rAA in the News

So my last entry, oh so many moons ago, mentioned that I was working on a new project. Now that that project has been released, I can talk about it, but better yet, how about an article about rPath Linux, what we're doing, and the rPath Appliance Agent (or rAA) which I helped design and build.

A little bit about rAA itself; it provides a pluggable framework for system configuration tasks, like setting up networking, setting the root password and checking for and applying software updates. There are some screenshots of rAA in action linked from the eWeek article above. rAA is written in python and built around TurboGears, a web application framework for RAD and MVC web development using Python.

rAA is Open Source Software, released under the Reciprocal Public License. A conary package group that can be added to a rBuilder Project to insert rAA into your own custom software appliance is available from the rAA Project.

Some basic documentation for rAA is available here. It's built with rPath Linux as an assumed installation platform, but several appliances have rAA built-in, and have VMware images available so you can try it out without installing a new Linux distribution.