Guest Stars

Zentyal Team is proud to announce that a new Zentyal.org website is coming soon! This is something that we have had in our minds for quite some time already and now we are extremely glad to let you know that next Wednesday May 29 is the day when it will go live!

The main goals have been to improve the hierarchy and structure of the website in order to make it easier to access and share interesting information. We have also wanted to highlight the How-tos and tutorials made by Zentyal users so that all this great content will become more accessible for the whole community to enjoy it!

The site has been divided in four major blocks of content with the aim of making it much easier and quicker to find what you are looking for. Moreover some new pages have been included: Technical features of Zentyal server, external how-tos, information on training, visual resources and ideas on how you can contribute to the project.

Here you can see a detail of the four main sections on the homepage:

And here you have a detail on how the News section will look like:

A full list of technical features of Zentyal server will be available at one sight:

So, stay tuned! The new site will go live on May 29 and you can join the Zentyal Team to spread the word of the coolest website in the world !

A post by Marta Cambronero

It seemed that five songs could be good enough for a post, so here we go with another five different songs from the people at Zentyal HQ. Suspicions were right, we are actually persons, sometimes even humans, and we use to work listening to music at our headphones. Thus, I hope you could know us a little ‘byte’ more with these posts.

xX_SpOiLeR aLeRt_Xx (xD) It seems that in this song squad classics have arrived, but also some Spanish themes, so get your ears ready for these songs chosen by people at Zentyal HQ. If there would be a hidden camera over here, you will notice that headbanging duels is a local sport. Guess why? Let’s discover it!

AC/DC – Thunderstruck

Ironman movie is cool, but we all agree that it is because of those AC/DC moments. Anyway, Mateo’s choice should be on that place where only brilliant songs deserve to be at. Thunderstruck is one of those, simple but great. Let’s listen to it in this live performance.

Jorn – Blacksong

Melodic guitars and Jorn Lande’s voice; perfect ingredients for a terrific recipe. It was hard for Neru to choose just only one song for these posts, but after several changes this was the chosen one. What do you think? Check it out at Youtube.

Joaquín Sabina – Y sin embargo

Joaquín Sabina is one of the best sing-songwriter in Spain. Some of his songs are widely know over here, and this is one of those. It does not matter which kind of music do you like, everyone will know these lyrics. Let’s check out Exekias’ choice in Youtube (You can turn on English subtitles, highly recommended).

The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army

Talking about classics, here it comes a newer one. Everyone who listen to that first song notes would recognise it. Maybe not the title or the band, but sooner or later everyone has listen to it. Do not know the song? Listen to Bencer’s choice!

Tachenko – Escapatoria

To conclude with this second instalment a local band come up. Tachenko is an indie pop band from Zaragoza, but it is also sixstone’s choice. It is impossible not cheering up while listening to this song, check it out.

A post by Miguel Julián

Hi all,

One of our main goals for Zentyal 3.2 is to revamp the look and feel of the Zentyal interface, we want to give it a new fresh touch of kindness but making it also a bit more aggressive. We’ve done some work already and you can have a sneak peek if you do the following on a root shell of your Zentyal machine:

apt-get update
apt-get install z32-theme-preview

In the improbable case you get tired of it and want to switch back to the classic theme, you can do it with just:

apt-get purge z32-theme-preview

And remember the Zentyal team don’t sleep, we just wait.

A post by jacalvo

I am sure that I don’t need to drill you about the importance of backing up your system. Ideally the whole system is backed up, but this costs time and space.

However, as very convenient shortcut, there is an easy (and free) way of backing up the Zentyal server configuration. With this configuration backup you can quickly restore your Zentyal server to a production state. And it does not need to be the same box, you can also use the configuration backup to apply the configuration to a new server.

The configuration backup also includes all the user and group accounts so your users can continue logging in to the services they use.

There are several ways to make and restore the configuration backup. The more versatile is to use Zentyal Cloud Service that comes with the Free Account registration: this way the backup will reside in the cloud and you could apply it to any of your Zentyal boxes. You can get a free account here.

