Search Results: "Jonathan McDowell"

18 April 2016

Jonathan McDowell: Going to DebConf 16

Going to DebConf16 Whoop! Looking forward to it already (though will probably spend it feeling I should be finishing my dissertation). Outbound: 
2016-07-01 15:20 DUB -> 16:45 LHR BA0837
2016-07-01 21:35 LHR -> 10:00 CPT BA0059
Inbound: 
2016-07-10 19:20 CPT -> 06:15 LHR BA0058
2016-07-11 09:20 LHR -> 10:45 DUB BA0828
(image stolen from Gunnar)

13 April 2016

Jonathan McDowell: Software in the Public Interest contributing members: Check your activity status!

That s a longer title than I d like, but I want to try and catch the attention of anyone who might have missed more directed notifications about this. If you re not an SPI contributing member there s probably nothing to see here Although I decided not to stand for re-election at the Software in the Public Interest (SPI) board elections last July, I haven t stopped my involvement with the organisation. In particular I ve spent some time working on an overhaul of the members website and rolling it out. One of the things this has enabled is implementation of 2009-11-04.jmd.1: Contributing membership expiry, by tracking activity in elections and providing an easy way for a member to indicate they consider themselves active even if they haven t voted. The plan is that this will run at some point after the completion of every board election. A first pass of cleanups was completed nearly a month ago, contacting all contributing members who d never been seen to vote and asking them to update their status if they were still active. A second round, of people who didn t vote in the last board election (in 2014), is currently under way. Affected members will have been emailed directly and there was a mail to spi-announce, but I m aware people often overlook these things or filter mail off somewhere that doesn t get read often. If you are an SPI Contributing member who considers themselves an active member I strongly recommend you login to the SPI Members Website and check the Last active date displayed is after 2014-07-14 (i.e. post the start of the last board election). If it s not, click on the Update link beside the date. The updated date will be shown once you ve done so. Why does pruning inactive members matter? The 2015 X.Org election results provide at least one indication of why ensuring you have an engaged membership is important - they failed to make a by-laws change that a vast majority of votes were in favour of, due to failing to make quorum. (If you re an X.org member, go vote!)

Jonathan McDowell: Software in the Public Interest contributing members: Check your activity status!

That s a longer title than I d like, but I want to try and catch the attention of anyone who might have missed more directed notifications about this. If you re not an SPI contributing member there s probably nothing to see here Although I decided not to stand for re-election at the Software in the Public Interest (SPI) board elections last July, I haven t stopped my involvement with the organisation. In particular I ve spent some time working on an overhaul of the members website and rolling it out. One of the things this has enabled is implementation of 2009-11-04.jmd.1: Contributing membership expiry, by tracking activity in elections and providing an easy way for a member to indicate they consider themselves active even if they haven t voted. The plan is that this will run at some point after the completion of every board election. A first pass of cleanups was completed nearly a month ago, contacting all contributing members who d never been seen to vote and asking them to update their status if they were still active. A second round, of people who didn t vote in the last board election (in 2014), is currently under way. Affected members will have been emailed directly and there was a mail to spi-announce, but I m aware people often overlook these things or filter mail off somewhere that doesn t get read often. If you are an SPI Contributing member who considers themselves an active member I strongly recommend you login to the SPI Members Website and check the Last active date displayed is after 2014-07-14 (i.e. post the start of the last board election). If it s not, click on the Update link beside the date. The updated date will be shown once you ve done so. Why does pruning inactive members matter? The 2015 X.Org election results provide at least one indication of why ensuring you have an engaged membership is important - they failed to make a by-laws change that a vast majority of votes were in favour of, due to failing to make quorum. (If you re an X.org member, go vote!)

12 April 2016

Reproducible builds folks: Reproducible builds: week 48 in Stretch cycle

What happened in the reproducible builds effort between March 20th and March 26th: Toolchain fixes Daniel Kahn Gillmor worked on removing build path from build symbols submitting a patch adding -fdebug-prefix-map to clang to match GCC, another patch against gcc-5 to backport the removal of -fdebug-prefix-map from DW_AT_producer, and finally by proposing the addition of a normalizedebugpath to the reproducible feature set of dpkg-buildflags that would use -fdebug-prefix-map to replace the current directory with . using -fdebug-prefix-map. Sergey Poznyakoff merged the --clamp-mtime option so that it will be featured in the next Tar release. This option is likely to be used by dpkg-deb to implement deterministic mtimes for packaged files. Packages fixed The following packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: augeas, gmtkbabel, ktikz, octave-control, octave-general, octave-image, octave-ltfat, octave-miscellaneous, octave-mpi, octave-nurbs, octave-octcdf, octave-sockets, octave-strings, openlayers, python-structlog, signond. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed: Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them: Patches submitted which have not made their way to the archive yet: tests.reproducible-builds.org i386 build nodes have been setup by converting 2 of the 4 amd64 nodes to i386. (h01ger) Package reviews 92 reviews have been removed, 66 added and 31 updated in the previous week. New issues: timestamps_generated_by_xbean_spring, timestamps_generated_by_mangosdk_spiprocessor. Chris Lamb filed 7 FTBFS bugs. Misc. On March 20th, Chris Lamb gave a talk at FOSSASIA 2016 in Singapore. The very same day, but a few timezones apart, h01ger did a presentation at LibrePlanet 2016 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Seven GSoC/Outreachy applications were made by potential interns to work on various aspects of the reproducible builds effort. On top of interacting with several applicants, prospective mentors gathered to review the applications.

