Top on UBOS - Open-source software for a thriving open social web

Website update

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The ubos.net website has been updated reworked in many ways. Here is a non-exhaustive summary of changes:

Simpler front page that clearly lists the UBOS components and is more to the point.
The UBOS Mesh project was renamed to UBOS PeerGraph a while ago; now the website reflects that.
The document hierarchy is now clearer and easier top maintain.
The HTML/CSS layout has been improved. Hope you like it.

Changes in progress

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The UBOS Project is going through some major changes. You will notice that the website is changing, the description of what UBOS is and what it is trying to do is changing, and that’s not all of it!

In the process we will also move from distributing UBOS code via Amazon S3 to Digital Ocean, and we will consolidate the code bases in the same account at Gitlab, rather than having them between Github and Gitlab.

A new UBOS family member: The UBOS Personal Data Mesh

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Update 2024-11: UBOS Personal Data Mesh has been renamed to UBOS PeerGraph.

The UBOS project has always been extremely ambitious. So far, we have had:

UBOS Linux, the Linux distro that makes self-hosting easy;
UBOSbox, a ready-to-use home server appliance distributed by Indie Computing as well as related cloud offerings;

but that’s only where it is starting to get interesting!

So far it’s only a technology preview, but check out the latest member of the UBOS family:

Website update makes information easier to find

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Update 2024-11: Links have been changed again.

We are happy to release the updated UBOS website. Among other things:

There is now a Glossary. If you were ever wondering what UBOS means when it says Site or AppConfigItem, you know where to go! Much of the documentation has been updated to link to the glossary.
The user FAQ, howto and troubleshooting pages have been restructured and merged into a single place here, so solution to problems are easier to find.

Nextcloud 20 is now available (October 2020)

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A new UBOS update is available on all release channels and all platforms.

The highlights:

The recently released Nextcloud 20 platform is now available.
Mastodon has been upgraded on the yellow channel

As usual, the details are in the release notes.

UBOS update available on all release channels (September 2020)

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 23:00:00 +0000

A new UBOS update is available on all release channels and all platforms.

Here are some of the highlights:

UBOS can now run on ODROID “home cloud” devices such as ODROID-XU4 and ODROID-HC2.
On a Raspberry Pi 4, UBOS can now boot directly from an external USB disk.
The UBOS installer has become smarter, and more flexible.
Hundreds of package updates.

As usual, the details are in the release notes.

UBOS update available on all release channels (August 2020)

Sun, 16 Aug 2020 20:00:00 +0000

A new UBOS update is available on all release channels and all platforms.

Here are some of the highlights:

The Raspberry Pi 4 is now supported.
UBOS has become even smarter about dependency management: if an Accessory requires another, you don’t need to specify the second one any more when creating or updating a Site. This is a great time saver when running Apps such as Wordpress or Nextcloud where Accessories often depend on others.
Improvement to the HTML generated for the UBOS Staff.
More customization options are available for Nextcloud
Speed improvements, bug fixes and lots of little things that make day-to-day work with UBOS even simpler. Like ubos-admin listsites --with <app>.

As usual, the details are in the release notes.

UBOS apps update available (August 2020)

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 03:00:00 +0000

A new UBOS apps update is available on all release channels and all platforms.

This update contains new versions of Nextcloud, Matomo, Mediawiki, and WordPress. Webtrees, the web-based genealogy app, is now available on thegreen channel.

Nextcloud has gained a few more apps, including Collabora Online, and Forms, so you can self-host your surveys and questionnaires.

The details are in the release notes.

UBOS apps update available (June 2020)

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 15:00:00 +0000

A new UBOS apps update is available on all release channels and all platforms.

This update contains new versions of Nextcloud, Matomo, phpBB, WordPress and more.

The documentation now describes common use cases for modifying deployed sites.

The details are in the release notes.

Nextcloud Hub is here! and more in today's UBOS apps update

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 13:00:00 +0000

A new UBOS apps update is available on all release channels and all platforms.

Nextcloud on UBOS is now the newly released Nextcloud Hub. Among its many new features:

Collaborate on rich documents over the internet right from the browser, just as if it were Google Docs: documents, spreadsheets and presentation. Except, there’s no third party cloud overlord spying on you (x86 only).
Full text search. Automatically indexes your documents, so you can quickly find what you are looking for.

