We woke up at 7am (!!!) and we left Hotel at 8am; the night and breakfast help us to recover energy.
I had to stay in booth from 9 to 11 and from 15 to 17, so, In the other moments, I visited other stands: I played (again) with FlightGears and, a bit, with Freets on Fire and TeeWars (amazing game!!).

In the OpenSolaris stand I spoke with a MySQL guy about past rumours and the possibility to have closed source part inside MySQL; as far as I remember he said: “Is impossible to say. I can’t say yes, but… of course, I can’t say also no”.
We spoke about the OpenSolaris community: management, development model and other stuff. I think is quite similar to Fedora community (but, of course, fedora community is better ).

During this day me and other guys enjoyed to see problems about biometrics controllers; ?Marco Ziesing tried to set up finger recognition but it didn’t work only for him! (LOL).

Software require to pass your finger on the sensor for three times, to allow it to memorize information: for me and other guys after third time, the cursor return and all goes ok, but for him, after third time, the program crashed….and he won also a set of kernel ops.

These are two OLPC in the Fedora booth, it’s a nice computer:

In the evening we went to a social event, organized by Linux Tag; all ambassador who paid EMEA fee receive a bathrobe as a gift. All EMEA member at Linux tag decided to dress their bathrobe to go to social event: simply wonderful.

Social event was located in a strange but nice place, maybe an old farm: unlimited drinks and meals, music, people etc..

and…shadowman appeared 

The place was divided into two main parts: inside the building there was a big table full of food, and a place to sing and dance, unfortunately the temperature was warm, so some people went in the outside part. The outside part was a small garden with some tables and a place where people grill meal for us.

Nice day and evening

FUDCon, FUDCon, FUDCon…yep, Fedora Users and Developers Conference For us was the most important day within Linux Tag.

Max Spevak opened the FUDCon with a short introduction, after Tribalth North spoke about Fedora Electronic Lab project which aim to packages and provide some electronic application into fedora distribution. This project is interesting especially for schools and universities.

After him, the speech about FreeIPA was unfortunately suspended, so, to cover the hole in the FUDCon program Yakoov Nemroy did a short talk about Smolt.

You can read to the background of this phtos…what Smolt is

Smolt is a software which permit to users to send to central server configuration details about your computer, this software allow to understand and simplify information about linux compatiliblity.

Max Spevak spoke about fedora community and some interesting point of view about this project.
This is the best photo i never take in Linux Tag, is focused, impressive and expressive

Afternoon started at 15:00 with Paul Frields about “Fedora state of union”, continued with Francesco Crippa speech about Func, cobbler and puppet as huge network management solutions and ended with Jeroen van Meeuwen with a talk about revisor, a fedora tool used to make spins and custom fedora distributions.

In the evening we went to an Argentinian restaurant near hotel; we had three new people with us: Dag Wieers and Tim Verhoeven from CentOS, Lennart Poettering and another guy (my memory is a “groviera”, I don’t remember his name) from RH.

After dinner, we went to drink and had a lot of fun.

Paul tried Berlininen Waiss in both available colors: red and green (the red is the empty glass ).

Paul Frields

Me with Dag and Tim

and in the end of the night we make somestrange pictures

I don’t know what we are doing

My last day, my plane hour was scheduled to 12:15am, I leave the fedora ambassadors group around 8:00am and I take two hours to have a short trip in the city.

I went with underground to Postdamme Platz, then I went by walking in the city towards Alexander Platz.

I saw the Brandenburg door, the parliament and some other nice and famous buildings.

When I reached Alexander platx, I caught train to go to airport

Linux Tag is the most important Linux event in Europe and is organized and played in Berlin. Linux Tag is characterized by an huge participations of people (expected ~10000), associations (Fedoraproject, Debian, Gentoo, GNOME, KDE, linux-gamers) and companies (IBM, Sun, Oracle…); in fact Linux Tag slogan is “when .org meet .com”.

My Fedora Ambassador participation was the first outside Italy; when I caught aeroplane I was a little bit scared because I didn’t travel outside Italy since exactly one year. I found a good environment made by nice people: great enthusiasm, great collaboration, great fun…

Wednesday 28/05

I arrived in Berlin at ~10:30 am, and I leave my luggage in my room (we lived in Film Hotel, with every room dedicated to an actor. My room was dedicated to David Niven, I don’t know who is, but Francesco was more lucky with Audrey Hepburn).
After arriving to Linux Tag in Messe Am, I met some fedora ambassadors and I took a look about stands of other associations/companies.

Fedora booth was wonderful: all people swear the official ambassador polo (my polo was a gift from Max, thanks again), two OLPC, one Asus eeePc, stickers, t-shirts and our powerful innovation USB stick creation station.

