debamaxKiBi’s bloghttp://mraw.org/blog/tags/debamax/KiBi’s blogikiwiki2018-01-15T11:02:01ZQuick recap of 2017http://mraw.org/blog/2018/01/15/Quick_recap_of_2017/2018-01-15T11:02:01Z2018-01-15T11:00:00Z
<p>I haven’t been posting anything on my personal blog in a long while,
let’s fix that!</p>
<p>Partial reason for this is that I’ve been busy documenting progress on
the Debian Installer on
<a href="https://debamax.com/blog/">my company’s blog</a>. So far, the following
posts were published there:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://debamax.com/blog/2016/11/22/debian-installer-stretch-alpha-8/">Debian Installer: Stretch Alpha 8 released</a>
with details on the release process, and on the <code>debootstrap</code>
attempt regarding merged-<code>/usr</code>
(granted, that one was from late 2016).</li>
<li><a href="https://debamax.com/blog/2017/02/13/debian-installer-stretch-rc-2/">Debian Installer: Stretch RC 2 released</a>:
wrapping up both RC 1 and RC 2 for Stretch, mentioning major changes
instead of all the tiny details one would usually find in the release
announcements published on the <code>debian-devel-announce@</code> mailing list.</li>
<li><a href="https://debamax.com/blog/2017/08/04/debian-installer-stretch-final/">Debian Installer: Stretch released</a>:
aggregating RC 3 to RC 5 this time, since the last few weeks before
the Stretch release date were quite busy!</li>
</ul>
<p>After the Stretch release, it was time to attend
<a href="http://debconf17.debconf.org/">DebConf’17 in Montreal, Canada</a>. I’ve
<a href="https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/167/">presented the latest news</a>
on the Debian Installer front there as well. This included a quick
demo of
<a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/d-i/kadit">my little framework</a> which
lets me run automatic installation tests. Many attendees mentioned
<a href="http://open.qa/">openQA</a> as the current state of the art technology
for OS installation testing, and Philip Hands started
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2017/11/msg00292.html">looking into it</a>.
Right now, my little thing is still useful as it is, helping me
reproduce regressions quickly, and testing bug fixes… so I haven’t
been trying to port that to another tool yet.</p>
<p>I also gave another presentation in two different contexts: once at a
<a href="http://rrll.alliance-libre.org/">local FLOSS meeting in Nantes, France</a>
and once during the
<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/fr/2017/Toulouse">mini-DebConf in Toulouse, France</a>. Nothing
related to Debian Installer this time, as the topic was how I helped a
company upgrade thousands of machines from Debian 6 to Debian 8 (and
to Debian 9 since then). It was nice to have
<a href="https://evolix.com/">Evolix</a> people around, since we shared our
respective experience around automation tools like Ansible and Puppet.</p>
<p>After the mini-DebConf in Toulouse, another event: the
<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/gb/2017/MiniDebConfCambridge">mini-DebConf in Cambridge, UK</a>. I
tried to give a lightning talk about <em>“how snapshot.debian.org helped
saved the release(s)”</em> but clearly speed was lacking, and/or I had too
many things to present, so that didn’t work out as well as I
hoped. Fortunately, no time constraints when I presented that during a
Debian meet-up in Nantes, France. <code>:)</code></p>
<p>Since
<a href="https://tails.boum.org/news/reproducible_Tails/">Reproducible Tails builds</a>
were announced, it seemed like a nice opportunity to document how my
company
<a href="https://debamax.com/blog/2017/11/20/tails-early-work-on-reproducibility/">got involved into early work on reproducibility</a>
for the <a href="https://tails.boum.org/">Tails project</a>.</p>
<p>On an administrative level, I’m already done with all the paperwork
related to the second financial year. <code>\o/</code></p>
<p>Next things I’ll likely write about: the first two D-I Buster Alpha
releases (many blockers kept popping up, it was really hard to
release), and a few more recent release critical bug reports.</p>
Freelance Debian consultant: running DEBAMAXhttp://mraw.org/blog/2016/08/08/Freelance_Debian_consultant_running_DEBAMAX/2016-08-22T06:00:01Z2016-08-22T06:00:00Z
<h3>Executive summary</h3>
<p>Since October 2015, I've been running a
<acronym title="Free/Libre and Open-Source Software">FLOSS</acronym> consulting company,
specialized on Debian, called <a href="https://debamax.com/">DEBAMAX</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://debamax.com/"><img src="http://mraw.org/blog/2016/08/08/debamax-logo.png" width="300" height="60" alt="DEBAMAX logo" class="img" /></a></p>
<h3>Longer version</h3>
<p>Everything started two years ago. Back then I blogged about one of the
biggest changes in my life: trying to find the right balance between
volunteer work as a Debian Developer, and entrepreneurship as a
<a href="http://mraw.org/blog/2014/09/15/Freelance_Debian_consultant">Freelance Debian consultant</a>.