UBOS update available on all release channels

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 05:30:00 +0000

A new UBOS update is available on all release channels and all platforms.

The focus of this release was tracking upstream package upgrades. The biggest new feature is that UBOS now writes system logs to the UBOS Staff. This aids in troubleshooting systems that don’t have keyboards or monitors.

There is also an initial integration with the Storj decentralized storage network on the “yellow” release channel, and the usual bug fixes and documentation improvements.

Migrating this site to Hugo and Sphinx

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 23:30:00 +0000

This site has been migrated to Hugo and Sphinx, from Jekyll and Sphinx. Please bear with us.

UBOS apps update available (2019-11-12)

Tue, 12 Nov 2019 20:00:00 +0000

Apps have been updated on all release channels.

UBOS update available on all release channels (2019-10-10)

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 09:21:00 +0000

A new UBOS update is available on all release channels and all platforms.

The focus of this release was tracking upstream package upgrades. There were also some minor bug fixes and documentation improvements.

As usual, the details are in the release notes.

UBOS update available on all release channels (2019-09-01)

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 21:55:00 +0000

Lots of new functionality in this UBOS update, which is now available on all release channels and on all platforms.

As usual, the details are in the release notes, so here are the highlights:

More and improved administration tools

Every wondered whether your UBOS device is working as it should, or whether you are overlooking something? ubos-admin status has lots of new functionality to help you out.

For example ubos-admin status --problems will tell you which problems UBOS is aware of, such as a daemon that failed, or a disk that is getting too full. And it keeps its answer short and sweet if everything seems fine. (You are get the full details with various other command-line options; see documentation.)

UBOS apps update available (2019-07-23)

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 15:00:00 +0000

Apps have been updated on all release channels.

UBOS apps update available (2019-05-09)

Thu, 09 May 2019 23:00:00 +0000

Apps have been updated on all release channels.

Nextcloud 16 is now available. It introduces machine learning to detect suspicious logins and offering clever recommendations. Group Folders now sport access control lists so system administrators can easily manage who has access to what in organization-wide shares. There are also Projects, a way to easily relate and find related information like files, chats or tasks.
Mediawiki has been upgraded
Wordpress has been upgraded

UBOS "yellow" update available (2019-03-29)

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 15:55:00 +0000

Update 2024-11: Removed now-superseded section.

This update has new packages both on the UBOS operating system level, and for applications. Sometimes, we have to do both at the same time!

As indicated in the last update, This is also the first update in which we use a new numbering scheme based on the date of the announcement.

For now, updates have been published to the yellow channel only. We will promote it to green in a few days, assuming things go well. If you like to be notified when UBOS updates have been published, or for any other notifications, here is the first news for you:

UBOS update available (2019-04-03)

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 15:55:00 +0000

This updated, on the “green” (“production”) release channel, aggregates several of the previously made updates on the “yellow” channel. It includes changes and extensions both an UBOS operating system level, and for applications.

If you run UBOS, we recommend you subscribe to one of our new release notification lists so you are notified when UBOS updates are available:

Release notification mailing lists

We have created notification-only mailing lists (separate for the yellow and the green channel) that you can subscribe to, to be notified when there are updates on the respective channel.
Go here to subscribe.

The details of the release are in the release notes.

UBOS Beta 17 available

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 12:00:00 +0000

There is lots of new stuff in this update. But before we get there:

This is the last of the increasingly inaccurately named “beta XXX updates”. UBOS has been fairly stable for some time, and our “beta” labels are a throw-back to the past when that wasn’t necessarily true. So going forward, we will stop using the term “beta”. Instead, we will focus on the distinction between the different release channels, and at what version they are at. If you check UBOS on GitHub, you’ll see that the milestone labels have already been renamed.

