maemo.org - Talk - Ask the Council! History thread

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- - Ask the Council! History thread (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=41451)

Re: Ask the Council!

The biggest problem we are facing is the lack of maintenance and support from Nokia.
We should, at least, try to move the OBS and package repositories to a somewhere else were we could easily do tasks such as promoting applications, upgrade the toolchain (compiler, binutils), manage allowed dependencies between repositories (allow applications to depend on CSSU), etc.

Re: Ask the Council!

Quote:

Originally Posted by SD69 (Post 1181741)

thanks. I'd like to hear more about this w3mir thing.

[off-topic]
w3mir
the site is pretty well structured & any GNU/Linux familiar user should easily find her/his way around.
personally i use openSUSE on my workstations so i simply used YaST2 to get the package (& dependencies)
(as a matter of fact, it happened the other way around... was looking for rsync GUIs & stuff when i came across w3mir & decided it might be worse a shot :D)
i created a base directory & a sub dir for each repository

Code:

~ # mkdir /mnt/k/maemo

~ # mkdir /mnt/k/maemo/extras

~ # mkdir /mnt/k/maemo/extras-devel

~ # mkdir /mnt/k/maemo/extras-testing

adding a .w3mirc file in each of those directories allows to pass w3mir a number of parameters / options;
personally i started with

Code:

Ignore: *_i386.deb

as i'm not interested in games, themes or the like i also Ignored any such dir with more then a few MBs and ended up with...

Code:

. # du -sm /mnt/k/mameo/*

1064    /mnt/k/mameo/extras

14325   /mnt/k/mameo/extras-devel

1831    /mnt/k/mameo/extras-testing

1949    /mnt/k/mameo/extrax+testing

by running following commands

Code:

~ # cd /mnt/k/mameo/{REPO}/pool/freemantle

/mnt/k/mameo/{REPO}/pool/freemantle # w3mir -t 0 -q -drr -r -q http://repository.maemo.org/{REPO}/pool/fremantle/

i'll refer you to w3mir's MAN...pages for the gritty details ;)

extrax+testing is extras & extras-testing merged;
simply run the w3mir command with extras respectively extras-testing URL in /mnt/k/mameo/extrax+testing/pool/freemantle to get that (if a packet is already there, obviously, it won't copy it again)
this saves 900MBs from ~2800MBs
guess could do the same with extras+testing+devel and save anywhere close to 2.5GBs; considering devel is 14GB...

all those numbers are with attached /w3mirc file (had to add .txt for TMO to upload it...)
as i said, not interested in games, themes & the like (no offence to the folks who spent their time developing 'em...) thus merely an inspiration
the file can be named w3mirc.ini on win32

playing around with the URL: and FETCH: parameters it should be possible to download / update extras+testing (or even extras+testing+devel) with one run...
once an initial download is done, the refresh goes thru like a breeze only getting the new / changed packages

hth
[/off-topic] :rolleyes:

Re: Ask the Council!

Quote:

Originally Posted by misterc (Post 1181732)

the principal problem here (IIRC) is that NOKIA does not repeat not want to give up the Maemo.org domain name.

That's why I also included the question for another name in my last post. Maemo is obviously a trademark or some similar construct owned by Nokia and can therefore not be used by a platform that has no official relation with Nokia.
To keep things easy one could simply move the name to an independent "internet tablet talk" site or whatever, but the problem is that this would require a transfer of the information gathered here at maemo.org, where I, as a layman, see legal issues since some of the contents here are the property of Nokia and there is no license given that allows the redistribution of the contents itself.

I don't even know if the content produced by the community (extras repos, forum content) could be copied. Of course every contributor can agree that his content can be copied, but some won't be reachable anymore others might not approve for whatever reason.

Quote:

Originally Posted by misterc (Post 1181732)

Pali provides a script to download all the Maemo packages;

I thought of something like this myself, but never actually did it. The problem with these scripts is that even though you can download the contents for yourself, you can't redistribute them. Even if Nokia would like to give us the permission, they can't because they are bound to 3rd party licenses themselves. So it doesn't help to keep up the infrastructure.

...I'll stop here before this post becomes a rant about intellectual property. :confused:

Re: Ask the Council!

Quote:

Originally Posted by timoph (Post 1181809)

You only need a shell one liner command to download all of the repository content. And no I'm not providing the command here because I know several people will try it (without a good reason to do so) and basically cause a DDOS against the repositories.

just to make sure i get this right...
are you saying we should just sit with our hands under our buts 'til next year and in the worst case scenario end up without packages? :confused:

the alternative to every single N900 owner (who wants to be sure s/he can keep using her/his N900 after this year...) to use w3mir (and / or Pali's script), download the base images (i.e. RX-51_2009SE_20.2010.36-2_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin ) would be the collective server mirroring.
after an initial enthusiasm (on Pali's thread) the intention to create such mirrors was pretty much gone; one good reason is that a private person trying to make Maemo repositories available to the community is practically guaranteed to get disconnected by his provider / have his site blocked by the hosting company (unless s/he goes for a PRO site with according bandwidth...)

any ideas :confused: :(

& again, off-topic, sort'a :o
on the other hand, this IS community stuff we should really start to think about... (SD69's plan B?)