27 March 2016

Lunar: Reproducible builds: week 48 in Stretch cycle

What happened in the reproducible builds effort between March 20th and March 26th:

Toolchain fixes
  • Sebastian Ramacher uploaded breathe/4.2.0-1 which makes its output deterministic. Original patch by Chris Lamb, merged uptream.
  • Rafael Laboissiere uploaded octave/4.0.1-1 which allows packages to be built in place and avoid unreproducible builds due to temporary build directories appearing in the .oct files.
Daniel Kahn Gillmor worked on removing build path from build symbols submitting a patch adding -fdebug-prefix-map to clang to match GCC, another patch against gcc-5 to backport the removal of -fdebug-prefix-map from DW_AT_producer, and finally by proposing the addition of a normalizedebugpath to the reproducible feature set of dpkg-buildflags that would use -fdebug-prefix-map to replace the current directory with . using -fdebug-prefix-map. As succesful result of lobbying at LibrePlanet 2016, the --clamp-mtime option will be featured in the next Tar release. This option is likely to be used by dpkg-deb to implement deterministic mtimes for packaged files.

Packages fixed The following packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: augeas, gmtkbabel, ktikz, octave-control, octave-general, octave-image, octave-ltfat, octave-miscellaneous, octave-mpi, octave-nurbs, octave-octcdf, octave-sockets, octave-strings, openlayers, python-structlog, signond. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed: Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them: Patches submitted which have not made their way to the archive yet:
  • #818742 on milkytracker by Reiner Herrmann: sorts the list of source files.
  • #818752 on tcl8.4 by Reiner Herrmann: sort source files using C locale.
  • #818753 on tk8.6 by Reiner Herrmann: sort source files using C locale.
  • #818754 on tk8.5 by Reiner Herrmann: sort source files using C locale.
  • #818755 on tk8.4 by Reiner Herrmann: sort source files using C locale.
  • #818952 on marionnet by ceridwen: dummy out build date and uname to make build reproducible.
  • #819334 on avahi by Reiner Herrmann: ship upstream changelog instead of the one generated by gettextize (although duplicate of #804141 by Santiago Vila).

tests.reproducible-builds.org i386 build nodes have been setup by converting 2 of the 4 amd64 nodes to i386. (h01ger)

Package reviews 92 reviews have been removed, 66 added and 31 updated in the previous week. New issues: timestamps_generated_by_xbean_spring, timestamps_generated_by_mangosdk_spiprocessor. Chris Lamb filed 7 FTBFS bugs.

Misc. On March 20th, Chris Lamb gave a talk at FOSSASIA 2016 in Singapore. The very same day, but a few timezones apart, h01ger did a presentation at LibrePlanet 2016 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Seven GSoC/Outreachy applications were made by potential interns to work on various aspects of the reproducible builds effort. On top of interacting with several applicants, prospective mentors gathered to review the applications. Huge thanks to Linda Naeun Lee for the new hackergotchi visible on Planet Debian.

26 March 2016

Jonathan McDowell: Dr Stoll: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the GPL

[I wrote this as part of BelFOSS but I think it s worth posting here.] My Free Software journey starts with The Cuckoo s Egg. Back in the early 90s a family friend suggested I might enjoy reading it. He was right; I was fascinated by the world of interconnected machines it introduced me to. That helped start my involvement in FidoNet, but it also got me interested in Unix. So when I saw a Linux book at the Queen s University bookshop (sadly no longer with us) with a Slackware CD in the back I had to have it. The motivation at this point was to have a low cost version of Unix I could run on the PC hardware I already owned. I had no knowledge of the GNU Project before this point, and as I wasn t a C programmer I had no interest in looking at the source code. I spent some time futzing around with it and that partition (I was dual booting with DOS 6.22) fell into disuse. It wasn t until I d learnt some C and turned up to university, which provided me with an internet connection and others who were either already using Linux or interested in doing so, that I started running a Linux box full time. Once I was doing that I became a lot more interested in the Open Source side of the equation. Rather than running a closed operating system that even the API for wasn t properly specified (or I wouldn t have needed my copy of Undocumented DOS) I had the complete source to both the underlying OS and all the utilities that it was using. For someone doing a computer science degree this was invaluable. Minix may have been the OS discussed in the OS Design module I studied, but Linux was a much more feature complete option that I was running on my desktop and could also peer under the hood of. In my professional career I ve always welcomed the opportunities to work with Open Source. A long time ago I experienced a particularly annoying issue when writing a device driver under QNX. The documentation didn t seem to match the observed behaviour of the subsystem I was interfacing with. However due to licensing issues only a small number of people in the organisation were able to actually look at the QNX source. So I ended up wasting a much more senior engineer s time with queries like I think it s actually doing x, y and z instead of a, b and c; can you confirm? . Instances where I can look directly at the source code myself make me much more productive. Commercial development also started to make me more understanding of the Free Software nature of the code I was running. It wasn t just the ability to look at the code which was useful, but also the fact there was no need to reinvent the wheel. Need a base OS to build an appliance on? Debian ensures that the main component is Free for all usage. No need to worry about rolling your own compilers, base libraries etc. From a commercial perspective that allows you to concentrate on the actual product. And when you hit problems, the source is available and you can potentially fix it yourself or at least more easily find out if there s been a fix for that issue released (being able to see code development in version control systems rather than getting a new upstream release with a whole heap on unrelated fixes in it really helps with that). I had thus progressed from using FLOSS because it was free-as-in-beer, to appreciating the benefits of Open Source in my own learning and employment experiences, to a deeper understanding of the free-as-in-speech benefits that could be gained. However at this point I was still thinking very much from a developer mindset. Even my thoughts about how users can benefit from Free Software were in the context of businesses being able to easily switch suppliers or continue to maintain legacy software because they had the source to their systems available. One of the major factors that has helped me to see beyond this is the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT). With desktop or server software there is by and large a choice about what to use. This is not the case with appliances. While manufacturers will often produce a few revisions of software for their devices, usually eventually there is a newer and shiny model and the old one is abandoned. This is problematic for many reasons. For example, historically TVs have been long lived devices (I had one I bought second hand that happily lasted me 7+ years). However the smart capabilities of the TV I purchased in 2012 are already of limited usefulness, and LG have moved on to their current models. I have no intention of replacing the device any time soon, so have had to accept it is largely acting as a dumb display. More serious is the lack of security updates. For a TV that doesn t require a network connection to function this is not as important, but the IoT is a trickier proposition. For example Matthew Garrett had an awful experience with some intelligent light bulbs, which effectively circumvented any home network security you might have set up. The manufacturer s defence? No longer manufactured or supported. It s cases like these that have slowly led me to a more complete understanding of the freedom that Free Software truly offers to users. It s not just about cost free/low cost software. It s not just about being able to learn from looking at the source to the programs you are running. It s not even about the freedom to be able to modify the programs that we use. It s about giving users true Freedom to use and modify their devices as they see fit. From this viewpoint it is much easier to understand the protections against Tivoization that were introduced with GPLv3, and better appreciate the argument sometimes made that the GPL offers more freedom than BSD style licenses.