To access to this feature in the web interface, you must click in System -> Import/Export configuration. A console interface is also available through the programs ‘/usr/share/zentyal/make-backup’ and ‘/usr/share/zentyal/restore-backup’.

How this works?

To the curious among us, let me explain its internal workings. The backup is just an archive file in TAR format, that includes the files describing the configuration.

First, the backup process writes some files with metadata, like the current date or the packages installed in the system. Then it loops through the installed modules making each one to dump its configuration.

Remember that the configuration values we see reflected in the web interface are stored in a Redis backend. So each module must dump its Redis keys and value to a file. However the Redis keys are not sufficient for all modules. Remember that the users and its related data are stored in LDAP. In this case the users module does a dump of the full directory in LDIF format.

Likewise the samba module dumps its internal database and the modules which use OpenSSL certificates to store them in the backup archive.

When the backup is finished, it is stored in your local file system: you can download or restore it from the Zentyal web interface.

For restoring a backup the same process is run in reverse, picking each of the files and importing them to our Zentyal system.

Configuration backup and the Backup module

As you may known Zentyal also has a file backup module which allows you to set the files to be backed up, the destination of the backup and its frequency.

A configuration backup is added to the backup of the selected files to have better recovery odds.

Backup in the cloud

One problem remains in this configuration backup schema and it is to store it in a remote, always-accessible location. The location which meets these requirements is the Internet, now dubbed cloud.

Zentyal Remote offers this service. It checks daily your Zentyal configuration and the contents of the LDAP directory, if it finds any changes, it makes automatically a backup and sends it to the cloud.

The number of simultaneous held backups depends on the type of edition you have. A community edition with Free Account can store one configuration backup, a Small Bussiness or Enterprise edition can have up to seven configuration backups. Furthermore, the seven configuration backup-limit only applies to automatic backups, you can have as many manual backups as you like.

Once you have your backup in the cloud, you can restore it in any of your subscribed Zentyal servers using the web interface.

Post written by Javier Amor Garcia

A post by Julio José García Martín

Hello again my fellow Zentyal plumbers. This post is very related with the first one, this time covering Zarafa and related subsystems.

Zarafa is a groupware suite, including mail, calendars, contacts, task and notes which offers fully-fledged collaboration, sharing and access permission mechanisms. A remarkable feature of Zarafa is its integration with Microsoft clients and mobile synchronization protocols.

Let’s jump to the plumbing diagram already:

(click to enlarge image)

First of all, this diagram is a simplified and Zentyal-contextualized version of some parts of the Zarafa documentation: Zarafa Architecture, Zarafa Components. We encourage you to visit the official Zarafa documentation to continue learning about this platform.

Point by point:

A: Most of the mail subsystem components explained in the first post Plumbing part I are exactly the same for this version, so you still have Postfix as your MTA and the optional parts like Amavis security suite, Postgrey, Fetchmail and so on. Zarafa replaces the MDA, and adds the groupware services and gateways for several protocols and platforms.

B: The zarafa-dagent is the equivalent of a MDA (performing some of the roles of Dovecot for the former blogpost), it uses LMTP, a simplified and local-only version of the SMTP protocol to communicate with the MTA. Take into account that different MDA means different mailboxes for your users, if you migrate your virtual mail domain from Dovecot to Zarafa, the user mail addresses may remain the same, but they are accessing a different Inbox in different storage backend.

C: MySQL database, related to the last point. Zarafa stores mail and some mail metadata in a proper database, as opposed to the file-system based mail storage present in traditional mail systems.

D: The zarafa-spooler sends the mail waiting in the outgoing queue through the MTA.

E: Zarafa is tightly integrated with the Apache server in Zentyal, so the ‘Web Server’ module is required to offer all the web-based interfaces and protocols available to the users.

