Have you translated a bit of Eclipse lately?

Although Eclipse Juno will be released in three months, did you know that for many spoken languages, it is already translated at 75% and more? Thanks to the Babel project, translating Eclipse is easy and almost fun. If you have an Eclipse account, head over to the translation tool at http://babel.eclipse.org/, pick a language, pick a project, a version, and a file, and translate away.

If some English terms confuse you, simply select them and Babel will search for translation hints (shown below). To top it all off, your translated strings are ported over to other Eclipse projects if an exact match is found for the English string. So even if you're working on Eclipse 4.2, you're in fact translating Eclipse all the way back to 3.6, and perhaps even contributing to all projects, from birt to webtools.



When you're done translating, head over to the Babel download page and pick up the next Nightly Build and see your favourite Eclipse projects translated!

Wednesday's outage explained

Last Wednesday just after 9:30am Eastern time my SSH console to dev.eclipse.org became unresponsive. Both our primary AND secondary NFS servers were no longer responding, and as a result most of eclipse.org was off the air. Since the failed servers are physically elsewhere, it's not like we can easily walk over to the console to see what has happened.

Usually, when one server ceases to respond, the problem is with the server. When two servers on the same network segment cease to respond at the same time, it's anything but the server. But Matt and I took no chances and split up: I investigated the network side and the possibility of a kernel DoS/exploit, and he hopped in his car to go see what's happening on the server side. Fortunately, the servers are only 10 minutes away.

As it turns out, the Linux kernel crashed on both servers, each within minutes of each other. Here's a sample of what we saw in the logs:

Feb 15 09:34:58 kernel: [18446743997.844366] WARNING: at [snip]/kernel/sched.c:3878 find_busiest_group+0xc79/0xce0()
Feb 15 09:34:58 kernel: [18446743997.844370] Hardware name: X8DT6
Feb 15 09:34:58 kernel: [18446743997.844417] Pid: 51, comm: events/0 Not tainted

Both servers are physically identical and were brought online about the same time, so this whole thing smells like something I've heard of before. To make me feel even better, the Kernel bug that closely matches what we've experienced is still open today:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16991

After restarting both servers, we discovered that our rather large OpenLDAP server's database has some data corruption, and some specific operations cause it to segfault. Those numerous LDAP crashes meant it was difficult for anyone to get anything done on Wednesday.

It's all fun :) Any bets on when this will happen again?

EclipseCon location change -- poll results

Last week I issued a webmaster "whacky poll", asking you your thoughts on the location change for EclipseCon this year. The results are in!

97 /doesnt-matter-where-it-is-as-long-as-there-is-enough-beer

Earning the #1 spot on the poll, I think it's clear what the priorities are...



93 /doesnt-matter-where-it-is-as-long-as-the-awesome-p2-guys-are-there

That wasn't actually an option on the poll.. However, it seems to have gone viral. Or maybe someone was stuffing the ballot box :)



50 /no-matter-where-eclipsecon-is-webmasters-will-still-buy-us-beer-right?

I think that is one of those "life certainties"...



38 /yay-less-time-on-an-airplane
27 /oh-no-more-time-on-an-airplane

Looks like more people will be spending less time on a plane. In other news, 27 people will be coming from California :)



38 /the-weather-better-be-warm-and-the-beer-cold
29 /if-its-not-in-california-im-not-going

You know, for the last few EclipseCons in California, the weather wasn't all that warm. I hope Washington treats us right.


In the "why-not-do-eclipsecon-in-(insert-tropical-exotic-location-here)" category:

• Melbourne, Australia
• Ibisa
• Fiji
  

I'm sorry, but Toronto doesn't qualify as either tropical nor exotic...


Others have also improvised their own entries... Such as this go-green one:

1 /yay-less-carbon-dioxide-maybe-we-can-survive-on-this-planet


1 /hi-denis-i-will-ask-my-obeos-colleagues-to-buy-you-some-beers

You can always count on the Obeo guys to give back to the community.



