GTD with RTM

Following my colleague and friend Mathias’s advice, I’ve been using GTD (Getting Things Done) to keep myself organized for some time now. A recurrent question is “what software are you using ?”. I tried several programs, but nothing could quite fit my system and decentralized use.

Lots of folks are now pushing GTG (Getting Things Gnome). While I see a lot of potential in GTG, it’s still a task manager (everything is a task) rather than a flexible list manager. GTD uses lists of things that are specifically not tasks (the inbox, the maybe lists, the project list…).

Mathias recommended using Remember the Milk (RTM), a highly flexible web service with lots of APIs (and more). I originally set up something along the lines of this reference post, but it failed for me in several areas:

• Parsing Inbox was painful (no shortcut key to move tasks to other lists)
• No “tickler file” approach allowing you to forget about an item for some time
• My projects are using work items in Ubuntu blueprints, keeping them in sync was also painful

So I changed it, here is my new setup:

• New items are created in the “Inbox”, without tags.
• A @ToProcess smartlist, using “list:Inbox and (isTagged:false or (tag:hide and dueBefore:tomorrow))”, contains the stuff I need to parse during next Process phase
• Process phase: for each item in @ToProcess:
  • If it’s actionable and takes less than 2 minutes, do it, mark it as completed (<c> shortcut)
  • If it’s actionable but needs more time, use <s> shortcut to tag it with appropriate context (“me” if only me is required)
  • If you don’t want to process it now, but want to file it in your tickler file for it to reappear in two weeks: use <d> “two weeks” to set a Due Date, then use <s> and tag it “hide”
  • Delegate tasks by using <s> and tag it “wait” + some context of who you’re delegating to
  • As soon as it’s tagged, the item disappears from the @ToProcess list, which is good !
  • If it needs to go to one of the Maybe lists, move it there
• My @NextActions smartlist uses “isTagged:true and not (tag:wait or tag:hide)”
• My @WaitingFor smartlist just uses “tag:wait”

I don’t maintain anymore “one list per project”, which was painful to me. I just use a “Projects” list that is a regular GTD Projects list I use during weekly reviews. I use multiple “Maybe” lists (one for ideas needing incubating, one for technologies to look at, one for blog article ideas, etc.).

A few remarks:

• I use Google Calendar for actions occurring at a specific time
• I use the priority shortcuts to give a sense of urgency that helps me quickly pick the right next action from the @NextActions list
• I use context tags for everyone: for example, I mark “jib” all tasks that require jib to be completed. When I talk to that person, I use the RTM tag cloud to quickly bring up a “tag:jib” search to get a list of all subjects I need him for, but also a reminder of tasks I delegated to him.
• I try to have my inbox at hand all the time, to be able to quickly drop there a quick idea that crosses my mind. I use RTM google calendar plugin, RTM netvibes module and also coded a “rtm” tool using their python API, for direct use when I’m hacking in a terminal. All create items in the default list (Inbox) and without tagging, so it just works.
• I also use an ActivityReport smartlist (completedWithin:”1 week of today”)

Hope it helps

Nominate your favorite Ubuntu Server papercuts !

An Ubuntu Server LTS release stays around for 5 years, so during the development cycle there is an increased focus in QA, bugfixing and stability. During Lucid UDS in Dallas, we discussed of various ways of translating that effort into clear actions. One of those discussions was geared towards improving the Ubuntu Server user (sysadmin) experience: we could focus on fixing lots of minor annoyances, low-hanging-fruit bugs that traditionally get less attention than others. On the footsteps of the excellent One hundred papercuts project (from the User experience team), this project was named Server papercuts.

This project is led by the Ubuntu Server community, for the Ubuntu Server community. We discussed the implementation details during our weekly IRC meetings, a specific Launchpad project was created, together with a team to triage the candidates (with a cool badge).

Now it’s time to nominate your personal pet bug, your favorite minor annoyance, your preferred PITA ! Here is the process to follow:

1. If the papercut isn’t already filed as an Ubuntu bug in Launchpad, file a bug against the affected Ubuntu package
2. Look up the bug you want to nominate as a Server papercut, then click on “Also affects project”
3. Click “Choose another project” and type in “server-papercuts”, click “Continue”
4. Click on “Add to Bug report”

That’s it ! Your bug will now show up on the Server papercuts buglist and we’ll Confirm or Invalid-ate it soon, when we start getting a good list.