Installing Nextcloud 15 on UBOS versus other Linux distros

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 23:00:00 +0000

Nextcloud 15 was released this week, and tutorials are appearing on the web how to install it on various operating systems. As a UBOS user, I can only marvel how complicated it is … compared to UBOS. Let’s compare:

on Ubuntu: Nextcloud auf Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS mit nginx, MariaDB, PHP, Let’s Encrypt, Redis und Fail2ban. States that the required amount of work is about 3 hours.
on Ubuntu: How to install Nextcloud 15 on Ubuntu with php7.3-fpm Apache2 and HTTP/2. Admittedly UBOS currently does not do fpm or HTTP/2, but those only add minimally to the length of the instructions. About 1400+ words of instructions to follow.

Release channel update

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 21:00:00 +0000

The first commercial products based on UBOS, UBOSbox Nextcloud, are shipping, and they ship on the all-new “green” release channel, which is now generally available.

What does that mean?

Well, as described in more detail in the documentation, UBOS is developed and released in several “release channels”:

The gory, technical operating-system level work is performed in the “dev” release channel. Nobody except for OS developers should ever have to use it.

Indie Computing announces UBOSbox Nextcloud and UBOS Live

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 16:00:00 +0000

At the Nextcloud conference in Berlin, Germany, Indie Computing Corp., the company sponsoring UBOS Linux, announced new products and services that bring the benefits of UBOS to non-technical users.

UBOSBox Nextcloud is a hardware appliance which pre-installs UBOS, and auto-installs Nextcloud, the open-source file management and collaboration app. UBOSBox Nextcloud allows non-technical users to “bring their data home” from the file sharing services such as Dropbox, or on-line calendars like Google Calendar, to hardware the user has full control over in their home, without needing to deal with software installation or configuration. It is designed to be used without needing a monitor or keyboard.

UBOS Beta 15: status LEDs, Pagekite and Staff improvements

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Two important conferences are coming up:

the Nextcloud conference in Berlin, Germany, from August 23 to 30, and
the MyData.org conference in Helsinki, Finland, August 29-31.

We’ll be at both, and just in time, we are proud to release UBOS beta 15!

Here are some highlights:

Boot your Raspberry Pi from USB, not just an SDCard
The UBOS Staff has learned a very convenient new trick
UBOS now drives the LEDs on Intel NUCs and the Desktop Pi enclosure for the Raspberry Pi
Access your device from the public internet through Pagekite integration

For more info, read the detailed release notes ~~here~~.

UBOS Beta 14: support for data disks and more

Sat, 28 Apr 2018 14:00:00 +0000

Just in time for the Let’s Self-host Installathon at Linuxfest NorthWest in Bellingham, WA, UBOS beta 14 is out!

As usual, we have a mix of new features that make users’ lives easier, new features that make developers’ lives easier, bug fixes and package upgrades. Here are the highlights:

It’s now easy to use a separate “big data disk” (like an external USB disk on a Raspberry Pi, or an extra big volume on Amazon EC2). This makes it much simpler for UBOS users that have a lot of data on their device.

UBOS Beta 13: new apps and lots of new features

Sat, 03 Mar 2018 15:00:00 +0000

IMPORTANT: The upgrade is more complicated this time (and this time only – we hope!). Please follow the instructions in the release notes. The short version:

% sudo pacman -Sy
% yes y | sudo pacman -S ubos-admin
% sudo ubos-admin update
% sudo ubos-admin setnetconfig <your-config-name>

UBOS beta 13 is out, and what a release it is! There are lots of new things. Here are some of the highlights:

WiFi configuration has become really simple, by means of the UBOS Staff USB stick: save a file with your WiFi network name and credentials to your UBOS Staff, and next time you boot your Raspberry Pi or PC, UBOS will automatically and securely connect it to your WiFi network.

End-to-end tutorials: how to set up an Indie Website with UBOS

Sat, 30 Dec 2017 22:00:00 +0000

The Indieweb community has long spearheaded many of the same principles behind UBOS: users should be in control of their online lives, creators should own their content and data, not the big websites, and the like.

Over the years, thousands of Indie Websites have sprung up all over the world support the IndieWeb standards and conventions, such as publishing your content on your own site and syndicating it everywhere else (POSSE).

UBOS has a new logo!

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 22:00:00 +0000

UBOS clearly needed a prettier logo, and as of today, it has one!

Simple, colorful, and distinctive. What do you think?

