Help Shape Maps.Ubuntu.com

About either months ago, I had started on a fun little project to raise awareness of how widely used Ubuntu Server is around the world. The result was http://maps.ubuntu.com/ a web tool allowing anyone using Ubuntu Server to "mark" his location on a global map. This was launched with celebrations for 10.04.1, and thousands of cities were marked (woohoo). The project code was open-sourced and lives at https://launchpad.net/mapuntu/trunk

It's been a while since the project was last updated, a few days ago, an Ubuntu community member ( hey Ronnie ) stepped up to re-shape the mapuntu project and relaunch it into an inspiring map that helps anyone record and locate Ubuntu events around the globe! The first part of that effort is creating a proper back-end API, everyone is encouraged to click that link and leave comments. If you are inspired by that project, and would like to help, please get involved! Things you can do to help include

• Review and enhance the proposed API
• Help write python code to implement the backend api
• Write html/css/js for the front-end
• Play with the code, test it, report bugs, adapt to your own website!

If you want to talk more about this, Please join #ubuntu-locoteams on IRC and ping Ronnie or myself (kim0, also on #ubuntu-cloud).

Cloud Python hackers wanted

A while back I had blogged (yes the one with the big uncle Sam pic) asking for people interested in working on a python tool to help migrate ebs AMIs across ec2 regions. Since then the project has progressed a bit:

- Project page is now: https://launchpad.net/ec2-migrate-ebs-ami
- Project is now able to launch two utility instances in the two specified regions, and mount the source volume in the source instance
- What remains is attaching a destination volume, and sync'ing over contents. More details can be found on the blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/cloud-server-n-ec2-migrate-region

Development pace has now slowed down significantly, as such I am renewing the call. This is a great way to start getting involved with cloud development, and to join the Ubuntu Cloud and server communities! joining in is "easy", you don't even have to know lots of python to start hacking! The steps are very well defined, and I am happy to help with all steps along the way. If you are thinking about it, go ahead and get in touch with me right now (kim0 on irc, kim0 AT ubuntu.com) or join today's irc meeting (6pm-UTC #ubuntu-cloud https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuCloudMeeting) and start discussing how you can get involved

Volunteer QA to Ubuntu Server

A great way to help contribute to Ubuntu and ensure Ubuntu Server remains the rock solid platform that it is, is by committing to helping perform specific QA tests in predefined scenarios. If you're interested, the following test cases specifically need someone to step up and commit to them

• Install (JeOS on ESX) QA Testcase
• Install (JeOS on KVM) QA Testcase
• iSCSI Authenticated Root Installation QA Testcase
• iSCSI Unauthenticated Root Installation QA Testcase

These tests are being marked as NOT required for ISO release exit criteria for Ubuntu Server. Quoting Robbie Williamson "Our decision was based on the lack of consistently available resources to verify these configurations. With that said, we are keeping them optional"

Robbie adds "Anyone wishing to reverse this decision, please contact me directly.  I have no problem adding them back along with your agreement to run them for each ISO release"

Again that's a great way to contribute to Ubuntu. If interested please contact Robbie directly, or contact me (leave a comment right here) and I will help get you on track

Cloud Community Flash, Adnane

Being my last post of 2010 (Hello 2011!) I wanted it to be special, thus I would like to thank every member and contributor to the Ubuntu cloud community, the whole Ubuntu community, and more generally Linux and the rest of the Open-Source world!

Let's meet Adnane Belmadiaf. Adnane is a committed Ubuntu community member, who has been rocking for the past few months. He's done some great work on the Ubuntu cloud portal. I asked him for a few words about himself, and here's what he has to say

AB: Hi, I'm Adnane, a 22 years old Ubuntu user based in Morocco. I was born to be a Web developer (Yes i am a CSS ninja XD) and I am a happy Linux user since 2008. I started actively contributing in 2009. I participated in many projects for Ubuntu such as (The Ubuntu Manual Project, LoCo Directory, and the Ubuntu Cloud Portal). It is a very good experience for me because I learnt and still learn a lot of things from others! The Ubuntu community is something that I’m very passionate about. It’s just awesome to see how it grows and evolves.it’s an inspiring environment to be part of!

AK: What keeps you motivated contributing to Ubuntu?

There are a lot of things that help me to stay motivated, but first and foremost - it's the great people i am working with, the atmosphere is always fun and everybody around you is there for support. You know that you're not alone. The appreciation for the work i have done - When a project/work is done there is that quite nice "Thank You" that keeps me motivated all the time. I'm constantly challenged to learn new things and I simply enjoy coding and solving problems. I would tell to everyone who want to be involved on the community, that patience and good work are the keys to success. it’s almost one year since i joined the community and the results are quite surprising. I now think I am ready to apply for an Ubuntu membership, which I am currently pursuing. Wish me luck :)

Ubuntu Cloud Tech Content

I had sent out calls to the Ubuntu cloud community asking what kind of technical content or training materials (tutorials, screencasts ..etc) they were interested in seeing. I got quite some feedback that boils down to the following being the top 10 topics

• Modifying Ubuntu images and rebundling to EC2
• Creating images from scratch with vmbuilder
• P2V and V2V conversions (Physical, VirtualBox, VMware...)
• Advanced cloud-init (custom handlers, multi-server, includes)
• Provisioning and deploying Web applications (e.g. rails, django) to the cloud
• Best practices for upgrading a server install cross-release
• Load balanced LAMP multi-tier installation
• Best practices around creating cloud instance snapshots
• Backing up live cloud instances
• Restoring cloud servers from backup/snapshots

Now, what's a better way to spend your holidays than hacking together content addressing those needs! Yup, nothing beats helping your fellow Ubuntuians :) So if you're feeling like contributing content to any of the above, drop me a comment or shoot me an email (kim0 AT ubuntu.com). If you'd like to contribute to some other content, do grab me as well! If you're unsure, or want to talk about how you can get involved (there's always a way) tune in to the weekly cloud community hour