A few people wrote in to say they couldn't attend this year, but this entry stood out:

1 /alblue-cant-make-it-again-will-cover-remotely

That's a shame -- we'll be missing the unique ties again this year.


That wraps up my whacky poll for EclipseCon! I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there.

EclipseCon Poll: What do you think of the location change?

I haven't done a whacky poll in a long time, so there's no better time than now.

You all know that this year, our favourite Eclipse gathering is moving to a new location. After so many years in California, what do you think of this move?

Cast your vote by clickety-clicking the links below. I'll post up the results tomorrow.

http://eclipsecon.org/the-weather-better-be-warm-and-the-beer-cold.wbmstr

http://eclipsecon.org/yay-less-time-on-an-airplane.wbmstr

http://eclipsecon.org/oh-no-more-time-on-an-airplane.wbmstr

http://eclipsecon.org/if-its-not-in-california-im-not-going.wbmstr

http://eclipsecon.org/no-matter-where-eclipsecon-is-webmasters-will-still-buy-us-beer-right.wbmstr

http://eclipsecon.org/why-not-do-eclipsecon-in-(insert-tropical-exotic-location-here).wbmstr

Authentication changes at Eclipse.org

As you may have heard, we've changed our authentication scheme at Eclipse.org. Instead of having Committer accounts in one database and Bugzilla users in another, both of those databases have been brought together.

We did this for many reasons: it felt strange to ask users to create a "Bugzilla" account to be able to participate on Forums; it was confusing; our sites, such as Wiki and Marketplace, needed to keep track of two auth sources; Eclipse Committers essentially had two accounts, which made no sense; for every new software tool we'd install, we needed to write custom plugins to allow authentication against the Bugzilla database.

Now everything is consolidated, and although we don't have a complete Single Sign On solution, this change has paved the way towards that. It was also a required change in order to deploy the Gerrit code review system.

As with any migration, it wasn't without its bumps and glitches, but overall it went well. Thanks to everyone who tested, re-tested and wrote in to report problems and bugs.

Meeting the people is what this is all about

I attended the Ottawa DemoCamp yesterday, where a bunch of Ottawa Eclipse community members gathered for a bit of food, a bit of beer and a lot of cake to celebrate Eclipse's 10th birthday.

These informal gatherings are not only about food, beer (and cake) and idle chat -- there is some quality learning happening at these events, and a great opportunity to meet some interesting people.

Yesterday I made some new friends who work on Eclipse technologies for the federal government of Canada right here in Ottawa. The Department of National Defense, no less (yes, Canada has one of those).

I also had a short but interesting talk with Ken Hussey about his work on Puppet-related tools at Cloudsmith. I've had Puppet on my list of tools to investigate for quite some time now, and seeing Cloudsmith in that space may help precipitate things.

A gentleman named Antoine also talked to me about Sonar -- a code quality and analysis platform. He made it sound really good, and the screenshots make it look even better. Definitely on the radar.

Ericsson was also in the house, and I had a short conversation with someone whose name I unfortunately cannot remember. But she was very nice, and explained that they use Eclipse and the CDT. I wanted to introduce her to Mr. CDT ("I pity the fool") himself, since he was also present yesterday -- but alas, that never happened.

Lastly, being seen in public with such local celebrities as Kim Moir, John Arthorne and Pascal Rapicault is always a great way to boost one's image.

Cheers!

Crowdsourced translations make Eclipse in English better too

A few years ago I actively worked on the Babel project -- a crowdsourced solution to Eclipse globalization. Since then the translation tool has been doing its job -- allowing the community to contribute translated strings, which are then turned into downloadable language packs.

Lately, one of our contributors in Japan has been opening a series of bugs outlining issues with the English strings in the message files. Pure awesome.

You have to love the power of OSS -- the more eyes we have looking at code, the better it becomes.

My first EclipseCon Europe!