F: ‘Web access’ and ‘Web app’ are two web interfaces that offer the user a very convenient and fully featured way to access the mail and groupware services by just using their web browser. ‘Web access’ is oriented to look and feel like a microsoft outlook interface, while ‘Web app’ uses modern web protocols to improve the experience and can even integrate with chat and voice IP subsystems.

G: Z-push, an implementation of Microsoft’s ActiveSync protocol, available in all the major smartphone operative systems. Using this gateway you can synchronize all your mail, contacts and calendars information in your phone, bidirectionally, without installing additional apps and over the air.

H: Zarafa gateway for common mail services, IMAP4(S) and POP3(S), take into account that if your plan to offer a mail gateway, IMAPS for example, first you have to make sure that this port is disabled in Dovecot.

I: Microsoft Oulook offers MAPI, an interface to perform the synchronization against third party software. The Zarafa Windows Client needs to be installed in the Desktop OS. It bridges the Zarafa groupware protocols and Microsoft Outlook clients in transparent way for the users.

J: The MAPI commands are encoded in web-service SOAP and synchronized against Zarafa server.

Hope you have now a clearer vision of all the features and possibilities that Zarafa brings to the table. An important piece is missing in the diagram: how Zarafa server and Postfix connect to the LDAP to retrieve user auth and directory information. In the next post I intend to cover the Samba and Kerberos subsystems.

A post by mburillo

We have now updated our Pootle translation platform to a newer version, fixing some persistent problems with the string search functions. We are migrating the translations and accounts to the new system, so the users should not notice any major changes. Please, send us a notification if you detect any problem with your account or your translations.

The internationalization packages are updated from time to time, so you can get a new language-pack-zentyal- containing your language fixes eventually. If you don’t like waiting and want to try your translations right away, you can click on the ‘Translate’ tab inside your language section and then download the ‘zentyal.po’ file, using the ‘Download’ link.

You will need a local copy of the github Zentyal repository:

apt-get install git (if needed)
git clone git://github.com/Zentyal/zentyal.git

You will then, replace the ‘.po’ file in the repository. In my example I will overwrite zentyal/extra/language-packs/po/es.po. The file downloaded from pootle is named zentyal.po, so you will need to rename it.

Example:
mv ~/Downloads/zentyal.po ~/repos/zentyal/extra/language-packs/po/es.po

You will also need the package building tools:

apt-get install dpkg-dev

By default behavior is to build all the language packs, you probably don’t want this, so make a backup of the zentyal/extra/language-packs/debian/control file and then delete the unwanted packages.

Example for Spanish only:


Source: zentyal-language-packs
Section: web
Priority: optional
Maintainer: Zentyal Packaging Maintainers
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 5.0.0), cdbs, po-debconf
Standards-Version: 3.8.2

Package: language-packs-zentyal-all
Architecture: all
Depends: language-pack-zentyal-es
Description: Zentyal translations for all supported languages
Zentyal is a Linux small business server that can act as
a Gateway, Unified Threat Manager, Office Server, Infrastructure
Manager, Unified Communications Server or a combination of them. One
single, easy-to-use platform to manage all your network services.
.
This metapackage includes the translations for all the languages.

Package: language-pack-zentyal-es
Architecture: all
Depends: zentyal-common (>= 3.0), ${misc:Depends}
Description: Zentyal translations for language Spanish
Zentyal is a Linux small business server that can act as
a Gateway, Unified Threat Manager, Office Server, Infrastructure
Manager, Unified Communications Server or a combination of them. One
single, easy-to-use platform to manage all your network services.
.
This package contains translations for the Spanish language.

Then, from the directory zentyal/extra/language-packs you will
execute the command dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc. When this process
is complete, you will find the .deb package in zentyal/extra,
language-pack-zentyal-es_3.0.1_all.deb in my case.

Then, just copy and install this package to your Zentyal machine:

dpkg -i language-pack-zentyal-es_3.0.1_all.deb

Restart the web interface…

service zentyal apache restart

And you should be able to see your updated Strings.

We encourage you to review the state of your native language translation and take the effort to help make Zentyal native for the people around you.

