SysCP - Blog - SysCP 1.3

Status - Report: April

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:25:21 +0200

Hi out there,

I just wanted to give you a short summary, what is happening @ SysCP currently.

The installer for SysCP 1.3 (the upcoming 1.4) is being rewritten by me from scratch at the moment. It's a phing-based CLI-application which allows you to:

Install / update the Panel
Alter the daemons - configurationfiles of supported distributions (yeah, no more manual editing ;) )
Install / delete modules while managing the dependencies on-the-fly
Grab modules directly from our (yet to be written) website
Update modules

CHTEKK is writing the most basic module of all our modules: the users - module. It will allow adding/editing/removing customers / resellers / admins, move customers between admins, give very detailed permissions and do all the important users - handling. For more informations: ask CHTEKK himself *g*

So long, stay tuned,
Florian

Working 1.3 and ML again

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:09:40 +0100

Hi again,

As I told you in my last post, SysCP 1.3 was totally broken due to dependency-updates. CHTEKK fixed that a few minutes ago, the only problem we have now: SysCP itself is working with E_STRICT - but some dependencies not :( We mostly develop with E_STRICT, but since i.e. PEAR::Log isn't E_STRICT compatible header-redirects will not work.

Another issue I just solved: our mailinglist is working again. It had some problems with ns-lookups, we changed our IPs on the FOSDEM and we made a mistake in the /etc/hosts (*slapping flo*). Mailman pushed out the mails for nearly a month all at once, sorry for that.

So long,
Florian

MySQL-module finished

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:58:51 +0100

Hi,

I just finished the MySQL-modul, it's working like perfectly. It's just impossible to test it, since we (in special: CHTEKK) updated all our dependent libs to a more recent version and now SysCP 1.3 is totally broken. This had to be done and will be fixed soon.

The next module I will put some work into will be the modules-manager (again) and the installer, Both need some changes and enhancements. Currently you need a lot of knowledge of the inner workings to get a basic running version, not very comfortable *g

So long,
Florian

MySQL-module - Work in progress ;)

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:04:10 +0100

Hi,

I just need to finish the templates for the MySQL-module and the possibility to add accounts and databases is working properly. I think I'll checkin the first draft in a few hours. Some other work has to be done, too ;)

Another topic which was talked about here in the office was the design of SysCP. It's some kind of old-fashioned and a fresh design would be really cool. Any webdesigner reading this? We could need help or just hints how the design could be improved.

So long,
Florian

My first days @ INWX

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:21:37 +0100

Hi,

I just wanted to tell you, that I started working @ INWX on monday. Basically my work until now was installing my working- / development- / testing-environment. The working-climate is really cool and my colleagues are nice. It's a lot of fun - and the TODO-list is very long ;)

Of course I "restarted" my work on SysCP 1.3/1.4. The MySQL - module should be finished soon, adding / deleting accounts is working, next will be the databases itself (yes, accounts / databases will be divided).

That's it for the moment, more to come soon ;)

So long,
Florian

FOSDEM 2007

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 11:57:57 +0100

Heyho,

As flo has written in his last post, CHTEKK, flo and I were attending the FOSDEM 2007 in Brussels. It was a very nice meeting with some very interessting talks. The hostel was very bad and dirty, the university not the best, but it was very funny to meet the guys, you daily talk and work with ;)

Of course a groupphoto was made, I put it in the extended article and on the "People" - wikipage. From left to right: CHTEKK (Luca Longinotti), me (EleRas, Florian Aders) and flo (Florian Lippert). You can see: we used the shirts flo told you about *g*

A bit coding was done, too. flo added a docroot for deactivated customers, enhanced the human sorting and grouped the settings. I wrote a script which automates our releases, before this all the packaging, writing the announcements and such stuff had to be manually. We three also decided some steps regarding managing customers exceding their traffic-limit. The page will automatically be turned off (and the deactivated docroot will be shown) and all other services will be deactivated, too. This can be turned off be default and per customer / reseller. Some other things we talked about: Managing of the modules in 1.4 from our side (we most likely will provide a database on syscp.org where all available modules can be listed and such stuff), permissionmanagement in 1.4 and some other minor decissions. The SysCP 1.2.x - series will continue a while until no more bugs can be found and the "easy to be build in" - stuff will be written for 1.2.x, too. All those changes will be ported to 1.4, too (if they are not in there already ;) ).

So long,
Florian

Continue reading "FOSDEM 2007"

Merry Christmas

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 12:31:11 +0100

Merry christmas to everybody out there!

A small update regarding SysCP 1.3:
The customer-side of the ftp-module is now working properly, just the admin-side (creating one account while adding a customer and deleting all accounts when the customer is deleted) as well as the cron-side (save the traffic) is missing.

CHTEKK added user-properties (homedir, uid etc) and rights for users yesterday, now you can again login as either customer or admin - this depends if the user is in the group "is_admin" ;)
You are able to create different groups, assign rights to them and then put users in these groups. Multiple groups per user are possible. The frontend is still missing, but the backend (database / evaluation) is ready :)

Once again: merry christmas, be hapy and enjoy these days :)

so long,
Florian

Statusreport for 1.3

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 02:37:41 +0100

Today and yesterday CHTEKK and I did a lot of work on 1.3.

CHTEKK implemented the functionality to start / stop / reboot vservers and improved the listing.