Fedoraproject stand

Our powerful USB stick creation station (thanks to Matteo Castellini for kobold).

Francesco e Matthieu while checking USB station

In the afternoon, after I attended the Aaron Seeigo’s talk about KDE 4 I stayed for about an hour near our booth to check USB station and OLPCs; I took a bit of my time to went to the stand in front of our: linux-gamers.

I loved that stand, there was two FlightGear’s stations with 3 monitors, cloches and pedals each one, connected by network as multi player game, in addition, the server was able to draw aeroplanes on the real world, using a google maps based application.

Me

Francesco

Freets on Fire with Guitar

At 16:00 I attended a talk on LVM. It was strange to see a speaker from Red Hat using an Apple computer (with Fedora 8 virtualized with VMWare), by the way this talk was interesting and showed a lot of stuff I didn’t know about LVM.

LVM Talk

After half of afternoon, my email addiction took over me and I needed to connect so I came on Development room (a room with tables and wired/wireless networking) with Francesco. In that room I found and meet other fedora ambassadors.

Francesco, Yakoov, Stefan, Andreas, Jeroen and Fabian

Gerold, Max, Paul, Yakoov and Sandro

We leave Linux Tag building at 19 and, after a pause in hotel, we went to an Italian restaurant and we ate pizza. I ever been thought Italian food is not so good outside Italy, I ate pizza without salt, I saw people mix pasta and ketchup (OMG!!!), however in that restaurant I ate good pizza so I decided to review my policy.

Fedora ambassadors after a tire day are coming to eat
(sorry but I forgot to change ISO, so I take it using ISO 800)

Thibault and Pavel (my room-mate)

Matthieu and Stefan

After dinner, we stayed in that restaurant to spoke and drunk beer, I saw for the first time “Berliner Weiss”, a special drink from Berlin ().

About near 12am, me and Francesco returned in hotel but while we was on street, we decided to made a short trip in the quarter close to us; we travelled for about 15/20 minutes until we reached the old church devastate by second world war bombing and kept original as after war.

I took a lot of photos in this day but criteria like Ubuntu’s policy…high quantity, low quality so more than 70% was deleted

During those days I understood the level of my english, so I decided study it to arrive to FUDCon and other events a bit more skilled

[to be continue...]

Yesterday I tried to upgrade from fedora 8 to fedora 9 using anaconda and DVD…As usually something went wrong: anaconda crashed during installation..fortunatly during post-install process…

Right now I have a mixed system:

[root@sboing ~]# yum list installed | grep fc8 | wc -l
254
[root@sboing ~]#


…and I try to use a bash powered script to clean and fix it:

[root@sboing ~]# for x in `yum list installed | grep fc8 | awk ‘{print $1}’ `; do yum remove “${x%.*}*fc8? ; echo “yum remove ” ${x%.*}*fc8; done

and after


[root@sboing ~]# yum list installed | grep fc8 | wc -l
26
[root@sboing ~]#


Now all seems working, except for the Nvidia video card :-/ I’m waiting next nvidia closed drivers….

Today, after a day needed to make running my development infrastructure (Posgresql + TurboGears) I’ve finally done my first commit on fedora-elections project (fedora-infrastructure group).

fedora-elections is a simple and very useful web application based on TurboGears + SQLAlchemy which implement a voting system. It will be integrated with FAS2 and will be used to make decisions (new fedora name, etc. ).

Thanks to Nigel Jones to help and teach me

Probably you have already read the great Francesco Crippa report’s. I want to try to write my report in a different mode, to give you another vision about yesterday day.

As Francesco said: it was great! I completely agree with him, it was a great party, with more people than other events we organized time ago. About 40 people, in our city 40 people to a Linux event are a lot.

Poweron

My morning start with some tests on kobold for usb live creation station…

… and preparing GNOME foots to use it as track for people who come to event because the location was a bit hidden from the street…

After that, me and Lucia went to supermarket and bought some snacks and drinks (especially beer, of course ) and we stored it in a secure place:

This good snack is cooked by Lucia, who, with other people, bring something homemade, to party (cakes in particulars, but also short snacks):

12 hour after, we prepare ourself to come to Lodi: here you can see Daniele and Gianluca in the elevator during transport to event location:

yum install fedora9releaseparty.noarch

It’s time to prepare event. All things (bottles, dishes, food, cakes) need to be placed. Room need to be fedorize with posters.

service fedora9releasepartyd start

Me, Francesco e Gianluca start event with a talk about Fedora 9 releases notes and fedora SIG. My photos from here are not so good, so I steal a couple of Francesco’s one

After talk, I take place on Fedora 9 usb creation station:

I love beer…

service fedora9releasepartyd stop

Now it’s time to start to clean the place…This is Stefano…our frend, fedora user from 2 week and LOLUG active member

2:05 AM …

Shutdown

It’s time time to return home, after cleaning location event and terminate event day shutdown

I’m satisfied of this event. A special thanks to Lucia, Francesco, Gianluca, Daniele, and other LOLUG people who help me in event organization. I reach home at 3:10 AM and today at 8 AM I was ready to go to work.

