“Speak Up!”: What is it? 🔗

The Speak Up! badge is categorized as a “Community Badge” and is defined in this Trac ticket. But what’s the real scoop behind the Speak Up! badge?

In short, the Speak Up! badge is awarded to anyone who says something in an official Fedora IRC meeting. A lot of important conversations and work in Fedora all happen in IRC, and meetings are the best time to get the pulse of a particular subgroup or team. It’s also a great time to introduce yourself to other contributors and begin moving towards becoming an active contributor. This badge is a great gateway towards earning many others!

How do I earn “Speak Up!”? 🔗

Earning Speak Up! requires you to be somewhat familiar with the Internet Relay Chat protocol (a.k.a. IRC). If you’ve never used IRC before, it’s like a large chat network. You connect to a particular IRC network, and you can join any number of chat rooms (called channels). The Freenode IRC network is a favorite of many open source projects and organizations. This includes Fedora! Fedora has several different IRC channels for all kinds of purposes. General support is in the #fedora channel, the Design Team is in #fedora-design, the Marketing team is in #fedora-mktg, the Fedora developers are in #fedora-devel, and the list goes on!

Usually on a regular basis, most of the Fedora subgroups have meetings where they discuss the tasks on their agendas, look at what needs doing, and welcome any newcomers! Introducing yourself in a Fedora IRC meeting is one of the best ways to begin the journey of becoming a contributor and meeting other contributors who are willing to help you get started.

You can check the Fedora Calendar app to see when a particular subgroup or team meets. For example, the Fedora Community Operations team meets on Tuesdays at 17:00 UTC in #fedora-meeting-2. Find the meeting time for a team you’re looking at contributing to and see if you can make yourself available for that time slot. When the meeting begins, introduce yourself towards the beginning. It doesn’t have to be complex! Just say hello, who you are, and maybe a few words on why or how you want to contribute. And that’s all it takes!

One thing to keep in mind is that to be awarded this badge, your IRC nickname must be the same as your Fedora Account System username, or you must specify your IRC nickname in your account. In Fedora IRC meetings, everything is logged, so the Meetbot will know if your username said anything in the meeting.

Congratulations, you have now earned the Speak Up! badge!

The “Speak Up!” tl;dr 🔗

1. Make sure your IRC nickname is the same as your Fedora Account System username, or you have your IRC nickname specified in your account
2. Find out when a subgroup or team that interests you is meeting on the Fedora Calendar app
3. Find time to attend meeting, speak up and say hello! We don’t bite. :)

“Vacation”: What is it? 🔗

The Vacation badge is categorized as a “Community Badge” and is defined in this Trac ticket. But what’s the real scoop behind the Science badge?

With the December holiday season right around the corner, this seemed like the perfect badge to feature this week. In short, the Vacation badge is awarded to contributors who mark when they will be unavailable in the Fedora Calendar app. Marking when you are helps others know when you will be away and know where to pick up the slack. If you an active contributor to any subgroup, team, or other entity in Fedora, this is especially important so people know when you will be away! Everyone needs a vacation every once in a while, so let others know when “the doctor is in” becomes the “the doctor is out”.

How do I earn “Vacation”? 🔗

Earning the Vacation badge is simple. To earn it, you will need an active account in the Fedora Account System, and it is only recommended you do this if you are an active contributor in some aspect of the Project.

To earn it, first navigate to the Fedora Calendar app and sign in at the top with your FAS information. Once you do so, go to the Vacations calendar and create a new entry by clicking the “+” button in the side bar. For Meeting name, just fill in your username. Choose the start and end dates for when you will be away (and times, if necessary). If you wish, you can include some extra information or comments about your availability in Information box.

Once everything looks good to you, hit the “Add” button at the bottom, and viola! You have now added when you will be away to the calendar and Fedora contributors will be able to quickly see when you are away and when you will be around after your vacation ends. You will be automatically awarded the badge.

The “Vacation” tl;dr 🔗

1. Sign into the Fedora Calendars app and visit the Vacations calendar
2. Share when you will be unavailable by creating a new event and adding it to the calendar
3. Get badge!

“Science”: What is it? 🔗

The Science badge is categorized as a “Quality [Assurance] Badge” and is defined in this Trac ticket. But what’s the real scoop behind the Science badge?

In short, the Science badge is part of a larger series of badges given to anyone who helps test the Fedora kernel using a set of Python scripts to test for important functionalities of the kernel in your system. Running these tests and uploading the logs to the Kernel Development Team helps improve the kernel by providing useful insight and feedback for the kernel team to analyze. All it takes is running a few scripts, uploading logs, and boom - a new badge!