A post by mburillo

Few weeks ago the Python Software Foundation asked for help in a trademark issue that involves “Python”.

As Zentyal uses Python as main programming language for our cloud based services and in the testing of Zentyal Server, we have decided to submit a letter for helping the Python Software Foundation as much as we can.

Please, if you use Python in any way, support them!!

Check out this letter template that might help you to send your own support letter to the Python Software Foundation.

A post by Julio José García Martín

One of the most recurrent topics at Zentyal’s HQ is music. In fact it use to conclude with some actual plush toy throwings and a heavy rain of axes. Our tastes may not differ a lot, but we actually love those confrontations. So, why not writing some lines to share our tastes with you all?

Firstly I thought that it would be fine to ask my everyone at the HQ for one of their favourite songs. Though if was harder than expected, for some it was pretty hard to narrow down the scope, and others were just only lazy, here there are some of the ones I gathered. Hope you like them… or not (mind your head, axes will be flying towards it).

Smoke On The Water – Deep Purple

Julio, our quality assurance guru just kept that simple with a classic: Smoke On The Water from the great Deep Purple (Glover, Blackmore and friends). In fact this song represented one of his first hard rock songs when he was a child, so it was a good way to introduce himself into the rock world, isn’t it? You can watch a live performance on Youtube if you want.

A.D.I.D.A.S. – Korn

Let’s come close to the present with Fernando’s choice. Nowadays it could even be considered a classic, but A.D.I.D.A.S. from the American band Korn is what he needs to cheer himself up while working. Again here you have the link to the official video on Youtube.

The Final Sacrifice – Avantasia

Hard rock classics, nu metal pioneers on our list, so now you can imagine how could our talks verse about. But here shows up Zei with his choice. Avantasia is a power metal supergroup headed by Tobias Sammet, and The Final Sacrifice is one of their bests. Prepare you ears, and listen it on Youtube.

Adagio For Tron – Tron Legacy OST

Well, it seems that guitars, basses and drums cope out music taste… but Blaxter has always something different in mind. The song he sent me is from the Tron Legacy OST, and it would chill down everyone here at the HQ. Check it out at Youtube, it is Adagio For Tron from Daft Punk.

Only For The Weak – In Flames

It is time for the last song of this post. Let me show my own choice. It always gives me a plus while developing, fingers seems to type faster and everything seem easier. My choice is Only For The Weak, from the Swedish band In Flames. It is great, and by far, it is the best song of this list (of course, it’s mine!). Check their live performance out at Youtube.

Image | 9gag

A post by Miguel Julián

We have had special guests at Zentyal HQ during the first weeks of the year. A few staff members of the Malawi Defence Force (MDF) visited us to take a training course, focused especially on security and how to optimize Zentyal server configuration to guarantee security in institutional environments. The course was jointly delivered by Zentyal and ACS Labs, UK-based IT support and service provider specialized in information security and Zentyal Partner.

Mussa Khonje, Computer Security Director at ACS Labs, UK, Nathan Soko and Duncain Taipi, respectively IT Officer and Director of Communications of Malawi Defence Force explained us why Zentyal software responds successfully to the main challenges regarding information security.

Zentyal: What would you say are the typical IT needs and challenges in defence force environments?

ACS Labs: The need to protect the banks, for example, is internationally recognized. When the armed conflict between Russia and Georgia took place in 2008, one of its effects was that people in Georgia could not draw money from banks. Since then organizations such as United Nations or NATO have implemented more rules to safeguard information security and how to tackle cyber operations. This is a new threat that is growing and changing all the time so there is a need to invest in this and it is also the direction the defence forces are taking.

MDF: Defence forces are not anymore all about armed defense, we believe that one must also be prepared for software attacks, to mitigate these attacks and to secure information. If your IT systems are being attacked or hacked, you should be able to make sure these systems can not be easily penetrated, that you are able to keep the information safe and secure the correct functioning of the government.

Zentyal: What are the benefits of Zentyal in comparison to other solutions?

