Blog | OSU Open Source Lab

Linux.com finds new home at OSUOSL

Posted by OSUOSL Admin on March 3, 2009

Linux.com is now being run by the Linux Foundation and, along with most of the other Linux Foundation infrastructure, is hosted at the OSU Open Source Lab.

The site has historically been a source for articles, information, and online forums about the Linux operating system. Under the Linux Foundation, the site will undergo a face lift in the coming months. An IdeaForge site has been launched at http://ideaforge.linux.com/ where you can view and make suggestions about what you would like to see on the future Linux.com site.

OSU Open Source Lab announces OSL Alliance Corporate Sponsorship Program

Posted by OSUOSL Admin on March 3, 2009

IBM, Google and Real Networks among lab's industry donors

Source: Jeff Sheltren, 541-713-3206
Media contact: Todd Simmons, 541-737-4611

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Oregon State University Open Source Lab, home to growing open source communities, today announced the OSL Alliance™ corporate sponsorship program. The OSL Alliance enables commercial vendors to financially support the expansion of computing infrastructure and services that OSL provides to open source projects worldwide. Among its donors, Google and Real Networks have contributed $1.25 million to date.

The Open Source Lab has provided world-class hosting and custom development for many of the world's largest and most far-reaching open source efforts, including the Mozilla Firefox browser, the Linux Foundation's main infrastructure, the Apache Software Foundation and the Drupal™ content management system.

Reciprocity and Gentoo

Posted by Lance Albertson on February 5, 2009

Donnie and Lance

It's not an overstatement to say that Gentoo was integral to the Open Source Lab’s foundation. The Linux-based operating system was one of the OSL's first projects – it even preceded the existence of the lab – and was instrumental in building the buzz that put open source at OSU on the map.

It started when Gentoo reached out to the open source community for help – it needed more infrastructure, and OSU provided it. "Web services donated an old Dell server, and from there Gentoo just grew and grew," says Lance Albertson, lead Unix systems administrator at the OSL.

Gentoo, which was already popular with the open source community at OSU, is an ideal system for many developers because it allows them to install their own meta-distribution. Everyone who uses Gentoo can compile his or her own code, making it extremely flexible and customizable. "The community thought, 'if OSU is using Gentoo, it must be good,'" says Albertson.

Helping Drupal Grow

Posted by OSUOSL Admin on February 5, 2009

When Drupal began to outgrow its infrastructure in the summer of 2005, its developers appealed to the open source community for help. OSL offered to host the equipment, and students Eric Searcy and Narayan Newton were put on the case.

"We attacked the problem from two different angles," says Newton, who now works with Tag1 Consulting and is a member of the association that runs Drupal. Searcy, now a systems administrator at InsightsNow in Corvallis, dealt with the scaling of the Web side of Drupal while Newton worked with the database.

They planned several tiers of attack, starting with two load balancers that became proxies that sent requests to Drupal's servers. It was easy then to know which server was up or down and to add new nodes quickly. The load balancers cached Drupal's Web pages, which would deliver older pages without needlessly taxing the Web server.

A History of Development

Posted by OSUOSL Admin on February 5, 2009

During his time at OSL, Josh Schonstal has worked on One Laptop Per Child and recently has been spending his time on TriSano, a tool that will help the Centers for Disease Control monitor outbreaks of infectious disease, environmental hazards, and bioterrorism attacks. TriSano is soon to be deployed in hospitals throughout Utah.

TriSano works like a front end for a database of information, Schonstal says. So when a health professional has a report to make, he or she gets a form that is separated into different concerns. The information is later accessible and editable to anyone with clearance to use the system.

Josh Schonstal

OSU senior Josh Schonstal was in second grade when he wrote his first computer program with his father’s help. As an eighth grader he was working with his friends on a basic role-playing game. OSU was the only school he applied to when he was looking for colleges, and that was because of the Open Source Lab.

OSUOSL Hosts OpenMRS Development

Posted by OSUOSL Admin on January 12, 2009

OpenMRS is an open source electronic medical record system framework. Led by the Regenstrief Institute and Partners In Health, OpenMRS has been implemented in several countries including South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda, and Tanzania.

The Oregon State University Open Source Lab is providing hosting for the OpenMRS Development Website including a Trac instance at http://dev.openmrs.org and the OpenMRS subversion repository. We are happy to provide services to OpenMRS and support their efforts in bringing usable medical information systems to developing countries where HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis are a major problem.

OSUOSL One of Nation's "Really Cool" Networking Labs

Posted by OSUOSL Admin on January 10, 2009

The Oregon State University Open Source Lab was recently featured in a Network World online story about really cool university computer network labs. This is a great honor for us, and we are glad to be in such good company. Some of the highlights of the OSUOSL included in the list were our hosting of projects such as the Linux Kernel, Drupal, the Linux Foundation, our development work on the Oregon Virtual School District, and our annual Government Open Source Conference.

The Network World article is located at http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/121508-university-networking-labs.html?page=4

For a full press release, please see http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2009/Jan09/opensourcelab.html