Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 04:32:00 -0600
From: Linux Journal News Notes 
To: lj-announce@ssc.com
Subject: Linux Journal Weekly Newsletter - February 28


            Linux Journal Weekly News Notes -- February 28, 2007


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   Greetings and welcome to the February 28th, 2007 edition of Linux Journal
   Weekly News Notes.  This edition features Bruce Byfield's review of some new
   GNOME-based panel apps, Pat Eyler's thoughts on a Ruby implementation
   shootout and Tom Adelstein's much-needed harsh words for certain commercial Linux
   firms.

   Further on, take an interesting look inside the Linux-based systems powering
   Wikispaces, a firm that allows you to build your own wiki site.  In
   addition, you'll find a 2003 archived interview with GNOME creator, Miguel
   de Icaza, as well as the Dot Org of the Week: GRAMPS geneological software.

   Thanks for reading our newsletter!

   James Gray and The Linux Journal Editorial Team
   jgray@linuxjournal.com

  FEATURED LINKS

   Recent GNOME Panel Apps by Bruce Byfield
   http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000188
   In this piece, Bruce deviates from OO.org to offer up mini reviews of these
   cool new panel apps: AllTray, Gimme, Sussen and Tomboy.

   New E-Newsletter: Off the Shelf
   http://www.linuxjournal.com/ots-newsletter
   Recently we started Off the Shelf, our newest e-newsletter here at Linux
   Journal.  This twice-monthly newsletter will keep you on the cutting edge of
   developments on the Linux and Open Source products and projects from around
   the world that our editors find new, note-worthy, time-saving, great deals
   or just plain cool.  Click on the above link to sign up!

   Ruby Performance by Pat Eyler
   http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000190
   Pat comments on an interesting Ruby implementation shootout posted by
   Antonio Cangiano.

   Commercial Linux Transforming the Community? Or Do They Need a Wake-up Call?
   by Tom Adelstein
   http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000189
   Tom fears that the Linux Community is becoming filled with people who are
   simply users and not masters of the technology.  He sees this as a dangerous
   trend.

   YET ANOTHER SHAMELESS PLUG

   Are you currently receiving Linux Journal? If not, did you know that you
   could get it for as low as $1.88 per issue?

   Click here http://www.linuxjournal.com/subscriptions to subscribe or find
   out more details.


 THE BRAIN TRUST: READERS SHARE THEIR EXPERTISE

   This contribution comes from Phani from Kentucky, USA:

   How to create RPM(s) as non-root user.

   Create a RPM macros file called .rpmmacros (note the "." in front of it) in
   your home directory with the following contents:

      %_topdir /some/path/rpm

   the RPM will point to this directory for all RPM Build needs such as:
   SOURCE, BUILD, SPECS, etc.

      %_prefix /some/path/local

   This location will be used as the root directory for all the installations
   of the binary RPM's

      %_dbpath /some/path/rpm

   This location will be used as the default rpm database:
   NOTE:The macros should have the full path name for each location,
   environment variables such as ${HOME} dose not work.

   To check the RPM default locations: #rpm showrc

   Create the following directory structure off of your home directory:

      ${HOME}/rpm
                  +---------/BUILD
                  +--------/RPMS

                  |        +---------/ia64
                  |        +---------/noarch
                  |        +---------/PowerPC
                  |        +---------/ppc

                  +---------/SOURCES
                  +---------/SPECS
                  +---------/SRPMS

   Create the spec file.

   Run #"rpm -ba ", and you are on your way ... ;-)

     Editorial Notes: You don't want to set "_prefix" and "_dbpath" if you want
     to build rpm's to install normally.  Phani did that to avoid changing the
     normal database and to always install things in "non-standard"
     directories.  He also left out the subdirs "i386" and "i586" which could
     cause problems for folks that don't have 64-bit machines.  So keep in mind
     that you are going to have to adjust his system to fit your system and
     your standard way of doing things.

   If you have a suggestion about this issue, or if you have a short technical
   tip to share with other readers, please send it to
   jgray@linuxjournal.com.  If we publish your tip, you'll get a free
   t-shirt!


 FROM THE ARCHIVES

   An Interview With Miguel de Icaza by Aleksey Dolya (2003)
   http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6833
   Above Bruce Byfield talks about GNOME panel apps, which is a good impetus to
   talk about GNOME a little more.  Here is an article from 2003 where we
   interviewed GNOME's creator, Miguel de Icaza.  He talks a lot about how
   GNOME got started.  At that time, Miguel was still with Ximian.


 LINUX INCOGNITO: THERE'S LINUX INSIDE!

   This submission comes from James, your trusty newsletter editor (in
   Michigan, USA):

   A few weeks ago, I promised my fellow grad students in my study group that I
   would build a wiki that would allow us to coordinate our ideas with all of
   us manipulating pages easily.  Since time was of the essence, I opted for a
   'ready-made' solution, called http://www.wikispaces.com/.  At
   Wikispaces, you can quickly customize your wiki using a mix of their
   templates and your own elements.  I had a useful space built in a few hours,
   and now everyone in our group is making pages, creating announcements,
   uploading files, joining in discussions, etc.  It's very slick.

   One day while I was modifying the wiki, I noticed the interesting selection
   of licenses you can choose for your wiki content, including variations of
   the Creative Commons License and the GNU Free Documentation License.  I
   thought to myself: "These guys get it!" It made me curious to know what OS
   and applications were powering Wikispaces, so I emailed them to ask.

