This update is for the 0.1 Release for Setup FUNC. (click here for Setup FUNC wiki)

So my project partner, Chris Abbott (cabbott) posted his blog of Release 0.1, you can click here to see his post of what he did.

For myself, I ensured that the master was set up properly and then had another slave (which is referred to as a “minion” in FUNC) set up to test to make sure that it was working. Here are the steps I did:

For the master, we decided to use Chile. First thing that had to be done of course was to install Func. This step was easy, we just ran yum install func. By installing Func with yum, it also installed “certmaster” because it was a dependency.

Certmaster originated from the Func project but now is used by many applications that needs to easily exchange SSL certificates.

After Func and Certmaster was installed on the master, we needed to make sure that Certmaster was running and that it was running on runlevel 3, 4 & 5.
chkconfig –level 345 certmaster on
service certmaster start

That was all that had to be done on the master (Chile). The Func service did not have to be started on the master. Now to set up a minion. For Chris, he set up Romania as a minion. I used Iraq as a minion.

Again, I used yum install func to install both Func and Certmaster. Before I turned any services on, I edited the “/etc/hosts” file because the system had both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and that will cause a mess when Func gets Certmaster to request for a certificate to be signed.

Contents of /etc/hosts file (original) – Iraq:
142.204.133.89 iraq   # Added by NetworkManager
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
::1     chile   localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6

Contents of /etc/hosts file (Modified) – Iraq:
142.204.133.89  iraq.proximity.on.ca    iraq    # Added by NetworkManager
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost

I removed the 3rd line in the “/etc/hosts” file because that was the IPv6 address. When Chris started the Func service in Romania, he found out that when IPv6 address was left there, there were two certificate requests (one with the hostname and one with 127.0.0.1). So by removing the IPv6, it will only request for a certificate to be signed using the hostname. In the first line, I added the “iraq.proximity.on.ca” hostname because the service cannot resolve the hostname with just “iraq”.

So now that the “/etc/hosts” file has been modified, the next step I did was to edit the “/etc/certmaster/minion.conf” file. Here we need to specify who is the master to sign the certificate requests.

Contents of /etc/certmaster/minion.conf file (Original) – Iraq:
# configuration for minions

[main]
certmaster = certmaster
certmaster_port = 51235
log_level = DEBUG
cert_dir = /etc/pki/certmaster

Contents of /etc/certmaster/minion.conf file (Modified) – Iraq:
# configuration for minions

[main]
certmaster = chile.proximity.on.ca
certmaster_port = 51235
log_level = DEBUG
cert_dir = /etc/pki/certmaster

As you can see, I added Chile’s full hostname under “certmaster” to indicate that Chile was the master.

At this point now, I turned on runlevel 3, 4 & 5 for the Func service and then started Func.
chkconfig –level 345 funcd on
service funcd start

Certmaster service was not started on the minion because it was not going to sign any certificates, but to only request for certificate to get signed.

Now for both Chris and I, we had trouble starting the Func service on the minions because of Iptables. It was blocking the port that Func and Certmaster used. As a temporary solution, we just turned off Iptables and then started the service. Before 0.2 release, we will have this problem figured out.

Now that Func is running on the minion (Iraq) and Certmaster is running on the master (Chile), I went back to Chile to see if there was a request from Iraq to have its certificate signed. To list/view if there are anything pending certificate requests, on the master, enter the command certmaster-ca –list (or certmaster-ca -l).

Func normally sends a certificate request to the master to get signed, however, if there was some reason why it didn’t, you can run /usr/bin/certmaster-request on the minion and that will send a request to the master.

To sign any pending certificate requests on the master, enter certmaster-ca –sign <hostname>. In my case, I had to enter “certmaster-ca –sign iraq.proximity.on.ca“. Next, I verified that it was indeed signed, so on the master, I entered certmaster-ca –list-signed and that will list all the certificates that were signed. Now since Chris signed a certificate with “127.0.0.1″, I “cleaned” it up by using the command certmaster-ca –clean 127.0.0.1 and that got rid of the 127.0.0.1.cert. All signed certificates are stored in the “/var/lib/certmaster/certmaster/certs” directory of the master.

Last thing I did was to run a few Func commands to make sure that everything was working as it should and that the master can talk to the minions. The two commands I used was func “*” list_minions and func “*” ping.

Results from the above commands:
[root@chile certs]# func “*” list_minions
iraq.proximity.on.ca
romania.proximity.on.ca

[root@chile certs]# func “*” ping
[ ok ... ] iraq.proximity.on.ca
[ ok ... ] romania.proximity.on.ca

And this is it for 0.1 Release! More updates coming soon!

So, I have to start blogging again and blog whatever I’ve done already for the class. But for now, got to get on the project blogs.

For my SBR600 project, I chose “Setup FUNC”. For information about FUNC, click here to go to the wiki page. It’s not 100% updated yet, but it will be REAL soon.

Currently, there are two project leaders for this project: myself and Chris Abbott (cabbott).

We’re both hoping to get it fully functional on the ARM machines before the semester ends!