How do I earn “Science”? 🔗

Earning Science requires you to clone a git repository, run a few scripts to test the Fedora kernel on your system, and upload the logs generated by the tests to the log tracker. This began with the Kernel Testing Initiative, pioneered by Fedora contributor Justin Forbes in early 2012.

The purpose of this initiative is to allow you, a user of Fedora, to run regression tests of the kernel in Fedora on your own system and provide an analytical report of the tests to the Fedora Kernel Team. These logs help act as “milestones” and “pointers” for how the Fedora kernel is running out in the real world. There are a lot of different architectures and environments, and this option allows users with all kinds of hardware to easily submit this info (and get a few badges for doing it)!

Clone the git repository 🔗

The first step you will need to do is clone the git repository where the kernel test scripts are hosted. To do that, open a terminal and run the following command (this requires that you have git already installed).

$ git clone https://pagure.io/kernel-tests.git

Once you do this, the scripts will be in a new folder in whatever your present working directory is.

Run the scripts 🔗

Now that the scripts are on your system, you can now get started running your regression tests! In the terminal, you can run the default test by executing the script with no arguments.

$ ./runtests.sh

You can follow the progress of the tests as the script executes. Once it finishes, a log file will automatically be generated in the logs/ folder. This is the file you will need to get your badge.

If you’re feeling like being adventurous, there are a few other tests you can run.

• Stress
• Performance
• Destructive

The stress and performance tests execute a few additional tests in addition to the default tests to help provide more detailed information about your system and how it works with the kernel. Whenever I run kernel tests, I usually run the default set, the stress set, and the performance set. Be warned, the first two tests can take a long time to execute, so if you are planning to do work while the tests are running, you may want to make a cup of coffee instead.

To run the specific tests, you can use the -t flag followed by the name of the test. For example, let’s say I want to run a performance test.

$ ./runtests.sh -t performance

Note that there is also a destructive test suite. As the name implies, this set of tests does contain some functions and tests that can potentially have devastating effects on your system. In an ideal case, this would not happen, but if the odds are not in your favor, this set of tests can leave you with a broken machine.

If you are running a system with Rawhide or have a spare computer that you don’t care for much, it can help to run the destructive tests on those machines. But it is not advised to run them on a system you depend on or actively use!

Upload your results 🔗

Once you finish running tests, it’s time to upload your logs. You can do so via the Kernel Logs app. Uploading the logs will require you to log into the site using your Fedora Account System username and password. After you log in, you will find the page that prompts you to upload new log files.

Upload any logs that were generated from the test or tests that you ran. As soon as you submit the log files, it will be registered in the system, and you will be awarded the badge automatically afterwards.

Congratulations, you have now earned the Science badge!

The “Science” tl;dr 🔗

1. Get the test scripts by cloning their git repo (git clone https://git.fedorahosted.org/git/kernel-tests.git)
2. Run the test scripts by executing the runtests.sh file (try the stress and performance tests too!)
3. Upload the logs to the Kernel Logs app
4. Get badge!

The Extra! Extra! badge is categorized as a “Content Badge” and is defined in this Trac ticket. But what’s the real scoop behind the Extra! Extra! badge?

In short, the Extra! Extra! badge is awarded to Fedora contributors that write an article for the Fedora Magazine, the premiere publication offered by the Fedora Project. The Fedora Magazine offers user-oriented content relating to the Fedora Project, whether it’s a how-to on using some awesome software, a major event report, or other cool things happening in the Linux world.

How do I earn “Extra! Extra!”? 🔗

Earning Extra! Extra! requires a good idea and a willingness to write about it! To write your own article for the Fedora Magazine, you should start by shooting a brief introduction to the Marketing mailing list.  Tell a little bit about yourself, what you’re interested in, and maybe why you want to write for the Magazine. After you introduce yourself, you will be granted contributor privileges on the Magazine!

You can learn more about the process for writing for the Fedora Magazine on their walkthrough page.

The first step to getting your article published and syndicated is by proposing a pitch for your idea. A pitch is a short, brief summary of what you want to write about and how you want to go about it. This helps make it easier to approve articles and prevent you from wasting your time writing an article if there is a reason that your idea isn’t suitable for the Magazine. Get started by learning how to write a good pitch!

After your pitch is ready, send a link to your article to the Marketing mailing list announcing that it is ready for review. All pitches and drafts are reviewed weekly at the Magazine editorial board meetings.

Once your article is given the “OK”, you are free to begin drafting your article and move towards publication. After your article goes live, you will be manually awarded the badge!