   I got interesting, thoughtful replies directly from two of the founders,
   Adam Frey and James Byers.  Here is what James Byers told me about their
   systems: "The infrastructure behind Wikispaces runs entirely on Open Source
   software.  We currently have a mix of Debian and RedHat Enterprise Linux
   systems.  We're serving Web traffic using lighttpd and PHP, load-balanced
   using Linux Virtual Server in a high-availability configuration.  MySQL is
   our database of choice, with a set of memcached servers handling data
   caching.  We're using MogileFS to take care of file storage and
   replication.  Our search service runs Apache Lucene.  We deliver mail using
   Postfix.  There are dozens of other Open Source packages I haven't mentioned
   in supporting roles.  Naturally, we prefer to browse and develop the site
   using Firefox."

   Byers continued: "We've used Linux and Open Source software since day one,
   and we can't imagine anything else powering Wikispaces.  The communities
   built around the software we use are amazing, and the support and guidance
   they provide are invaluable.  As we scale our site, we look first to
   software solutions across commodity hardware, rather than buying commercial
   software and exotic hardware.  This approach seems like the default for many
   startups, and it wouldn't be possible without the Open Source ecosystem that
   exists today."

   "Control and transparency are also crucial for us: how we deploy our
   systems, how they're upgraded and maintained, how security fixes are
   released for public consumption.  If there were black boxes keeping our site
   alive, I wouldn't sleep nearly as well.  The last big benefit I'll mention
   is cost.  We couldn't offer our service on a free and low-cost basis if we
   had to pay for a commercial database license, for example.  We have hundreds
   of thousands of wikis at Wikispaces, and we're adding more and more every
   day."

   Our readers want to hear about your interesting experiences uncovering Linux
   in an unexpected or innovative situation.  Email them to me at
   jgray@linuxjournal.com.  If your contribution is selected for
   publication, we'll send you a t-shirt!


 DOT ORG OF THE WEEK

   This submission comes from Kevin in Oregon, USA:

   GRAMPS at http://gramps-project.org/ is a genealogy program for Linux and other
   UNIX-like systems.  The GRAMPS name stands for Genealogical Research and
   Analysis Management Programming System.

   GRAMPS helps you track your family tree.  It allows you to store, edit, and
   research genealogical data.  GRAMPS attempts to provide all of the common
   capabilities of other genealogical programs, but, more importantly, to
   provide an additional capability of integration not common to
   these programs.  This is the ability to input any bits and pieces of
   information directly into GRAMPS and rearrange/manipulate any/all data
   events in the entire data base (in any order or sequence) to assist the user
   in doing research, analysis and correlation with the potential of filling
   relationship gaps.

   GRAMPS currently runs on Linux, BSD, and Solaris.  GRAMPS can't answer the
   big question, "Why am I here?"  But, it might help you answer, "Where did I
   come from?"

   [Editor's note: The project organizers say "This year, over 90% of all
   commits have been done by five people...Forward progress on the project is
   slowing due to the increasing support load."]

   Do you know of an organization or person making a unique contribution to the
   Linux community despite not getting paid for it? If so, we'd like to share
   information about them with our readers.  Send your recommendation, along
   with why the organization/people are worthy of recognition, to
   jgray@linuxjournal.com.


 TECH TIP: Addition to Keith Daniel's "What Did I Call That Script?"

   Last week, LJ Webmaster, Keith Daniels shared a script he developed called
   "What Did I Call That Script?" This week Karl sent us some enhancements to
   the script that may prove useful in your own work.

   Big thanks to Keith Daniels for his what-did-i-call-that-script shell script
   finder mentioned in the LJ Weekly Newsletter (Feb. 21)! I wanted it to do a
   bit more, so I made a few tweaks.  Maybe you will find the changes useful.

   Objectives:
    1. Don't force the 4-line restriction on the length of each script's header
    2. Allow multiple search paths (not just ~/bin/)
    3. Support display of script's path/name without hard-coding it into the
       header

      #!/bin/bash

      #-
      #- NAME:    ~/bin/scriptsearch
      #- PURPOSE: grep for patterns in all scripts under preset search
      paths; output header lines in each matching script
      #- NOTES:   all lines beginning with '#-' are assumed to be header lines
      #- USAGE:   scriptsearch 
      #-

      # paths in which all scripts will be searched
      SEARCH_PATHS="${HOME}/bin /usr/local/bin"

      if [ ${1} ]; then
         for PATH in ${SEARCH_PATHS}; do
            echo -e "\n...searching ${PATH}...\n"
            # find list of matching files for current search path
            MATCHES="`/bin/grep -li $1 ${PATH}/*`"

            for MATCH in ${MATCHES}; do
                  # print summary for each matching file
                  echo "#====\n"
            done
         done
      fi

   Note that a side-effect of the way I handled objective (1) is that my Perl
   scripts, which often have a print_usage() function with a "print qq{...}"
   spanning multiple lines can be searched as well without duplicating the
   print_usage() function.  Just prefix each line in the qq{...} with '#-'.

   I added the -i option to the grep command for ${MATCHES}.  Very simple
   change but quite important since I don't want to lose relevant results
   simply because my search keywords are lowercase but the script contains
   matches with uppercase characters (var names and comments might be our
   memory cues for finding the script, and they commonly contain uppercase).

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