Here are a few guidelines on what makes a good Server papercut:

• Bug affects a server package
• Bug has an obvious and easy fix
• Bug makes the life of the sysadmin more miserable

Here are a few guidelines on what doesn’t make a good Server papercut:

• New features
• Large-scale improvements that affect multiple packages
• Your solution is likely to result in a new papercut for someone else

For more details, complete acceptation criteria is described in the project spec.

Good hunt !

Karmic Java contents

I recently generated the Java contents file for karmic. It describes all the JARs and all the Java classes shipped in 9.10 packages. It is very useful for Java packagers to find if a given class they miss already ships somewhere in Ubuntu. You can download it here. More information on Java contents files is available on the Ubuntu Java team wiki.

UDS Lucid

This week, Dallas hosts the Ubuntu Developer Summit for the Lucid Lynx release. This is the key moment where we define what will be done for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and discuss how it will be done. There will be plenty of interesting sessions in all the tracks, and sometimes I wish I could attend two sessions at the same time. In the server track, Monday will have a special focus on applications, Tuesday on cloud images, Wednesday on Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, Thursday on infrastructure sessions, and Friday on testing.

I’ll just highlight one session that I think represent the QA focus of this release: “Server usability papercuts”. The 100 papercuts project focused on common annoyances, easy-to-fix bugs that hinder the user experience in Ubuntu Desktop. It was a great idea, and I think a great success. Several members of the server team think this can be transposed to the Ubuntu Server product as well. Some server packages may be counter-intuitive, suffer from bad default configurations or force the systems administrator to stupid repetitive tasks. Some other packages might not work well together, while it is good practice to use them together. We could identify some of those and fix them, to improve the general server experience for this release. Interested ? Join us today, 15:00 Dallas time !

Run your own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, part 3

In part 1 and part 2 of this series, we saw how to set up a minimal cloud infrastructure and bundle a basic image (and test it). In this final article, we’ll play with our cloud from an end-user perspective.

Setting up the web UI

First of all, before accepting end users, as the administrator of the cloud you will have to setup a few things on the web UI. Using your favorite browser, you should:

• Open https://cloudcontroller:8443/
• Log in using the default user/password: admin/admin
• Change the default password, setup the cloud admin email address
• Logout

Setting up the cloud client

We’ll use Ubuntu 9.10 beta for this purpose, as it includes all the needed packages, and it’s so great ! You will have to install the following packages:

$ sudo apt-get install euca2ools unzip
 

Registering on UEC, getting credentials

As the end-user, fire up your favorite browser and:

• Open https://cloudcontroller:8443/
• Click “Apply” and enter your end user details

If you set up the email correctly on your cloud controller, it should send an email to the cloud admin address asking him to approve that request. Follow the instructions on that email to approve the account as the admin.

You should then get an email at the end user email address asking you to confirm the account request. Follow the instructions on that email, then you can log in on the web UI:

• Open https://cloudcontroller:8443/
• Login using your end user username and password
• Click “Download Credentials” in the “Credentials” tab
• Note the EMI reference you can use on the “Images” tab

Starting up an instance

You should unzip the credentials zipfile you just downloaded, then source the eucarc file and test the connection:

$ unzip euca2-enduser-x509.zip
$ . eucarc
$ euca-describe-availability-zones verbose
 

Setup a SSH key and allow connection to the SSH port:

$ euca-add-keypair enduserkey > enduserkey.priv
$ chmod 0600 enduserkey.priv
$ euca-authorize default -P tcp -p 22 -s 0.0.0.0/0
 

Then starting up an instance is just a matter of passing the right EMI and type:

$ euca-run-instances -k enduserkey emi-XXXXXXXX -t c1.medium
 

Enjoy !

Run your own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, part 2

In part 1 of this series, we saw how to install the cloud infrastructure. In this article, we’ll bundle and upload an EMI (Eucalyptus Machine Image), based on Ubuntu Server 9.10 Beta, and validate that we can run an instance of it.

Download required elements

Go to the cloud/cluster controller and download the required items.

