NetKernel News Volume 1 Issue 10

January 8th 2010

Happy New Year. What's new this week?

• DPML bugfix
• Apposite UI tweak
• How to run NK as a windows service/*nix daemon.

Updates

DPML: A fix was made to eliminate some corners cases in the handling of the <modify-response> tag, in particular to handle dependent expiries. Thanks to Darren Cruse for discovering this.

Apposite: A minor tweak to the recent UI updates, a selection in either the repository or repo-set drop down lists now instantly triggers an AJAX refresh of the listed packages.

Howto run NK4 as a Windows Service/*nix Daemon

An updated version of NK3's windows service wrapper is available here...

http://resources.1060research.com/aux/nkse/4/win32-service.zip

Just expand this into your NetKernel [INSTALL]/bin/ directory and follow the steps in the readme.txt.

FYI because of the way the windows service wrapper works it will not be possible to use the "Reboot" NK option from the NK control panel when running as an NT service - you should use the Win32 services "restart" option to do a hard reboot.

For *nix platforms, a daemon script is available here...

http://resources.1060research.com/aux/nkse/4/netkerneld

On Linux we symlink it to /etc/init.d/netkerneld (set runlevels with chkconfig or appropriate tool). You will need to edit it to set the user name of the user you want to run NK as (for historical reasons the default username is "dexter") and also set the NK install path. Finally you must have a copy of "wget" installed, which is used to call the various REST admin interfaces.

When set up the usage is:

/etc/init.d/netkerneld {start|stop|restart|status}

ROC News

The new decade is upon us and ROC is ten years old. It was great to see many people trying out NK4 over the holidays. Lots of you also provided valuable feedback and encouragement - thank you.

We're now fully back up to speed, refreshed and determined to make this the breakthrough year for NK and ROC. On the horizon are:

Detailed exposition and illustration of ROC patterns. Improved tools support with "convention over configuration" style for turn-key solutions. More howto's, video tutorials and template solutions. NetKernel Enterprise Edition with cluster/cloud capability. A customer portal featuring integrated support services, product management services.

NK4 was a huge investment but we're now comfortable that we're through the post-launch period of snag fixing. Speaking for the 1060 team, now's the time for us to step out from our ROC hermitage and "put it about" in the wider world. Watch out for much higher visibility.

Tony will also be getting back to covering the ROC fundamentals on his blog - but we won't let that slow us down.

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to you all.