ACS Labs: Zentyal’s position is unique because it is a one platform with so many solutions. It is a well-tested system, with constant security updates and also very flexible to changes on technology. With other solutions you find a big gap: you need to download the software updates and implement them to the machines, what takes a week or more, and during this time the hackers can attack your system. Zentyal offers customers fast and automatic updates.

MDF: Zentyal includes many services that in other software solutions come in different packages. Moreover, Zentyal integrates these services in all-in-one solution and it is very easy-to-use, just by clicking. We believe it is a powerful software that helps to control many security issues.

Zentyal: So, we heard that during the course you were simulating attacks to different machines in order to test their vulnerability. What were the results?

MDF: Yes, we were going into Zentyal software and other software products to test how difficult is to penetrate them. It took us five minutes to go into the proprietary product. Zentyal instead resisted the attack even though we know Zentyal rather well. When you configure it properly, it mitigates completely the attack.

ACS Labs: In the Zentyal Summit of 2012 ACS Labs tested and presented the findings we knew about the strength of Zentyal. It is intelligent to use Zentyal because it is secure by default. If you configure Zentyal very well and you have great security policy, you will always keep your infrastructure protected.

Zentyal: What would you highlight from the course?

MDF: The teacher, Mateo Burillo, went far much deeper than we expected. We believe you Zentyal guys have chosen someone who has deep knowledge about what we were interested in.

A post by Marta Cambronero

Amid laughs, Lego plays, origami papers, plastic sheets and colorful pencils is how you could see Zentyal staff at HQ on the 21st of December. The reason was the Agile workshop Teresa Oliver had prepared for Zentyal crew. But what is Agile? Is it really useful tool to improve the project development? Teresa, founder of Skok and in charge of this Agile training session, was pleased to respond to some questions for those who still don’t know what Agile techniques can do for your work-flow.

Zentyal: What is Agile?
Teresa Oliver: It is a different way of managing projects and teams. It is based on giving value to the customer as soon as possible, as frequently as possible and adapting to the change all the time. It means not to have complex and fixed requirements at the beginning of the project, but build and deliver them at the end of it because there are many possibilities of not doing everything right from the beginning, not to have understood the requirements properly or it might also happen that customer needs change during the project. For this to work it is vital that the teams share and practice a range of values like confidence, communication, respect and absolute transparency, and this is not always easy.

Z: Why games can help to overcome these issues?
T. O.: We combine many short games to stimulate the conversation about different Agile values with other longer games such as Lego and the ones with board and pieces in order to understand the complete cycle of a project. These games helps to embrace and fix concepts much more clearly than a traditional presentation.

Z: If I want to practice Agile methodologies, what are the first steps to be taken?
T. O.: When we -Skok- collaborate in a company, we start with a basic workshop for the whole team, comparing their common everyday work with an Agile one. Afterwards we choose a pilot project, we apply Agile principles from the start and we learn what happens: What works and what has to be adapted to this specific environment. And later we extend, little by little, the learning to the rest of the projects. It uses to be very contagious.

Z: Is it possible to apply Agile in other environments apart from software development? Some people say they use it in their lives.
T. O.: Of course! In fact it is done more and more: At universities and schools, for managing ONGs, for organizing children tasks in families, to mobilize multidisciplinary teams for transversal projects in big organizations… Agile can be useful in every environment where there is a set of people sharing a common goal and dealing with uncertainty and a fast adaptation to change.

Z: In case I want to learn more, to whom I should turn to for advice?
T. O.: Apart from books and blogs, I recommend to meet people in your local community that share these interests. In Zaragoza we have Agile Aragon, a small but very active community, that meets periodically to organize events, talks, bring people from other cities to share their experiences, make Agile programming sessions, etc. There is nothing like personal contact.

Z: How can I find my local Agile community?
T. O.: In Spain local communities are listed here. A good worldwide list, can be found here.

Thanks Teresa for making Zentyal Team a little more agile !

A post by Marta Cambronero