For a 64-bit image:

$ URL="http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic"
$ wget -O image.gz $URL/beta/ubuntu-uec-karmic-amd64.img.gz
$ wget -O vmlinuz $URL/beta/ubuntu-uec-karmic-amd64-vmlinuz-2.6.31-11-server
$ wget -O initrd $URL/beta/ubuntu-uec-karmic-amd64-initrd.img-2.6.31-11-server
 

For a 32-bit image:

$ URL="http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic"
$ wget -O image.gz $URL/beta/ubuntu-uec-karmic-i386.img.gz
$ wget -O vmlinuz $URL/beta/ubuntu-uec-karmic-i386-vmlinuz-2.6.31-11-generic-pae
$ wget -O initrd $URL/beta/ubuntu-uec-karmic-i386-initrd.img-2.6.31-11-generic-pae
 

Bundle the EMI

First you should unpack and resize your image to the desired size, lets say 4Gb. This can take a very long time (15 minutes !) on slow disks as you unpack 10Gb-worth of image space:

$ zcat -f image.gz | cp --sparse=always /dev/stdin image
$ e2fsck -f image
$ resize2fs image 4G
$ truncate --size=4G image
 

Then bundle and upload the kernel:

$ . eucarc
$ euca-bundle-image -i vmlinuz --kernel true
$ euca-upload-bundle -b ueckernel -m /tmp/vmlinuz.manifest.xml
$ euca-register ueckernel/vmlinuz.manifest.xml
IMAGE     eki-KKKKKKKK
 

Take note of the EKI reference, you’ll need it later. Then bundle, upload and register the ramdisk:

$ euca-bundle-image -i initrd --ramdisk true
$ euca-upload-bundle -b uecramdisk -m /tmp/initrd.manifest.xml
$ euca-register uecramdisk/initrd.manifest.xml
IMAGE     eri-RRRRRRRR
 

Take note of the ERI reference. Finally, bundle the image with the kernel and ramdisk, upload and register:

$ euca-bundle-image -i image --kernel eki-KKKKKKKK --ramdisk eri-RRRRRRRR
$ euca-upload-bundle -b uecimage -m /tmp/image.manifest.xml
$ euca-register uecimage/image.manifest.xml
IMAGE     emi-XXXXXXXX
 

Bundling will also take a lot of time ! Take note of your EMI reference.

Start an instance of your EMI

In order to access your instance using SSH, you’ll need to setup a few one-time things (create a SSH key and authorize access to port 22 of your instances):

$ euca-add-keypair mykey > mykey.priv
$ chmod 0600 mykey.priv
$ euca-authorize default -P tcp -p 22 -s 0.0.0.0/0
 

Now it’s time to start your instance !

$ euca-run-instances -k mykey emi-XXXXXXXX -t c1.medium
 

The “c1.medium” VM type is sufficient by default to run a 4Gb instance. You should take note of the i-YYYYYYYY reference that is displayed on your INSTANCE line. The first time you start an EMI, it can take some time (like 10 minutes) to move from “pending” state to “running”, depending on size. You can use the following command to automatically watch the output of euca-describe-instances, every 5 seconds:

$ watch -n 5 euca-describe-instances
 

Take note of the first ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ IP address mentioned in the output of the command. When the instance is “running”, ctrl-C to exit watch, then:

$ ssh -i mykey.priv ubuntu@ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ
 

You are in ! When you’re done playing with your instance, just run the following command on the cloud/cluster controller.

$ euca-terminate-instances i-YYYYYYYY
 

In the third and last part of this series of articles, we’ll talk about how to run instances from another workstation, as a cloud “customer”.

Run your own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, part 1

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is the product, powered by Eucalyptus, that allows you to easily run your own Amazon-EC2-like private cloud. It’s a lot simpler than you’d think. With the recent Ubuntu Server 9.10 beta release, you are now able to easily deploy that infrastructure from the CD installer.

Prerequisites

To deploy a minimal cloud infrastructure, you’ll need at least two dedicated systems. One will hold the cloud controller (clc), the cluster controller (cc), walrus (the S3-like storage service) and the storage controller (sc). This one needs fast disks and a reasonably fast processor. The other system(s) are node controllers (nc) that will actually run the instances. These ones need CPUs with VT extensions, lots of CPU cores, lots of RAM, and fast disks. For both, 64-bit support is highly recommended.

