Posts Tagged ‘plan’

Thoughts on setting up a service

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

The mission statement for this Open Source project is:

“Providing solutions to archive, query and analyze IRC logfiles.”

My idea of “solutions” is twofold; On one hand, I should create software so users can archive, query and analyze IRC logfiles themselves. On the other hand, I should setup a service that provides the same functionality to users that don’t have the time or know how to install and configure the software.

At the time of writing, the software itself is not mature enough to actually start working on such a service.  But, I can ponder about it from time to time and publish some of the ideas here on this blog. Besides, I should spent that spare time on developing the actual software.

The service would basically be a website where users can register themselves and the channel they want to log. After they have registered, they can either invite a logging bot that will start logging the channel or upload their own IRC logfiles. Users should then be able to make use of the same functionality that the web application provides, such as viewing a logfile, browse the image gallery, create a paste, etc.

Back to coding…

Project rebooted!

Monday, January 19th, 2009

This is probably going to be the last post before I can actually start working on the source again!

SPAM
In my battle against SPAM, I took another measure to protect the forum and bug tracker from fake registrations and bug reports by adding CAPTCHA to the forum registration page and the bug report page. This is going to save me some time, I was a little bit fed up with having to remove fake registrations and bug reports. That time is better spent on adding new features!

Latest revision
I checked my development server for the latest revision of the source code and it seems that it is a little bit more recent (rev 39) than the source that is available online (rev 36). Just some minor changes though, mostly documentation related updates. I will synchronize those soon. Speaking of synchronization, I’m thinking of using a SourceForge Subversion repository. That way it will be more accessible and centralized.

The todo list and roadmap are still in sync with the latest revision. I might as well add all the items on the todo list (and roadmap) to the bugtracker as feature requests. This will give them status and if others want to join in they can see what is assigned and what is not.

Working installation
The current installation of IRC Collective on my development server is up to date and working! It has not ‘assimilated’ any IRC logfiles for the past 15 or 16 months, but other than that it is still working!

Eclipse workspace
Setting up the Eclipse workspace was not as easy as I though it was going to be. Turns out I used NFS  to share my home directory on the development server. The Eclipse workspace was stored within this directory. It required some additional software to be installed on my workstation before I could mount the NFS share again. Luckily the workspace was compatible with the version of Eclipse I have currently installed.

Reboot complete!
That’s it! I can start developing again…

Progress update (3)

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Things I have done since the last progress update:

  1. Masked all email addresses on the website
  2. Pruned all bogus accounts and posts on the forum
  3. Updated the forum and the bugtracker to the latest versions
  4. Re-enabled the forum
  5. Re-enabled anonymous bug reports and feature requests (bugtracker)

Most of the site is working again, except for email. But this is not a priority for now. First I want to see if spammers are still able to put posts on the forum using non activated accounts. I hope the latest version of punBB is more secure.

Progress update (2)

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

After the troubles I experienced with the current Matrox driver I decided to install an earlier release of Ubuntu. And so I did. I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 on to my workstation and installing the Matrox driver went without any problem. Also updated all the packages and than proceeded with installing Eclipse.

I just need to install some more development tools again and I can start working on the website. To be continued..

Progress update

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Here’s what I have done so far to get my development server and workstation ready:

  1. Installed Ubuntu Linux 8.10 on my workstation
  2. Updated the Debian Linux installation on my development server
  3. Installed development tools like Eclipse and Subversion

I tried installing the driver for my Matrox graphics card in my workstation, but it seems that the version of the X Server is too new. So I can either wait for Matrox to release a new version that will be compatible with the newer X Server or downgrade my X Server to a version that the driver does support. Or alternatively, I could just install an older version of Ubuntu all together.