21 November 2015

Jonathan McDowell: Updating a Brother HL-3040CN firmware from Linux

I have a Brother HL-3040CN networked colour laser printer. I bought it 5 years ago and I kinda wish I hadn t. I d done the appropriate research to confirm it worked with Linux, but I didn t realise it only worked via a 32-bit binary driver. It s the only reason I have 32 bit enabled on my house server and I really wish I d either bought a GDI printer that had an open driver (Samsung were great for this in the past) or something that did PCL or Postscript (my parents have an Xerox Phaser that Just Works). However I don t print much (still just on my first set of toner) and once setup the driver hasn t needed much kicking. A more major problem comes with firmware updates. Brother only ship update software for Windows and OS X. I have a Windows VM but the updater wants the full printer driver setup installed and that seems like overkill. I did a bit of poking around and found reference in the service manual to the ability to do an update via USB and a firmware file. Further digging led me to a page on resurrecting a Brother HL-2250DN, which discusses recovering from a failed firmware flash. It provided a way of asking the Brother site for the firmware information. First I queried my printer details: 
$ snmpwalk -v 2c -c public hl3040cn.local iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.1 = STRING: "MODEL=\"HL-3040CN series\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.2 = STRING: "SERIAL=\"G0JXXXXXX\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.3 = STRING: "SPEC=\"0001\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.4 = STRING: "FIRMID=\"MAIN\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.5 = STRING: "FIRMVER=\"1.11\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.6 = STRING: "FIRMID=\"PCLPS\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.7 = STRING: "FIRMVER=\"1.02\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.8 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.9 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.10 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.11 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.12 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.13 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.14 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.15 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.16 = STRING: ""
I used that to craft an update file which I sent to Brother via curl: 
curl -X POST -d @hl3040cn-update.xml https://firmverup.brother.co.jp/kne_bh7_update_nt_ssl/ifax2.asmx/fileUpdate -H "Content-Type:text/xml" --sslv3
This gave me back some XML with a URL for the latest main firmware, version 1.19, filename LZ2599_N.djif. I downloaded that and took a look at it, discovering it looked like a PJL file. I figured I d see what happened if I sent it to the printer: 
cat LZ2599_N.djf   nc hl3040cn.local 9100
The LCD on the front of printer proceeded to display something like Updating Program and eventually the printer re-DHCPed and indicated the main firmware had gone from 1.11 to 1.19. Great! However the PCLPS firmware was still at 1.02 and I d got the impression that 1.04 was out. I didn t manage to figure out how to get the Brother update website to give me the 1.04 firmware, but I did manage to find a copy of LZ2600_D.djf which I was then able to send to the printer in the same way. This led to: 
$ snmpwalk -v 2c -c public hl3040cn.local iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.1 = STRING: "MODEL=\"HL-3040CN series\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.2 = STRING: "SERIAL=\"G0JXXXXXX\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.3 = STRING: "SPEC=\"0001\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.4 = STRING: "FIRMID=\"MAIN\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.5 = STRING: "FIRMVER=\"1.19\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.6 = STRING: "FIRMID=\"PCLPS\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.7 = STRING: "FIRMVER=\"1.04\""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.8 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.9 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.10 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.11 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.12 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.13 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.14 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.15 = STRING: ""
iso.3.6.1.4.1.2435.2.4.3.99.3.1.6.1.2.16 = STRING: ""
Cool, eh? [Disclaimer: This worked for me. I ve no idea if it ll work for anyone else. Don t come running to me if you brick your printer.]

