Thursday, January 31, 2013

New security fix for Rails 2.3.x. Applications updated on BitNami

A new Rails security issue that affects older versions of Rails (2.3.x and 3.0.x) was recently announced. This is a vulnerability related to the JSON parser code for Ruby on Rails with allows attackers to bypass authentication systems, inject arbitrary SQL or inject and execute arbitrary code.

We have released RubyStack 1.8, Redmine 1.4.x, Radiant, Gitorious and Tracks with the latest Rails v2.3.16 that fixes this issue. Note that if you are using an application that ships Rails 3.2.11, it is not affected by this issue.

We are also removing older versions of BitNami Rails apps published on the Windows Azure and Amazon Cloud catalog and marketplace and that may be vulnerable to these security issues.

For more details about these security issues please check the information provided in the official Ruby On Rails blog. If you already have installed a version of these applications please make sure that you update your environment or apply the appropriate patches.


Wednesday, January 30, 2013

ResourceSpace is now available in BitNami

We are happy to announce that ResourceSpace stack is now available on BitNami library. ResourceSpace is a web-based, open source digital asset management system which has been designed to give your content creators easy and fast access to print and web ready assets.

You can now download free, ready to run native installers for  Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Azure and Amazon EC2 images for ResourceSpace.

You can find below a brief Q&A with Neil Braddy and Dan Huby, two ResourceSpace developers, where they share some details about the project.


1. What is the goal of the ResourceSpace application?

ResourceSpace aims to provide a user friendly, web based, and free alternative to expensive commercial digital asset management systems.

2. What are some of the features of ResourceSpace?

ResourceSpace integrates with several open source image, video and document processing libraries and can therefore generate previews automatically for hundreds of file types.
There's a strong focus on collaboration and sharing. It's possible, quickly and easily, to share assets with both internal and external users.

3. Which projects or organizations are using ResourceSpace currently?  What kind of projects do they use it for?

There are many organisations around the world using ResourceSpace. It is particularly popular with large charities such as Oxfam, ActionAid, Save the Children, Fair Trade and the WWF. These organisations use the software for the storage and retrieval of photos and videos of their work. 
ResourceSpace is also used by corporations for management of marketing assets such as product photography and brochures.

4. What do you expect will be the main benefits of having BitNami packages available for ResourceSpace?

The BitNami stacks will increase the reach of the software. The standard download can be cumbersome to install and configure for non-technical users, as it requires several separate utilities and libraries to be separately downloaded and configured. The BitNami stacks are installed quickly and easily and require almost no technical knowledge at all. We hope that this will encourage many more people to try out the software.

Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

First Release Candidate for Ruby 2.0 Available in BitNami

With the release of Ruby 2.0.0 planned for February 24th, you may want to test out Ruby 2.0.0rc1, the first release candidate for this version, and test if your projects are ready for it. In order to simplify this task for you, we have just released BitNami Ruby Stack with ruby 2.0.0rc1. It is completely self-contained and will not conflict with your current development environment. You can download it, give it a try and safely remove it when you are done.

This version includes new features and improvements but it includes a few compatibility issues as well. You can find a list of changes in the Ruby repository.

If you are not familiar with BitNami Ruby Stack, it is a free package that simplifies the development and deployment of Ruby on Rails applications. This version includes ready-to-run versions of Apache 2.2.23, MySQL 5.5.29, Ruby 2.0.0rc1 and Rails 3.2.11. It also includes RVM 1.13.6, NGinx 1.2.4, Passenger 3.0.17, SQLite 3.7.10, Git 1.7.11.3 and all required dependencies.

BitNami RubyStack can be deployed using all-in-one free native installers (for Linux and Mac OS X), virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images as always and we are happy to add Windows Azure as an additional Cloud platform. If you are not familitar with this platform yet, check our Getting Started guide to learn how easy it is to run BitNami applications through the Windows Azure management console.



Monday, January 21, 2013

Welcome to the Newest BitNami Stack, Chyrp!

Chyrp is an open source blogging engine that was the third winner of the BitNami bi-weekly packaging contestThanks to the community votes, Chyrp was selected to be packaged as part of the BitNami Library. You can now download free, ready to run native installers for Windows, OS X and Linux or one of our virtual machines. Free Azure and AWS cloud images will soon be published as well.

Arian Xhezairi, one of the Chyrp developers, was kind enough to answer some questions about his project. See below.

What is the goal of Chyrp?
Chyrp is a blogging engine designed to be very lightweight while retaining functionality. It is driven by PHP and MySQL (or SQLite), and has a very powerful theme and robust module engine, so you can personalize and modify it any way you want. 
The project was started nearly 10 years ago, and aims to be as lightweight and extendable as possible, takes all the distractions out and delivers a seamless content publishing experience, so the user can get the most out of it.

