenVZ, δύο εργαλεία εικονικοποίησης ανοιχτού κώδικα, σε συνδυασμό με το Proxmox, ένα project ανοιχτού κώδικα, αποτελούν τους διαχειριστές της πλειοψηφίας αυτών των διακομιστών. Αυτές οι δύο εικονικές μηχανές “τρέχουν” σε ιδιόκτητους και ανοιχτού κώδικα διακομιστές.

Ο Urbāns διαπίστωσε ότι οι δύο αυτές εικονικές μηχανές ελαφρύνουν τα καθήκοντα του τμήματος τεχνολογίας πληροφοριών. “Η μετατροπή ενός διακομιστή αποτελεί εύκολη υπόθεση, επειδή δεν υπάρχουν πλέον διαφορές στο υλικό. Η κλωνοποίηση μηχανών είναι μία ευκολότερη διαδικασία, η οποία βοηθά στην κατασκευή και αποκατάσταση των αντιγράφων ασφαλείας. Ουσιαστικά, είναι εύκολο να κάνεις δοκιμές και όλο αυτό μειώνει τον χρόνο που απαιτείται για την διάθεση των υπηρεσιών στην παραγωγή. Οι εικονικοποιημένοι διακομιστές μας “μεγαλώνουν” όπως τα μανιτάρια μετά την βροχή.”

πληροφορίες ελήφθησαν από άρθρο του site opensource news

Yep, I'm running for the privilege of being on the openSUSE board again. Lots of fine candidates this time, which is pretty cool in its own right.

I finally managed to fill out the remaining bits of my election platform page, so if you're interested, please have a read -- yes, I know, it's long ;)

The short summary:

• I care about the contributors, their environment, it must be a fun place where people feel comfortable, with friends
• I care a lot about the people aspects of the project, probably even more so than for the technical bits
• I believe that I have a few ideas on concrete things we (and specifically, but not only, the board) should get involved in

All that "I, I, I" comes quite tedious, to be honest, and I'm under the impression that I'm bragging around, which is something my inner beast is spanking me for, endlessly. But well, the whole purpose is specifically to explain what each candidate proposes so I guess it's fine.

So if you adhere to what I wrote there and/or if you trust me to do the right things, do vote for me -- don't think that oh well, I'll be elected anyway, if everybody thinks like that, I won't ;D

I am very pleased to announce that ARM Holdings has joined our current sponsors, by providing a pile of Texas instruments OMAP4430 powered Pandaboards and some Samsung Exynos4210 powered Origen boards! Many thanks to the fine folks in Cambridge for their most generous donation. In addition to that, thanks to the community’s donations, we have also obtained an ST-Ericsson Nova A9500 powered Snowball board. Huge thanks to everyone that has made this happen.