Project and new-channel announcements should be submitted to the editor by 18:00. They may be submitted in person on channel #openprojects, sent via memoserv using "/msg memoserv send Editor [content]", or sent to email address web at openprojects dot net. All times on the news pages are in UTC.

Friday passed uneventfully. Our peak dipped below the 3,000 mark, though not much. Some discussion of tweaks for the MAP command and some work on a channel mode to filter color codes. Your editor passed the day very quietly and hacked on a small logging CGI, refreshing his memory on the atomic nature of O_APPEND with a single write(). He then discovered that the host the web server we're running on is not running Linux, and that SunOS whatever doesn't have asfprint(). Use perl for this and forget about setuid?

The end of the week has arrived.

Thursday was an interesting day. Your editor had discussions around 16:00 which he hopes will lead to a retainer for consulting work during the next month and possibly a long-term relationship. He's also talking to some potential corporate sponsors regarding contributions to the operating fund. Speaking of contributions, thanks to Mondragon for contributing an 800 MHz Duron processor and an ASUS A7V motherboard, which should be extremely handy in one of the utility machines we're planning to set up.

Traffic begins to lighten near the end of the week and this week is no exception; nonetheless, today's Gelhausen sample still places us above 3,000 users. There appeared to be a bit of server DoS activity in the morning and maybe once in the late afternoon; multiple leaf nodes pinging out against a hub is usually a dead giveway. But the activity seemed relatively minor.

Yesterday around press time, banner ads for OPN began appearing on Freshmeat, SourceForge and Slashdot. Thanks to OSDN and VA Linux Systems for helping us out! Traffic on the site continues relatively light and we'll let you know if it picks up dramatically.

To summarize, if you want to contribute hardware or make a monetary contribution to the operating fund, check here. We can also use your help with both banner ads and with the server upgrade project, and if you'd like to drop in on the (sometimes drowsy, sometimes frenetic) command center for priority projects, please stop by or click on #mistertoad.

The deadline for channel announcements is 23:00. All times on the news pages are in UTC. If you'd like to submit an announcement, either drop by #openprojects or "/msg memoserv send Editor [content]". Have a great Friday and an excellent weekend!

--lilo

Wednesday found your editor spending time talking to espnow.com around 05:00, talking to Mandrakesoft around 17:30 and catching up on his sleep just before midnight. Interesting discussions but nothing immediate to report.

Thanks to epsas for registering #jobs. If you are looking for a job involving free software development or administrative skills, or if you are looking for skilled open source technical people, please stop by and feel free to idle. We hope the channel will prove a useful resource. Epsas himself may be the perfect moderator since he is a unix system administrator who is at the moment looking for a new position.

Our server problems with server bing disappeared mysteriously around 08:35, suggesting kiddie games. Servers asimov and sterling each split a few times during a period from late morning through the afternoon. On the whole, though, things were fairly quiet (as has become usual of late). Yesterday's network growth chart showed a jump to 3,111 users on the Gelhausen sample.

Many thanks to Tom Dengler, who introduced a first cut of the MAP command patch for dancer-hybrid, not yet committed. Your editor will be spending some time going over the state of the tree with project leads now that he has a bit more time on his hands. Expect some changes to the TODO list. To get involved in our high-priority internal projects, please come by or click on #mistertoad.

As usual, if you've got a new channel announcement or some other posting about your project, please drop it off before 23:00, when the gates close. Your editor solemnly promises to avoid sleeping through deadline whenever possible. All times on the news pages are in UTC. Drop your announcements by channel #openprojects or "/msg memoserv send Editor [content]". Thanks to everyone for your support of OPN and have an excellent Thursday morning.

--lilo

Tuesday was a fairly quiet day, with some exceptions. Your editor neglected to mention in yesterday's news that, on Monday, we officially crossed the 3,000-user level and rescaled on the network growth chart. Thanks to Andreas Gelhausen of netsplit.de for tracking our progress so faithfully. Today we continued to stay above the 3,000 level, which was gratifying. We're having connectivity problems with bing and are investigating those, but that server is not currently in the main rotation.

No new contributions to the operating fund and this might be a particularly good time to make one since your editor has just been laid off from his full time job. There's a bit of detail in his latest Advogato diary entry. In other news, the folks from lrp.c0wz.com have registered #LRP, so if you're interested in the Linux Router Project, come see them for support and information and to welcome them to the network!