I converted the add.php and edit.php for the ftp-module to propel and together with CHTEKK we made some coding-definitions how a module / action should be designed. This will be written down soon and published to our wiki

but now I'm a bit tired and I'll go to bed ;)

So long,
Florian

P.S.: It's a pleasure to code with CHTEKK *g

vserver-module is growing

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 01:50:18 +0100

Hello,

CHTEKK did some work over the last days and finally he got something visible: The overview of configured vservers is working. All the data is directly fetched via XML-RPC from the linux-vserver-daemon. He (CHTEKK) also provided a screenshot to prove that it's working. For this screenshot 22 xml-rpc requests were made to the daemon, needing 8% of the whole request time - so getting the data from the daemon is very fast.

And I started to convert the ftp-module, found some time to work - tomorrow we will go further :)

So long,
Florian

Yes, we're still alive

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 16:15:00 +0100

As you may have noticed, we didn't write anything in this blog during the last days.
This has one simple reason: time is, as often, currently for many of us (the developers of SysCP) a very rare resource.
CHTEKK will try to get the "user" and the "linux-vserver" - modules working during the next ten days. We'll see if he's successful ;) I'll try to get through my work as soon as possible, but sadly (for SysCP sad, for me good) I have some other projects around.
If you want to see who's rewriting which module for SysCP 1.4, you can have a look here.

So long,
Florian

About suPHP and aliasdomains

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:08:11 +0100

Sorry for the delay with the following, but I had to do some other things in real life ;)

I just converted eremit's suPHP - module to the new languagefiles and design. It's now fully up-to-date and can be used again with the most recent trunk/syscp-1.3 (currently revision 931). The contributions for 1.3 / 1.4 can be found in their own branch in the svn - repository: http://svn.syscp.org/branches/contributions (The suPHP - module can be found here).

Next thing on my todo-list will be the aliasdomain - patch made by prodigy7. Thanks to croessner for rebuilding the diff against trunk. I looked into it yesterday evening and found only minor bugs, I'll fix them directly after applying (mostly things which have todo with the languagefiles ;) ).

So long,
Florian

Trunkmerge of 1.3

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 10:22:13 +0100

Great news on the development for 1.3: I managed to merge all changes CHTEKK and I made over the last weeks to trunk/syscp-1.3. It was very outdated :P Some of the new things which are now in the trunk:

Converted the SysCP 1.2.14 design - now the old design AND the new designs are available in 1.3
Added a modules-manager, which also handels module-dependencies
The languagefiles were split to satisfy the modules-idea
Basic languageeditor was added, this languageeditor handles the splitted languagefiles very well (I needed only 20 minutes to translate the half of SysCP 1.3 into german)
ValidationHandlers were added, now they must be implemented on all inputdata, this will happen together with the new database-layout
Specialsettings in vhosts are written correct, was a small bug fixed by Janosch on the mailinglist
Plugins were added, They will help us to improve the modules
XmlRpcHandler was added, this is needed for thelinux-vserver - support
Many minor bugs smashed

Today I want to build a few mockups regarding the inline-help, just to figure out what looks best ;)

So long,
Florian

Updates on languagesplitting

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 20:11:00 +0200

There is nothing special today, we just estimated that we need approx 15 - 21 hours for finishing the languagesplitting for 1.4. It took my around one hour today for one module and 13 modules are still needed. But I'm not alone while doing this, so we hope to be faster than this. When we finished the splitting we will merge the stuff into trunk, so stay tuned ;)

So long,
Florian (EleRas)

More planned stuff for 1.3

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 22:18:41 +0200

And back to some blogging (jeah, blogging is funny, that's the first blog i've ever written *g*).

Since Michael Mittermeier was on TV this evening, 9 hours of work and two flys flying around his room, flo didn't get to work on SysCP today, that's very sad :(. I for myself hope getting his ass to motion if I post often about the 1.2.15, 'cause technically it's mostly done :P (okay, as he told me now, he did something during the commercials and he catched one fly now, so there is hope :D )

I for myself have some thoughts about 1.3 not mentioned yet to the public, the team mostly knows them, so I want to share them with you (please remember, these are ideas, possible they will not be included with SysCP directly!):

Continue reading "More planned stuff for 1.3"

Thoughts about mail-handling

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 21:22:00 +0200

Today we had some discussion about the topic "How shall we handle mails in SysCP 1.4". We didn't say "that's how we do it", just basic thoughts, which I want to tell you now.

First thing: We want to have a module for managing spam / virus-settings (most likely with amavisd-new as a backend). No idea yet how it should look like, but we want to have one :D

Another thing I was missing in SysCP is the managing of passwords (and other settings) of emailaccounts. Currently there are two possibilities how a password for an account can be changed: By the "accountuser" with the webmailer if it supports this or by the "domainowner" managing this with SysCP. There are cases where both cases are not possible:

The webmailer doesn't support this (i.e. roundcube)
The email-account is for another user who should not have access to the SysCP-account

I had the idea, that we should add a level next to the admin / reseller / customer - areas, namely an "email" - area. You login to this area with your email-address and password and in this area you can change the email-account-password, define redirects and (if the spam / virusmodule is enabled) manage your spam-settings.

What do you think about these ideas? Comments are welcome ;)

So long,
Florian