[UPDATED] Bitshares OS Alpha 0.1 - Instead of Worker's Proposal, let's try Santa's one :)
1. What is my drive with Bitshares?
As someone who calls himself Lucifer, claiming to be Authentic Asshole publicly, I don't fit in classic fashion of Egoistic profile. I strive to seek pride in success, not just talk and dreams or terms like "fallin' off the wagon" ,that Stan Larimer recently used in one of his interviews, where the way he explained the World/People, not just Bitshares concept, is just... Remarkably correct and accurate. People forgotten to appreciate safety they've had for decades, finding more and more comfort in Chaos, actually just not having any other option.
We will all agree on what he said... To many times in life I've seen people being sad and depressed because they've "just missed opportunity of a lifetime!". Guess what poor souls ? You were ignorant for it, otherwise you can't miss good opportunity, and even blind people who can't see for real are able to grab one, so definitely it was not a "Destiny" or "Bad luck" issue.
This is my drive with Bitshares. It's a community of people who is dealing with twisted World of problems, on a daily/hourly basis, being transparent about it, being stubborn and persistent with it, staking more than just money but priceless time in life to just make it happen, and most important part... making the first crucial change, in more than 20 Years of IT I've seen from Spain to Australia (Over the Southern Asia and entire Europe), and by that I mean first show of Napster (P2P based), BearShare, Limewire, Torrent... Decentralized p2p networks of the past used in public. Those people are my Drive.
2. Bitshares OS Alpha
2.1 How it all began
You will probably not believe into this, but I've done in last 40 days, about 50+ installations, configurations and attempts of both on various hardware configurations, locations, even OSes of a Full RPC Node for Bitshares, just for obtaining the limits, problems, issues, missing pieces in the docs, differences between OS, docker, doxy, source, etc.
Doing all of that, and putting myself in the shoes of consumer, wealthy user, basic it admin, basic it guy, investor even, i came to one conclusion. If you open to them full setup, configs, problems, issues, environment setup for the OS and to get it all done by doing rebuild, download/copy/move blockchain files, run a screen, detach from a screen, if u click ctrl+c by accident its gone for 5 hours, etc., they will just fuck off from it. Seriously, it's to much for documentation, it's to much for accepting it, appreciating, or understanding it ever... fully.
In this case, by following Red Hat Enterprise trick they've done years ago, they practically released a Fedora Core Project, that was free to use and being very hot and spicy in Linux community for end users/admins by just as a challenge to fix all it bugs and core problems, doing it publicly on a web board, same like we are doing nowadays, while commercial/enterprise part of the market wouldn't even smell it knowing how crappy it is.
At the end of the year, when Fedora Core is nearly fully polished by community, Red Hat would take all the fixes, repack it to Red Hat Enterprise and making their year so successful, that they have to do only simple enterprise support, while next release is being done by community :)
This is where the idea came from... :)
2.2 The Idea
I've found all what I've needed to start making it whole. Example, You can download ETH and configure miner for yourself, with building it all from source and having a pain. But you can also download EthOS and start OS that is loading and installing everything, doing only what you need to be done, with minimal setup.
Whole product can be presented in a gift box, steemitshop or wherever it needs to be presented, with a 12-14 pages instruction manual and abilities of the system. Presentable, Market ready, Bugs Free, Automatically Updated, Selection of Server Mode (Full RPC, Private RPC, additional package bitshares-ui), with services running in the background, and a Witness OS Only option - Bitshares blockchain with a ptpp ready purevpn account with unique (dedicated) ip to mask your real ip with highest security available, being configured for easy deployment.
2.3 Progress
Remaining tasks before start branding/labeling OS for BitsharesOS as alpha release are:
- detailed list of necessary packages and best configuration for any hardware setup (SSD or RAM preferred).
- shell (bash/sh) scripting is done for entire blockchain with full deployment to native commands of system - needs to be added in the installation package list
- Running bitshares node as native Ubuntu service with full functionalities like any other service, with setting time gaps for closing/stopping/restarting service since blockchain is well known for looooong signal until real EXIT.
- Running central server for package/update availability with re-configure/re-deploy bash scripts for producing new releases wherever github makes a release
Suggestion: It would be wonderful if Bitshares Network could join our project in order to produce releases directly wherever they do on github to the central server
2.4 ETA on Alpha Release
- Our administrator/engineer estimate will be available after Monday, along with some other proposal documentation where I would like to meet and discuss with Bitshares itself, before any public release.
- Alpha Release will be available for Testing and Download between 18th of November and 1st of December 2017.
Copyright
There is none. Even I'm not official Bitshares representative, developer or anything, except CTO for a company who is running Thailand location for Bitshares DEX, for this OS, supported or not by Bitshares, I'm packing and building it, as Bitshares OS, giving it with NO COPYRIGHT as a living legacy to Bitshares Network itself to copyright, market it and use however they think it's the best.
[UPDATE]
[FIX] btsd.service: Native service integration to Ubuntu while running it as screen and creating group of services for the blockchain through simple shell script file authorized by systemd itself.
Share some love for helping/responsible parties:
@bitshares.fdn
@apasia.tech
@britcoins
@mrstaf
Cheers,
I'm not sure I understood, are you proposing to turn bitshares into an operating system? I don't fully comprehend what benefits it will bring, but nothing less than awesome came from apasia.tech up untill now, so I would suggest you to post it on the bitsharestalk.org forum, where relevant people actually discuss things instead of commenting "upvote for upvote"
@ravid - If you read the article 2 sections are describing what it can be used for and why I've started it. But, i'll give you one additional example:
a) Bitshares dev team decides to drop new release, and that release needs to be applied as update until xx.xx.xxxx date. If nobody follows up, checks up on time, or not deploy manual update example blockchain can start operating on less witnesses because outdated ones are missing the blocks. - Having OS with defined server for update releases can save a lot of work on all sides, making it completely reliable.
[UPDATED]Again, it would cut a lot current messy documentation and polished a lot of stuff during deployment for each individual willing to join bitshares community as Witness, Full Node, Worker, or whatever intention/idea they may have. It would reduce costs and investments just in deployment for any business who wants to build something on top of the bitshares, still leaving it as open source in the packages as well as github.
Im sure proposal will be posted at the bitshares talk forum as announced/scheduled, not long ago in bitshares dex channel on Telegram.
Cheers,
Loved your comment :)
Luci
Simplified deployment for new nodes is a great idea, so not only the chosen ones (programmers and sw engineers) can participate.
I'm having doubts about the centralized update server... Adds a single point of failure - as in it could be hacked, some bs update released that is due in the next minute, noone participates, network starts with less (zero) witnesses, everything's falling apart
I've brought to apasia.tech really nice portfolio of security hosting, aws like instances in Thailand (High availability nodes), and years of happy corporate customers who moved over to us having even few corporate Magento and php infected->cleaned/saved (now working) websites without having a workable backup. Another thing is... It's not centralized. As Ubuntu OS have more mirrors than one available and there is no issues. CDN network is always an option. SSL a must.
I assure you deployment and security of packages is not an issue. Github is PUBLIC and Centralized server, and we are still using it, yes ?
Nothing to be worried about, its running for years on Ubuntu with their very poorly managed centralized servers, will run with Bitshares OS even better (less packages, higher bandwidth, low consumption usage).
Well then, it looks like you got everything figured out. As I said, everything you guys brought to this platform until now was awesome, so best of luck to you all. Keep up the good work!
This post has received a 0.18 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @banjo.