The Chandler Project Blog » heikki

Update on supported Chandler Desktop platforms

heikki — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:04:59 +0000

We’ve added Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and Mac OS X “Leopard” to our supported list, and are just phasing out Mac OS X “Panther” support, so it was time to clarify what platforms are officially supported.

Linux:

Ubuntu Dapper Drake (tarball installs)
Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (deb install, using system python)

Windows:

Windows XP

Macintosh:

PPC Mac OS X “Tiger”
Intel Mac OS X “Tiger”
Intel Mac OS X “Leopard” (using system python)

Additionally Chandler may be built and may run in the following configurations but is not officially supported/tested, although we may fix issues if reported, especially if given patches:

Linux:

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (using system python)
Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 64-bit (using system python)
Other Linux variants

Windows:

Windows 2000
Windows Vista

Macintosh:

PPC Mac OS X “Panther”
PPC Mac OS X “Leopard” (using system python)

Chandler can encrypt mail and sharing account passwords

heikki — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:27:47 +0000

Chandler 0.7alpha5 has the ability to encrypt the email and sharing account passwords. To encrypt the account passwords, you need to go to File menu and select Protect Passwords… and set a master password. From then on, whenever Chandler needs to use an email or sharing account password, it will ask you for the master password in order to decrypt the protected account password(s). A word of warning though: if you forget the master password you will need to reset all passwords and set new values before email and sharing will work again. By default Chandler remembers the master password for 15 minutes, but you can change the time. The full specification for this feature is described in the Passwords spec.

Chandler performance

heikki — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 21:38:56 +0000

Many of us at OSAF have started trying to use Chandler for basic calendaring needs (we call this dogfooding). One of the first things that we see that makes the experience frustrating is that Chandler is too slow in many basic operations, like creating an event. We want to improve these a lot before we release 0.6.

We have identified 9 use cases that we are most interested in, and a handful of others we are paying some attention to. We are also automatically tracking how we are doing: the Tinderbox system runs these performance tests continuously and reports how we are doing against our targets and how the times change over time as we make changes.

On Parcel and CPIA Script Security

heikki — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:45:26 +0000

We have made a conscious decision to not try and implement half-hearted security sandboxes for CPIA Script and third party parcels. Because Python itself does not provide a sandbox (unlike Java and Javascript, for example), this would be pretty hard to do, although projects like Zope have come up with limited sandbox-like functionality.

What this means is that any CPIA script or parcel can do anything a regular user, and by extension Chandler, can do.

Please note that this is no different from the way Mozilla Firefox extensions work, for example. Once you start installing a Mozilla Firefox extension, it can do whatever it wants. In case it is malicious, bad things will happen.

There are several ways in which the Mozilla project mitigates these risks. First, most users will be installing extensions from the SSL-protected site addons.mozilla.org. Although there are no guarantees the extensions installed from there are not malicious, it is somewhat unlikely. It is possible to install extensions from other sites as well, but this requires more user action, which hopefully makes some people think about the implications of their actions, and will also discourage a fair number of people altogether. Finally there is a two second delay in the install dialog so that people won’t accidentally click the install button without having a chance to see it. The Mozilla project also supports signed extensions, but these are extremely rare due to the difficulty of the signing process.

The success of the Mozilla Firefox project, and at least as of yet the rarity of malicious extensions, seems like a good model to adopt for Chandler as well. Once 3rd party Chandler parcels start appearing we should provide a trusted site from which to search and download these parcels.

Finally, there is a way to limit the damage of potentially malicious Firefox extensions or Chandler parcels. Do not run the computer with root or administrator privileges.

Europython 2005 report

heikki — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 20:04:01 +0000

Long overdue, but here at last…

Andi Vajda and I participated in Europython 2005 this summer. I gave a Chandler presentation, and Andi gave a presentation on PyLucene. Both were reasonably well attended.

I also did an M2Crypto sprint, and while I got a lot done there are still some loose ends before we can do the next M2Crypto release.

We met lots of interesting people and saw interesting presentations. There were some calendar projects presented that we obviously need to take a closer look at.

You can read more in my post to the dev mailing list in here.

OSAF in Europython 2005

heikki — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 18:07:25 +0000

I will be in Europython 2005 from June 27 to July 1. I will be giving a presentation of Chandler in the business track.

I have also spared the last two days for an M2Crypto sprint. We are using M2Crypto in Chandler for the crypto/SSL stuff.

Andi Vajda is the other OSAF developer going to Europython. Andi is giving a talk on PyLucene. PyLucene will provide full text search for Chandler.

We’d be happy to talk with you about all Chandler-related stuff.

Sharing over SSL/TLS finally works

heikki — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 18:20:59 +0000

Did you know Chandler now supports sharing to a webserver over SSL/TLS connection? Look in your account settings for sharing, and check the SSL box and you are all set. Some bugs remain, so please check Bugzilla if something does not work and file new ones if appropriate.

PS. My first ever blog post.