I've just realized that nothing screams abandoned site, like no updates.

This week I finished the first pass of non-customized/patched RHEL 7.1 rpms (except a few on arm).  I also finally finished integrating rpm signing into the build workflow.  With those two items done, I figured I'd have a go at building images.  I was able to build images, but they all failed to install, for various reasons.

Planned for next week.  Run all new 7.1 packages through a second time, just to make sure they got built with the correct gcc and glibc.  Work on customized and/or patched rpms.  Start updating the website with various things, like what we change from Upstream.   Start working on script that uploads packages to our repository.  Test if we can use dropbox as a repo mirror.  In theory it is possible, but I'd like to try it.

This week I managed to get all the non-customized RHEL 7.1 rpm's rebuilt for a second time, with the updated gcc and glibc. Things appear to be working much better. Still working with rebuilding xulrunner and firefox on arm. xulrunner keeps getting oom killed, but I should be able to get it next week. I also got all the customized packages that are needed for x86_64 done. With the customized and non-customized packages done for x86_64, I was able to build installation images for x86_64. I'm still working in getting the DVD install working (not all the rpms are on the DVD) but network installation works. Ya!! After all these months, I am able to do an installation. I am now working on getting the packages uploaded out of my local network to yorlinux.org.
Next week I plan on getting the x86_64 installation DVD working. I should also get xulrunner and firefox built on arm. I am planning on getting installation images working for both i386 and arm. There are several packages that are marked x86_64 only that work just fine on i386 and arm, such a libreoffice. I will work on those after I get the i386 and arm installation images working.

This week felt like I had both great strides forward, and great steps back. I managed to get an x86_64 DVD that installs locally, great, but it will only install the minimal install, sigh. I cleaned up the i386 dependencies, yah!. I managed to get an i386 DVD and network install CD to work, great, except for the last step which is to put the initrd line in the grub config, sigh. But, what that means is that you can now install both x86_64 and i386 via network install and DVD. But on the i386 install, you will need to manually update your grub config file before you exit out of the installed. Did I mention this is pre-alpha. I've been making slow but steady progress on the arm front. One thing that has helped is getting onto some scaleway cloud servers. These are quad-core A7 computers with 2 Gig of memory and 50Gig SSD disks. I was having memory issues with some of the larger packages, like java-1.8 and xulrunner. Building on those helped several of those issues.
Planned for next week. I want to get the arm installable, which includes resolving a few more dependency issues. I also want to update the i386 kernel. I'm thinking that the initrd line problem is related to a similar bug in bugzilla. And, just for fun, I want to setup some t-shirt/product shops that sell Casual Tux merchandise. As my wife joked, I'm probrubly just doing all this so I can get a t-shirt out of it.

This week felt like I had both great strides forward, and great steps back. I managed to get an x86_64 DVD that installs locally, great, but it will only install the minimal install, sigh. I cleaned up the i386 dependencies, yah!. I managed to get an i386 DVD and network install CD to work, great, except for the last step which is to put the initrd line in the grub config, sigh. But, what that means is that you can now install both x86_64 and i386 via network install and DVD. But on the i386 install, you will need to manually update your grub config file before you exit out of the installed. Did I mention this is pre-alpha. I've been making slow but steady progress on the arm front. One thing that has helped is getting onto some scaleway cloud servers. These are quad-core A7 computers with 2 Gig of memory and 50Gig SSD disks. I was having memory issues with some of the larger packages, like java-1.8 and xulrunner. Building on those helped several of those issues.
Planned for next week. I want to get the arm installable, which includes resolving a few more dependency issues. I also want to update the i386 kernel. I'm thinking that the initrd line problem is related to a similar bug in bugzilla. And, just for fun, I want to setup some t-shirt/product shops that sell Casual Tux merchandise. As my wife joked, I'm probrubly just doing all this so I can get a t-shirt out of it.

This week was everything arm, and online shops. One of the frustrating things about working on the arm is some things take a long time. Building kernel 4.0 took 2 days. Building the latest uboot took a full day, for a bad build. I was able to boot a pcDuino3 Nano into Yor Linux, but it's network didn't work. So, progress on arm, but not enough to cheer about. I did have fun creating some swag shops. I don't expect to really make much, but I have fun setting up the shops and products. I created shops at Cafe Press, Zazzle, and SpreadShirt. Although all of them do t-shirts, the other products, and the ease of setting up a shop varied tremendously.

