There are a few changes that channel operators should be aware of:

• Usernames are no longer prefixed with i= or n= depending on ident status.  We will be using the more common form of prepending a ~ for non-identd users.
• Channel quiets are no longer grouped with bans.  Now there is a separate +q mode.  Trying to mute via +b %hostmask will not work, you must use +q hostmask.

There are also a few expanded ban types that can be used with all ban-like modes (bqeIi).  Extended ban types are denoted by a $ and may start with a ~ to indicate negation:

• +b $r:troll  will ban all users with the realname (GECOS) of ‘troll’
• +q $a:pici  will mute any user who is logged into services with the account pici
• +e $~a will create an exception for any user identified to services

More information about other changes can be found here.  If you have any questions about the new modes or anything else related to the migration, feel free to ask us in #ubuntu-irc.

P.S.  We are working on changing our operator scripts and aliases to an ircd-seven compliant form, but I do not have any links yet.  Nothing like leaving it to the last minute.

I showed some test output images to the folks in #ubuntu-offtopic and a few of them thought it was neat and asked me for the code so that they could make their own graphs.  I took that as a sign that I should clean up the code to make it more efficient.  I also went ahead and used optparse to make the application more user-friendly.

To start, lets take a look at what the output for the teams that Jussi created:

Well that’s rather self-explanatory. Much more so than looking at a bunch of lists on LP.

How if we looked at someone that has administrative access for some Launchpad teams.  Perhaps Jono:

Green filled team nodes indicate that the root user has administrative access to them.  I chose to focus on what teams a person had control over, rather than which relationships granted that level of access.  This was mostly due to not being happy with the options that Graphviz had for shading and coloring edges.

I suppose that graph was somewhat complex… although its nothing compared to sabdfl’s:

Anyway, the python script itself is available here. And the help page is as follows:

Usage: lpdot.py [-c COLOR] [-a COLOR] [-o PATH] [-d PATH] username

Options:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  -c COLOR    set default node color to COLOR (defaults to white)
  -a COLOR    set administrative node color to COLOR (defaults to greenyellow)
  -o PATH     write png file to PATH (defaults to pwd)
  -d PATH     write dot file to PATH

  A list of valid colors can be found here:

http://www.graphviz.org/doc/info/colors.html

1. Get the user’s Launchpad page
2. Check if they’re indeed an Ubuntu member
3. Go to the cloaked Ubuntu members team
4. Remember the user’s Launchpad id and add them to the team
5. Ask freenode staff to apply the cloak

Now this doesn’t sound that difficult, but we’re all busy and we know that Launchpad isn’t exactly the fastest site around.  So, in order to make this easier for myself, I put together a small python script using launchpadlib to do all the dirty work for me.  It also gave me an excuse to play with optparse, which I have been looking to have a reason to use.

The script gives me the ability to check a member’s status and add them to the cloak team in one step.  I can also choose to use the launchpad staging server to do a dry-run if I’m just testing.

This was my first time using launchpadlib to update information on Launchpad itself.  I have to say that it was a lot easier than I had originally thought it would be.

As of revision 9, the code is as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python
cachedir = '~/.launchpadlib/cache/'
import sys
from optparse import OptionParser
 
def main():
    usage = 'usage: %prog [options] username'
    parser = OptionParser(usage)
    parser.add_option('-f','--force',action='store_true',dest='force',
        help='add user regardless of membership in ubuntumembers')
    parser.add_option('-s','--staging',action='store_true',dest='staging',
        help='preform events against the launchpad staging server')
 
    options,args = parser.parse_args()
 
    if len(args) != 1:
        print 'Error: incorrect number of arguments'
        parser.print_help()
        sys.exit(2)
 
    from launchpadlib.launchpad import Launchpad,STAGING_SERVICE_ROOT,EDGE_SERVICE_ROOT
    from launchpadlib.errors import HTTPError
 
    if options.staging:
        print 'Warning: using staging.launchpad.net'
        service = STAGING_SERVICE_ROOT
    else:
        service = EDGE_SERVICE_ROOT
 
    launchpad = Launchpad.login_with('irc_lpteam',service,cachedir)
    membername = args[0]
    teamname='ubuntu-irc-cloaks'
 