9 November 2015

Jonathan McDowell: The Joy of Recruiters

Last week Simon retweeted a link to Don t Feed the Beast the Great Tech Recruiter Infestation. Which reminded me I d been meaning to comment on my own experiences from earlier in the year. I don t entertain the same level of bile as displayed in the post, but I do have a significant level of disappointment in the recruitment industry. I had conversations with 3 different agencies, all of whom were geographically relevant. One contacted me, the other 2 (one I d dealt with before, one that was recommended to me) I contacted myself. All managed to fail to communicate with any level of acceptability. The agency hat contacted me eventually went quiet, after having asked if they could put my CV forward for a role and pushing very hard about when I could interview. The contact in the agency I d dealt with before replied to say I was being passed to someone else who would get in contact. Who of course didn t. And the final agency, who had been recommended, passed me between 3 different people, said they were confident they could find me something, and then went dark except for signing me up to their generic jobs list which failed to have anything of relevance on it. As it happens my availability and skill set were not conducive to results at that point in time, so my beef isn t with the inability to find a role. Instead it s with the poor levels of communication presented by an industry which seems, to me, to have communication as part of the core value it should be offering. If anyone had said at the start Look, it s going to be tricky, we ll see what we can do or Look, that s not what we really deal in, we can t help , that would have been fine. I m fine with explanations. I get really miffed when I m just left hanging. I d love to be able to say I ll never deal with a recruiter again, but the fact of the matter is they do serve a purpose. There s only so far a company can get with word of mouth recruitment; eventually that network of personal connections from existing employees who are considering moving dries up. Advertising might get you some more people, but it can also result in people who are hugely inappropriate for the role. From the company point of view recruiters nominally fulfil 2 roles. Firstly they connect the prospective employer with a potentially wider base of candidates. Secondly they should be able to do some sort of, at least basic, filtering of whether a candidate is appropriate for a role. From the candidate point of view the recruiter hopefully has a better knowledge of what roles are out there. However the incentives to please each side are hugely unbalanced. The candidate isn t paying the recruiter. If you re not paying for it, you re the product may be bandied around too often, but I believe this is one of the instances where it s very applicable. A recruiter is paid by their ability to deliver viable candidates to prospective employers. The delivery of these candidates is the service. Whether or not the candidate is happy with the job is irrelevant beyond them staying long enough that the placement fee can be claimed. The lengthy commercial relationship is ideally between the company and the recruitment agency, not the candidate and the agency. A recruiter wants to be able to say Look at the fine candidate I provided last time, you should always come to me first in future . There s a certain element of wanting the candidate to come back if/when they are looking for a new role, but it s not a primary concern. It is notable that the recommendations I d received were from people who had been on the hiring side of things. The recruiter has a vested interest in keeping the employer happy, in the hope of a sustained relationship. There is little motivation for keeping the candidate happy, as long as you don t manage to scare them off. And, in fact, if you scare some off, who cares? A recruiter doesn t get paid for providing the best possible candidate. Or indeed a candidate who will fully engage with the role. All they re required to provide is a hire-able candidate who takes the role. I m not sure what the resolution is to this. Word of mouth only scales so far for both employer and candidate. Many of the big job websites seem to be full of recruiters rather than real employers. And I m sure there are some decent recruiters out there doing a good job, keeping both sides happy and earning their significant cut. I m sad to say I can t foresee any big change any time soon. [Note I m not currently looking for employment.] [No recruitment agencies were harmed in the writing of this post. I have deliberately tried to avoid outing anyone in particular.]

31 October 2015

Jonathan McDowell: Thoughts on the LG G Watch R Android smartwatch

Back in March I was given an LG G Watch R, the first Android Wear smartwatch to have a full round display (the Moto 360 was earlier, but has a bit cut off the bottom of the actual display). I d promised I d get round to making some comments about it once I d had it for a while and have failed to do so until now. Note that this is very much comments on the watch from a user point of view; I haven t got to the point of trying to do any development or other hacking of it. Firstly, it s important to note I already was wearing a watch and have been doing so for all of my adult life. Just a basic, unobtrusive analogue watch (I ve had a couple since I was 18, before that it was pretty much every type of calculator watch available at some point), but I can t remember a period where I didn t. The G Watch R is bulkier than what I was previously wearing, but I haven t found it obtrusive. And I love the way it looks; if you don t look closely it doesn t look like a smart watch (and really it s only the screen that gives it away). Secondly, I already would have taken my watch off at night and when I was showering. So while the fact that the battery on the G Watch R will really only last a day and a half is by far and away its most annoying problem, it s not as bad as it could be for me. The supplied charging dock is magnetic, so it lives on my beside table and I just drop the watch in it when I go to bed. With those details out of the way, what have I thought of it? It s certainly a neat gadget. Being able to see my notifications without having to take my phone out of my pocket is more convenient than I expected - especially when it s something like an unimportant email that I can then easily dismiss by swiping the watch face. My agenda being just a flick away, very convenient, particularly when I m still at the stage of trying to remember where my next lecture is. Having walking directions from Google Maps show up on the watch (and be accompanied by a gentle vibration when I need to change direction) is pretty handy too. The ability to take pictures via the phone camera, not so much. Perhaps if it showed me roughly what I was about to photograph, but without that it s no easier than using the phone interface. It s mostly an interface for consuming information - I ve tried the text to SMS interface a few times, but it s just not reliable enough that I d choose to use it. I ve also been pleased to see it get several updates from LG in the time I ve had it. First the upgrade from Wear 4.4 to Wear 5.1 (probably via 5.0 but I forget), but also the enabling of wifi support. The hardware could always support this, but initially Android Wear didn t and then there was some uncertainty about the FCC certification for the G Watch R. I can t say I use it much (mostly the phone is within range) but it s nice to see the improvements in support when they re available. What about the downsides? Battery life, as mentioned above, is definitely the major one. Mostly a day is fine, but the problem comes if I m ever away. There s no way to charge without the charging dock, so that becomes another things I have to pack. And it s really annoying to have your watch go dead on you midday when you forget to do so. I also had a period where I d frequently (at least once a week) find an Android Wear isn t responding. Wait/Restart? error on the watch screen. Not cool, but thankfully seems to have stopped happening. Finally there s the additional resource requirements it puts on the phone. I have a fairly basic Moto G 4G that already struggles with Ingress and Chrome at the same time, so adding yet another thing running all the time doesn t help. I m sure I could make use of a few more apps if I was more comfortable with loading the phone. The notable point for me with the watch was DebConf. I d decided not to bring it, not wanting the hassle of dealing with the daily charging. I switched back to my old analogue watch (a Timex, if you care). And proceeded to spend 3 days looking at it every time my phone vibrated before realising that I couldn t do that. That marked the point where I accepted that I was definitely seeing benefits from having a smart watch. So when I was away for a week at the start of September, I brought the charger with me (at some point I ll get round to a second base for travel). I was glad I d done so. I m not sure I m yet at the point I d replace it in the event it died, but on the whole I m more of a convert that I was expecting to be.