Planned for next week. Installers for x86_64 and i386, and documentation. I want to install Yor Linux on my laptop, and I can't do that without the installer working. In the past week I've had several people ask the procedure for doing a rebuild, so I figure it's time to get serious about documentation.

This week started out with working on the installations.  x86_64 minimal install worked pretty good.  I then moved onto the i386 install.  It started out failing to put the initrd line in grub, which means the machine wouldn't boot after installation.  Investigation found that I had an old pre-rhel7 beta kernel getting installed instead of the new rhel 7.1 kernel I built.  After that, installation worked, the machines would boot, but there would be no login prompt.  The machine would be running, with no way to log in.  More investigation showed that for i386, everything isn't at the right versions.  At this point I decided it was time to stop and redo and check the whole workflow and all the versions of all the packages.

Next week.  Thorough check of all versions of all packages (x86_64, i386 and arm).   Work on the build workflow of new packages.  And hopefully, documentation.

This week started out pretty great.  I had my first successful arm installation.  I created an arm image on a Scaleway arm server, and booted off it.  mirror.yorlinux.org is now a quad core arm machine running Yor Linux 7.1testing.  http://mirror.yorlinux.org/pub/linux/yor/ is now the place to download binaries.  We are still in what I call pre-alpha, but we are getting closer to an alpha release, and then some real testing.  Also this week I got serious about checking the versions and releases of all the packages in the release.  I started with x86_64, and compared what I had with Scientific Linux 7.1 and CentOS 7.1.  I thought I had been doing a good job of clearing out older packages, but I clearly hadn't.  I got the cruft cleaned out of x86_64, and some for i386 and arm.

Next week I plan on getting all the cruft out of i386 and arm.  When that is done, I will begin again to work on building installer images.  I also want to document how I built my image for Scaleway, and possibly use those same steps to create an arm image builder.

This week has been a week of cleanup and arm building.  I cleaned up all the i386 cruft, and I believe it is ready to start really building images with it.  I also cleaned up alot of arm cruft.  There were several packages that needed a tweak here and there to make them build on arm.    But I'd like my packages to be the same for all three branches.  So as I made these changes to the arm packages, I incorporated them in x86_64 and i386.  Because of these changes I didn't build the images for x86_64 or i386 this week.  But I made tremendous progress on the last troublesome arm packages.

Next week.  I plan on finishing the last of the arm packages.  I will then start with the image builds (x86_64, i386 and arm).  When I get some stable images, I will then start with the automation scripts.  As I write those scripts, I'm going to be doing the documentation.

I finished most all of the arm builds.  I also built images for x86_64 and i386 using pungi.  x86_64 kept failing during the build, and i386 would build and install, but won't bootup.  I believe both can be fixed by updating the kickstart file used for both.  But this week other priorities took the time that I usually use on this project.

Next week will be image week.  I plan on working on the kickstart files for both x86_64 and i368, as well as tweaking the comps file.  I also plan on building arm images, and get those working on beeglebone black and PcDuino3 Nano.

This has been a rather frustrating week.  I didn't get as much time to work on Yor Linux as I wished.   The work I did ran me into the same roadblocks as before, but not enough time to find the real problems.  There was some progress.  I've updated the kernel and firmware for i386 and arm, and managed to get a few more problem packages built.

Next week I plan on working on those installation image roadblocks, as well as a few more of the problem packages.  I've got the design for the new building scripts in my head, I haven't had the time to sit down and write them, but I don't see that happening next week.

This week I finally figured out the problems with the x86_64 and i386 installers.  With that solved I was able to create installation DVD's for x86_64 and i386, and with that, have our first alpha release.  There are still several things to do before a real release, but it installs and is stable for x86_64 and i386.  As for the arm version, progress was made but not enough for an alpha image.

Next week I will be on vacation.  I expect no progress.

This week has been all about building scripts.  I'm working on automating the builds, and also making it easy for other people to take my scripts and customize them.  I've put them on github at  yorlinux-buildscripts.   At this time the only script that is completely working is the one that checks to see if there are any new git repo's.   But the basic structure of the scripts has been setup, allowing for easy customization, and lots of comments in the code.

