Project History

At the beginning...

Computer training, I started using the UNIX operating system in the late 80s when I worked in the industry. I immediately appreciated the capabilities of this operating system that allows complex treatment combining the use of multiple tools.
Also at this time that I started to practice programming in C language.

I bought my first PC in 1989. This machine was running under MS-DOS, an operating system much more rudimentary than UNIX.
Having bought a C compiler from Borland (Turbo C 2.0), I quickly set about writing in C UNIX commands that I knew, to succeed, little by little, to have the same technical possibilities at home than on my workplace.
In little more than 10 years, and I rewrote for MS-DOS à hundred of UNIX-like commands including tle text editor vi.

Like many, I finally learned the existence of GNU/Linux, but in the mid 90s, it did not immediately interested me because I already had my personal UNIX on MS-DOS.

Since September 1999, I work near Paris and go back in my native region around Toulouse for the holidays (school).
The first 3 years I moved my most recent computer to use it in the Paris region from September to June and near Toulouse in July-August.
At the end of summer 2002, I preferred to leave this computer in Toulouse region to buy a newer machine in the Paris region.

Unforeseen problem: this new machine does not have the drivers for Windows 3.1 that I used for some essential elements such as graphics card (limited to 256 colors), modem, etc. ... Hence the need to move to a more recent operating system.

The newest operating system has been naturally GNU/Linux that I used already on my workplace.

The passage under the GNU/Linux has been for me the occasion to start in autumn 2002 writing a suite of email tools called Libremail that I posted on the Web from June 2003 starting at that occasion my 2 first websites.

Origin of the idea of Cyloop

In my workplace, we had a file server that centralized the user accounts and also served as an internet proxy.

On this server, a colleague implanted RRDtool which, combined with snmp for data acquisition allowed to obtain graphs with information about the server, like the access network (LAN and Internet), filling different partitions of hard disk and memory usage.

I was interested in these tools and had perfected the system established by my colleague.

A few years later, from the autumn of 2008, I installed the same tools on my home computer.

Some graphics RRDtool as the layout of the memory usage permit to know when a computer is turned on. Moreover, for a long time graphs showing the filling of hard disk gave the same information until I found a way to extend the previous course during periods of shutdown.

Still, I wanted to make graphs that provide an average value of the use of my computer at different times of day or week. However, RRDtool has not been provided to make this kind of document.

The idea to write Cyloop came from that.

Chronology writing Cyloop

Before you start writing different tools of Cyloop, I had to design a file format for storing the data recorded at different instants of a cycle.

In October-November 2008, I wrote the format specifications for Cyloop files.

At first, I designed a file format able to store a single variable counter type, or value type, at the different moments of the cycle.

I soon felt that a Cyloop file may store several variables identical characteristics, and later variables with different characteristics, each variable having its own description.

However, to write the different tools Cyloop, I preferred to start by performing a version with one variable by file whose potential could be expanded once the various tools of Cyloop would be developed.
I quickly abandoned the idea of intermediate Cyloop files with multiple variables with identical characteristics, which, if it had some interest on programming side, was useless in relation to the ability to store multiple variables of different nature.
There remained only a fundamental tool to write to get a version of Cyloop exploitable, but writing this tool was much longer than expected.
Then, I stopped working on Cyloop until July 2010 when I changed my source files for future internationalization of the user interface using the principle that I developed some years before for Libremail project.