8 October 2015

Jonathan McDowell: The sad state of home entertainment software platforms

I got home from a law lecture[1] today and took apart my TV. As you do. I d a couple of motivations for this. The TV is an LG 55LM8600-UC. That -UC is important - it means it s the US model. I shipped it back to the UK along with the rest of my belongings at the start of the year. It s a lovely TV, and I m very happy with the picture quality. Up until now I ve been running it through a 240v->120v transformer, because the back clearly states 120v 50/60Hz. Having had success converting my Roomba PSU to UK voltage I was wondering if it might be easy enough to do the same for the TV. So the first reason for taking it apart was to look at the PSU board and work out if I could replace it with a UK version, or fix up a handful of components myself. Turns out its rated for 100-240v 50/60Hz so it looks like it should be fine to plug into UK mains directly. And, having done so, it all seems fine. However I don t take any responsibility if you try this yourself and it all goes up in smoke. The other reason was to have a general poke at trying to get access to the onboard CPU - the firmware updates are signed and encrypted so I m a bit stuck working from just those. My TV is from the US; it therefore has an ATSC tuner, and is no good for picking up the DVB-T/T2 broadcast in the UK. It also has a range of smart apps built in. Of course are also tailored to the US, so the Amazon Instant Video app connects to amazon.com and is no use with my Amazon UK account. Netflix is smarter about this and detects where you re located rather than requiring logging in to the appropriate geographic site. However the Netflix app is old and doesn t support user profiles. Which causes a problem when I spend an afternoon watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and it screws up the recommendations for my girlfriend. In an ideal world I d easily be able to update the apps on my TV to recent versions appropriate for my geographic location. Instead, the current state of home entertainment software platforms is at least 10 years behind mobile phones. Some devices allow you to get hold of SDKs even as an end user, but you re stuck with a multiple ecosystems even between different models from the same manufacturer. LG has no interest in updating my 2012-era TV. They d rather I buy a nice new 2015 TV. Which means at present my TV is mostly a really nice monitor for my XBMC/Kodi box. I can get away with using my Blu-ray player for Netflix, as it does user profile, but it s also a US model and again Amazon Instant Video doesn t work with a UK account. I should point out /that/ box is from Panasonic, just in case anyone thinks I m needlessly picking on LG. My amp is an Onkyo and it would be nice if it could stream music from Amazon/Google as well (it supports Spotify and a couple of others already), but again no joy there. I understand there are DRM issues around video and audio content, but these problems seem to have largely been solved in the Android world while still providing a fairly standard development environment and allowing end users to install their own software. It would seem to make more sense if there was a standard TV / Blu-ray platform that the likes of Netflix and Amazon could write apps once for, reducing the effort required on both sides to get the latest and greatest services on end user equipment. I guess this is some of what Google was trying to achieve with Google TV, but it s probably less interesting to them than mobile devices as I certainly don t tend to do things like search on my TV; I just want to view content and would be mighty pissed off if it started advertising things at me unexpectedly. While I m not planning to buy a new TV any time soon, I could do with a UK spec 3D-capable Blu-ray player. Is there anything out there with some commitment to open apps / proper updates? I haven t found anything, but I d love to be proved wrong. [1] It was on the duty of care and negligence, if you care.

24 September 2015

Jonathan McDowell: New GPG key

Just before I went to DebConf15 I got around to setting up my gnuk with the latest build (1.1.7), which supports 4K RSA keys. As a result I decided to generate a new certification only primary key, using a live CD on a non-networked host and ensuring the raw key was only ever used in this configuration. The intention is that in general I will use the key via the gnuk, ensuring no danger of leaking the key material. I took part in various key signings at DebConf and the subsequent UK Debian BBQ, and finally today got round to dealing with the key slips I had accumulated. I m sure I ve missed some people off my signing list, but at least now the key should be embedded into the strong set of keys. Feel free to poke me next time you see me if you didn t get mail from me with fresh signatures and you think you should have. Key details are: 
pub   4096R/0x21E278A66C28DBC0 2015-08-04 [expires: 2018-08-03]
      Key fingerprint = 3E0C FCDB 05A7 F665 AA18  CEFA 21E2 78A6 6C28 DBC0
uid                 [  full  ] Jonathan McDowell <noodles@earth.li>
I have no reason to assume my old key (0x94FA372B2DA8B985) has been compromised and for now continue to use that key. Also for the new key I have not generated any subkeys as yet, which caff handles ok but emits a warning about unencrypted mail. Thanks to those of you who sent me signatures despite this. [Update: I was asked about my setup for the key generation, in particular how I ensured enough entropy, given that it was a fresh boot and without networking there were limited entropy sources available to the machine. I made the decision that the machine s TPM and the use of tpm-rng and rng-tools was sufficient (i.e. I didn t worry overly about the TPM being compromised for the purposes of feeding additional information into the random pool). Alternative options would have been flashing the gnuk with the NeuG firmware or using my Entropy Key.]