Apps have been upgraded, and some new additions

Sun, 05 Nov 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Following the now independent release of UBOS beta 12, here’s the first application upgrate. The following apps and accessories were upgraded to the indicated version:

Mattermost: 4.3.1
Mediawiki: 1.29.1
Nextcloud: 12.0.3
- Calendar: 1.5.6
- Contacts: 2.0.1
- Mail: 0.7.4
- News: 11.0.5
- Notes: 2.3.1
Shaarli: 0.9.2
Wordpress:4.8.3
- Bridgy: 1.3.1
- Analytics for Wordpress: 6.2.4
- Indieweb: 3.3.1
- Indieweb Post Kinds: 2.6.6
- Photo dropper: 2.3.4
- Semantic linkbacks: 3.5.1
- Social network auto-poster: 4.0.7
- Syndication links: 3.2.2
- Webmention: 3.4.1
- Responsive theme: 3.6

Some of these Wordpress plugins are new on the yellow release channel.

UBOS Beta 12 released with better test coverage

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 15:00:00 +0000

It’s really easy to underestimate how much time it takes to improve your build system. This is one of those cases, but eventually, we made it to the finish line.

Welcome, UBOS beta 12!

This release does not contain app updates; those will follow shortly. Detailed release notes are ~~here~~.

UBOS Beta 11 released with support for Marvell ESPRESSObin

Sun, 11 Jun 2017 23:00:00 +0000

UBOS Beta 11 is here, and we are proud to add the Marvell ESPRESSObin to the list of supported devices.

Launched on Kickstarter earlier this year, the ESPRESSObin is an interesting board: it doesn’t have any graphics (which is fine with us because most UBOS devices are used as headless servers) but instead it has three Ethernet ports and a SATA connector. The currently available 1GB version costs only $49 on Amazon. So it’s perfect for running UBOS.

UBOS Beta 10 released with automatic Tor hidden services setup

Sun, 12 Feb 2017 16:00:00 +0000

Update 2024-07: Tor support has been removed again, due to low usage.

Beta 10 has arrived with new software packages, new features and the obligatory bug fixes. The big news is this:

You can now set up web applications, like Wordpress, as a Tor hidden service with a single command. This joins previously-available functionality to set up HTTPS sites, including certificate provisioning, with a single command. Here are some examples:

Podcast: The IoT Overlords and their Thirst for your Data

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 20:00:00 +0000

Listen to UBOS instigator Johannes Ernst being interviewed by Bruce Sinclair of IoT Inc. As Bruce puts it:

In this episode of the IoT Business Show, I speak with Johannes Ernst about the IoT Overloads and the upcoming data showdown. (57min)

UBOS Beta 9: Nextcloud 10, Wordpress accessories and new features

Wed, 09 Nov 2016 22:00:00 +0000

Beta 9 has arrived with new software packages, new features and the obligatory bug fixes. Here are some of the highlights:

Nextcloud 10 is now available, as well as easy ways to upgrade from Nextcloud 9 and from ownCloud.
Wordpress has gained some themes and plugins to make websites prettier.
Automatic file system snapshots protect against failing upgrades. Not that those should ever happen, but let’s be safe instead of sorry.

Talk: "UBOS and the Indie Iot" at Mozilla San Francisco

Fri, 23 Sep 2016 23:30:00 +0000

The Mozilla IoT folks invited me (Johannes Ernst) to give a talk at their Connected Devices meetup in San Francisco last night. I talked about “UBOS and the Indie IoT”. It features:

a little bit of UBOS,
a compare and contrast between Indie IoT and Overlord IoT,
a high-level market map, and
how I control my pool from my couch.

Interesting? Join us on the brand-new Indie IoT mailing list at groups.io/g/indieiot.

Migrating sites running on UBOS to Letsencrypt

Thu, 25 Aug 2016 15:00:00 +0000

If you have a site that currently doesn’t use SSL/TLS encryption, or you use a a certificate from a different provider, UBOS lets you easily move to a Letsencrypt certificate.

Letsencrypt.org is a wonderful idea. If it didn’t exist, somebody would have to invent it! Of course, there are many certificate authorities from where you can obtain SSL/TLS certificates for your website, so the traffic to and from your website is encrypted and cannot be read or altered by anybody.