Just recently I’ve updated the FALL 2010 SBR600 Participants table and a while back I updated my project choice in the Project Table.

Well, so now back to work. I got to choose a project last week that I want to tackle on for the rest of the semester but I still want to catch up on some other things first.

But before anything, I had to find a way to change the screen resolution on Fedora that was installed on my VirtualBox. For some reason, the largest resolution was 800×600! It was killing me! It was so hard to work on!! Just the terminal took up like the whole screen already! For your information, I installed Fedora 13 (32-bit) on VirtualBox 3.2.8. I will refer to VirtualBox as VB for the rest of this blog.

I did some research and found a site that explained why and how to get a larger screen resolution for Linux on VB. If you’re using VB and also having the same problem, click here to see the instructions. However, if you want to just quickly fix it without reading a lot, I’ve included the instructions and steps below that I took to get what I wanted.

First, boot up Fedora (as you already know, 800×600 is the largest resolution you got!).

Now there is a CD/DVD image with VB extras that comes with VB when you install it. Mount it by selecting Devices –> Install Guest Additions… at the top of the VB window (the one with Fedora running).

Once it’s mounted, you should see the “CD” on your desktop. If not, make sure that VBoxGuestAdditions.iso is checked when you go to Device –> CD/DVD Devices.

Now open up the terminal and do the following steps as root.

Copy the required file from the CD image to the home directory (~):
cp /media/VBOXADDITIONS_3.2.8_64453/VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run ~

Update the kernel build and header with yum. Also, install the “dkms” package. You should already have “gcc” installed as well. If not, then that needs to be installed.
yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers dkms gcc

Once those packages are installed/updated, you can run the file that was copied to your root’s home directory
~/VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

Once the installation has been complete, reboot your machine and when it boots up, you will see that VB will now load Fedora with the screen resolution of 1024×768. If you want a higher resolution (like me), then you will have to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. The following is the content of my xorg.conf file. Your file should look 90% the same. The only thing extra that I have is the line where I specified what resolutions I wanted. I have bolded it below.

Contents of xorg.conf file:
# VirtualBox generated configuration file
# based on /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Section “Monitor”
Identifier   “Monitor[0]“
ModelName    “VirtualBox Virtual Output”
VendorName   “Sun Microsystems Inc”
EndSection

Section “Device”
BoardName    “VirtualBox Graphics”
Driver       “vboxvideo”
Identifier   “Device[0]“
VendorName   “Sun Microsystems Inc”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
SubSection “Display”
Depth      24
Modes      “1440×900″ “1280×864″ “1152×864″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
Device       “Device[0]“
Identifier   “Screen[0]“
Monitor      “Monitor[0]“
EndSection

That’s it! If you reboot again, it should load up to your highest resolution (or the first one you specifed in the file). For me, it loaded up to 1440×900.

Hope this helped those that were frustrated about the screen resolution like me!!

Now back to catching up… still need to finish SRPM rebuild and SPEC file creation. Need to start creating the project page also! So much for a long weekend….

After the installation, I went on to re-build NLED and VIM 7.3 again to test the performance.

For NLED, I came across the few errors that a lot of people had when they built NLED. Both occurring when running the make command.

Error #1:
cc -O -c -o nled.o nled.c
make: cc: Command not found
make: *** [nled.o] Error 127

The above error occurred when I ran make the first time. It indicated that it did not recognize the cc command, which means that I am missing the gcc compiler. So, I installed it by running yum install gcc.

After gcc was installed (along with all the dependencies), I ran the make command again. This time, I got the below error.

Error #2:
qkdisp.c:125:21: error: ncurses.h: No such file or directory
qkdisp.c: In function ‘qd_boldon’:
qkdisp.c:181: error: ‘A_BOLD’ undeclared (first use in this function)
qkdisp.c:181: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
qkdisp.c:181: error: for each function it appears in.)
qkdisp.c: In function ‘qd_boldoff’:
qkdisp.c:195: error: ‘A_BOLD’ undeclared (first use in this function)
qkdisp.c: In function ‘qd_cols’:
qkdisp.c:276: error: ‘COLS’ undeclared (first use in this function)
qkdisp.c: In function ‘qd_open’:
qkdisp.c:499: error: ‘stdscr’ undeclared (first use in this function)
qkdisp.c: In function ‘qd_revon’:
qkdisp.c:570: error: ‘A_REVERSE’ undeclared (first use in this function)
qkdisp.c: In function ‘qd_revoff’:
qkdisp.c:584: error: ‘A_REVERSE’ undeclared (first use in this function)
qkdisp.c: In function ‘qd_rows’:
qkdisp.c:593: error: ‘LINES’ undeclared (first use in this function)
qkdisp.c: In function ‘qd_scrollup’:
qkdisp.c:635: error: ‘LINES’ undeclared (first use in this function)
qkdisp.c: In function ‘qd_scrolldown’:
qkdisp.c:682: error: ‘LINES’ undeclared (first use in this function)
make: *** [qkdisp.o] Error 1

For this error, I noticed that on the first line, it indicated that it could not find the file “ncurses.h”. So, I used yum again to find it, download it and install it. The command I used was: yum install *ncurses.h

Once it was completed, I ran make one more time and this time, it ran successfully without any errors. I think when I built NLED this time, it had errors that I did not see before because like I mentioned in my previous blog, I installed ALL the packages that were included in the installation DVD, but this time, I only installed the default packages to run Fedora.