Big change because it meant giving up the comfort of the salaried
world, and figuring out whether working this way would be sufficient to earn
a living…</p>
<p>I experimented for a while under a simplified status. It comes with a
number of limitations but that’s a huge win compared to France’s heavy
company-related administrativia. Here’s what it looked like,
everything being done online:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>1 registration form to begin with: wait a few days, get an
identifier from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INSEE">INSEE</a>,
mention it in your invoices, there you go!</p></li>
<li><p>4 tax forms a year: taxes can be declared monthly or quarterly, I
went for the latter.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>A number of things became quite clear after a few months:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>I love this new job! Sharing my Debian knowledge with customers,
and using it to help them build/improve/stabilise their products
and their internal services feels great!</p></li>
<li><p>Even if I wasn't aware of that initially, it seems like I've got a
decent network already: Debian Developers, former coworkers, and
friends thought about me for their Debian-related tasks. It was
nice to hear about their needs, say yes, sign paperwork, and start working
right away!</p></li>
<li><p>While I'm trying really hard not to get too optimistic (achieving a
given turnover on the first year doesn't mean you're guaranteed to
do so again the following year), it seemed to go well enough for me to
consider switching from this simplified status to a full-blown
company.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Thankfully I was eligible to being accompanied by the local Chamber of
Commerce and Industry (<a href="http://www.rennes.cci.fr/">CCI Rennes</a>), which
provides teaching sessions for new entrepreneurs, coaching, and
meeting opportunities (accountants, lawyers, insurance companies, …).
Summer in France is traditionally rather quiet (<em>read:</em> almost everybody is on
vacation), so <a href="https://debamax.com/">DEBAMAX</a> officially started
operating in October 2015. Besides different administrative and
accounting duties, running this company doesn't change the way I've
been working since July 2014, so everything is fine!</p>
<p>As before, I won't be writing much about it through my personal blog,
except for an occasional update every other year; if you want to
follow what's happening with DEBAMAX:</p>
<ul>
<li>Website: <a href="https://debamax.com/">debamax.com</a> — in addition to the
usual <a href="https://debamax.com/company">company</a>,
<a href="https://debamax.com/services">services</a>, and
<a href="https://debamax.com/references">references</a> sections, it features
a <a href="https://debamax.com/blog/">blog</a> (with
<a href="https://debamax.com/blog/rss.xml">RSS</a>) where some missions are
going to be detailed (when it makes sense to share and when
customers are fine with it). Spoiler alert:
<a href="https://tails.boum.org/">Tails</a> is likely to be the first success
story there. <code>;)</code></li>
<li>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/debamax">@debamax</a> — which is going
to be retweeted for a while from my personal account,
<a href="https://twitter.com/CyrilBrulebois">@CyrilBrulebois</a>.</li>
</ul>
Freelance Debian consultanthttp://mraw.org/blog/2014/09/15/Freelance_Debian_consultant/2018-01-15T11:02:01Z2014-09-15T09:20:00Z
<p>I’m not used to talking about my day job but here’s an exception.</p>
<p>Over the past few years I worked in two startups (3 years each). It
was nice to spend time in different areas: one job was mostly about
research and development in a Linux cluster environment; the other one
was about maintaining a highly-customized, Linux-based operating
system, managing a small support team, and performing technological
surveillance in IT security.</p>
<p>In the meanwhile I’ve reached a milestone: 10 years with Debian. I had
been wondering for a few months whether I could try my luck going
freelance, becoming a Debian consultant. I finally decided to go ahead
and started in August!</p>
<p>The idea is to lend a hand for various Debian-related things like
systems administration, development/debugging, packaging/repository
maintenance, or Debian Installer support, be it one-shot or on a
regular basis. I didn’t think about trainings/workshops at first but
sharing knowledge is something I’ve always liked, even if I didn’t
become a teacher.</p>
<p>For those interested, details can be found on my website:
<a href="https://mraw.org/">https://mraw.org/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> It moved to <a href="https://debamax.com/">https://debamax.com/</a> since then.</p>
<p>Of course this doesn’t mean I’m going to put an end to my volunteer
activities within Debian, especially as a Debian Installer release
manager. Quite the contrary in fact! See the August and September
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/">debian-boot@ archives</a>, which
have been busy months. <code>:)</code></p>