Development Central

My Chumby arrived today. It’s a tiny computer with a touchscreen and wireless capabilities. Out of the box it can play Flash “widgets” and stream music.

The cool part is that it runs Linux and can be customized. You can develop Flash widgets for it, but there are plenty of other hacks. I’ve already SSH’d into it and created a simple CGI script for its built-in web server (in vi no less!).

I want to see if I can have it show the build status of our continuous integration server at work. While I may not leave it as a permanent fixture in the office, it would be a fun project.

Update - March 25, 2010

Our company requires the use of a proxy server to connect to the Internet. No exceptions. Chumby does not support proxy servers. End of story. :(

Update - March 29, 2010

The story picks up again. :) I found this post on the chumbysphere forum, and the advice from techgermz for no authentication worked. I did a chmod +x on the script just in case, but I’m not sure if that was necessary. I didn’t try streaming music.

I’m still having a problem where the screen goes blank and the menu button doesn’t work (but the internal web server still responds) after it’s online for a couple of hours at work. I’m currently testing it at home to see if I can replicate the issue on a non-proxied WiFi network.

Our continuous integration server was running slower than usual. One of our chief IT guys figured it out; the antivirus software installed on it was set to scan all folders. Every check out, every build, every copy apparently triggered a scan. While it’s a good idea to scan the final deployment folders, exclude the rest of the folders for a significant improvement in build times.

We use TeamCity, but this is applicable to any CI software.

Thanks to Eric and Rob for this tip!