OK, now Roller is getting way cool
I've been using Roller since 1.0, and I'm impressed with the latest production release (3.1). The new themes (see www.rollerthemes.com) are great.
I haven't started using the topic cloud stuff yet, but I'm looking forward to doing so. Now if only there was an editor plugin that worked correctly in Safari...
Finally fixed up the Wiki formatting on my site
I switched to using MediaWiki as the home page for wittle.net, as I got tired of waiting for JetSpeed to get robust enough to deploy and customize without weeks of work. I used Gimp and our new all-in-one printer/scanner to pull in a family photo and edit it for the upper left corner picture, and added a gold-toned wittle.net logo on the top of the page. I also ditched the standard MediaWiki background image; I may end up playing with the stylesheet some more to add some color back in. Anyway, it doesn't look quite as half-deployed as it did earlier...
Upgraded to Roller 3.0
I upgraded from Roller 2.0 to Roller 3.0, and it generally went smoothly. However, I do not seem to have a site administrator user, and can't figure out how to create one. Therefore, the roller home page is pretty ugly at this point on wittle.net. Hopefully I can get some help from the roller forums on this one.
Never mind, I modified the rolename value in the roleuser table to 'admin' for one of my users, and that got the job done.
Confirmed Jetspeed2 and Tomcat 5.5.15 don't play nice
So it was independently confirmed what I found, that Jetspeed 2.0 and Tomcat 5.5.15 do not play nicely together. If you try to log in with a user who has a role other than admin, you are taken to a 403-Forbidden error page in Tomcat. If you modify your URL to go back to Jetspeed, you are authenticated, but at least part of Tomcat doesn't think so.
Hopefully we'll get a Jetspeed 2.0.1 or 2.1 soon that addresses this and other issues with the installation and setup. As I mentioned in the last post, I like the architectural changes, but would prefer more stability before I work on customizations for deployment.
Trying to get Jetspeed2 working
Boy I'd like to have a smooth experience getting Jetspeed running. Not happening yet though. Couldn't build a custom portal using the initial 2.0 release and the docs on the site; found the fix in a post to the jetspeed users list. Got the portal running, but the login process isn't working for any role other than admin. Posted a question to the user list about this; we'll see how long it takes to get an answer.
The jetspeed 1.x architecture was baroque; the jetspeed 2 architecture looks better. Unfortunately, there are enough spot problems with the distribution so far that it makes me nervous.
Upgraded to Roller 2.0
I'm working on upgrading things on wittle.net. If you're reading this, I'm making progress!
The upgrade process started when my server crashed, and I decided to take that opportunity to go to RHEL4 from RHEL3. It is now also time to upgrade the other components of wittle.net. I'm typing this into the Weblog running Roller 2.0, which is running on Tomcat 5.5, which requires Java 1.5. Therefore, since you're reading this, all of these upgrades have worked!
The most difficult upgrade will be from Jetspeed 1.5 to Jetspeed 2.0. Jetspeed 2.0 is a completely new product from the ground up, and I'd customized one of the Jetspeed 1.5 skins fairly extensively. Should be educational.
More fun configuring RHEL4 & OS X Tiger
I just finished probably 6-8 hours worth of work trying to get my Mac to print to the printer hanging off my Linux box. I've learned a lot about cups through doing this, and the weakness of the RHEL4 GUI for printer configuration.
I used the GUI to define my print queues as shared and supporting the lpd protocol, but was unable to access them from a client machine. Even from the server, lpstat -h <hostname>; where <hostname> was the name for the internal interface of my server failed with a permission error.
After much playing around and trying various sources of documentation (googling on my specific error message was useless), I finally got it working as described here.
Server Instructions
OK, wittle.net is now nearing my goals. It is running the Roller web logger to provide a place for recording information on the site without extensive effort for HTML editing. All you need to do to add information is to create a new BLOG entry by filling out a form.
It is also running Jetspeed 1.5, which is designed to be an enterprise portal, but I'm using it for authenticated access to information. Specifically, for example, our family photo album. Once you've logged in, you can see our picture archive.
I plan on making the integration between these two applications more seamless, initially from the UI style perspective, then (perhaps) providing a single sign-on.
For now, the link at the top of the wittle.net home page takes you to the BLOG, and the link at the top of the BLOG for wittle.net takes you to the home page.
Hope you enjoy!
Done with the Domain Server
I've completed getting wittle.net to be a PDC for my home network; now connections to the shared resources are much faster and more stable. The only unfortunate part is that these are new accounts, according to the XP clients, and therefore all preferences for the old accounts are "lost". I seem to remember something about a user migration wizard, I'll have to look for that somewhere.
Starting to come together
The wittle.net web site is starting to come together. Right now, it is running Apache Jetspeed 1.5 as the portal, and LogRoller 0.9.8.2 for weblogging. The photo album is home-grown (and probably version 0.0.2), but fairly functional.
I also have mail-aliasing for addresses on the wittle.net domain, and mailboxes available using IMAP.
I still plan to turn it into a NT domain controller to run my internal home network, and have all of my personal computers configured in that domain.
Open source software does amazing stuff!
I guess I should dump the Oracle 9i instance and convert the Jetspeed install to MySQL, like Roller is using.
The to-do list never ends...