DOTLAN EveMaps

Yesterday I was in the data center reinstalling the Server Host system. I successfully (or not) switched from XEN virtualization to KVM. The reason behind this change (since I’m running XEN for over 4 years now) was that KVM seems to be the future of linux based virtualization and I tried to get rid of various XEN related kernel crashes I already reported earlier last year.

In order to prepare the migration I switched all existing guests from XEN-PVM (paravirtualized) to XEN-HVM (hardware virtualized) and prepared the new configuration files for libvirt. In the datacenter I replaced the network uplink with my notebook to present you a temporary “maintenance page”. The installation of Debian 6 as host system went smooth and after some typo fixing in my libvirt xml files the I could boot the evemaps guest without problems. After a short verification that everything was running I switched the cables and DOTLAN was back live after exactly 1 hour downtime. Everything was looking fine … until.

This night the server crashed again around 2am UTC without any reason, logfiles, etc. Likely some weird locking kernel panic who knows. The server was rebooted this morning directly after I woke up.

Hardware

The hardware DOTLAN EveMaps is running on is know over 4 years old (bought in February 2007)

• BOARD: Tyan Tomcat n3400b
• CPU: AMD Opteron 1216 (DualCore 2.4GHz)
• RAM: 8GB PC5300 DDR2, non-ecc (initial 4gb later 8gb)
• HDD: 2x 250gb + 2x 1TB
• CHASSIS: Chenbro RM217

After various problems and crashes last year (when assigning 2 cpus to a guest) I always tried to fix the problem on the software side. Switching from Debian to CentOS/RHEL Kernel and Xen Subsystem and now to Debian/KVM Solution. Even a running memtest last year didn’t showed any major problems but they’re still preset (even I lowered the crash risc by limiting the guests). Crashes on strange load situations, crashing guests and kernel panics rebooting the dom0 (host).

I order to continue to provide a stable and speedy service I decided it’s about ****ing time to upgrade the hardware. I really hope the hardware upgrade/change + combined processor switch helps.

I just ordered

• Intel Xeon E5620 (Quad Core, 2.4GHz)
• Supermicro Mainboard (integrated KVM!)
• 16GB Registered ECC RAM

to replace the outdated components. I’ll do the upgrade sometime in the next weeks.

Can I help?

Of course: If you like DOTLAN EveMaps please use the PayPal Donate option and help me to continue to provide this hopefully usefull service.

Wollari

After a couple hours of deploying, hot fixing, debugging, using ccp logserver (which is the only way to debug JavaScript stuff in the ingame browser) the majority of work is done. DOTLAN EveMaps 3 (or whatever version suits you)  is ready to rock and roll.

Have fun using it, [like] the sov losses (change) of your enemy or bookmark your favorite systems. User registration is enabled (even Twitter has some OAuth authentication problems atm).

The full ChangeLog is linked below

• Updates with screenshots
• Full DOTLAN EveMaps 3 Changelog

I’m safe back home after a great fanfest in Iceland. As I already mentioned in a previous blog post, there’s a big update incoming. Various people I’ve talked to in Reykjavik had the opportunity to gain a preview on the upcoming changes.

I’ll post a full detailed change log with the coming update in the next 1-2 weeks. I’m doing some latest updates, changes, checks and tests.

Here are the major changes in a short list (which are not technical):

• already reported
  • Detailed ticker changes (colored corp description diff)
  • Places listings (Landmarks, Agents in space, Sites, Static Complexes)
• Agent search (+ Details)
• User services
• Login via 3rd party authentication services
• Lowsec borders become dashed as visibility increase for pilots with red/green color problems
• Date selector for (historical) maps, sovereignty / alliance change listings
• Highlighted changes on historical maps
• Select systems, etc from the favorites dropdown box
• Create and share jump bridge networks
• Use your own or subscribed jump bridge networks in the route planer
• Access the history of your radar track history (only for users with verified API keys)
• Endless scrolling in the live ticker / event listings
• The Like button for *all* live ticker changes. (It’s just a counter but fun to watch what’s currently hot)

I’ll let the pictures speak for themself:

Today we had the mighty round table about the API topic. Compared to the last fanfest in 2009 I can say: THANK YOU. This year we had 5 3rd party related sessions and round tables. A whole bunch of CCP Developer are actually working around and with the API or thinking outside the box and the 3rd party development future.