21 September 2015

Jonathan McDowell: Getting a Dell E7240 working with a dock + a monitor

I have a Dell E7240. I m pretty happy with it - my main complaint is that it has a very shiny screen, and that seems to be because it s the touchscreen variant. While I don t care about that feature I do care about the fact it means I get FullHD in 12.5 Anyway. I ve had issues with using a dock and an external monitor with the laptop for some time, including getting so far as mentioning the problems on the appropriate bug tracker. I ve also had discussions with a friend who has the same laptop with the same issues, and has some time trying to get it reliably work. However up until this week I haven t had a desk I m sitting at for any length of time to use the laptop, so it s always been low priority for me. Today I sat down to try and figure out if there had been any improvement. Firstly I knew the dock wasn t at fault. A Dell E6330 works just fine with multiple monitors on the same dock. The E6330 is Ivybridge, while the E7240 is Haswell, so I thought potentially there might be an issue going on there. Further digging revealed another wrinkle I hadn t previously been aware of; there is a DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport (MST) hub in play, in particular a Synaptics VMM2320. Dell have a knowledge base article about Multiple external display issues when docked with a Latitude E7440/E7240 which suggests a BIOS update (I was already on A15) and a firmware update for the MST HUB. Sadly the firmware update is Windows only, so I had to do a suitable dance to be able to try and run it. I then discovered that the A05 update refused to work, complaining I had an invalid product ID. The A04 update did the same. The A01 update thankfully succeeded and told me it was upgrading from 2.00.002 to 2.15.000. After that had completed (and I d power cycled to switch to the new firmware) I tried A05 again and this time it worked and upgraded me to 2.22.000. Booting up Linux again I got further than before; it was definitely detecting that there was a monitor but it was very unhappy with lots of [drm:intel_dp_start_link_train] *ERROR* too many full retries, give up errors being logged. This was with 4.2, and as I d been meaning to try 4.3-rc2 I thought this was a good time to give it a try. Lo and behold, it worked! Even docking and undocking does what I d expect, with the extra monitor appearing / disappearing as you d expect. Now, I m not going to assume this means it s all happy, as I ve seen this sort-of work in the past, but the clue about MST, the upgrade of that firmware (and noticing that it made things better under Windows as well) and the fact that there have been improvements in the kernel s MST support according to the post 4.2 log gives me some hope that things will be better from here on.

24 August 2015

Jonathan McDowell: Random post-DebConf 15 thoughts

There are a bunch of things I mean to blog about, but as I have just got fully home from Heidelberg and DebConf15 this afternoon that seems most appropriate to start with. It s a bit of a set of disjoint thoughts, but I figure I should write them down while they re in my head. DebConf is an interesting conference. It s the best opportunity the Debian project has every year to come together and actually spend a decent amount of time with each other. As a result it s a fairly full on experience, with lots of planned talks as a basis and a wide range of technical discussions and general social interaction filling in whatever gaps are available. I always find it a thoroughly enjoyable experience, but equally I m glad to be home and doing delightfully dull things like washing my clothes and buying fresh milk. I have always been of the opinion that the key aspect of DebConf is the face time. It was thus great to see so many people there - we were told several times that this was the largest DebConf so far (~ 570 people IIRC). That s good in the sense that it meant I got to speak to a lot of people (both old friends and new), but does mean that there are various people I know I didn t spend enough, or in some cases any, time with. My apologies, but I think many of us were in the same situation. I don t feel it made the conference any less productive for me - I managed to get a bunch of hacking done, discuss a number of open questions in person with various people and get pulled into various interesting discussions I hadn t expected. In short, a typical DebConf. Also I d like to say that the venue worked out really well. I ll admit I was dubious when I heard it was in a hostel, but it was well located (about a 30 minute walk into town, and a reasonable bus service available from just outside the door), self-contained with decent facilities (I m a big believer in having DebConf talks + accommodation be as close as possible to each other) and the room was much better than expected (well, aside from the snoring but I can t blame the DebConf organisers for that). One of the surprising and interesting things for me that was different from previous DebConfs was the opportunity to have more conversations with a legal leaning. I expect to go to DebConf and do OpenPGP/general crypto related bits. I wasn t expecting affirmation about the things I have learnt on my course over the past year, in terms of feeling that I could use that knowledge in the process of helping Debian. It provided me with some hope that I ll be able to tie my technology and law skills together in a way that I will find suitably entertaining (as did various conversations where people expressed significant interest in the crossover). Next year is in Cape Town, South Africa. It s a long way (though I suppose no worse than Portland and I get to stay in the same time zone), and a quick look at flights indicates they re quite expensive at the moment. The bid presentation did look pretty good though so as soon as the dates are confirmed (I believe this will happen as soon as there are signed contracts in place) I ll take another look at flights. In short, excellent DebConf, thanks to the organisers, lovely to see everyone I managed to speak to, apologies to those of you I didn t manage to speak to. Hopefully see you in Cape Town next year.