    team = launchpad.people[teamname]
    member = launchpad.people[membername]
 
    if 'ubuntumembers' in  [e.name for e in member.super_teams]:
        print "'%s' (%s) is an Ubuntu Member" % (member.display_name,membername)
        print "Attempting to add '%s' (%s) to '%s' (%s)..." % (member.display_name,membername,team.display_name,teamname)
 
        try:
            status = team.addMember(person=member,status="Approved")
        except HTTPError as error:
            print "Error: %s has occurred" % error
            sys.exit(1)
 
    else:
        print "'%s' (%s) does not appear to be an Ubuntu Member." % (member.display_name,membername)
        if options.force:
            print 'Warning: force enabled, adding to team anyway'
            try:
                status = team.addMember(person=member,status="Approved")
            except HTTPError as error:
                print "Error: %s has occurred" % error
                sys.exit(1)
    print 'Success!'
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

The latest code is available here for anyone who wants to play around with it themselves.

Note: I have filed a bug against launchpad that could make it easier to add people to teams.

Prune Channel Access Lists:

Currently about half of the people on our core channel access lists are inactive. Some of them now contribute to other parts of Ubuntu, while others simply do not contribute at all. Soon we will be using Launchpad teams to ensure that our operators are active and interested. Eventually we’d like to have an automated process whereby operators with expired team memberships are automatically removed from the access lists.

Develop an Application Process for New Operators:

Presently when we feel that we need more operators we use a set of undocumented guidelines to pick from a pool of IRC helpers.  The IRCC will work towards creating a documented set of criteria that potential operators must meet.

Document Operator Assessment Process:

We currently do not have a written, or scheduled, assessment process for current operators.  With the team membership expiration dates going in, we will need a way to assess operators who wish to keep their channel privileges.  Working from the operator guidelines and the new operator application procedures, we will put together an assessment document that we may compare our current ops against.

Membership Approval:

As its stands now, people who contribute extensively via IRC are left to apply for membership via their respective regional membership boards.  We will be working with the Community Council to come up with a set of IRC-specific requirements so that we may approve these new members directly.

IRC Tracker:

We also have a long list of new suggested features for our IRC Tracker (previously called BantrackerTwo):

• MyBans page
• Mode generator for ban removals
• Concept of relationships between events
• Anonymous access
• Links to the appeals process for banned users
• Aliases/tags for nicks
• API
• Better bot to tracker interface
• Bot nagging for comments after an event occurs
• Human readable URLs throughout
• Improved interface for Encyclopedia (factoid) plugins
• Suggested factoid queue moderation

As you can see, we’re going to be very busy in the next few months.

I currently feel that my tagging system is a bit substandard. Nearly everything that is tagged Ubuntu also falls under Linux and Tech. Miscellany has everything else that I can’t seem to categorize otherwise, like Futility Closet and Not Always Right.  Also, as you can see, I don’t always get a chance to read every single new item. One person suggested to use a Favorites tag to separate the feeds that they always read away from the others, but I’m not sure how well this would work in practice.

How do you organize your RSS Feeds? Do you use Google Reader or does some other application (preferably not locked in to one computer) work better for you?

One such package was devscripts; I make heavy use of the rmadison command when doing support in #ubuntu.  While I could probably have easily just used the basic interface for searching, I wanted something a bit nicer.  I settled for using Mozilla’s Mycroft to create a SearchPlugin that could be added to Firefox’s search bar.

The plugin itself can be found here.

• Grab the nearest book: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die – info
• Open to page 56: Review of Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh) – 1924
• Find the fifth sentence:

“Some of the camera work is ’subjective,’ as when his drunken perceptions are rendered by optical distortion; at other timer, it is the camera’s mobility that is evocative, as when it passes through the revolving doors that serve as a symbol of destiny.”

#ubuntu has be wonderfully busy since the release announcement.  We’re currently hovering around 1500 users in channel.

Some of the first packages for Jaunty were just uploaded.  I’m waiting patiently for the time where the archives are at a state where they can start being tested.