Here are a few topics that I really wanna mention.

1) Developer Program / Monetization

CCP announced a developer program for 99$ per year, so 3rd party developer are legally allowed to gain revenue out of their work. That means: You can now sell your application or your premium service for real money. But there are more ways to gain revenue: Advertising and donations is money as well. Even ingame money is technically real money, cause you can buy it with real money. This is a real problem and really needs some proper definition, cause otherwise every alliance or guide/info page which funds their infrastructure through player donations and advertising would be illegal (if you don’t pay the additional 99$/year). Until CCP releases the proper license description and information what you’re allowed to and what not, we can only spin our head around it.

2) Devs are actually using the API them self

CCP Atlas started a small tech demo on what’s possible to create with the combination of ingame browser and the Eve API. He wanted to create an enhanced asset viewer for the ingame browser and some other stuff. In that progress he actually came a cross a lot of missing IGB Javascript hooks and various API problems. It’s nice to see that CCP Devs actually using the API them self and finding bugs and adding features cause they see a need them self. CCP Atlas’s project will be available for download as well.

CCP Atlas: I can do better than that.

3) More Sessions / Round tables / Devs

As already mentioned: the number of roundtable and learning sessions has increased. You could actually see CCP Developer (old and new faces) having interest in the 3rd party dev community, their projects and needs. Compared to 2009 we had just people that took notes and no dev was felling responsible for it. Nowadays you’ve at least 2 people assigned to the API: CCP PrismX (DB Developer), CCP Stillman (QA) and more people that sound like having an interesting the community and their work.

4) Waiting for soon ™

Of course: A lot of issues and feature requests have been made and put into a long long waiting queue aka backlog. But for the moment we’ve to wait until CCP got the new customizable API Key system ready. While doing the last changes (memcache, etc) on the API itself, CCP came a cross various problems with the API in general and couple database performing issues, leading to the blockage of the CharacterName API. Before adding new features to the API they wanna fix the old stuff first, making everything more stable and create the new api key system. After that we can defiantly see more stuff coming in the future.

Conclusion

It really feels that there’s actually some movement going on in CCP in reanimating the forgotten API System and their users. We had a couple API Changes in the last weeks/month. Together with the discussion rounds and sessions I’m really looking forward to see actual changes, improvements and new data.

What and how this will affect DOTLAN EveMaps currently is unsure (money stuff), but for the rest: I really can’t wait to see new data coming out of the API, being presented and tracked on my page.

I like finding and speaking to a lot of people on fanfest to gather some feedback,  ideas, and free hot tea (due to my cold, but sadly there’s no hot tea in the catering), I’m seeing the same scheme over and over again:

People asking me about various features that would be very cool to have them integrated. Most of the time I’ve to tell them that they’re already live for a long time or they’re ready to get rolled out after this fanfest.

To my bad, there was a really great article by Kirith Kodachi on Eve Tribune that listed the majority (not all) features I providing. Here’s the link:

Eve-Tribune: Eve Utilities – DotLAN Maps

P.S.: I’ll be live on EveTV Friday for an Interview if nothing goes wrong. See you soon.

P.P.S.: Yes Manasi, I’ll try to blog more often. Promised.

It looks like my schedule is getting very busy on the fanfest. By the look on the current fanfest schedule the number of 3rd party development/api/fansite related presentations, talks and discussions have tripled.

I really expect the dev tracks are getting full and some of them might have hot headed discussions.

If you’re interested in having a talk with me about DOTLAN EveMaps and some of the upcoming features, please send me email, evemail or a message on twitter.

Hello everybody, long time not seen … at least for those people who not following my few updates on twitter. I just wanna bring you a bit up to date regarding DOTLAN EveMaps.

Yes! There’s a new awesome update incoming. It’s already ready rock’n’roll and will be deployed after the coming fanfest.

Since my last post (in November) was just pointing out the technical, backend and framework changes, I would like to start giving you a few impressions of some of the new things.