As usual, the deadline for project or new-channel announcements on OPN is 23:00; drop them by #openprojects or send them via "/msg memoserv send Editor [content]". All times on the news pages are in UTC.

To help with our priority projects, stop by or click on #mistertoad. If you come by the channel, idle a bit and then check with the first live client you see. Thanks to everyone for their various contributions, and have a great morning and an excellent Wednesday!

--lilo

Hi all. Monday was another quiet day. Not much to report on the server code front, not unusual at the start of the work week. However, this was our best day yet for the operating fund operating fund, by just a bit; $150 US in contributions. Thanks to an anonymous donor and to rwaters of #linpeople.

We're still waiting to find out if our ads will be going up someplace highly visible; no word back from that sponsor. To get involved in generating the ads or to put ours up on your site, please take a look on our banner ads page. Thanks to everyone for their help.

Announcements should be dropped by #openprojects or sent via "/msg memoserv send Editor [content]" before 23:00 UTC. All times on the news pages are UTC. Have a great morning and an excellent Tuesday!

--lilo

Your editor is sitting, of all places, in a warehouse in San Francisco where an ad agency is casting Linux people. It's quite odd.

Sunday was another quiet day on the network. InnerFIRE posted a patch to resolve the +I channel mode problem from yesterday's news. We've been discussing the elimination of services by distributing the functions to the servers; your editor has an approach he is exploring but is not sure this will be fully cooked for the first production dancer-hybrid release.

Here's hoping you will have an excellent Monday. Remember that announcements should be dropped by #openprojects or sent via "/msg memoserv send Editor [content]" before 23:00 UTC. If you'd like to contribute to the network, please take a look at the contributions page or you can stop by or click on #mistertoad. Thanks again to all the people who help make OPN go. All times on the news pages are UTC. Have a great morning!

--lilo

Good morning to you all. Splitting occurred from barnes yesterday in a pattern suggesting minor DoSing, but things were otherwise fairly quiet. Your editor managed to kill tolkien with an injudicious use of the operserv raw command, and steadfastly considers this to be a learning experience.

Robster has set up a few testbed servers with the latest version of the code for dancer-hybrid and we're beginning to audit the changes which have been committed so far. The +I channel mode patch (exceptions to channel invite-only status) does not appear to work properly. The problem does not seem to be related to the channel forwarding patch. InnerFIRE suspects it's something minor and we're investigating.

Channel mode p was deprecated by a dancer patch, but the behavior was unexpected. The intent was to have /mode * +p actually do /mode * +s in a clear and visible fashion, so that people could get used to the change. Instead, the mode change is being ignored completely, possibly as a result of last minute changes which have slipped your editor's mind. Is this better or worse? Let us know what you think.

User mode patches for +I (disallow invitations) and +C (disallow private CTCP and CTCP replies) look good, helping us meet prerequisites for secure user cloaking. The patch for user mode +E (disallow private messages from users who are not both registered to services and identified) works fine as well. Next we'll sort through the patches and decide what the next generation of changes will look like.

No new contributions to the operating fund were made today. We could definitely use a few tomorrow, if you've been thinking about it. We also need three 1-U or 2-U boxes for colocation in the near future, as stated yesterday. To donate hardware or to contribute to the operating fund, please take a look here. If you'd like to work on our server upgrade project, dancer-hybrid, or make or display our banner ads, please stop by or click on #mistertoad. Thanks again to all the people who keep us running.

Your editor has made changes in the color of bold-faced text and links on the site. You'll have to reload the pages and tweaks.css to see the difference. Send email to web at openprojects dot net or just send a /msg to lilo to let us know what you think.

It might help our color scheme to redo it slightly so that it is clearly in non-clashing shades of blue in 16-bit, and so that the colors look substantially the same in 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit, at least on platforms other than the Mac (where gamma problems crop up). If you think this is possible and you'd like to give it a shot, try it and drop by #mistertoad to show us your work. Thanks.

As usual, the cut-off for announcements and for new channel notices is 23:00. This supports a theoretical news delivery at just after midnight, but on the other hand, we have days like today when your editor's spouse needs quality time and he takes his two-year-old out for a spin. All times on the news pages are official Open Projects UTC, in which 00:00 functions as the beginning of our work day. Okay, we're a little odd. :)

To have your announcement included in the news, just drop by #openprojects or "/msg memoserv send Editor [content]". Have a great Sunday!

--lilo

previous news

Copyright © 2001-2002 Open Projects Network.
Current network date and approximate time: Friday, 14-Jun-2002 23:44:59 GMT.
.