Now that UDS is over members of the Ubuntu Server Team are busy writing specifications (aka blueprints) about topics discussed during the summit. Specifications should be finalized by Thursday, June the 5th according to the Intrepid release schedule. Here is a non-exhaustive list of blueprints that are currently been written:
Encrypted ~/Private Directory in Each User’s Home
Dustin Kirkland has written a proposal to provide a default location for users to securely store sensitive data using filesystem encryption. The idea is to create a Private directory for each user and mounting it using ecryptfs at login. More details (such as PAM integration) can be found in the specification.
Kerberize Services in main
Mathias Gug outlines what could be done to improve kerberos integration for different services available in the main repository. The question of which kerberos implementation (MIT vs Heimdal) should be used is discussed and services that should support kerberos are listed.
Ubuntu Calendar Server
Chuck Short started a wiki page on Calendaring options available in Ubuntu. There a couple of packages available in universe (such as darwin calendar server, egroupware, obm, zimbra, and open-xchange). The goal of the specification is to find if one of them is suitable for inclusion into main.
Ubuntu Server Guide additions and updates
Adam Sommer has a list of specific sections in the Ubuntu Server Guide that should be worked on during the Intrepid release cycle. Windows Networking and network authentication with LDAP and Kerberos are the major targets. Plans to provide a pdf version of the guide are also discussed.
J2EE Support
Thierry Carrez looked into J2EE options that could be included in Intrepid. Tomcat, Geronimo, Glassfish and Jonas are amongst the projects that have been evaluated. A complete matrix is available in the wiki page.
This is just a selection of the blueprints worked on by members of the Ubuntu Server Team. Most of the specifications can be found on the ubuntu-server blueprint page in Launchpad.
These documents are still being worked on – now is the best time to read them, comment, suggest and send improvements (on the specification page or on the ubuntu-server mailing list). Make yourself hear now and there is a higher chance your ideas will be included in the next release of Ubuntu, the Intrepid Ibex !
I LOVE the ideas of officially supporting a calendaring solution; keep up the great work!
About the encrypted user dirs:
I use this technique (manually) for a while now because its backup friendly (we backup with rsync everynight) on our terminal server.
But it has some weak points:
– If the private volume is mounted when the backups run, the “secret” files will be backupped unencrypted. I guess you can prevent this if the private directory is in a standard location and using the exclude path options in rsync.
– As long its mounted at least the root user can access the files.
But i do feel this is the right way to go, rock on.
About the kerberization: keep it going, it is important.
About the calendar server.
It tested the following:
- Zimbra: Its very heavy and as far as I know not completely open either. I would stay away from this since it has a very specific configuration to let everything work and it basicly ships with its own heavily modified userland (all the services plus configurations plus scripts). If you want zimbra its best to install it like a third party app.
- egroupware yet another crappy php app. It works, but it just sucks your balls off. If people want this they can just install it as a webapp.
I didn’t check out obm and open-xchange as i can remember.
I did orientatie on the darwin calander server and it got me very interested. But it looked a bit under documented a while back. I didn’t take it for a testdrive since the installation had same annoying dependencies as well and i was not in a hurry. Seeing it back in inteprid is cool. Can it easily be backported to hardy?
You might want to consider DAViCal, which is a PHP based CalDAV server. It is GPLv2 or later and pretty stable.