Maintenance and Slowness Resolution

The Linuxvillage community wiki (xwiki.linuxvillage.org), graciously hosted by Gandi as part of their supported projects programme, was experiencing noticeable slowness and lack of responsiveness when loading pages. An in-depth diagnostic session identified the root cause and resolved it.

Issue Identified

The Licensor Application extension (XWiki license manager) was installed by default without any need — no paid extension was installed. The page Licenses.Code.MissingLicensesUIX, responsible for displaying license alerts, had empty content. The system logs showed the following error on every single page render:

ERROR o.a.v.rendering - Left side ($unlicensedSheets.size()) of comparison operation
has null value at xwiki:Licenses.Code.MissingLicensesUIX[line 5, column 61]

This Velocity error was triggered across the entire wiki, including the home page, and could reach one occurrence per second during peak activity. This explains the slowness experienced by public visitors: every page render triggered a cascading error handling process before being able to respond. Additionally, a reference to the legacy Mail plugin (MailPlugin), obsolete since an earlier version, remained in the configuration file, generating an extra error on every server startup:

ERROR - Cannot initialize plugin [com.xpn.xwiki.plugin.mail.MailPlugin]
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.xpn.xwiki.plugin.mail.MailPlugin

Actions Taken

• System log analysis via journalctl -u xwiki to identify recurring errors
• Server snapshot taken as a precaution
• Clean uninstallation of Licensor Application 1.32 and its dependencies via the XWiki administration interface
• Removal of the MailPlugin reference in /etc/xwiki/xwiki.cfg (line commented out and documented)
• XWiki restart and log verification

Result

The logs now only show harmless warnings, and navigation throughout the wiki is noticeably smoother.

Next Steps

A request has been submitted to Gandi, our sponsor, to upgrade the VPS resources (from 4 GB to 8 GB RAM). This request for an upgrade is meant to allow XWiki to better handle simultaneous connections, particularly in collaborative editing mode.

On January 3rd, we sent you an email to inform you of the upcoming closure of the Linuxvillage forum and the steps we will be taking following this shutdown.

The forum was no longer active, except for consultation. There were many tips and tricks in both the French and English sections; we intend to recover and republish some of these articles.

However, after performing successful database export tests yesterday, we have decided to close the forum for stability and security reasons. We will be able to put back online tips that are still relevant today fairly easily.

If you are aware of specific articles that you would like to see back online, please feel free to send us a message to let us know.

We could also consider creating a new forum in the future, using a more modern platform like Discourse, or perhaps setting up a mailing list, if there is interest.

The “Tips and tricks,” in both French and English, will be published on this platform, as the new wiki (XWiki) mentioned in our newsletters is not yet bilingual.

Best regards, and Happy New Year 2026!

A new English and French versions are available. You’ll find them at the top of this page.

The entire system has been updated. Additionally, the following packages have been removed: Libreoffice-draw and its dependencies, Gsmartcontrol, and Geany. The aim is above all to obtain reasonably sized installation images, bearing in mind that the fight against software obesity is a futile one, but not yet lost! ^^

Of course, you can always install the packages you need from the Synaptic package manager, or from the Software Center, once this edition has been installed on your computer.

One small detail has changed: the “@” symbol in the command prompt turns green for the user, and red when the terminal switches to administrator mode.

The previous posts will provide you with information on the system’s general content.

Built on the Ubuntu Openbox Remix 22.04 LTS version, available on the download page, here it is, arriving right on January 1st, 2025! If necessary, be sure to read this article on methods for downloading a disk image containing a system and verifying the file’s integrity after downloading.

We wish you a Happy New Year 2025 with plenty Linux Penguins in your homes!!!

Distribution content

The ISO image is 2.4 GB, contains most of the programs necessary for everyday use. You will find Firefox to surf the web, the Thunderbird client to manage your email, Libreoffice Writer, Calc, and Impress for office needs… In addition, the Synaptic package manager will allow you to install even more applications.

Desktop environment

The environment is composed of lightweight elements brought together and working together through ready-to-use configurations. This is how Bento Openbox Remix was designed from the start. Openbox, the advanced window manager, offers a complete menu from a right-click on the desktop, as well as on the panel. It also provides a session management menu: “Right-click → Quit” which allows you to shut down, restart, put the system to sleep, change users or quit the session.

The panel has changed since version 22.04. We had LXpanel, a very easy-to-configure panel thanks to graphical tools. In this new version, we have Tint2, lighter, more stable, but less obvious to customize. LXpanel has been set aside, following a bug that affects it in the latest versions of Ubuntu and makes it inoperative. However, the provided Tint2 panel is configured for most uses, and it is functional and stable. The session manager is still Lightdm.

Applications

Programs for everyday use are available from the “Cat head” menu on the left of the panel, and from the Openbox right-click menu “Applications”. (You can click on the screenshot below to display it full size).

Above in the accessories menu, we can notice an archive manager, a calculator,  a file manager, a text editor, and other programs.

The Graphics section comes with a scan software, and image viewer, a pictures manager, and Gimp, the image editing software.

The Multimedia menu will allow you to discover the audio volume manager, a lightweight audio player, a webcam utility, and the SMplayer video player, along with MPV (lighter, and on which SMplayer depends).

The Internet menu includes a network configuration manager, an IRC client, and the previously mentioned Thunderbird and Firefox. These are provided by the Mozilla community to avoid relying on the snap package system. For those unfamiliar with this, we’ve chosen to keep things lightweight and use traditional installation methods for these applications. This ensures that updates are handled in the same way as the rest of the system.

The Office section includes the LibreOffice suite, offering spreadsheet, drawing, presentation, and word processing tools. PDF Arranger lets you manipulate PDFs by adding, removing, or merging pages. The Atril document viewer can open any PDF file. You can discover for yourself the following Settings and System sections, which offer extensive customization options.

Technical details

As promised, this is the Bento Openbox Remix Edition, rebuilt from Bento Openbox Remix Core 6.

This edition has been enriched with a number of packages. Some applications more often requested have replaced others and are generally larger in size.

The disk image is 1.8 GB large.

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The previous version, presented here is now available as a version number 6. This update raises its size from 734M to 829M.

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This edition has been rebuilt ton top of the Bento antiX x86_64 edition already available online, and comes with some additional packages. Also some applications have been replaced with some more often required and larger in size.

The download file is 1100 MB. In this Bento antiX edition you will find the programs and features presented on the presentation page https://linuxvillage.org/en/blog/2022/01/14/bento-antix-x86_64 along with the following changes:

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Size : 698 MB

Bento antiXi686 PAE is a spinoff of the antiX Linux 32bit system rebuilt with the help from members of the antiX forum https://www.antixforum.com.

Size: 695 MB

Bento antiX i486 is a respin from the distribution antiX Linux 32bit system with an i486 kernel,rebuilt with the help from members of the antiX forum https: //www.antixforum.com

The wallpaper comes from a Charlie Henson background on https://gnome-look.org.

User level : beginners and up.

Hardware requirements : from 1 GB RAM, 2 GB recommended, and 730 Mhz processor minimum + 7200 RPM HDD or SSD (PATA or SATA).

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