I'm in Germany this week for my first EclipseCon Europe. I had heard rumors that the Wifi's performance wasn't comparable to that of EclipseCon NA so I came here to help.

Just to be clear: I'm not involved in the network or Wifi setup at either conference, but I do bring a copy of download.eclipse.org with me. I then set up a mirror and some redirects so that your Eclipse bits aren't sent over the Internet.

This morning was a typical EclipseCon Day 1: although the conference Wifi is great, as attendees start up Eclipse, the p2 downloads pile up against the poor Internet connection, making it nearly impossible to do anything else. But after some caches, redirects and tweaking compression on www.eclipsecon.org, the local mirror is putting out over 800KB/sec and the rest of the world feels accessible again.

I'll keep monitoring the situation throughout the conference and tweak content as I can to help make sure your Wifi experience at econ2011 is the best it can be.

10 years of Eclipse as seen by /etc/passwd

If you've worked on a *nix system, you're likely familiar with the /etc/passwd file -- the main list of accounts on that system. Although eclipse.org does not use the passwd file for user accounts, examining the compatible getent passwd tells the story about who was involved in setting up the original dev.eclipse.org way back in 2001.

Keep in mind that we delete accounts of committers who have been completely decommitterized; therefore, the people you see mentioned below are still active participants in the Eclipse community even after 10 years.

First up, the standard root, mysql and other system accounts, then here's what I see:

500:kmoir

I wasn't there in 2001, but judging by her UID=500, I'm guessing Kim Moir was the one who inserted the first Linux CD in the drive and installed a computer called "dev.eclipse.org".

Next up:
512:mmartin

Mark was a webmaster@eclipse.org for a long time. Although he and his account are no longer active on dev.eclipse.org, he gave me my webmaster training at the IBM Queensview lab back in October 2004. So his account stays for my own nostalgia :-)

Judging by Mark's UID=512, I'm guessing a few other webmasters were blessed with accounts on dev.eclipse.org before his.

Next up:
1000:droy
1002:jeff

I am an imposter in that list, since Jeff McAffer predates me by a few years. But I have root@eclipse.org, so I faked my UID=1000. Deal with it :-)

After creating Jeff's account, Kim wasted no time getting things set up:
7003:cvs
7004:viewcvs
7005:anonymous

The jump from UID=1000 to UID=7003 is likely an artifact of an IBM security policy for user ids, since there is nothing below 7003.

Then, we have the first Eclipse committers:
7008:pmulet
7012:mcq
7020:dj
7026:johna
7033:ggayed
7034:veronika
7036:steve
7037:silenio
7043:dmegert
7047:daudel
7048:jeromel
7050:oliviert

Although some of them are not very active anymore, some of them still are, but one thing they all have in common is that they helped shape Eclipse as you see it today.

Mailing lists on dev.eclipse.org came a bit later in 2002 with the creation of a 'mailman' account, followed shortly by a 'webmaster' account. At that time, I'm guessing the real webmaster became a few people who perhaps occasionally shared the job.

7336:david_williams

David Williams and some of the still-active WTP committers are listed next, which likely happened in 2003-2004 when the WTP top-level project was created. Today, David Williams is a name recognized more than even Eclipse itself.

A bunch of BIRT committers are listed in succession, which matches up to 2004's creation of the top-level project of the same name.

8249:mmilinkovich

Although Mike was on the Eclipse scene long before I was, he only got an account on dev.eclipse.org when the Phoenix project was created and he became a committer. Bye Bye Frames!

The Eclipse superstar with the most letter Z's in his name... circa 2005 ... followed by our own Conference Queen Anne Jacko.
8444:caniszczyk
8636:ajacko

I could go on... But I wanted to highlight the first years. Besides, I must be the only sysadmin dumb enough to put user id's and UIDs in plain text on a blog.

Fast forward six years... and we're up to UID=9826. Who will have lucky account UID=10000 ?

Hudson building Hudson

Ok, so I'm easily impressed. I think it's cool.