What are some of the features of Chyrp?
We pride ourselves with Chyrp being extremely lightweight. Given the flexibility it provides, it is possible to basically run it on almost any kind of Web server configuration. Below are just a few (amongst many) key features that make Chyrp appealing:
* Custom post types (Feathers), i.e. Text, Link, Photo, Audio, etc.
* Inline post editing with AJAX
* Post drafts and scheduled publishing
* Easily add and edit pages
* Custom URL Permalinks
* Numerous modules to extend blog's functionality
* Clean and user-friendly interface
* Super-awesome community members
* Completely free and open-source, MIT licensed.
* Easy HTML blog posting w/ RedactorJS WYSIWYG editor
 
What do you expect will be the main benefits of having BitNami packages available for Chyrp?
Besides the benefit of getting exposure to a wider audience, BitNami's cross-platform Chyrp stack will be a great way to allow users create their own blogging environment in seconds, regardless of the operating system they run.

We are glad Chyrp is now part of BitNami. Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest

BitNami Cloud Tools now with AWS Command Line Interface (CLI)

We are happy to announce a new version of the BitNami Cloud Tools package. This version ships the Developer Preview of AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), a new Python unified tool to manage your AWS services.

With this tool, you will be able to control multiple AWS services from the command line and automate them through scripts. This preview release currently supports 10 AWS services.

In addition to that, BitNami Cloud Tools includes the most popular AWS developer tools for the command line:
- EC2 API tools
- EC2 AMI tools
- CloudFormation tools
- SES tools (Simple Email Service)
- SNS tools (Simple Notification Service)
- CloudWatch command line tool
- and more.
You can check the full component list and versions at http://bitnami.org/tools/cloud

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

You have decided! OpenERP to be added to the BitNami library.


It seems that our users are interested in accounting applications. First PhpCompta won our bi-weekly packaging contest a few weeks ago, now OpenERP has been chosen by our users to be added to the BitNami library.




You ask, we execute. As all other winner applications OpenERP will get free native installers, virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images. But that is not all, since now also Windows Azure Cloud images will be available for each project that win our contest.


OpenERP is a comprehensive suite of business applications including Sales, CRM, Project management, Warehouse management, Manufacturing, Financial management and Human Resources just to name a few.




OpenERP's modular approach allows you to start with one application and add other modules later.






 We continue working on previous winner applications like Chryp, Tiki and ResourceSpace. We are in contact with their developers and they will be released soon in BitNami.


Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest!  Once you have voted, remember to share via the Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus buttons to encourage your friends to do the same to help your app climb to the top of the list.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Important Security fix: Rails applications updated on BitNami

In the last two days several patches for Rails have been released in order to address extremely critical security issues. We want to let BitNami users know that all our Rails-based application installers, virtual machines and cloud images have been already updated and released.

Redmine, Spree, Typo, Radiant, Gitorious and Tracks and other Ruby on Rails based projects are already releasing new versions to provide fixes to those security issues. We did not want to wait and we already released patched versions of these applications. We will be upgrading those to officially released versions once available.

We have also updated our Ruby Stack to include the latest version of Rails.

We are also removing older versions of BitNami Rails apps published on the Amazon Cloud catalog and marketplace and that may be vulnerable to these security issues.

For more details about these security issues please check the information provided in the official Ruby On Rails blog. If you already have installed a version of these applications please make sure that you update your environment or apply the appropriate patches.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Run BitNami Apps on Windows Azure



Every month, hundreds of thousands of BitNami users visit our website to launch their favorite web applications, from project management tools to development environments and business apps. Part of what makes BitNami so attractive to so many users is our focus on providing a consistent experience on different platforms. You can download a WordPress installer or virtual machine and develop locally in your laptop, regardless of whether it is running Windows, Mac or OS X. Once you are ready to go into production, you can easily launch a machine in the cloud with the exact same configuration and easily transfer your content.

Today, we are happy to announce our support for Windows Azure. Starting today, and over the next few weeks, we will be making all BitNami applications available on their Open Source community portal, called the VM Depot. We have been working closely with Microsoft Open Technologies to make this happen and we have to say we are impressed with the focus and determination to make open source apps run optimally on top of their platform. For those of us that lived through Microsoft domination of the 1990s and early 2000s, this was a bit puzzling at first. But looking at the fiercely competitive landscape of Cloud Computing, it makes perfect sense in order to further the adoption of the platform. With the release of the community portal, Microsoft just took another significant step on their way to challenge the current dominant Cloud player. 

We are happy to add Windows Azure as an additional Cloud platform, providing our users with the choice of one more high-quality platform to deploy our apps. Moving forward we plan to continue to invest significant resources to make BitNami applications run smoothly on Windows Azure.

Try BitNami on Azure now for free

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Announcing the Latest BitNami Contest Winner - ResourceSpace!


Congratulations to the latest winner of the BitNami packaging contest, ResourceSpace! ResourceSpace is a web-based, open source digital asset management system which has been designed to give content creators easy and fast access to print and web ready assets.

Completely web based
Quick and easy search
Automatic resource preview and conversion

After a hard fight with other applications, ResourceSpace finally won the BitNami packaging contest and it will become the next application to join the BitNami family. As with all BitNami-packaged applications, it will soon be available in a complete, ready-to-run package that you can download as a free native installer, virtual appliance or cloud template for the Amazon cloud.

Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to vote for it in our online contest! Every two weeks the content is restarted and one app is selected. Previous winners were the TestLink and PhpCompta applications. Your vote can make a difference!