Great! Now on to VIM.

For VIM 7.3, I actually rebuilt it without any errors. Everything went smoothly.

To see my blog on how I built NLED, click here.
To see my blog on how I built VIM 7.3, click here.

Now that I rebuilt both NLED and VIM, I noticed that the performance was much better! I think I was right, it was a mistake installing all the packages when I installed Fedora. On top of that, Fedora hasn’t froze on me once or was showing any lag!

The specs on both my laptop and desktop is pretty much the same: both dual-core with 3GB of RAM. The only difference is that the CPU speed of my laptop is 2.0GHz whereas the CPU speed of my desktop is 2.4GHz. I don’t think it would make THAT much of a difference would it?

Anyways, maybe I should re-install Fedora on my laptop when I have time so I can at least work on anything in the future from anywhere. But for now, I must get my own spec file working to package a software from source.

I wonder if it’s because when I installed Fedora, I installed all the packages that came on the DVD; causing it to load a ton of things at start up..

I think I’m going to re-install Fedora on VM again, but this time on my desktop at home. Hopefully the performance will be better and there will not be any trouble for me when I try to package a software. The hardware specs on both my desktop and laptop is pretty similar so I should be able to tell which is better, but this time when I install, I’m just going to install the recommended packages and not everything….

Anyways, I’ll blog again when I’m done installing Fedora on my desktop VM. I’ll re-build NLED and VIM 7.3 from source again also to see if the performance is better. It shouldn’t take long now since I know what to do.

I want to make a good spec file to package by Tuesday!

VIM stand for Vi IMproved. It is another programmers text editor, however, it is upwards compatible with vi. VIM is very useful for editing programs. For more information about VIM, go to VIM’s home page.

Now back to the build..

So just like NLED, I downloaded VIM using the wget command. The link to the source package was ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unix/vim-7.3.tar.bz2.

Once it was downloaded, I unpacked it using tar -xvjf vim-7.3.tar.bz2 and then started the build process.

The build process was much like NLED, except probably had a few more steps/command to execute. First, I ran the ./configure command, then make, and then make install (as root of course as you need permission that your regular user does not have). All the command executed successfully without any errors and it didn’t really take that long!

Once that was done, I tested the software (by running the vim command) and made sure that it worked.

I wonder if this package is small enough for me to re-package it?

For more information about NLED, you can visit the NLED site here.

Here is what I had to do in order to build the NLED package from source:

1. First, I had to download the source code which was in a tar-ball from http://cdot.senecac.on.ca/software/nled. I did this by opening a terminal and typing this command as a regular user.

   $ wget http://cdot.senecac.on.ca/software/nled/nled_2_52_src.tgz

   This downloaded the file in the current working directory.

2. Next was to untar the file.

   $ tar -xzf nled_2_52_src.tgz

   Now I have a directory called “nled-2.52“

3. Next I changed into the newly created directory and used the “make” command to build NLED.

   $ cd nled-2.52/
   $ make

   When I executed the “make” command, everything seemed to have worked fine for me and no errors came up like it did for the others. Maybe I already had all the dependencies installed already..

4. Last step was to test it to make sure that it was successfully built and working.

   $ ./nled

   And… it works!!

   

Now that I successfully built NLED. I need to find another package to build.. Hopefully I can find a simple one like Chris recommeneded. I will post the second part to this lab another blog once I find another package to build.

I have never blogged before and the main reason for me having a blog is for the SBR600 course. I know many people who blog as well so you never know, maybe this is a good start for me!

Other things that you might want to know about me is that during my spare time, I enjoy communicating with people in all sorts of ways (usually MSN, Facebook, and texting). I also play a variety of sports and enjoy rock climbing and archery. I also just started going to the gym to do some weight training.

Just another note before continuing with what I have to include in this blog is….. yesterday was MY BIRTHDAY!!! Though my stomach was very sick this morning (to the point that I couldn’t even walk to my bathroom), my birthday dinner was pretty good. I enjoyed it!

Well, back to my SBR600 tasks:

The following screenshot is a portion of a IRC conversation I had on the Seneca IRC channel. My IRC nickname is jvan. You can click on the picture to enlarge it.

As you can see, I am using ChatZilla which is a really user-friendly IRC client. It’s really easy to install if you have Firefox before it’s just an add-on! If you would like to get it, simply click here.

I also now have a user page on the Seneca and Fedora Wiki.

Click here for my Fedora Wiki User page.
Click here for my Seneca Wiki User page.

That’s it for now. Now, I need to find out what I missed this morning since I was too sick to get to school… Hopefully I didn’t miss much and can catch up! Wish me luck!