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[Syllable] The free desktop and server operating system family

Kaj
28-Aug-2010
[2114x12]
Your goals are quite suited to Syllable
Although both Desktop and Server are designed as general-purpose 
systems, we're obviously about thirty thousand software packages 
behind on the likes of Debian. On Server, because it's a Linux, we 
can install many of those packages from third-party package managers, 
but then we can't guarantee their stability because they're not integrated 
with Syllable
Much of the integration of Syllable comes from my build system. I 
always meant it to be able to build varieties, of which we now have 
two major ones: Desktop and Server
Server is not yet very suitable for people such as Graham, who have 
lists of requirements that vary a lot from year to year because they 
want to cherry-pick it from the entire open source pool. But if you 
have a well defined set of software choices, and especially if you 
would like to package that up appliance style for customers, Syllable 
is a good base to do that on
If you're interested enough, I'm available to produce a customised 
package of Syllable
Are there any open source packages you need besides SQLite?
I'm not sure what your workload is, but we have been running a small 
website provider on Server for two years now, without any system-related 
problems
Server 0.3 was meant to enable that and 0.4 was meant to mature that 
functionality. We did improve security during that time, and improvements 
such as those were rolled into 0.4
Security could still be improved, but we are running the Try REBOL 
site on it to test it, which allows the public to run almost any 
REBOL expression, and although many tried, we haven't had any breaches 
yet :-)
http://tryrebol.esperconsultancy.nl/
Server 0.4 uses the latest stable Linux kernel instead of the bleeding 
edge one, so that should also help stability
Syllable should run very well on hardware such as the Advantech
ddharing
29-Aug-2010
[2126]
Thanks. The only open source package missing for my current project 
is sqlite. I downloaded the SO binary from http://sqlite.org, but 
haven't tested it yet because I still need to purchase the REBOL/SDK 
for Linux. My Windows SDK license file doesn't work. :) As you know, 
REBOL/Core doesn't support library access.
Kaj
29-Aug-2010
[2127x2]
Yes, I even recently requested this limitation to be lifted. I suspect 
it's an oversight, because View should have the library access
We're using View on our graphical version of Server, but that's a 
development version using binaries from GoboLinux
ddharing
29-Aug-2010
[2129x2]
I thought library access might have been left out to keep REBOL/Core 
as small as possible. That's still a great selling point.
Kaj, in your documentation, you mentioned how to start Cheyenne and 
the FTP server automatically by uncommenting lines in their respective 
start scripts. On startup, where are these scripts being called? 
I ask because I would like to add applications to run at startup. 
If it's a standard Linux thing, that's fine, I can look it up. I 
noticed that the directory structure, though, is different from Linux 
installations I've seen in the past.
Kaj
30-Aug-2010
[2131x20]
Yes, that is one of Syllable's selling points. :-) On Server, startup 
is currently a mix of traditional Linux start scripts and our own. 
The traditional ones are from the Linux From Scratch project, so 
you could refer to their documentation
Cheyenne has no traditional Linux packaging, so it's in the Syllable 
format. You can make your own resource package in the same format 
to add extra start scripts in a modular way. You would add a package 
directory under /resources/:
cd /resources
s mkdir my-package
Start scripts go into an extra subdirectory:
/resources/my-package/tasks/
Most start scripts such as for a server would go here:
/resources/my-package/tasks/start/
In some cases you need to set extra variables in the user's environment. 
A script for that would go here:
/resources/my-package/tasks/setup/
Once the directory structure is set up, a most common start script 
could be edited like this:
s mcedit /resources/my-package/start/my-package.sh
Once all the files are in the package, you need to register it:
s package register my-package
It's then symlinked into the main package pool. You can see all the 
registered Syllable-style start scripts here:
ll /resources/index/tasks/start/
All those start scripts are called during system startup from the 
Linux From Scratch start scripts
The setup scripts are called from /etc/profile, so typically at system 
startup and at each user log-in into a console shell
Sorry, forgot the tasks directory in the start script:
/resources/my-package/tasks/start/my-package.sh
ddharing
30-Aug-2010
[2151x2]
Thanks, that's very helpful.
I will be documenting the installation and task configuration procedures 
as part of my project. The installation will be specific to our hardware. 
I will probably be able to roll that back to the Syllable community 
in some form.
Kaj
31-Aug-2010
[2153]
That would be very nice
Kaj
1-Sep-2010
[2154x3]
I've upgraded the Try REBOL website
The Linux is now a graphical development version based on Syllable 
Server 0.4. Cheyenne is much newer, almost the latest version. REBOL 
3 is much newer, the latest version for Linux, which is Alpha 99
http://tryrebol.esperconsultancy.nl/
ddharing
2-Sep-2010
[2157x3]
Looks good. Very snappy.
How is the graphical version of Server coming along?
What kind of hardware is "Try REBOL" running on?
Pekr
2-Sep-2010
[2160x2]
PC ... of some kind :-)
Kaj - what is the vitality of Syllable project? Still the same team 
size, etc.?
Kaj
2-Sep-2010
[2162x2]
No, it's always changing over the years, but generally, the size 
is still the same
For example, the first goal for a graphical server was to port the 
Syllable Desktop GUI to Server, but that project is stalled for the 
moment being because the developer is gone