taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

new-referrer-rss.pl - generate RSS feed of new referrer URLs from access_log

SYNOPSIS

new-referrers-rss nameofsite [source ...] > new-referrers.xml

DESCRIPTION

Given the name of a web site, and a selection of Apache combined log format ‘access_log’ files containing referrer URL data, this will generate an RSS feed containing the latest referrers.

The script should be run periodically with ‘fresh’ access_log data, from cron.

Tags: access_log, apache, referrers, scripts, software, web

Are you a student, and interested in earning $4,500 for contributing to open source, and fighting spam, over the course of the summer?

If so, get thee hence to the Google Summer of Code 2006 site, and propose a project!

Last year, we in SpamAssassin didn’t get it together to mentor SoC projects. This year, however, we have a few prospective mentors (including myself), and a few sample project ideas lined up; we’re all ready to go! Here’s the Student FAQ. Be quick; applications end in a week and a bit.

Here’s hoping we get some interesting submissions ;)

Tags: apache, google, gsoc2006, spamassassin, summer-of-code

ongoing: The ASF Server:

Tim Bray: Which Apache project burns the most resources?

Mads: Spamassassin by a wide margin. [...]

Heh, we win ;)

Helios, the Zones server, has been an incredible resource for us. SpamAssassin isn’t a traditional open-source software project in one respect: we use a lot of centralized “phone home” infrastructure to support rule and score generation. Having a virtualized server of this quality and horsepower to use for this has been fantastic.

(thanks to John O’Shea for the pointer!)

Tags: apache, asf, funny, heh, solaris, solaris-zones, spamassassin, virtualization

Back from ApacheCon!

I’ve got to say, I found it really useful this year. Last year, I was pretty new to the ASF, and found that my expectations of ApacheCon didn’t quite match reality; it wasn’t a rip-roaring success exactly, for me, as a result.

However, many details of how the ASF works — and how the conference itself works and is organised — are much clearer after you’ve spent some time lurking and absorbing practices in the meantime. (The visibility one gets into the process as a member of the ASF makes this a lot easier.)

Result: it was much more of a success for me this time around. Plenty of networking, putting faces to the names, hanging out, and discussing many aspects of our work.

The hackathon really worked out, too; while we didn’t produce a hell of a lot of code per se, it made for a good ‘developer summit’ and I think we established solid agreement on SpamAssassin’s short-term directions and goals. (summary: rules, and faster).

On top of that, I got to meet up with Colm MacCarthaigh and Cory Doctorow for discussion of Digital Rights Ireland. Looks like I’ll be spending a bit of time on that next year ;)

Finally: Solaris. On Monday night, I got to sit down with Daniel Price, one of the kernel engineers behind Solaris Zones, work through a quick demo of a bug I was running into with chroot(2) and zones on our rule-QA buildbot server, and watch as he visually traced it through the OpenSolaris kernel source on the web. From this — and from talking to Daniel — it’s pretty clear that things have changed at Sun. Pretty much the entire Solaris operating system is now a full-on open-source project; it’s not just a marketing gimmick. The source is up there on the web, that’s the source for the code they’re running now, and there’s no half-assed ‘freeze it, cut out the good bits, and throw it over the wall’ fake-open-source tricks.

The concept of getting this level of access to Solaris source code and engineers, would have blown my mind when I was Iona’s sysadmin back in the 1990s ;) I’m very impressed.

Tags: apache, apachecon, apacheconus2005, asf, conferences, open-source, opensolaris, solaris, spamassassin, sun, virtualization, zones

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be going to San Diego for ApacheCon US 2005 (including the hackathon beforehand). There’ll be quite a few other SpamAssassin committers there, too, so if you’re working with SA, or interested in getting some face time with the developers, there’s no better way of doing so.

Tags: apache, apachecon, conferences, san-diego, spamassassin

Apache: It seems I’ve been elected as a member of the Apache Software Foundation! That’s a nice surprise ;)

Tags: apache, foundation, member, software, surprise

Apache: Not content with distributing GPL’d software, Microsoft are now taking another step into the open-source world by shipping Apache-licensed code.

Not quite as big a deal as the GPL — but still, another interesting milestone.

Tags: apache, apache-licensed, code, content, deal, gpl, microsoft, milestone, software, step, world

Spam: SpamAssassin is now officially an Apache top-level project! InternetNews.com coverage:

The Apache Software Foundation is taking the spam fight to a new level – literally — with the promotion of its Spam Assassin project to top-level status.

Hooray ;)

Tags: apache, com, coverage, fight, foundation, internetnews, project, software, spam, spamassassin