Next week, expect more of the same.  I'd like to get the scripts done so that any updates that come from Red Hat automatically get built and put into the nontested repository.

This week was all about scripts, as well as figuring out what packages go in what categories.  We have all arches, noarch, x86_64 and i686 only, x86_64 only, arm only, manual, and donotbuild.  All the scripts, and the package lists, are in the yorlinux-buildscripts git repo on github.

Next week I expect to have everything in place for automatic daily builds of any updated packages.

This week has all been about scripts.  I've reworked my main build script to use a central configuration file.  I've also written up a script that checks the centos rpm git repos (where the rhel rpm code is) to check when there is something new.  Depending on if packages are in my donotbuild, manual, noarch, or everything list, it does the appropriate thing.  Or, it should.  Ran into a little hickup and had to manually build the source rpm's, and copy them into the appropriate queues.

Next week I'll be concentrating on the arm machines, getting their build working.  And a bit of fixup on the scripts.

Although there was some arm work this week, the majority of work was finishing and tweaking scripts.  I was able to get Yor Linux working on a PcDuino3 Nano.  Unfortunately it was done via a yum install onto a pre-setup sd card.   I don't have a nice image I can reproduce.   As for scripts, I have worked out the bugs of the scripts that check if there are new packages, convert them into source rpms, and set them into the proper queues.   The worker nodes happily worked through the queues building our updates.  A new script then took those results, moved them into an untested area, creates a repo, and syncs that up to our off-site repo server.  All in all, a very good week.

Next week we'll work on the scripts that signs the packages and move them into the 7testing security and fastbugs areas.  We're also going to get images created for arm, so that we can make arm installation more realistic.

Although work was done this week on arm, I think more work was done on the scripts.  Last week I concentrated on the PcDuino3 Nano.  Although I can consistently get an image on it, getting the network to work still eludes me.  For the scripts, I finished two major pieces.  The first is the transition from using aarch32 to armv7.  aarch32 was a poorly chosen distinction.   Since I had used it from the beginning of my arm building, this caused several breakages that had to get fixed.  The second buildscript update was the script that takes the newly built packages, and moves them into the untested repo.  This allows the quick turnaround for building packages that depend on packages that just came out.  Also, the git repo was changed from yorlinux-buildscripts to yor-buildscripts.

Next week I expect to write the script that takes the packages from untested, signs them, then places them in security, fastbugs, or the base repo of testing.  For the arm front, I plan on working on the Raspberry Pi 2.  We'll see how easy or hard it is to get an image built for it.

This week the work on Raspberry Pi 2 (rpi2) went very well.  Not only was I able to get Yor Linux to work on it, but I was able to create a minimal install image.  I also created a way to install onto an sd card using rsync instead of dd.  The thing I don't like about images you just dd onto your disk, is that there is no easy way to partition.  It also takes quite a while.  So with my way, you partition your sd card the way you want, put the file systems on, mount them, then rsync everything over.  Anyway, images are here, and installation instructions are here. In other news, I fixed some typo's with my scripts, and fixed a few trouble packages.

Next week, I plan on getting the script that moves packages from untested, into the appropriate testing areas (os/Packages, updates/security, updates/fastbugs).

You might have noticed that this week the fastbugs and security repo's were populated.  I finished/fixed the script that signs the packages, and puts them in their appropriate repos.  You are asked for each source rpm where to put it, so there is some manual work.  But I feel better about being asked where to put the packages, than to always wonder if I the script was getting things in the right place.  I also fixed the script that checked for updated packages.  It was correctly identifying updated packages, but wasn't bundling them up into src.rpm's and putting them in the queues.

Next week I hope to fully automate everything, from checking to see if there are updates, building, and pushing everything into the untested repo.  If I have time, I plan on polishing up the final releases, possibly get a second beta out.

This week I installed Yor Linux on one of my old netbooks.  This is one of the reasons I made Yor Linux, so I could have my own i386 version clone of RHEL7, so I was fairly excited to do this.  It installs great, and runs great, except for wireless, and plymouth.  In a related moved, I have started work on automating the download and building of new fedora source rpms.  For i386 and armv7, I plan on downloading and building the latest stable kernel, firmware, and kernel related packages from fedora, once a month.  Other packages I get from Fedora I'll deal with on a case by case basis.  My script that detects new updates to centos packages, and is supposed to put them into src.rpm's and put those in build queues, continues to have issues.   It detects new updates, and sends me mail, but I have to do the other steps manually.

