On our way... Some news for October 2013

We’ve made the first step

Among things that make CL the system it is, Calculate Utilities certainly come first. You must have noticed that several versions of them can be (and actually are) used simultaneously : 2.1, 2.2 and 3.1. Calculate 2.1 are server utilities (the calculate-server package), Calculate 2.2 handle the building procedure, Calculate 3.1 are standard setup tools. Why make it so complicated? The answer it simple, we didn’t! But the latest version was so different from the previous set that, considering the time it took us to develop CU 3, we had to use them together - as a compromise of course, not on the regular basis.

The final version of Calculate Utilities 3 was made available several days ago. You should have all of the following in v3.1.8:

calculate-install
calculate-desktop
calculate-client
calculate-update
calculate-core
calculate-lib

We’ll be porting the rest very soon.

2.2 ==> 3

The utilities that for now come in version 2.2 include calculate-builder and calculate-assemble. The new calculate-update will also be concerned when we migrate. Besides, we are still debating between drakut and genkernel-next. Both packages use udev, as well as the actual calckernel (which is a genkernel fork as I guess you know).

A major update of calculate-assemble would not only mean introducing a GUI client for creating custom system images, but above all implementing another logic. It is possible that we add a new overlay… just possible.

Servers deserve our attention too

calculate-server will be the last to be rewritten, and it’s really a challenge: just imagine a graphical configuration client for servers that you are able to run on a remote CLD machine!

We’ll be correcting some other incongruities at the same time, such as ldap running on a same host as other services or calculate-server being unavailable on desktops. But first of all, one package will become several, featuring a package for a task. It will therefore include calculate-ldap, calculate-samba, calculate-ftp, calculate-dns, calculate-mail, etc. Then, if you wanted to configure a samba server on a CLD machine, you will simply have to install calculate-samba and rerun Calculate Console.

Calculate Utilities 3.1.8

You can view the full list of modifications here.

A new command was added, cl-core-custom, that allows you to apply templates depending on your custom actions.

Say you wanted a configuration that should not be dependent on your system, or it should be applied when and only when some particular event happens that is not a Calculate Linux event. You will need custom templates in this case.

[]{.performed. .are .they .+when+ .are .Events .do. .Utilities .Calculate .what .are .Actions .actions. .and .events .up .mix .not .must .You .Note:}

We introduced a new action variable, ac_custom_name, for you to be able to create custom templates. It accepts an action name as the value and is called with the cl-core-custom command, for instance:

cl-core-custom fileserver

You can call this command directly in the source code, binding it to some action to be performed, or do so manually either from the command line or with your GUI setup client.

Here is a simple example template, that could be used to configure a file server:

 # Calculate format=samba path=/etc/samba name=smb.conf ac_custom_name==fileserver

[linuxdistro] 
comment = Linux distributions
path = /var/calculate/linux
public = yes
writable = no
browseable = yes
only guest = yes
guest ok = yes

Calculate Linux 14

It would be great to release CL14 when all Calculate 2.2 utilities have passed to 3*! Calculate Linux 15 would mean the full migration to CU3 then.

That’s how we see it now… but let’s keep focused on result, not deadlines.