Looks like I will be finished the desktop integration later today. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hope to have ISOs for tomorrow morning.

I spent yesterday handling the quarterly update to Arch Linux. This one involved moving /sbin /bin /usr/sbin to /usr/bin. It involved recompiling 20 of our base packages. Unfortunately, updating from the previous release would be a manual expert process. The next ISO will insulate you from needing to do that. The previous ISO release is now deprecated.

I hope to finish the next ISO release today or tomorrow. The testing start date is not yet impacted.

I did not get much done on the weekend. Will work the day towards completing the release. Still expect to have the first three modules completed this week ready to begin testing the week of June 10.

I will contact each of you this week after the high-level test plans are complete to discuss scheduling of technical field trials so that I can prioritize the modules.

No good news on the desktop integration. I had to ride a major upgrade to perl that required recompiling a significant number of packages for the next release. After recompiling and packaging the destktop intergration into the release the day will be gone. Looks like the release will be Monday. I want to start execution of client test plans the week of June 10, and it doesn't look like that date is impacted yet.

I will work the weekend on completing the release, the high level test plans and the first of the modules. Check back Monday.

One more day on the desktop integration. I still hope to have high level test plans available tomorrow, but obviously the first modules will be delayed until Monday.

Still working the desktop integration. Quite close. Should have an ISO release later today, as planned.

A bug was reported in the unx-2013.05.24-i686.iso image. When booting from CDROM, if you do not press ESC at the prompt to enter the boot menu, it attempts to install to the CDROM and fails. This will be fixed in the next ISO. For now, just press ESC at the prompt when booting from CDROM. CTRL-ALT-DEL will reboot if you missed the prompt.

I still hope to have at least the one module and the support packages from the Modules page out by the end of the week. Hopefully we can start lab testing one or two of the modules the week of June 3rd. I will put up some preliminary test plans by Friday as well.

It appears that it will take one more day (the rest of today and into the night) on the integrated desktops and full base package. It should be available tomorrow.

I still hope to have at least the one module and the support packages from the Modules page out by the end of the week. Hopefully we can start lab testing one or two of the modules the week of June 3rd.

Its looking like there will still be a release later today including the integrated desktop environment and extended base packages. Check back tomorrow.

After the integrated desktop environment is included, the base platform will be complete and it will be time to start packaging the modules that are already complete. This should only take a few days per module because the code is already written and all that is required is some polishing, testing and packaging. I hope to have the first two or three modules and the support packages from the Modules page out by the end of the week. I will release them as they are ready.

Just released the first ISO image. It boots live and persistent on a 4G USB stick. I need volunteers to try loading it on a range of sticks from 8G to 32G, and to test the checkpoint and rollback on sticks 16G and over.

This release does not have the full desktop environment; just a meager Fluxbox, and not all of the base packages are included in the release. The release is just i686. I plan to have the next release ISOs out on Monday with the full desktop environment and all base packages; both, 32-bit and 64-bit.

I had an ISO yesterday but ran into some difficulties with a broken boot when I tried it. I think that I will be past that this morning and on to release. There are some things in the release that are not perfect, but can be upgraded with packages.

Check back this afternoon.

I have discovered that I can block updates to packages from the Arch Linux repsositories for packages that are contained on the unexicon repositories. This way I can block out stable releases and insulate unexicon users from otherwise turbulent changes on the main Arch Linux respositories. I am placing all of the packages that are included in the ISOs on the repository to generate the first stable release.

I still hope to have the resulting ISOs available later today. I will keep you posted.

The website was turned online just a few minute ago. If you could not reach it immediately it was because it took the DNS entries a little while to propagate through the net.

It looks like we are going to have a release of ISOs later today. I am currently building and performing final testing on the images. I will complete the Modules and Download page when they are ready.

Until then, the Release Notes are complete and there is a lot of reading there. Almost nothing in the release notes will change after the release.

I spent a significant amount of time getting the Checkpoint and Rollback for system upgrades done. It is now possible to checkpoint the system, upgrade its software, and then allow the system to run for stress testing the upgrade. At any time it is possible to rollback to the previous system image and even continue running on the previous system image while any problems with the upgraded system are investigated. See Online Upgrades in the release notes for a brief description.

It is also possible to perform offline backup and restore of the entire system image by mounting the snapshot volume and backing it up using the normal tools. It can also be restored and the system can be rolled back to the restored image. See Offline Backup and Restore in the release notes for a brief description.

I spent some time getting the light-weight desktops supported by the release integrated into a single environment. The release will support Fluxbox, Blackbox, Openbox, IceWM, LXDE, and even WindowMaker and FVWM light-weight window managers in an integrated XDE desktop environment with session management, automatic XDG menus and autostart, file management, and theme management.

These light-weight window managers allow us to sport graphical login even on production deployment platforms, as well as providing a comfortable environment for management workstations use to manage unexicon nodes. Remote graphical login is provided by a full XDCMP/X11VNC integration.