WiFi on UBOS

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Update: UBOS now has built-in WiFi support via the UBOS Staff and the manual setup described in this post should not be necessary any more.

Unfortunately, the state of WiFi on Linux in general is a mess. We can’t fix that general mess single-handedly on UBOS I’m afraid. But when your WiFi dongle has the “right” chip set, using WiFi on UBOS can be surprisingly easy. Such as when using Element14’s Wi-Pi (datasheet) with the Raspberry Pi.

UBOS Beta 8: incremental improvements and bug fixes

Fri, 12 Aug 2016 22:00:00 +0000

Beta 7 was a major feature release. This time around, the improvements are more incremental. Here are the highlights:

When creating a new site with sudo ubos-admin createsite, you can now easily install several apps at the same site. For example, you could run your Wordpress blog at example.com/blog and your Nextcloud family file sharing at example.com/files. The command has been restructured to allow you to enter multiple apps.
You can now restore old backups to new apps. For example, if you’d like to migrate your ownCloud installation to Nextcloud, all you need to do is to create a backup of your ownCloud site with sudo ubos-admin backup and then tell sudo ubos-admin restore that you’d like to migrate. It’s really easy.

How we packaged Mattermost for UBOS

Thu, 21 Jul 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Update 2024-11: Mattermost is no longer packaged due to low usage.

This post is a step-by-step transcript of how we packaged Mattermost for one-command install and update on UBOS. The process turned out to be rather typical, and if you are thinking of packaging up an app for UBOS, you can use it as a template.

In case you haven’t come across Mattermost, it is a very nice open-source implementation of a group messaging platform similar to closed-source Slack.

Video: Installing Nextcloud on Raspberry Pi 3 with UBOS

Fri, 15 Jul 2016 23:30:00 +0000

In this end-to-end tutorial, Johannes Ernst shows how to download and install UBOS on a Raspberry Pi 3, without a keyboard or a monitor, and get Nextcloud running on it.

UBOS Beta 7: more apps, Raspberry Pi 3, offsite backup, e-mail, AWS and more

Thu, 07 Jul 2016 22:00:00 +0000

UBOS continues to make great steps forward. In the latest beta, we have added support for more types of hardware to run UBOS on, more apps, important software upgrades, and many small improvements that make your life as owner of a UBOS device in production just so much easier.

Where do we start?

You can now run UBOS natively on Amazon Web Services’ cloud computing platform, EC2. To to so, see details here.

UBOS Beta 6: now supporting Raspberry Pi Zero, Docker and more

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 15:00:00 +0000

Hot on the heels of beta 5, here is beta 6 already. It was intended only as a bug fix release, but those bugs got squashed faster than expected, and so UBOS also got a few new features while we were at it.

Here are the highlights:

It’s hard to believe, but $5 buys you a gigahertz processor, half a gig of RAM, HDMI video and lots of programmable I/O pins; in other words, a Raspberry Pi Zero. We are proud to announce that UBOS now runs on the Raspberry Pi Zero, in addition to the original one and version 2.

UBOS Beta 5: single-command firewall configuration, Linux containers etc.

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 17:00:00 +0000

It’s been longer since beta 4 than we would have liked, but if you work on a big chunk of new functionality, that’s sometimes what happens!

Now we proudly present: UBOS beta 5. Here are the highlights:

In addition to being the primary operating system on a device, UBOS can alternatively now run in Linux containers. Not just on x86_64 PCs, but also on Raspberry Pi’s! So if you already run Linux and don’t want to remove your distro, you can simply run UBOS in addition! To make this easy, we are providing pre-configured images. Here are the instructions for how to run UBOS is a container.

UBOS Beta 4: support for Mediagoblin, Webtrees and PostgreSQL

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 18:00:00 +0000

We are proud that UBOS beta 4 has been released:

There are three major new features:

Mediagoblin, the GNU Project’s photo and media sharing application, now installs, backs up, restores and upgrades with a single command, like all the other apps on UBOS.
Webtrees, a full-featured web genealogy app, allows you to collaborate with your relatives on your ancestors over the internet, without spilling the family secrets to the general public because you keep them on your UBOS device.