The “Extra! Extra!” tl;dr 🔗

1. Introduce yourself on the Marketing mailing list, explaining why you want to write for the Magazine and what your idea for an article is
2. Once you are promoted, start a pitch to be reviewed by the editorial board, email to list when done
3. When your pitch is approved, begin drafting and move towards publishing
4. After publishing, badge is manually awarded by Magazine editors

This information is also on the Magazine “How to write an article” page.

The Telegraphist badge is categorized as a “Quality [Assurance] Badge” and is defined in this Trac ticket. But what’s the real scoop behind the Telegraphist badge?

In short, Telegraphist is awarded to Fedora contributors and users who map the names of their favorite upstream projects to packages available in Fedora. This makes it easier for developers and users to monitor updates on their favorite packages, and to make sure that new versions of upstream software are packaged and made available in Fedora. The software backing this site is called Anitya, and you can use it now on release-monitoring.org! The original announcement for this site was made by Ralph Bean on the developers mailing list in February 2015.

How do I earn Telegraphist? 🔗

Earning Telegraphist is easy! First, you should look through the list of software you have installed on your system. What are some of your favorite apps? What do you use all the time and think you couldn’t live without? Try searching for it on Anitya. Does it exist?

It may be that the package you search for is already mapped. In that case, take a look through it and see if the information is still correct and relevant. Sometimes a project’s homepage may change, or they might switch the locations of where they host their code. If something’s wrong, edit it and correct the info.

On the other hand, it may be that the package you want to add doesn’t exist. Viola, a badge opportunity has presented itself! You can help Fedora developers by providing the relevant info for a project. Click on “Add project” on the top bar and begin entering all the relevant info. For an example, see my mapping of the yubikey-personalization-gui in the screenshot.

The Telegraphist tl;dr 🔗

1. Awarded to contributors who map upstream project info to specific packages in Fedora
2. Automatically awarded when you map a project on release-monitoring.org
3. Find project info for your favorite software, and if it doesn’t exist, add it to the database

What is this? What is this?! Introducing a new series being published weekly on my blog - “Gotta Badge ‘Em All!” This series aims to introduce readers to the hundreds of Fedora badges that members of the Fedora community can earn. Maybe you’re a newcomer looking at becoming more involved by earning more badges, or maybe you have been around for a while and just want to grow your badge numbers.

No matter who you are, this series aims to educate and teach readers about how to earn some of the less obvious Fedora badges available. Not all the badges are obvious, and I want to bring more light to the “how-to” process to picking up some of these badges.

Publishing Schedule 🔗

The schedule I intend to follow aims for a new article in the series every Monday at 3:30 UTC. If you’re from the US East Coast, like me, this translates to Sunday evenings at 22:30 (10:30pm).

Read more 🔗

Wanting to keep up with the series? Just follow the tag “Gotta Badge ‘Em All” on my blog (if you’re an RSS person, use this)!

Stay tuned for the first article in the series coming very soon, explaining the Parselmouth badge!

The Parselmouth badge is categorized as a “Miscellaneous Badge” and was defined in this Trac ticket. But what’s the real scoop behind the Parselmouth badge?

In short, Parselmouth is awarded to Fedora contributors who assist in porting Python 2 packages in Fedora to Python 3. As of present date, the current version of Fedora (Fedora 23) defaults to using Python 3 for new installs. While Python 2 is easily installed, there are still a large number of packages that are not up to date to using the latest version of the language. As recognized by the developers of the programming language and the countless that use it, Python 3 is the future, and it is important that Fedora helps lead the way towards making Python 3 the standard.

How do I earn Parselmouth? 🔗

Parselmouth is a manually-awarded badge by some of the Python maintainers in Fedora. In order to earn the Parselmouth badge, you will need to help port packages and be noticed by the maintainers.

“But how can I do that?!” 🔗

There are a number of ways you can earn the badge. Periodically, there are Fedora Activity Days (FAD) which are dedicated days or sometimes weekends where contributors work together during coordinated times over IRC to help make progress on porting packages. Just recently, there was a Python 3 Porting FAD that successfully helped port many more packages to Python 3. One way to earn this badge in the future is by watching for any more announcements of a Python 3 Porting FAD on the Community Blog.

Alternatively, jump into the #fedora-python IRC channel on Freenode and introduce yourself to the channel. Explain that you want to help port packages, and someone will be able to help guide and direct you to where you can get started.

The Parselmouth tl;dr 🔗

1. Awarded to contributors who help port Python 2 packages in Fedora to Python 3
2. Typically awarded during Fedora Activity Days for Python porting
3. Can be earned by helping port packages any time year-round