11 August 2015

Jonathan McDowell: Programming the FST-01 (gnuk) with a Bus Pirate + OpenOCD

Last year at DebConf14 Lucas authorized the purchase of a handful of gnuk devices, one of which I obtained. At the time it only supported 2048 bit RSA keys. I took a look at what might be involved in adding 4096 bit support during DebConf and managed to brick my device several times in doing so. Thankfully gniibe was on hand with his STLinkV2 to help me recover. However subsequently I was loathe to experiment further at home until I had a suitable programmer. As it is this year has been busy and the 1.1.x release train is supposed to have 4K RSA (as well as ECC) support. DebConf15 is coming up and I felt I should finally sort out playing with the device properly. I still didn t have a suitable programmer. Or did I? Could my trusty Bus Pirate help? The FST-01 has an STM32F103TB on it. There is an exposed SWD port. I found a few projects that claimed to do SWD with a Bus Pirate - Will Donnelly has a much cloned Python project, the MC HCK project have a programmer in Ruby and there s LibSWD though that s targeted to smarter programmers. None of them worked for me; I could get the Python bits as far as correctly doing the ID of the device, but not reading the option bytes or successfully flashing (though I did manage an erase). Enter the old favourite, OpenOCD. This already has SWD support and there s an outstanding commit request to add Bus Pirate support. NodoNogard has a post on using the ST-Link/V2 with OpenOCD and the FST-01 which provided some useful pointers. I grabbed the patch from Gerrit, applied it to OpenOCD git and built an openocd.cfg that contained: 
source [find interface/buspirate.cfg]
buspirate_port /dev/ttyUSB0
buspirate_vreg 1
buspirate_mode normal
transport select swd
source [find target/stm32f1x.cfg]
My BP has the Seeed Studio probe cable, so my hookups look like this: Bus Pirate + FST-01 SWD connection That s BP MOSI (grey) to SWD IO, BP CLK (purple) to SWD CLK, BP 3.3V (red) to FST-01 PWR and BP GND (brown) to FST-01 GND. Once that was done I fired up OpenOCD in one terminal and did the following in another: 
$ telnet localhost 4444
Trying ::1...
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
Open On-Chip Debugger
> reset halt
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0x01000000 pc: 0xfffffffe msp: 0xfffffffc
Info : device id = 0x20036410
Info : SWD IDCODE 0x1ba01477
Error: Failed to read memory at 0x1ffff7e2
Warn : STM32 flash size failed, probe inaccurate - assuming 128k flash
Info : flash size = 128kbytes
> stm32f1x unlock 0
Device Security Bit Set
stm32x unlocked.
INFO: a reset or power cycle is required for the new settings to take effect.
> reset halt
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0x01000000 pc: 0xfffffffe msp: 0xfffffffc
> flash write_image erase /home/noodles/checkouts/gnuk/src/build/gnuk.elf
auto erase enabled
wrote 109568 bytes from file /home/noodles/checkouts/gnuk/src/build/gnuk.elf in 95.055603s (1.126 KiB/s)
> stm32f1x lock 0
stm32x locked
> reset halt
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread 
xPSR: 0x01000000 pc: 0x08000280 msp: 0x20005000
Then it was a matter of disconnecting the gnuk from the BP, plugging it into my USB port and seeing it come up successfully: 
usb 1-2: new full-speed USB device number 11 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=234b, idProduct=0000
usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-2: Product: Gnuk Token
usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Free Software Initiative of Japan
usb 1-2: SerialNumber: FSIJ-1.1.7-87063020
usb 1-2: ep 0x82 - rounding interval to 1024 microframes, ep desc says 2040 microframes
More once I actually have a 4K key loaded on it.

21 July 2015

Jonathan McDowell: Recovering a DGN3500 via JTAG

Back in 2010 when I needed an ADSL2 router in the US I bought a Netgear DGN3500. It did what I wanted out of the box and being based on a MIPS AR9 (ARX100) it seemed likely OpenWRT support might happen. Long story short I managed to overwrite u-boot (the bootloader) while flashing a test image I d built. I ended up buying a new router (same model) to get my internet connection back ASAP and never getting around to fully fixing the broken one. Until yesterday. Below is how I fixed it; both for my own future reference and in case it s of use any any other unfortunate soul. The device has clear points for serial and JTAG and it was easy enough (even with my basic soldering skills) to put a proper header on. The tricky bit is that the flash is connected via SPI, so it s not just a matter of attaching JTAG, doing a scan and reflashing from the JTAG tool. I ended up doing RAM initialisation, then copying a RAM copy of u-boot in and then using that to reflash. There may well have been a better way, but this worked for me. For reference the failure mode I saw was an infinitely repeating: 
ROM VER: 1.1.3
CFG 05
My JTAG device is a Bus Pirate v3b which is much better than the parallel port JTAG device I built the first time I wanted to do something similar. I put the latest firmware (6.1) on it. All of this was done from my laptop, which runs Debian testing (stretch). I used the OpenOCD 0.9.0-1+b1 package from there. Daniel Schwierzeck has some OpenOCD scripts which include a target definition for the ARX100. I added a board definition for the DGN3500 (I ve also send Daniel a patch to add this to his repo). I tied all of this together with an openocd.cfg that contained: 
source [find interface/buspirate.cfg]
buspirate_port /dev/ttyUSB1
buspirate_vreg 0
buspirate_mode normal
buspirate_pullup 0
reset_config trst_only
source [find openocd-scripts/target/arx100.cfg]
source [find openocd-scripts/board/dgn3500.cfg]
gdb_flash_program enable
gdb_memory_map enable
gdb_breakpoint_override hard
I was then able to power on the router and type dgn3500_ramboot into the OpenOCD session. This fetched my RAM copy of u-boot from dgn3500_ram/u-boot.bin, copied it into the router s memory and started it running. From there I had a u-boot environment with access to the flash commands and was able to restore the original Netgear image (and once I was sure that was working ok I subsequently upgraded to the Barrier Breaker OpenWRT image).