Raspberry Pi Geek Magazine: UBOS is "clever"

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 17:00:00 +0000

Raspberry Pi Geek Magazin has a five-page (!) in-depth article on UBOS in its latest 03/2015 issue, calling UBOS “pfiffig” (clever) and “it is a lot of fun.

In spite of its English-sounding title, the magazine is actually published in German.

Here are some snippets translated into English:

Setting up a personal cloud with Ubos

You Are The Boss

More and more people would like to keep control over their data. The avenue to your own personal cloud could hardly be any easier than with Ubos -- and that in spite of doing without a graphical user interface. By Ferdinand Thommes.

User Story: How I set up ownCloud on UBOS with VirtualBox behind a firewall

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 09:00:00 +0000

UBOS user Emmanual Arthur wrote us with this experience report. You can often find him on #ubos.

“I wanted to use ownCloud Server, but to set it up on Windows 8.1 wasn’t trivial. So the UBOS solution is more appealing to me. I also wanted to be able to use my ownCloud server if I am out of range of my local network. I didn’t want to use Dropbox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive and such. I also want to sync my calendar, contact and the photo folder on my smartphone with my ownCloud server. I accomplished this without the need to configure everything in Linux and then the ownCloud server.

How to add an app to an existing site

Sat, 14 Mar 2015 11:30:00 +0000

Let’s say you have set up a site with one app (e.g. owncloud), as it is described in Setting up your first Site and App. What if you’d like to run a second app at the same site, say selfoss?

Short version:

% sudo ubos-admin showsite --siteid &lt;siteid&gt; --json &gt; site.json
% vi site.json
% sudo ubos-admin deploy -f site.json

where in the second step, you add a second entry into the appconfigs array with the app you want, the context path where to run, and a unique appconfigid, like this:

UBOS Beta 3 is out: added Raspberry Pi 2, Beagle Bone Black, and the UBOS Staff

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 09:00:00 +0000

We are proud that UBOS beta 3 has been released this morning.

There are two major new features:

UBOS now also supports the quad-core Raspberry Pi 2, and the Beagle Bone Black. These two new platforms join the original Raspberry Pi and the x86 (64bit) platform for physical and virtualized computers, for more options to run UBOS.
The UBOS Staff makes secure configuration of UBOS devices without keyboard and monitor a snap. See blog post and documentation.

Meetup on Monday, March 9

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 09:26:00 +0000

The next UBOS / Indie Box meetup is going to be on Monday, March 9, 6:30pm, at the Hacker Dojo, in Mountain View, CA.

Can’t come? Meet us on IRC at #ubos on freenode any time.

Video: installing ownCloud 8 on UBOS with TLS

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 07:00:00 +0000

Our friends at ownCloud released their version 8 the day before we pushed out UBOS beta 2. We managed to include it at the last minute, and here is a video that shows how easy it is to install ownCloud on UBOS.

Including virtual host setup, SSL/TLS setup, and using Bonjour/mDNS, it only takes a single command and about a minute!

UBOS Beta 2 is here!

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 17:00:00 +0000

We’re proud to announce that UBOS is now available in its second beta release.

You can run UBOS:

on standard PCs, as their primary operating system
on standard PCs and Macs, in VirtualBox
on your Raspberry Pi Model B and Model B+.

Highlights

Many bug fixes and reliability improvements from beta 1, as to be expected.
UBOS has an installer that makes it easy to install UBOS on a new computer. Download the the image for a bootstick, boot in the boot stick and run sudo ubos-install /dev/sda to install UBOS on your first hard drive. RAID1 is also no problem, simply say sudo ubos-install /dev/sda /dev/sdb. More options are available.

UBOS featured in Linux Journal

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 12:16:00 +0000

In their February issue, Linux Journal has a long interview on UBOS with Johannes Ernst.

You’re the Boss with UBOS

The interview was conducted by Doc Searls who, other than being a Senior Editor there, is one of the original authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto, recently updated.

Here are some choice quotes:

DS: making it easy for muggles to set up their own fully independent personal home servers with little or no help from wizards.

DS: What's the end state of the "Internet of our own things"? Or at least a state to which Linux Journal readers can aspire—and weigh in with some code and product?

