ArchServer Project

*Cough* We're back?

Well I guess you've notice we have magically come back online. Yes this is true. ArchServer is back online, sorta. The services will all come back online in the next week or so. We hope to have everything up and running 100% within a month with all packages and downloads online and ready to get ourselves back up to speed. Currently we are on a temporary server but plan to move to a more permanent server very soon. That change shouldn't cause any problems other than a brief interruption while services move.

Grand Re-opening

Closing Down Sale

Well it has come to the time that many projects ultimitely face; due to lack of both people, and available time of people who are involved, today we call "Time of Death" on the ArchServer Project.

We're not dead (Yet)!

Those of you following the project have no doubt noticed it has been fairly quiet lately... I thought I'd post a quick note to say that we're NOT dead, we're just a (very) small team at the moment and we all have to earn a living etc as well as choosing to work on this project.

Hosting Changes

We are currently in the process of migrating our infrastructure to a new host. Our infrastructure will now be spread over multiple servers, all running ArchServer as the OS.

Meeting Minutes - March Meeting

Meeting Minutes for the March project meeting are now available in a more readable format than the IRC Logs web page.

You can download a PDF of the minutes here:
http://www.archserver.org/uploads/minutes/meeting-110312.pdf

Mail Lists Down

Mailing Lists are down at the moment while I move my VM Host from Virtual Box to Xen.

Community Meeting

Community Meeting Saturday 12 March 2011 at 22:00 UTC to be held in #ArchServer-Meeting on FreeNode.

To find your local time for this meeting, please check this website: http://bit.ly/ekoEYk

All community members are welcome to participate and help shape the direction of ArchServer!

See you there!

Release Announcement - redgum RC3

The ArchServer Team is proud to announce the Release Candidate 3 (RC3) of the ArchServer 'redgum' release.

This release provides the following features:

• Latest Longterm-support (LTS) kernel; 2.6.32.28
• Update to the latest pacman version (3.4.2)
• Use DHCP or Static IP (fallback) during Installation (for remote installation)
• Dual Architecture ISO Images
• Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) packages (e.g. redmine, sonar, hudson, etc)
• Ruby 1.8 (available in testing)
• Arch Installation Framework (AIF) update
• Installation over Serial Support

Several bugs from the last two RCs are fixed in this relase candidate as well. If you are already using one of these releases, you should use pacman to update your installation to this release.

If you are a new user, we welcome and encourage you to assist us with testing by downloading this latest version from our Mirrorbrain supported mirrors:

http://mirror.archserver.org/iso/

This is a RELEASE CANDIDATE only, containing various fixes identified in previous RC releases. It is not yet considered suitable for production use, and is designed for TESTING ONLY. Please test thoroughly, and report any bugs to our Bug Tracker (http://bugs.archserver.org)

For feedback and/or support:

Release Announcement - redgum RC2

Release Announcement - redgum RC1

The first Release Candidate (RC) for the ArchServer 'redgum' release is now available!

There are both 'core' and 'netinstall' ISO images available via the mirrors:
http://mirror.archserver.org/iso/

This installation image features the following packages:

• kernel26-lts-2.6.32.19
• pacman-3.3.3
• rsyslog-3.22.1 *
• vixie-cron-4.1-1 *

Mirror Infrastructure Update

Some important changes have been made to the setup of the master repository and mirror infrastructure of the ArchServer Project.
There are now 2 sites for repositories:

• repo.archserver.org - this is the official repository where files are actually hosted.
• mirror.archserver.org - this is a Mirrorbrain site that looks identical to repo.archserver.org, but any downloads will be farmed off to our mirrors automatically based on the clients IP address.

Meeting Minutes - 100815

Meeting Minutes for the August project meeting are now available in a more readable format than the IRC Logs web page.

You can download a PDF of the minutes here:
http://www.archserver.org/uploads/minutes/meeting-100815.pdf

Community Meeting

Community Meeting Sunday, 15th August 2010 at 11:00 UTC to be held in #ArchServer-Meeting on FreeNode.

Meeting Minutes - 100305

Meeting Minutes for the March project meeting are now available in a more readable format than the IRC Logs web page.

New Mirror - Australia

I'm happy to announce that we have a new tier 2 mirror for the project, finally one in the Asia Pacific region. This server is in Sydney, Australia:
http://au1.repo.archserver.org/ FTP and rsync will be setup on the server soon.

First Progress Meeting

The first ArchServer progress meeting will be held on Friday 5th March at 2300hrs UTC. See [1] for timezone planner.

There is a meeting agenda available in the wiki [2] so if you wish anything in particular to be discussed, please edit the wiki and add your topic.

The meeting will be held on IRC in #ArchServer-meeting (FreeNode Network) and will be logged [3] for those who can't make it to review afterwards. The channel will be moderated to help maintain a coherent and focuses discussion, but topics and points can be private messaged to the chairperson (fukawi2).

We hope to see you there!