Next week I hope to have the fedora automated package script written and tested.  I also hope to get the wireless working on my netbook.

Updated the i386 and arm kernels to 4.1.3-200, as well as added all the firmwares and drivers that correspond with it.  Started work on getting fedora packages automatically pulled.  Continued to tweak the script that download from centos and turns the code into a srpm.  Did some security and fastbug updates.

Next week I will be at Flock and don't expect any real progress.

My apologies for two weeks without updates.  I was at Flock, LinuxCon, and ComiCon Chicago.

Last week I got all the updates done from when I was gone.  I also found out why I was having wireless issues on my old netbook.  Seems that there were no wireless packages installed.  I've also been reworking my x86_64 and i386 build machine.

Next week I plan on getting the rest of my automation scripts finished, so if I am gone again, packages will get built and pushed up to untested without any intervention.  I also plan on working on the comps for i386 to make i386 more of a workstation/desktop install and not a server install.

This week was about servers. My x86_64 build server was a 3 year old laptop, which I gave to my daughter for a semester of school. I've been working on transforming my nfs server into a build server. It needs to be RHEL7 or newer in order to build some of the packages. But the network hardware was so old I, RHEL7, not it's clones, have the drivers for it. To make this short, I've got a new network card and it's now running Yor 7.

Next week, I'll make sure the new build server still has what it takes. Get the scripts automated like I planned on last week.

This week has been pretty busy with alot of progress on various fields. My script that checks for new updates, makes them into src.rpms and puts those in the right place might finally be done. It helped that I managed to save off two packages git repo's before they were updated so I could finally get consistent testing material. The other problem was that it would work when I ran the script by hand, but not via cronjob. I believe it's done so next week I can finally start work on the next scripts in the chain.
The other progress I made was with images. I finally cleaned up my comps files, for all three arches. I also cleaned up my installation, bootup, and background graphics. I went with a more minimalist look and the yor-logo's rpm went from 20Meg to 3.5 Meg. I'm pretty sure that most people won't see the change, and those that do will be grateful that the crazy shutdown graphics screen is gone.
I now have new iso images for x86_64 and i386 that utilize the new comps files, graphics, and yum repos. I consider these my Beta release. And if RHEL 7.2 wasn't a few months away* I would progress towards making a release candidate.

Next week, if my script finally does work, I'll work on the rest of the scripts that will automatically built and upload updated packages to the untested repo. If I have time, I'd like to make beta releases for arm as well.

* My guess that RHEL 7.2 is a few months away is due to the 7.2 public beta release.

Scripts and updates. Of course my check and update script didn't work again via cron. I've created a new script that checks for updates in fedora for the fedora packages that I have pulled into Yor Linux (mainly the kernel and firmware for arm and i386). It works quite well, and hopefully I will be able to adapt it to work on the centos git repositories, ending that pain. I had planned on getting the arm beta releases out but the kernel rebuild (4.2.0) took longer than I expected so that will have to be next week.

Next week I plan on getting the beta out for the arm release. I also plan on a total rewrite of my check and build script for centos/rhel updates.

This week has all been about getting Yor Linux to boot to it's own kernel on the arm platform, instead of having to use a manufactures kernel. I know it should be possible. We're using the same kernel and uboot that is in Fedora 23, and that works for all the boards I've been testing on. But I'm learning that there is always something more to learn when it comes to booting on small arm machines. Hopefully when I'm done it will be very simple for others. For now, I'll keep working at it.

Next week. I'll do a little bit more arm investigation, but I plan on focusing on getting the scripts working.

This week now much got done. All I did was consolidate some of the scripts. Why have seven scripts when you can consolidate them into one. I also started working on a different flower for a background or design. Drawing flowers in svg format is harder, but the payoff, of being able to scale, is very nice.

Next week I plan on consolidating my download and build scripts, which hopefully will fix them in cron jobs as well.

I finally got my script fixed that checks for new packages, creates the src.rpm's and puts them in the build queues. It ended up being the scripts in centos-common needed their paths set correctly, so it was failing during cron jobs. With that fixed, I was able to cleanup the rest of the scripts, getting rid of about 8 scripts, and putting queues, results and other things in their own directories so the main build directory doesn't look so cluttered. This was a major step forward.