EDIT: Timopth, i'm not trying to start a flame war about the best way to handle the situation; just trying to broaden the discussion (we need to have anyway...)

Re: Ask the Council!

Quote:

Originally Posted by misterc (Post 1181838)

Code:

~ # mkdir /mnt/k/maemo

~ # mkdir /mnt/k/maemo/extras

~ # mkdir /mnt/k/maemo/extras-devel

~ # mkdir /mnt/k/maemo/extras-testing

adding a .w3mirc file in each of those directories allows to pass w3mir a number of parameters / options;
personally i started with

Code:

Ignore: *_i386.deb

as i'm not interested in games, themes or the like i also Ignored any such dir with more then a few MBs and ended up with...

Code:

. # du -sm /mnt/k/mameo/*

1064    /mnt/k/mameo/extras

14325   /mnt/k/mameo/extras-devel

1831    /mnt/k/mameo/extras-testing

1949    /mnt/k/mameo/extrax+testing

by running following commands

Code:

~ # cd /mnt/k/mameo/{REPO}/pool/freemantle

/mnt/k/mameo/{REPO}/pool/freemantle # w3mir -t 0 -q -drr -r -q http://repository.maemo.org/{REPO}/pool/fremantle/

for mirroring apt repositories is better to use program apt-mirror. I created patch for apt-mirror to support also downloads.maemo.nokia.com see: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...3&postcount=75

Re: Ask the Council!

Quote:

Originally Posted by pali (Post 1181852)

for mirroring apt repositories is better to use program apt-mirror. I created patch for apt-mirror to support also downloads.maemo.nokia.com see: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...3&postcount=75

as you may have noted i'm not a m$ fan
on the other hand, i haven't managed my foray into the .deb further then the N900, installing (but not using yet) a Trinity / Kubuntu VM and running your scripts on openSUSE

i don't like .deb (& related distros) but all this apt-* stuff only works on a .deb based machine :(
thus for all the others out there (mostly m$ user? but also Fedora, slackware, Gentoo...) not an option :|

Re: Ask the Council!

Quote:

Originally Posted by misterc (Post 1181860)

apt-mirror is perl script which does not support on any dpkg-* programs. So if you install perl on your m$ machine, you can run apt-mirror too.

Re: Ask the Council!

sed 's/support/depend/g'

Re: Ask the Council!

Quote:

Originally Posted by misterc (Post 1181851)

just to make sure i get this right...
are you saying we should just sit with our hands under our buts 'til next year and in the worst case scenario end up without packages? :confused:

I would hope we could find a way to automate, but distribute, the mirroring in a way that doesn't approximate a DDOS attack or put heavy stress on their servers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by misterc (Post 1181851)

the alternative to every single N900 owner (who wants to be sure s/he can keep using her/his N900 after this year...) to use w3mir (and / or Pali's script), download the base images (i.e. RX-51_2009SE_20.2010.36-2_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin ) would be the collective server mirroring.
after an initial enthusiasm (on Pali's thread) the intention to create such mirrors was pretty much gone; one good reason is that a private person trying to make Maemo repositories available to the community is practically guaranteed to get disconnected by his provider / have his site blocked by the hosting company (unless s/he goes for a PRO site with according bandwidth...)

any ideas :confused: :(

& again, off-topic, sort'a :o
on the other hand, this IS community stuff we should really start to think about... (SD69's plan B?)

Yes, the idea of plan B is to put together a legitimate, viable, freestanding, community site that complements maemo.org. Something that won't get shut down. The idea is to not do this as a fork, but to try to get the infrastructure and control over it to better align with respective motivations of Nokia and community. More of a conventional pairing of an OEM official site and a second community run site since it's not working out anymore to try to "share" maemo.org.

Quote:

I don't even know if the content produced by the community (extras repos, forum content) could be copied. Of course every contributor can agree that his content can be copied, but some won't be reachable anymore others might not approve for whatever reason.

Almost all of the content is CC. No problem with copying. The problem is making it available again in useful format.

Quote:

Glad to see discussion. I might as well drop it here among friends that we have registered www.maemocommunity.org. With a disclaimer, and considering that Nokia hasn't branded a product as maemo in over two years, the domain name is among the least of our issues.

My suggestion is we continue and develop a solid technical plan for setting up repos at a new website to be released later. I am trying to line up some administrative and legal support. More on that later. And I also suggest we take some time to at least try to work out some areas of cooperation with Nokia.

Re: Ask the Council!

Yes, I think that moving only the most problematic sections out of Maemo.org could be a good starting point. That in my opinion should be the OBS and repositories, the rest of stuff is mostly working OK and would be easier to move in case of shutdown.