Installing the cloud/cluster controller

Download the 9.10 Server beta ISO. When you boot, select “Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud install”. When asked whether you want a “Cluster” or a “Node” install, select “Cluster”. It will ask two other cloud-specific questions during the course of the install:

1. Name of your cluster: pick any name you want
2. List of IP addresses on the LAN that the cloud can allocate to instances: enter a list of space-separated unused IP addresses on your LAN.

When it reboots, run the following to get the latest eucalyptus package and reboot:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo reboot
 

Installing node controllers

The node controller install is even simpler. Just make sure that you are connected to the network on which the cloud/cluster controller is already running. Take the same ISO, select “Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud install”. It should detect the Cluster and preselect “Node” install for you. That’s all.

It is also recommended to update to the latest 9.10 status:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
 

Connect your node controllers to the cloud

After all nodes are installed, you need to return to the cloud/controller and run the following command to make it “discover” your newly-installed nodes.

$ sudo euca_conf --no-rsync --discover-nodes
 

Confirm all the nodes it finds, and you are done. To check that your private cloud infrastructure is ready to serve, you need to retrieve admin credentials and run euca-describe-availability-zones command. Run the following on your cloud/cluster controller:

$ sudo euca_conf --get-credentials mycreds.zip
$ unzip mycreds.zip
$ . eucarc
$ euca-describe-availability-zones verbose
 

This last command returns a description of the capabilities of your cloud cluster, how many instances of each type you could run on it, for example:

AVAILABILITYZONE   myowncloud                 192.168.1.1
AVAILABILITYZONE   |- vm types                free / max   cpu   ram  disk
AVAILABILITYZONE   |- m1.small                0004 / 0004   1    128     2
AVAILABILITYZONE   |- c1.medium               0004 / 0004   1    256     5
AVAILABILITYZONE   |- m1.large                0002 / 0002   2    512    10
AVAILABILITYZONE   |- m1.xlarge               0002 / 0002   2   1024    20
AVAILABILITYZONE   |- c1.xlarge               0001 / 0001   4   2048    20
 

In part 2 of this series, we’ll cover bundling your first EMI (Eucalyptus Machine Image), based on Ubuntu Server 9.10 Beta. We’ll test it by starting an instance of it. Stay tuned !

On burnout and technical management

Jono posted recently the slidedeck for his famous 12 stages of burnout presentation. I highly recommend this presentation, especially to technical teams working from home.

I think we are especially vulnerable to burnout, with limited social interactions and sporadic discussions with our peers and managers. It’s quite easy to fall into the trap of the first two stages, trying to prove yourself and work harder. And from there we are vulnerable to falling into the spiral of the next ten stages.

This highlights one important role of managers of technical teams: to protect ourselves from this outcome. You shouldn’t have to prove yourself if your manager makes you confident you’re in the right place and you earned your position. You shouldn’t have to work harder if your work output is closely monitored and realistic goals have been set for you.

Technical managers have lots of duties. They must build their team, define objectives, ensure that goals are reached, protect their team from vertical and horizontal organizational hazards… But keeping their team in shape is one of their most important duties, and detecting and avoiding burnout in their team is an important part of it.

Your family and your peers can watch your back and help you recover from it. But a good manager should save you from it.

Join the Ubuntu Java Team meetings

The incredible Emmet Hikory (persia) wrote last week that the new season was open for Java Team meetings.

If you are interested in the state of Java packages in Ubuntu, want to participate in Java software packaging, or are just curious, please feel free to join us on Thursdays, 0900 UTC, on Freenode’s #ubuntu-meeting channel ! Let’s shape the future of Ubuntu Java together.

All you ever wanted to know about Java library packaging

I’ll be giving a packaging training session this Thursday at 12:00 UTC about Java libraries.

• If you are interested in Java and want to learn how to properly package Java libraries for Debian/Ubuntu…
• If you don’t want to touch Java but are curious to know what makes Java library packaging different from other types of packaging…
• If you already know this stuff inside out but want to share some tips and tricks…

Then please join us on Freenode’s #ubuntu-classroom !