[1] http://bit.ly/aQp0Yz
[2] http://wiki.archserver.org/index.php/Meeting_Agenda
[3] http://irclogs.archserver.org/archserver-meeting/today

Kernel Package Changes

The kernel26 package has been replaced with the kernel26-lts package. Unfortunately the normal replace=() functionality of pacman won't handle the transition so some manual intervention is required.

During the update it is necessary to install this package explicitly using `pacman -S kernel26-lts`

Furthermore it is best is to remove 'kernel26' as well as 'kernel26-firmware' before installing 'kernel26-lts' to avoid any conflicts in the firmware package files.

If there are any issues, please report them to the Bug Tracker [1]

[1] http://bugs.archserver.org

Tagline Poll Results

Well as I sit in Wellington International Airport (at 5.00am) on my way home from linux.conf.au I see that the voting has reached 100 votes! And the winner is..................

"Simplicity Meets Stability"

Thank-you to everyone who voted. The tag line will be branded across the site(s) over the next few days. We are still developing an official logo for the project so if anyone has any l33t design skillz, head over to the forum and see the thread there to contribute your ideas.

Help Needed!

We're still looking for volunteers to join the ArchServer Team and help us drive ArchServer into existence.

If you're looking for some way to contribute back to the Linux and Open Source community, have a look at our recruitment page and see if there's something that "jingles your bells" ;)

http://www.archserver.org/volunteer

Mailling Lists Back

The ISP have fixed up the outbound SMTP blocks so the mail lists are working again :)

Mailling List Issues

Mailling lists are currently delayed due my ISP deciding to block outbound SMTP, except to their own SMTP server. SPF records on the domain mean we can't use their server to relay (at least without updating our SPF).

I've opened a support ticket with them, so hopefully it will be resolved shortly since it is a business account so there's no reason they should be blocking SMTP!

Inbound is still OK, so all mail will be recieved by mailman and it will just be queued on my perimeter firewall until it can establish SMTP connections again.

Vote for the ArchServer Tag Line

Every good project needs a tag line to go with the name, so after soliciting suggestions through the forums, the poll is up and running and ready to accept your vote.

Vote now for your favorite ArchServer tag line: http://www.archserver.org

(Link fixed - sorry!)

ArchServer mentioned in DW Weekly

It's only a small mention, but we've still been noticed by the guys over at DistroWatch Weekly :)
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20100104#stats

News to Email Bridge

With the new CMS system running the front of the website, news will automatically be posted to identi.ca and the general mailing list at the same time as it is posted to the website...

For those interested in the technical details... The CMS system is "CMS Made Simple", which using the "Event Manager" feature allows a custom PHP function to be executed upon certain events. I've simply made a function to fire on the "NewsAdded" event which will send a copy of the news article to identi.ca via email, and the mail list.

Yes, it's been a quiet New Years Eve here at work... Happy New Year to everyone!

Repository Tree Change

It has been decided the tree of the repositories should change to allow a separate [testing] repo for each release to be used.

TRUSTED USERS: Please note the change in syntax (and filename) for the staging2testing.sh script. The README file on hydrogen has been updated with all the details.

MIRRORS: You may wish to manually move testing/ into redgum/testing to save having to retransfer all packages again.

TESTERS: Please update your pacman.conf to have the correct new locations for the testing repo:
[testing]
Server = http://repo.archserver.org/redgum/testing/os/ARCH

Replace repo.archserver.org with your preferred mirror and ARCH with your architecture.

Automatic identi.ca News Updates

With the new CMS system running the front of the website, news will automatically be posted to identi.ca at the same time as it is posted to the website... Yes, it's been a quiet New Years Eve here at work...

ArchServer base Repository complete

The final packages have been added to the 'base' repository and uploaded to the mirrors ready for testing. Please install these packages onto your existing Arch Linux installations and report any issues with the packages. An installation ISO to install fresh to ArchServer is in the works and will be available shortly.

Official Master Server Up; First Testing Packages Available.

The ArchServer master server is finally up and running, with the first packages in testing, and 2 mirrors synced up ready to go! :)
If you are interested in testing some packages and reporting any bugs, issues and/or suggestions, please do have a go and let us know
Quick Install Guide
Mirrors

Master Server Coming Soon!

Thanks to LeaseWeb for coming to the party with a good deal on a dedicated server, soon we'll have the development and master repo server up and running - hopefully within the next 2 weeks.

Mail Lists Available

Mailing lists are now up and running. Send a subscription request via e-mail to join the lists -- please avoid hitting the web GUI if possible as it is running over a home ADSL connection at the moment until the project can get going :)

• general-subscribe@lists.archserver.org
• announce-subscribe@lists.archserver.org

ArchServer group on identi.ca

Follow the project on Identi.ca: http://identi.ca/group/archserver

Initial Packages Added to Github

Hosting of the PKGBUILD's for packages in ArchServer are currently being hosting at GitHub. You can browse the current git repositories here: http://github.com/ArchServer