Now I want to sleep

Party + Linux + Fedora = Beer + food + Social

I’m proud to announce first Italian Fedora 9 Release Party scheduled for 13 May 2008. We will be in Lodi (south of Milan) in Via P.Gorini 19.

We will provide food and drinks and fedora USB creation stations (powered by kobold), unfortunately we don’t have time to print CDs/DVDs, so we will bet on USB creation stations technology.

Don’t exitate to come! Remember also to bring with yourself an USB key with at least 1Gb of free space (if you have data, kobold preserve it, but is better to backup it before )

More information (in italian language) here. Thanks also to other LOLUG members to support us.

I hope we will meet there

Circa un mesetto fa, quando iniziammo ad organizzare quest’evento, ricordo di aver avuto molte perplessità, non tanto per l’evento in se, quanto per l’assenza sistematica di buona parte delle persone del LOLUG.

Ad essere sincero mi sono ricreduto.

LiberaMENTE è stata una ottima iniziativa, complessa e di notevole importanta. Oggi come oggi se ripenso a quella giornata, caratterizzata da un mix esplosivo di esperienze (partecipazione del LOLUG, Evento Fedora, Meeting dei Fedora Ambassadors), sono felice di aver partecipato, di aver organizzato e di aver impiegato energie e tempo affinchè il LOLUG partecipasse.

La mia esperienza è stata caratterizzata (positivamente) dal contatto diretto con diverse persone, che finora avevo conosciuto solo per via telematica: liberaMENTE è stata anche luogo della prima riunione italiana di Ambassador fedora con la partecipazione di ben cinque elementi: Francesco Ugolini, Francesco Crippa, Andrea Modesto Rossi, Gianluca Varisco e Me.

Per quanto riguarda l’evento fedora, abbiamo allestito la prima stazione di build automatico di chiavette USB in modo che chiunque avesse una chiavetta, potesse inserirla e in modo del tutto automatico avrebbe avrebbe ottenuto una chiavetta bootabile con sopra fedora8. Il software è stato scritto da Matteo.

Tornando alla manifestazione, l’unica nota dolente è stato il poco afflusso di persone, ma se vogliamo esser positivi, ha permesso di confrontarsi maggiormente con gli altri espositori/partecipanti alla manifestazione.

Ah dimenticavo, al banchetto erano anche presente l’eeePC di Asus e l’OLPC.

Liberamente (19 April)
I will partecipate as LOLUG member and Fedora Ambassador, and I will do a smart talk on LTSP technology. LTSP is a killer technology to help schools and PA to migrate on opensouce when an upgrade of large scale system is required.

Pycon 2 Italy (9, 10 and 11 May)
My talk proposal about Func was accepted and, see you there. Sunday at 17:45 I’m excited and, at the same time, scared. It’s my first official conference, and I’m not so able to speak in public, but on the other hand, never I start, never I learn. Let’s go.

I found this nice command on Max Spevak’s blog to know the most used shell commands


[lfoppiano@sboing ~]$ history | awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head
179 ls
162 cd
91 ssh
79 grails
61 vim
24 rm
22 su
21 git-pull
20 svn
20 mplayer
[lfoppiano@sboing ~]$


My question is….where is python? Maybe on fc8-serv.byte-code.lan

Today…after some month of delay, I finally joined into fedora project.

At this moment I don’t know which section of this big project I prefer. I will probably choose fedora-infrastructure but also fedora-marketing or fedora-packaging attract me.

Fedora-infrastructure scare me a bit, because is composed by skilled and experienced people, but at the same time is a great chance to learn and improve my knowledges.

I will choose in few days…for now I’m a lurker in many fedora Mailing Lists

Stay tuned!

Parliamo un po’ del fedora by night, di martedì scorso. Potrete trovare a breve le slide dell’iniziativa, sulla pagina del LOLUG. La serata è stata molto buona, e l’affluenza discreta, considerando la diffusione dell’iniziativa è stata fatta solo ed esclusivamente per via telematica.

Ha funzionato molto bene la formula “fai una domanda e ti regalo un dvd”, si è discusso anche con il pubblico di diversi argomenti, in particolare due mi son rimasti impressi: la questione mono (Novell che sta spingendo per integrarlo in GNOME) e la differenza/contrapposizione con ubuntu (che spende un sacco di soldi per stampare CD invece di pagare gli sviluppatori per scrivere software).

