Been in a slump lately. Coming into work at 3:30pm is not conducive to getting paid when you're supposed to be in at 10:00am, so I'm attempting to get things back in working order. Something about your coworkers making bets about when you'll be clocking in is a wake up call. On that note, I'm an hour early today, and if somewhere in the bowels of my soul I find that I have a child size slice of will power left I'll be in at least on time tomorrow.

I here by claim WoW as a productivity killer. Summer + WoW = no working on MOTU in a while. I'm quite close to finishing packaging Bibus, it's really pathetic that I haven't finished it by now.

I miss the outside world. This job in the CS dept is awesome, but I also miss all of the entire day. It's a little depressing thinking that the rest of my adult life is supposed to be like this. Being a kid was cool in that respect.

I think my big toe is going to fall off, but that's a story for a different day.

I'm finally mostly moved into my new apartment. It was kinda hellish when I first got here -- the place was in a pretty disgusting state. But it's looking a lot better now! All my stuff is here, my machine is set up, internet is set up, most of the house is set up, went grocery shopping a little while ago. The stress of moving is manifesting in myself and my roomate, it's a nasty thing, I'm glad the hard part in is mostly done now.

I don't have to work tomorrow, but I have errands to do which shouldn't take much time. Hopefully I'll wake up at a decent hour of the day like a normal human being and get business taken care of. I wanna come back here and get back to work on packaging Bibus and have something presentable by the end of the week.

+edit+ time for a strong drink and maybe a smoke break

Summer's here. Oh ya!

I'm moving next Wednesday across town to an apartment. I'll miss the perks of having a self contained living unit. That aside, the new apartment will be nice, the change of location brings me closer to a lot of friends.

I'm looking forward to working on Ubuntu projects all summer.

For a few days I've been fighting with what appeared on the outside to be libc6 halting my ability to make a pbuilder build environment. The bug post is over at Debian (#479202). Turns out that something was wrong in perl and a patch has since been released. As of 12:08 yesterday (Ubuntu archive time) the beautiful 5.10.0-9.1 version has been released and synced into Ubuntu Intrepid repos. Mmmmmm, I can finally make Intrepid environments!

I wasn't initially able to create Intrepid environments once libc6 was working, I had to update to them from gutsy's. The fix to this is to use the hardy backported debootstrap package. There is a few ways you can do this yourself.

Method 1 (Easier): Download the package from your favorite archive and use dpkg to install it:

$ wget http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_...
$ sudo dpkg -i debootstrap_1.0.9~hardy1.deb

Method 2 (More involved): Enable the backports mirrors in your /etc/apt/sources.list file (optionally set up pinning). This method enables the entire backports repository and may not be preferred behavior.

Start by adding an entry to the backports repository at your favorite mirror and then update your package database

$ sudo su -c "echo 'deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-backports main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
$ sudo apt-get update

You should now see 1.0.9~hardy1 as a candidate when you run apt-cache policy debootstrap. As per usual sudo apt-get install debootstrap will bring it up to the latest and greatest version possible. And that's what we want -- it will install a pbuilder script into /usr/share/debootstrap/scripts which can then let you specify intrepid create targets from the command line.

$ sudo pbuilder --create --distribution intrepid

See the official Ubuntu Help Site for a more detailed description of backports and enabling pinning such that packages are installed from the main/universe/etc repository over the backports unless specified, or check out the official Ubuntu Wiki on pbuilder for a howto on building packages in a clean test environment.

Hello everybody! This will be my first post syndicated on Planet Ubuntu and I thought I should take this opportunity and use it to introduce myself.

My name is Tim Bielawa (though to most I'm just 'Shaggy'), I'm a student at West Virginia University (seriously, it is a state, I promise!) and I'm majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. My day job is working for the Computer Science Department as a Systems administrator (amongst other things) supporting our workstations and ever growing infrastructure. Oh, by the way, all of which (servers included) runs Ubuntu :). We're in the process of migrating all the workstations to Hardy now and by July first (mark that date to come and party in Morgantown, WVU for our release party!) rolling out with Hardy on the entire infrastructure.

I started with Slackware (9 through 11), and jumped between Debian (briefly), and Gentoo up until last Fall/Winter 2007 when I started this new job. Using Ubuntu everyday got me hooked, I rather like it :). I must admit, it took a while to get over my guilt issues of not having to ./configure && make && make install anymore -- it felt like cheating -- as if Linux was suddenly too easy and no longer a challenge to use.

I wonder how many new Ubuntu Linux users even know what that means (./configure && make && make install), or even better -- will ever roll their own kernels by hand? The less the better I think, because it means we're doing a good job of making Ubuntu the most user friendly community driven Linux distro out there.

Getting into this new position, working towards being a MOTU, has put the challenge and joy back into my Linux experience. Instead of compiling software for my box I'll be packaging it so it can work on anyones box, which if you ask me, is far more stimulating and most of all -- rewarding.

Before my introduction post gets too long I'll finish up. My goal for a job outside of college is to develop modeling software and/or graphics rendering engines. Basically if I don't turn into another John Carmack I'll be making a better MATLAB or Mathematica. To facilitate this goal I thought that joining the MOTU Science Team (though I wouldn't dare call myself a MOTU yet) would be the most logical decision. This way I'll be focusing around the kind of software I'll be writing one day.

I put this blog together to document my steps towards being a full fledged official MOTU and to maybe even help encourage others pursuing the same goal. I've got a patch submitted already for slocate (#155061) which has gotten great comments so far (Thanks to James Calver for his kind words. I'm glad my efforts helped you figure out bug fixing better!) and a new package (Bibus) up on REVU for inclusion in Intrepid.

I spent the first hour or so this evening on #ubuntu and then spent the last few hours on #ubuntu-motu. This is an extension of me mucking around the entire MOTU wiki on Ubuntu.com for the last two days, except more interactive. I began chatting up the folk in #ubuntu-motu, saying how I was looking forward to contributing and becoming a science team motu. I forget which motu it was, but some one mentioned that LaserJock (Jordan Mantha) was the leader of the Science MOTU team and that he's usually on at about this time. Then with striking timing he appeared, no more than 1 minute after his name was spoken.

LaserJock and I spoke for a while, a few other devs started talking as well. They all seemed like great folks, I am recalling how welcoming they were. We all got along quite well and shared what appeared to be an equal enthusiasm for Ubuntu, development, and The Community encompassing it.

After a while LaserJock asked if I had a Launchpad account, which I confirmed, then he sent me a link to the MOTU Science Team page on launchpad and instructed me to join. About 45 seconds later I was accepted!

So there it is, tomorrow I'll be getting flooded with my first batches of emails reporting everything from bugs, to wishes, to who knows what. I don't consider myself a MOTU yet, even if I am on the team. But, I am perfectly positioned to start working towards earning that title.

I've been awake since about 3pm on Wednesday the 30th of April and I"m almost too excited now to sleep... but I'll at least lay down and try and rest for a while. In all likeliness I'll wind up passing out right now :)

I want to become a master of the universe. I'm maintaining this blog now so I can keep track of my progress. If you're uncertain about what all this master of the universe business means then you need to check out this wiki entry at Ubuntu.com. I'll summarize with a quote:

Masters of the Universe (MOTUs) are the brave souls who keep the Universe and Multiverse components of Ubuntu in shape. They are community members who spend their time adding, maintaining, and supporting as much as possible the software found in Universe.