THEIR things or OUR things? Talk on Indie IoT

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 11:15:00 +0000

Johannes Ernst, primary UBOS developer, will be giving a talk at next week’s “Internet of Things Silicon Valley” meeting titled:

THEIR things or OUR things?
Let’s build a more customer-centric, privacy-respecting "indie" IoT instead.

Update: Slides are now available (formats: PDF with notes Keynote)

This talk is focused on the big picture that makes technologies such as UBOS so important, here applied to the rapidly growing Internet of Things.

Upcoming UBOS Meetups through May

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 11:07:00 +0000

The following UBOS / Indie Box meetups are coming up, generally on the second Monday each month:

Monday, February 9, 2015 at 6:30pm, Hacker Dojo, Mountain View, CA
Monday, March 9, 2015 at 6:30pm, Hacker Dojo, Mountain View, CA
Monday, April 13, 2015 at 6:30pm, Hacker Dojo, Mountain View, CA
Monday, May 11, 2015 at 6:30pm, Hacker Dojo, Mountain View, CA

Meetup January 12, 6:30. Let's run web apps on our Raspberry Pi's

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 13:22:48 +0000

Register for this event on Monday, January 12, 6:30pm, at the [Hacker Dojo](http://hackerdojo.com/) in Mountain View, CA.

UBOS Beta 1 is here, and that means installing web apps on our Raspberry Pi’s has become as simple as executing a single command:

% sudo ubos-admin createsite

For this hands-on meetup, bring your Raspberry Pi’s, and we will get one or more web apps running on it. Your choices currently are:

Proud to announce: the first 500 downloads

Mon, 22 Dec 2014 19:47:12 +0000

I’m happy to announce that as of today, UBOS has been successfully downloaded more than five hundred times!

Trying out the beta of an operating system is not for the faint of heart: you need a spare computer to install it on, or at least be familiar with virtualization. Which means geeks only with some time. So I’m quite impressed by 500 downloads in the short time that UBOS has been available.

UBOS Lightening talk, Mountain View, CA, Dec 5, 2014, 5:30pm

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 13:18:44 +0000

There will be a lightening talk on UBOS at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, CA, tonight at 5:30pm. Sorry for the late notice.

It is open to the general public. You don’t need to be a Dojo member to attend. Directions are here.

UBOS Beta 1 is now available!

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:00:00 +0000

We’re proud to announce that UBOS is now available in a first beta release.

You can run UBOS:

on standard PCs, as their primary operating system
on standard PCs and Macs, in VirtualBox
on your Raspberry Pi Model B and Model B+.

The following apps are available and have been tested on all platforms:

Owncloud: Your Cloud, Your Data, Your Way!
Install with sudo ubos-admin createsite, specify app owncloud

Postscapes.com article on UBOS and Indie Box

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 13:34:11 +0000

Postscapes published the first article about UBOS and the Indie Box Project titled:

“Personal server software UBOS lets users run their own clouds, control their own data”.

Thanks, Ted Burnham!

Selfoss Restore/Upgrade Issue

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 15:12:11 +0000

Update: solved.

There’s an issue with restoring selfoss from backup.

Cool Trick of the Day

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:12:11 +0000

Let’s say you set up a site with some apps, but at the wrong hostname. That just happened to me. I meant to call the hostname selfoss-test, but accidentally I called it test-selfoss.

This is what I did to correct the situation (all on one line):

% sudo ubos-admin showsite --host test-selfoss --json \
    | sed -e 's/test-selfoss/selfoss-test/' \
    | sudo ubos-admin deploy --stdin

In English: Take the Site JSON of the site currently at hostname test-selfoss, replace test-selfoss with selfoss-test, and deploy. Note that because we did not change the site id or the appconfig ids, all the data was preserved.

Package Signature Issues

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 15:12:11 +0000

Update Sept 27, 2014, early morning: this issue has been resolved. The dev and red channels have been updated, and new images have been created.

The red channel is currently moving towards requiring package signatures from the UBOS buildmaster before packages can be installed. There are some teething issues. If you run into them, temporarily disable package signature checking by editing /etc/pacman.conf, and changing the signature settings to optional:

FileSigLevel = Optional
LocalFileSigLevel = Optional
RemoteFileSigLevel = Optional