One of the features that many people do not realize that nano supports is syntax highlighting.  This can quickly and easily be enabled by following these directions:

nano will automatically read in ~/.nanorc if it exists. Since you probably don’t have that file there already, go ahead and copy the sample file out of /etc:

 [pici@romulus:~]$ cp /etc/nanorc ~/.nanorc

Highlighting for each language needs to be turned on explicitly in your new .nanorc file. In Intrepid, the lines specifying each language begin around line 217, which is probably around the same area in other releases. If not, this is what you’re looking for something similar to this:

some default languages supported by nanorc:

## Nanorc files
include "/usr/share/nano/nanorc.nanorc"
 
## C/C++
include "/usr/share/nano/c.nanorc"
 
## HTML
include "/usr/share/nano/html.nanorc"
 
## TeX
include "/usr/share/nano/tex.nanorc"
 
## Quoted emails (under e.g. mutt)
# include "/usr/share/nano/mutt.nanorc"
 
## Patch files
include "/usr/share/nano/patch.nanorc"
 
## Manpages
include "/usr/share/nano/man.nanorc"
 
## Groff
# include "/usr/share/nano/groff.nanorc"
 
## Perl
include "/usr/share/nano/perl.nanorc"
 
## Python
include "/usr/share/nano/python.nanorc"
 
## Ruby
include "/usr/share/nano/ruby.nanorc"
 
## Java
include "/usr/share/nano/java.nanorc"
 
## Assembler
include "/usr/share/nano/asm.nanorc"
 
## Bourne shell scripts
include "/usr/share/nano/sh.nanorc"
 
## POV-Ray
#include "/usr/share/nano/pov.nanorc"

Go ahead and remove the hash from each include statement for the languages you wish to enable, and you’re all done.

Some other options that I find helpful to have in my .nanorc are as follows:

Other options:

## Setup tabs
set autoindent
set tabstospaces
set tabsize "4"
## Don't wrap text at all.
set nowrap

Screenshot coming soon.

Here are a few of my aliases from my ~/.irssi/config file:

CS = “/msg chanserv”;CSINFO = “/msg chanserv info $0″;

CSACCESS = “/msg chanserv access $0 list”;

CSOP = “/msg chanserv op $C $0″;

CSDEOP = “/msg chanserv op $C -$0″;

CSKICK = “CSREMOVE”;

CSBAN = “/msg chanserv op $C $N;/wait 50;/ban $0;/msg chanserv op $C -$N”;

CSMUTE = “/msg chanserv op $C $N;/wait 50;/mode +zq $0″;

CSKICKBAN = “/msg chanserv op $C $N;/wait 2;/remove $C $0 :$1-;/ban $0;/msg chanserv op $C -$N”;

CSUNBAN = “/msg chanserv op $C $N;/wait 50;/unban $0;/msg chanserv op $C -$N”;

CSTOPIC = “/msg chanserv op $C $N;/wait 50;/topic $0-;/msg chanserv op $C -$N”;

CSMODE = “/msg chanserv op $C $N;/wait 50;/mode $C $0 $1″;

CSMOD = “/CSMODE”;

CSINVITE = “/msg chanserv op $C $N;/wait 50;/invite $0;/msg chanserv op $C -$N”;

NS = “/msg nickserv”;

NSINFO = “/msg nickserv info $0″;

remove = “/quote remove”;

CSREMOVE = “/msg chanserv op $C $N;/wait 25;/remove $C $0 :$1-;/msg chanserv op $C -$N”;

CSRM = “CSREMOVE”;

CSKB = “CSKICKBAN”;

ubottu = “say !$0 > $1 (Please see the private messsage from ubottu)”;

bot = “ubottu”;

NICKSETUP = “say $0: Please make sure that you have followed *all* of the steps outlined at http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup and then return here and ask a staffer to activate  your cloak. (I am not a staffer)”;

I originally found many of these aliases in Aaron Toponce’s blog, but they since been modified to fit Freenode changes and my own preferences.

In addition, here are some of the more important scripts that I have symlinked into ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun. Most of these can be found in the irssi-scripts package:

auto_away.pl

bantime.pl

chanpeak.pl

clones.pl

dictcomplete.pl

dns.pl

figlet.pl

format_identify.pl

notify.pl

screen_away.pl

trigger.pl

usercount.pl