[Commotion-dev] Commotion DR1 is available for download
seamus tuohy
s2e at opentechinstitute.org
Wed Mar 13 23:29:52 UTC 2013
Commotion's first developer release (DR1) is now available for testing.
This version replaces our September 2012 pre-release (PR3) and adds
several new features. Though Commotion developers tested each component
feature, we will begin extensive pre-release testing of the entire DR1
suite in the coming weeks. We hope you will join us in testing the new
components.
Pre-built Commotion packages for Ubiquiti routers and Android devices
can be found at https://commotionwireless.net/download, with DR1 listed
under Nightly Builds and PR3 listed as Stable. You can view the
Commotion source code at
https://github.com/opentechinstitute/commotion-openwrt . You will find
links to many of the new packages in the Readme, as well as some quick
notes on building an image for your own hardware.
The DR1 release brings a complete overhaul to the Commotion system while
still ensuring compatibility with PR3 release Commotion nodes.
Forward-facing features include a new theme, easy "quickstart" node
configuration, application announcement and discovery, and a one-click
troubleshooting tool. Behind the scenes, DR1 contains a core Commotion
daemon and new cryptographic system.
The quickstart tool provides an easy interface for node configuration.
The Commotion daemon provides a common mesh network management interface
through an embedded library, and forms the core of future Commotion
platform development. Commotion's new application suite uses mDNS to
announce local applications across the network. Users can find local
applications using the router’s web-based application portal. Node
owners can easily manage and customize application portals for better
community application support. The application portal integrates the
Serval Project's key management daemon, which provides transparent
message encryption and authentication. Finally, the debugging helper
creates custom, downloadable documents for offline debugging by network
administrators.
Each of these tools still requires thorough testing to ensure they are
both stable and well documented. If you are an interested user,
developer, hacker, or are just plain interested, we would love to hear
your feedback. Following initial internal testing, DR1 will undergo lab
testing on an eight-node physical test environment. Then we will install
on the Open Technology Institute’s (OTI) 18-node testbed community
network. Once the software is deemed stable, we will deploy it on an
active six-node community wireless network for user testing. We have
pre-built images for testing on Ubiquiti wireless hardware. The source
code includes instructions for building Commotion’s test release on
other hardware for those that wish to test on their own devices.
We will update the documentation to incorporate user feedback once
testing is completed. After the build has been thoroughly tested and DR1
has become stable, we will update the warning label on the downloads
page to reflect the capabilities and limitations of this release. We
will then bring the other Commotion platforms up to feature parity with
the DR1 Commotion OpenWRT release.
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