1) Universe > Places

CCP Manifest asked on twitter about a complete listing of landmarks and sites a few days ago … Well I couldn’t resists and a new section was done promptly. Those Sites will also be included in the universal search of course.

2) Live Ticker > Details

$corporation changed their description … who cares about that … well … at least as long as you can’t see the details.

More details will be revealed on the fanfest (if you can find me), in interviews, in this blog or live on EveTV. Hope to meet you all on the fanfest. Donations in beer or other liquids will be appreciated 🙂

Well you likely noticed that there was no bigger update in the last time on DOTLAN EveMaps (apart from the tracking feature in September). The truth is: yes, there’s not a lot of new stuff I can do right now with the lack of new (public) APIs to process and analyze data. So I took the time to do something useful and painful (from workload perspective).

I wanna give you some insight what’s going on the background:

Complete rewrite of the codebase

• Replace the huge amount of scripts and mod_rewrite rules with a MVC-like framework for page generation.
• Major code cleanup and rewriting of old classes (which are smelling like 2003)

Rewrite of the background Daemons (once again)

• To make background jobs ready for the future I rewrote my PHP daemons and my internal job scheduler. (API Keys, Pheal API Library).

Switching to Pheal as API Access Library

• In the past my update daemons used Curl, SimpleXML and file based caches to request API data and update DB constantly.
• Pheal makes the access easier for me  (since I’ve my own database layout). I even added a couple features to Pheal (like archiving and logging).
• Before running into religions library discussions: The switch from plain SimpleXML to Pheal it just felt natural to me. I have full control and access on the API attributes while the access to complex api results with multiple rowsets was getting  easier, so I could keep 80% of my update functions and my database layout.

JavaScript Framework change

• In the past 2+ years I’ve relied the Prototype Framework very heavily. But even the fact that Prototype 1.7 was just released it feels a bit like “riding a dead horse”. So I took the opportunity and rewrote/re-factored my complete JavaScript stuff and converted the whole page to make use of widely used jQuery + jQuery UI Framework.
• At some points I was close to put everything down cause I was running into cross-browser CSS problems again, but good right now.

What does that mean?

You can see, there’s not much going on the surface and all above is only running on my testserver, not on the live version. But in general the overall cleanup, refactoring, reorganizing of the backbone and libraries of DOTLAN EveMaps should make future development and additions for a lot easier for me. Sure, I’ve a couple small features a ready, but I’ll will keep working on the rest trying to get a bigger update ready in the near future and of course testing it over time. At the same time I hope for new public APIs/improvements.

Btw: Keep up the the good work on the API CCP recently, please don’t  stop now!)

Btw 2: I booked, my fanfest flight and hotel for march a bit ago. Feel free to buy me a beer in Iceland 🙂

This weekend Veto Corp is celebrating their 5th birthday. Nothing special since nowadays many corps are announcing their anniversary on CAOD, but instead of blowing up some random T1 ships in-game and pray to the mighty “CCP God“, they decided to do it again with more publicity in a pub in London.

Anyway … I’ll be up there as well. My flight is leaving tomorrow in the early morning. See you soon. This weekend will be awesome. I’m not a veto pilot, but meeting eve players, having some drinks and talking about former battles is always exciting.

Events & Gatherings:
Veto Corp Present : London – Veto 5th Anniversary – November 20th

P.S. DOTLAN EveMaps development is still ongoing and exciting. ATM I’m refactoring the complete webpage system, framework and everything in general. There’ll be more information soon(tm).

Just a quick note for those who have an automated mail filter to delete newsletters: DOTLAN EveMaps has been featured in the recent Eve Community Newsletter Vol. 48

DOTLAN EVE Maps generates dynamically updated maps of the EVE star systems, populated with relevant in-game data. Recent kills, outpost changes, sovereignty and factional warfare data are available on the site, and the vector-based maps can be generated in a range of formats including GIF, VML and PDF. The site also offers RSS feeds providing a live ticker of information for those that wish to be kept up to date on the latest changes.

Thanks for the spotlight.

Eve Community Newsletter Vol. 48