Oolite Bulletins

Getafix wrote:

I will have to buy a used Core 2 Duo Quad, for my aged motherboard, to be prepared for E/D Beta release.

How 'aged' - Socket 775? I've got an old Asus 775 mobo in the cupboard (no CPU though). You'd need a Q6600 or above, I'd guess?

Continued the discussion here.

Last night the nightly server power supply has died.

The power supply has just been replaced by the one I had in my personal tower and
the web-server service has been restored.
For the time being it points to the previous nightly that contains the following change:
3bbc5b9 cim Fri Apr 4 22:58:59 2014 +0100 More atmosphere texture generation debugging

The Windows VM is broken and it is currently being restored
from the most recent backup (21-Mar-2014).

The Linux VMs are also being checked in parallel; they seem fine but let's hold a bit more.

I will keep editing this post with updates.

EDIT: We are back in business.

Getafix wrote:

EDIT: We are back in business.

Muchas gracias, amigo! <downloads nightly>

Hello,

I´ve read a lot about 1.79. When is ist going to be released? It´s my first update, so please forgive me my stupid questions: How is it done? Just run the installer and the rest ist done automatically? What happens to all my oxp? Will they still work with 1.79? The new file format is oxz, isn´t it, so do I have to rename all oxp to oxz?

Greez Sarr

If you mean when will be officially released as the new Oolite then no current release date yet, after fixes and improvements which the dev team select and put into from the list in GitHub.

But if you mean how can you try the current state, then a test version is available in the nightly builds. This will install into a different folder (Oolite-Trunk) so your current installation will be untouched.

Please copy all subfolders from your Oolite/AddOns folder into the new Oolite-Trunk/AddOns to get the same oxps in the new installation. If an oxp is not working similarly in 1.79 as in 1.77 then please report it in the proper topic of the oxp.

You do not need to rename anything to oxz, the old format is still working. The new format contain the whole .oxp folder in one .oxz file what you do not need to unzip, just put into the AddOns folder.

@SARR: What Norby wrote basically covers your question. Just a couple additional details about how it is normally done:

Release date: Not fixed yet and generally asking what it’s going to be jinxes it and prolongs it further (joking, but truth is it’s not set in stone yet). Since the next release is going to be a very major one, there is going to be an announcement even before the actual release date, when the entire code of the game will be frozen (i.e. no more changes to the game will be accepted unless they fix very serious bugs) for a period of time sufficient to run final tests.

After this, the game will be released in what we call Deployment Configuration – targeted to end-users, fully optimized, no debug sanity checks. A utility to convert the installer to Test Configuration will be issued separately for OXP creators and coders who want to have full debug control over the game, at the expense of some performance. Normally an updater of the previous version to the current one gets released too, but this time I intend to skip this step for the Windows port: the changes to the game compared to previous version are so many and significant, that most likely the updater will be of size similar to the actual installer itself, so might as well skip it.

Recommended install steps for Windows:
Make a backup of the entire Oolite folder so you can restore your game in case things don’t go as planned.
Uninstall previous version. Your save game files and OXP folders will be preserved.
Install new version at the same location as the previous one.
Update whatever OXPs require updating to their latest versions. Normally, if you keep your OXPs updated at all times, you will already have what you need and this step may not be required.

thanks for the answers! so when 1.79 is released, it´s going to be a long evening, because I have more than 100 OXP installed..........

Greez Sarr

During the next days, starting of today and till Sunday 27/Apr, the nightly server will mostly be unavailable.
The following major operations will be performed:
1. Image backup of server
2. Motherboard downgrade (explained later in this communication)
3. New O/S installation and web-server re-installation.

Following a stability period of two weeks the server will be brought down again to get an image backup of the new installation.

During terrastorage server unavailability, Mac users may use the following link for the nightly:
http://oolite.org/nightly/mac/index.php


Please, note that the virtual machines used to build Oolite nightly will not be touched... at least not at this stage.
However, the plan for the near future is to re-build the virtual machines with modern O/S and development tools.

To be honest with the community, the motherboard downgrade is due to the fact that I will use the server's motherboard for my E:D rig.
My PC motherboard has a very old PCI Express and also imposes many limitations when it comes to max memory supported.
I don't think that this change will have any impact to user-experience for the nightly service.

I will be posting some updates on the progress here.

EDIT 2014/04/28 02:11am:
O/S and server services have been successfully installed.
All virtual machines (used for the nightly builds) have been successfully tested.
Oolite Nightly service configuration is in progress.


EDIT 2014/04/29 17:45:
Oolite Nightly service is live... well... with a change....
I am sorry but, DYN is stopping the free dynamic dns service,
and I had to change my dynamic dns provider from DYN to NO-IP.

This means that terrastorage nightly service URLs are now:
Mac OS X: http://terrastorage.no-ip.info/oolite/status_mac.html
Windows x64: http://terrastorage.no-ip.info/oolite/status_win64.html
Windows x86: http://terrastorage.no-ip.info/oolite/status_win32.html
Linux x86_64/AMD64: http://terrastorage.no-ip.info/oolite/status_AMD64.html
Linux x86: http://terrastorage.no-ip.info/oolite/status.html

A relevant announcement will be posted in the initial post of this thread for each O/S.

[dumb pilot mode] Will I have to alter something in the auto-update thingy? [/dumb pilot mode]

Following the last "edit" of my previous post,
if you are using rsync to update to the latest nightly,
don't forget to update your scripts to point to the new address.

@another_commander: Please update the nightly URL in the first post accordingly.

Sweet... done, and it works! <buffs fingernails> Muchas gracias, amigo!

Heh, I take a few months' break and everything is overturned again!

The links in the Wiki to download nightly still point to old URLs...
(http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_FAQ and http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Running_Oolite-Linux)

... can someone fix it?

Fixed, thank you.