This is something I have been wanting to do for a long time now. I’ve set up a project on google code for Grafpup, which has subversion access, so now wherever I am at I will be able to hack away at the various scripts and code which administer and configure Grafpup even on another computer. Interested parties will also be able to check out the latest work being done on the project via anonymous svn checkout, and there is the possibility for collaboration if someone at some point in the future comes forward with a desire to contribute.

In order to use google code I had to upgrade the subversion package as well, because the old package did not have ssl support and google requires this for code check in. In the process I upgraded openssl and the neon library, which were broken in the last release and the reason subversion didn’t have ssl support then. Well better late than never I guess.

I added a portion of my latest code on the package tools (see last post) as my first commit tonight. For anyone intersted in following the work, make sure you have subversion installed (already installed if you have the devx module loaded) and run the following command -

svn checkout http://grafpup-linux.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ grafpup-linux

I’ve been fleshing out a few ideas and some code for the 3.xx branch, while I still tweak a little on 2.01. I haven’t yet started compiling the binary packages, but the overall structure is taking a little better shape starting with package management.

The new package format I have been devising has several advantages over anything we’ve used previously. Each package alrady contains within it a list of files and a spec file with a description, category, and list of dependencies. Read the rest of this entry »

As per a request in an earlier comment I have upgraded to the latest Inkscape (0.46). I was really skeptical at first because Inkscape now requires the boost package (libboost) in order to compile, and boost is quite huge at 48mb for the binary package once I compiled it. However, it seems that Inkscape only uses a small portion of the code and it is compiled in statically, so boost is not required to run the program, just to build it.

The new version is very nice and adds a lot of new functionality, but it comes with over a 2mb increase in size (before compression). Good thing I’ve been shaving down other areas.

Well I’ve got the firewall cut down about as far as possible now, and a simple start|stop script placed in /etc/init.d so that it can be controlled via the service manager. The firewall script reads the configuration file /etc/rc.firewall, which has a really simple format for determining which ports to leave “open”. Here’s an example:
open 80:tcp
That line would be read by the startup script and would instruct it to accept all tcp connections on port 80 (for running a www server). Absolutely nothing fancy about it, but it works, and that’s more than can be said about the complicated Linux Firewall wizard that was in the iso previously. As of right now it is required to edit the rc.firewall config file manually (which isn’t all that hard) but at some point when I find the time I plan to write a little gui to make it easy to turn common ports on or off, or to specify custum ports to let through the firewall. I don’t imagine it will take more than a couple hours work to knock it all together.

My main problem these days is still time. I’m equipped and connected to the net (at least every few days anyway), which is more than I could say a couple months ago, but I spend an awful lot of time working. And often when I’m not working I have to deal with little (and not so little) family issues. So the progress might remain a bit slow for a while, but it will at least be a slow steady pace.

Two different people have reported that the firewall blocks all networking in 2.01 alpha. I’ve decided to go from scratch with this and solve the problem my way, so Monday night’s project will be to compile the latest iptables source and begin the creation of my own custom firewall script. I’m planning to keep things simple and just create a sane default, and a way to specify ports to open up with a little gui interface. I’ve grown a little tired of trying to read other people’s code and figure out where the problems lie, so if things get stuffed up this way there won’t be anyone to blame but me.

I also plan to change the way the firewall is treated in Grafpup. Right now, there are two firewall creation tools which are run as standalone programs from the applications menu. Since iptables is a daemon, I’m going to let the service manager control starting and stopping it and just use my future gui interface for configuration.

I’ve added Jason Pline’s Pwireless program to the default install. This is a nice simple gui that scans for any wireless networks in range and allows you to connect to them using dhcp. Quite a bit more intuitive to use than the network wizard is at the moment, with less steps to get it working. I made a couple minor changes myself, adding a progress bar while iwlist is scanning for networks, and changing the executable name to pwireless from Pwireless, which required a few changes in the script as it was set to restart by calling “Pwireless” in several instances. I’ve changed all of those instances to read “$0″ so you could name the program Albert and it would work just fine.

There was a persistent bug in pkgtool, the cli script forming the basis of package management in Grafpup. On occasion dependency information was not parsed correctly, causing the wrong package to be downloaded and installed. Now fixed, and should be more reliable.

