SLURM, Django and Migratation to Postgres

by Sebastien Mirolo on Tue, 29 Jul 2014

When we picked SLURM because of the accounting feature, we also deployed a MySQL database as recommended. We also wanted to tightly integrate our Django project with SLURM so we created models out of the slurmdbd schemas and tweaked the foreign key definitions, etc. The following is the account of everything that went wrong. read more...

Continuous Integration for a Javascript-heavy Django Site

by Sebastien Mirolo on Sat, 25 May 2013

In the popular series on how technical decisions are made, we will see Today why fortylines picked django-jenkins, phantomjs, casperjs and django-casper to build its continuous integration infrastructure on. read more...

Django and PayPal payment processing

by Sebastien Mirolo on Thu, 3 May 2012

I gave a another shot at the paypal API Today. Since I am most interested in encrypted web payments, after signing up with a business account, I went through the steps of generating a private key and corresponding public certificate. read more...

Packaging Python Apps

by Sebastien Mirolo on Sun, 22 Apr 2012

I have never quite understood why python (or ruby) packages are delivered through their own manager (pip, gem) instead of the local system package manager (apt, yum, etc). I mean I understand the python developer rationale and disagrees with it. My main problem with side-stepping the local package manager is that now the programming stack of prerequisites matters, a lot. It is not just about dependencies and APIs anymore but also about which package manager to use. That creates tons of problems especially when you rely on something with some very problematic design issues like easy_install. read more...

Scala Tools

by Sebastien Mirolo on Tue, 6 Mar 2012

There are basic tasks you need in any development stack: Style Checking, Code Coverage and Reference Documentation. As it reaches maturity, all language ecosystem provides tools for managing those activities. Scala is not exception. read more...

Backups with rsnapshot

by Sebastien Mirolo on Sat, 22 Oct 2011

First I created a cron job to dump the databases running on production servers in SQL format. read more...

Bringing-up CruiseControl

by Sebastien Mirolo on Thu, 7 Jul 2011

CruiseControl is a continuous build application written in Java, using a jsp web framework. It is not as straightforward to setup as running "aptitude install cruisecontrol". So while the 73Mb cruisecontrol-src-2.8.4.zip file was downloading from the website, I started to read through a good introduction to cruisecontrol. read more...

Lost SSH Connection and GNU screen

by Sebastien Mirolo on Thu, 9 Sep 2010

I had to do work remotely on a machine that required long session recently and the ssh connection kept dropping at random. It is very annoying and it seems almost impossible to track it down. The best explanation so far looks to lie with the way routers, firewalls and other bridges between me and the remote machine maintain some sanity into their NAT tables. In any case, I started to use GNU screen such that least running jobs do not just get killed off when the connection dropped. read more...

Integrating with Amazon Payment System

by Sebastien Mirolo on Wed, 21 Jul 2010

In order to get payments processed through Amazon, you need to register with one of amazon payment systems. Amazon provides a lot of different services and it is a little confusing at first to understand how each service relates to each other. I figured that you first need to get an "Amazon Web Services Account" then register for an "Amazon Payments Account" and finally sign up for an "Amazon Payments Business Account". You will need a U.S.-based credit card and information about your business to complete the registration. I have created a specific e-mail address on fortylines mail server that is only used for communication with Amazon services. read more...

Compiling git 1.7.1.1 on Ubuntu

by Sebastien Mirolo on Tue, 20 Jul 2010

I happily compiled git 1.7.1.1 and installed it. Then I tried to clone a git repository through http I got a very strange error. read more...

Ubuntu Server and VMware Fusion

by Sebastien Mirolo on Sat, 17 Oct 2009

Anticipated the upcoming next release of Ubuntu, I decided to setup an Ubuntu Server Edition sandbox under VMware to test the configuration scripts. I do not know about you, but I feel a little anxious about upgrading the customer-facing Internet server, fixing bugs in real-time. read more...