Next week I plan on working on arm again. Particularly trying to get the RasberryPi 2 binaries into it's own yor linux repo. So you can still run a cloned rhel and get all the good stuff from the pi's.

This week I made some great progress on the arm platform. I believe I've finally got what I consider a solid beta for the armv7 branch. I'm still running a few more tests, but I should have the beta out early next week. I didn't get the raspberry pi2 stuff done I was hoping to do.

Next week should be the beta release of Yor Linux 7.1 for armv7. I also hope to work more on getting proper Raspberry Pi 2 support on Yor Linux. Sure it will run on it right now, but I have to do some slight of hand to get it running, and I'd like it to work just like all the other armv7 machines.

This week was fairly exciting.  We released the Yor Linux 7.1 Beta release for arm.  I also started work on Yor Linux Extras.  Why have an extras repo when there is already EPEL7?  Because they are only for x86_64.  If I need something that is in EPEL7 then I have to rebuild it for x86_64, i386 and armv7.  This week I did icewm and xfce.  icewm rebuilt fine, as did xfce, but xfce did not work properly on i386, where I was testing.  I also got all my automation finished, except the mail.  So now updates are automatically updated, built, and put into untested.  The problem with my mail is that when I was doing my testing, I kept sending the same email over and over again, which google thought was spam, so my machine got blacklisted.

Next week I will work on getting xfce working.  I'll also look into getting mail working again.

This week we had our first user reported bug.  The i386 installation images were not working on real machines.  We had only tested them on virtual machines.  It ended up being similar to the arm problem we were having (newer kernel needed a newer kernel-install script).   Everything has been worked out, and this time tested on real machines.  I also got XFCE rebuilt and working for x86_64, i386 and armv7.  This is in the extras repo that was created.

Next week I plan on getting the extra repo into our yum configs.  I also plan on documenting how to create media from windows.

This week was all about build iso images for x86_64 and i386.  This came about because of the images I made last week.  Although they would install, they wouldn't install a fully functional graphical desktop.  This weeks images now will install a fully functional GNOME desktop, and XFCE desktop.  The images are totally what I want them to be, but I now have things in place so that when we start getting the images ready for the 7.2 release (whenever that is) it will be easier for me to create good, working install images.

Next week I plan on getting our extra repo into the regular yum configs, as well as setup an rsync machine, so that if people want to mirror us they can do it easier.

I was sick this week.  About all I was able to do was move security and fastbugs from untested to testing.

Next week I plan on working on the emails from scripts actually getting places.  As well as get the extras repo config into the yor-release package.

This week has all been about the rebuilt of the 7.2 rpms.  Things are still chugging along.  One nice thing is the updated systemd.  For i386 and arm I had to customize systemd due to the updated kernel I was using.  The systemd for rhel 7.2 has the updates that I was using, so I no longer have to customize it.

Next week, will still be about the recompiles, and if they manage to get mostly done, I'll see about getting a beta out.

This week was easy to sum up.  Builds.  Most builds just take a long time, but there was one nice circular dependency.  gtk3 <-> adwaita-icon-theme.  I was also doing all those fun manual package fixups.

Next week I hope to have all the i386 and x86_64 builds done, and hopefully a possible alpha release.

This week has all been about fixing dependencies.  I tried building an iso image but the scripts screamed about dependencies.  Some, like the new xorg, needed the whole group of packages rebuilt with the new libraries.  Some were just a matter of removing old packages that were no longer in 7.2.  The ones that took the most time was those packages I have listed that require manual fixing.  I still have 5 of those packages left, including anaconda (the installer).

Next week.  I do plan on getting the final packages fixed and built this week.  After that I plan on building beta installation images.

This week has been a week of working on those few packages that take the longest time.  I believe I have all the x86_64 and i386 packages finished up, but there are still a few arm packages giving me issues.  There is also a problem with the installer.  It fails when starting up saying it can't find the udev library, but the real problem is that glibc is missing.  The image building logs show glibc being installed, but something getting messed up between the start of the build and the end.  I also looked at the amount of attempted logins that are happening on this site today.  It's rather flattering how many people and/or bots are being blocked a day.

Next week I plan on finishing up the last of the trouble packages, as well as tracking down the problem with the installer.