Somewhat related was a bug in grafbuild, which is a script I created to manage installation from source code and the creation of new packages. If there were extra dashes in a package name then the _dev and _nls packages would be named incorrectly. I did a couple improvements while I was in there, and now the script will automatically convert manpages to html format and move them to /usr/share/doc.

I’m working a little bit at a time on a complete revamp of package management for a later release (3.0?). There will be a new package format with a lot more simplicity, but at the same time enhanced features. The new format and utilities will also enhance and speed up my own development process. After running grafbuild in a source directory, I can then run a new script called simply “makepkg” which will ask for a brief description, let me choose a category, and then compute the package size, list any dependent packages, and create a file list for easy package removal and to update a new package database so that other packages can use the dependency information. And of course it then creates a compressed tarball, but now using bzip compression for smaller download size. Very slick in comparison, as most of these steps were completely manual before. But it may take some time to create gui tools to go along with the new cli tools, and to revamp unleashed to build the iso with the new package format.

I’ve uploaded 2.01alpha1 to the new repo at puppylinux.ca. This release introduces a low latency preemptive 2.6.24.3 kernel and numerous improvements in desktop configuration utilities. This is probably the most “usable” Grafpup to date.

For a running list of changes please see the release notes for 2.01. Bugs should be reported on the Grafpup bugtracker. There are a few known issues with this release (it is alpha). The new script which updates a user’s configuration files from /etc/skel has a bug when called from the package manager, which is fixed in the tree already. There are also some bugs in certain packages available for download, which have not yet been updated for full compatibility with the new iso.

Comments can of course be posted here as well, or on the Puppy Linux forum.

For it’s entire existence Grafpup has included the freeware image viewer/editor XnView. Unfortunately the author seems to be extremely slow to update anything other than the Windows version of the program, and the current version for Linux is a couple years old now. I’m beginning to notice some problems opening some newer image formats, and the primitive Xlib interface has always been ugly and a bit awkward. So I’m bowing to the inevitable and removing the program from the official release.

As I’d like to have a simple image viewer in the iso I went in search of something lightweight, fast, and which could handle a variety of formats. I found Gpicview, part of the growing lxdesktop project. It’s dead simple and supports all image formats that gtk+ can display. Which means I can now click on an svg file (or svgz) and have it open in the same viewer as a jpeg, which I think is what a user would expect. Plus it’s almost ridiculously small at 58k. It’s not a very powerful program, and I’ll miss some of XnView’s features, but I’m going for a more consistent user experience.

Ah, then there is Grafburn. This was my baby for a while, and it served well for a time. It even went into Puppy for quite a number of releases. However, Sigmund Berglund has written what I consider a vastly superior program in terms of interface and overall usefulness called Pburn. It took a bit of work to make the program a bit more portable as it was written explicitly for Puppy Linux, but as of now Pburn-1.4.2 is running quite nicely for me in Grafpup.

For anyone who is interested, Grafburn-0.10.93 is in the new repo at puppylinux.ca. I had continued to tweak the program during my absence, and may still revisit it from time to time. But I think it will be more productive from this point to support the better of the two projects, and pass on my occasional fixes upstream.

Earlier today there was a malicious and very nasty attack on grafpup.org, which affected all php scripts accross the entire site. Permissions were changed on every php file to 777 and a php include was tagged onto the bottom of each file, pointing to a bogus jpeg image which was, in reality, another script. I caught the attack whilst it was in progress and managed to stop the bleeding partway. However, much of the site was down for a lot of the day. I just now got the news page back up (I took the time to upgrade Wordpress while I was at it) but still have to restore the Coppermine gallery and the Mantis bugtracker.

This attack is earily similar to recent attacks on several university websites as well as the blog of Barry Kauler, the creator of Puppy Linux. I’d like to say this is the last of it, but right now I’m not sure that’s true. However, no other files seem to have been corrupted so there is some good news.

I have set up a new auxilliary file repo at puppylinux.ca, courtesy of Eric Mulcaster. The main site here, grafpup.org, is temporarily running low on storage space so over the coming weeks I may be posting new iso images and other files for download at this new repo rather than here at grafpup.org.

The site on puppylinux.ca is up and running but not very many files have been uploaded to it yet. I will be doing the file transfers in my spare time over the coming weeks.