Non ha funzionato, ma non è la prima volta, la formula delle offerte, che sono fondamentali per l’associazione, che non può vivere solo delle quote dei soci. Anche al Linux Day la raccolta di soldi non è andata come si sperava (pochi hanno dato tanto, e molti non hanno dato nulla), ma probablmente non è più un sistema funzionante anche quando metti in vendita magliette o gadgets.

Per il resto, c’è anche da dire che foto come queste non si erano ancora viste

Eccone qualcuna seria

Complimenti ai relatori Francesco, Simone e Davide. E complimenti anche al LOLUG

Ogni tanto il kernel mi parla….


Message from syslogd@ortles at Feb 6 20:01:42 …
kernel: You have some hardware problem, likely on the PCI bus.

Message from syslogd@ortles at Feb 6 20:01:42 …
kernel: Dazed and confused, but trying to continue

Message from syslogd@ortles at Feb 6 20:01:42 …
kernel: Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason a0 on CPU 0.

Attenzione: Questo post parla di software in versione beta.

 Se non si è disposti ad affrontare il rischio di uno o più malfunzionamenti, si passi oltre.

I riproduttori di file musicali Sony WALKMAN sono un’alternativa economica e funzionale ai più blasonati Apple iPod, Creative Zen e simili. Hanno solo due piccoli problemi:

• Memorizzano i dati con un formato di incapsulazione proprietario DRM-enabled, ATRAC (e anche se sembra che Sony sia in vena di ripensamenti a questo proposito, penso ci vorrà del tempo prima che le scorte di magazzino vengano sostituite e si renda disponibile un prodotto della stessa durevolezza al medesimo prezzo).;
• Richiedono la “risposta di Sony ad iTunes”, SonicStage: questo software, disponibile esclusivamente per Microsoft Windows non sempre funziona – anche se a me, per la verità, non ha mai dato problemi, neanche dentro una macchina virtuale VMware/VirtualBox – e non permette di ritrasferire un file dal lettore al proprio computer se non si dispone dell’originale.

Se per il primo punto non possiamo farci nulla, possiamo, invece, liberarci dell’applicativo Sony (e di Windows) grazie a Symphonic, l’erede del progetto NW-E00x MP3 File Manager che promette di funzionare su uno spettro più vasto di riproduttori. Col mio NW-S202F ha funzionato  .

Passare a Symphonic, come vedrete, non è indolore: non potrete più utilizzare SonicStage col vostro lettore, e potrete (a quanto vedo, e credo solo per il momento) caricare solo file MP3. Non provate a forzare il caricamento di altri tipi di file: il vostro lettore andrà di matto, fidatevi - se però convertirete il/i vostro/i file in MP3 (come in questo caso) non ci saranno problemi.

In compenso, però, potrete portarvi sempre dietro il nuovo music manager, perchè occupa solo pochi KBytes.

Ecco cosa bisogna fare:

1. Installare almeno¹ Java Runtime Environment 6. Il web è pieno di HOWTO a che trattano l’argomento: chi utilizza Debian etch e non ama sporcarsi le mani con troppi pacchetti instabili può seguire la procedura descritta qui.
2. Scaricare l’ultima release di Symphonic (al momento la 0.1.1b) da qui, decomprimiamola in $HOME/symphonic e creiamo uno script in $HOME/bin (directory che dovrebbe essere presente nel nostro PATH) di nome symphonic con questo contenuto:

   #!/bin/bash
   cd $HOME/symphonic; java -jar JSymphonic_0.1.1b.jar $*

   Renderemo eseguibile lo script con chmod +x $HOME/bin/symphonic.

3. Mount-are il lettore, e spostare la directory omgaudio/ nella vostra home, per poi salvarla da qualche parte come copia di backup, da ripristinare nel caso qualcosa andasse storto; sì, perderete tutte le canzoni già memorizzate sul lettore, ma è necessario.
4. Scaricare e porre sul lettore la nuova directory omgaudio presente in questo archivio.
5. Lanciare l’applicativo da terminale con $HOME/bin/symphonic o, in alternativa, tramite doppio click su uno shortcut che ci siamo creati. Al primo avvio (o quando il lettore non è stato mount-ato), Symphonic ci dirà che non c’è nessuna periferica configurata:

   
   
   Device not found

   Non appena si preme OK, viene aperta la finestra in cui sarà possibile specificare i percorsi mancanti:

   
   Set path

   Specificate nella prima riga il mount point del lettore, nella seconda la posizione della vostra musica.

Da qui in poi, dovrebbe esservi tutto abbastanza familiare. Se così non fosse, commentate.
Enjoy