29 June 2015

Jonathan McDowell: What Jonathan Did Next

While I mentioned last September that I had failed to be selected for an H-1B and had been having discussions at DebConf about alternative employment, I never got around to elaborating on what I d ended up doing. Short answer: I ended up becoming a law student, studying for a Masters in Legal Science at Queen s University Belfast. I ve just completed my first year of the 2 year course and have managed to do well enough in the 6 modules so far to convince myself it wasn t a crazy choice. Longer answer: After Vello went under in June I decided to take a couple of months before fully investigating what to do next, largely because I figured I d either find something that wanted me to start ASAP or fail to find anything and stress about it. During this period a friend happened to mention to me that the applications for the Queen s law course were still open. He happened to know that it was something I d considered before a few times. Various discussions (some of them over gin, I ll admit) ensued and I eventually decided to submit an application. This was towards the end of August, and I figured I d also talk to people at DebConf to see if there was anything out there tech-wise that I could get excited about. It turned out that I was feeling a bit jaded about the whole tech scene. Another friend is of the strong opinion that you should take a break at least every 10 years. Heeding her advice I decided to go ahead with the law course. I haven t regretted it at all. My initial interest was largely driven by a belief that there are too few people who understand both tech and law. I started with interests around intellectual property and contract law as well as issues that arise from trying to legislate for the global nature of most tech these days. However the course is a complete UK qualifying degree (I can go on to do the professional qualification in NI or England & Wales) and the first year has been about public law. Which has been much more interesting than I was expecting (even, would you believe it, EU law). Especially given the potential changing constitutional landscape of the UK after the recent general election, with regard to talk of repeal of the Human Rights Act and a referendum on exit from the EU. Next year will concentrate more on private law, and I m hoping to be able to tie that in better to what initially drove me to pursue this path. I m still not exactly sure which direction I ll go once I complete the course, but whatever happens I want to keep a linkage between my skill sets. That could be either leaning towards the legal side but with the appreciation of tech, returning to tech but with the appreciation of the legal side of things or perhaps specialising further down an academic path that links both. I guess I ll see what the next year brings. :)

29 May 2015

Norbert Preining: USB stick update: Debian is back, plus GRML

In the previous post on the multi-boot usb stick, Debian had to be dropped, due to missing support of iso-loading in the Debian installer iso images. Thanks to helpful comments from Jonathan McDowell and private emails, we found a way around this. In addition to having again an installable Debian image, I also added GRML support. multi-usb-disk There are a few tricks necessary to get this going, though. Let us start with the easy part, grml: Grml Quoting from the home page of Grml
Grml provides an excellent selection of software packages for installation, deployment and system rescue. You ll get sysadmin s favourite tools. Choose between a x86 and an amd64 version depending on your needs or just grab the multiboot ISO grml96, providing 64bit and 32bit ISOs in one single place.
I went for the 64bit version Version 2014.11 (named Gschistigschasti , a typical Austrian expression for fuss ), as most computers nowadays are anyway 64bit capable, downloaded the image file grml64-full_2014.11.iso, and saved it into my USB stick s boot/iso/ directory, where there are already the other iso images. Then, with the help of the Grml web page which provides guidance how to boot from ISO, I added the following entry to my grub.cfg: 
submenu "GRML 2014.11 ---> "  
  menuentry "Grml Rescue System 64bit"  
        iso_path="/boot/iso/grml64-full_2014.11.iso"
        export iso_path
        loopback loop (hd0,1)$iso_path
        set root=(loop)
        kernelopts=" ssh=SOME_PASSWORD_HERE toram  "
        export kernelopts
        configfile /boot/grub/loopback.cfg
Note that if you add the ssh=SOME_PASSWORD_HERE part, an ssh server is started and the root login password will be set to SOME_PASSWORD_HERE, so choose it wisely (and different from your normal passwords!). If you don t want a running ssh server, simply remove the ssh parameter. That s it, booting into Grml takes quite some time, but worked out nicely. Debian Jessie installation As mentioned in the previous post, booting Debian/Jessie installation images via any method didn t work, since the iso images is never found. It turned out that the current installer iso images do not contain the iso-scan package, which is responsible for searching and loading of iso images. But with a small trick one can overcome this: One needs to replace the initrd that is on the ISO image with one that contains the iso-scan package. And we do not need to create these initrd by ourselves, but simply use the ones from hd-media type installer. I downloaded the following four gzipped initrds from one of the Debian mirrors: i386/initrd text mode, i386/initrd gui mode, amd64/initrd text mode, amd64/initrd gui mode, and put them into the USB stick s boot/debian/install.386, boot/debian/install.386/gtk, boot/debian/install.amd, boot/debian/install.amd/gtk, respectively. Finally, I added entries similar to this one (rest see the grub.cfg file): 
submenu "Debian 8.0 Jessie NetInstall ---> "  
    set isofile="/boot/iso/firmware-8.0.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso"
    menuentry '64 bit Install'  
        set background_color=black
        loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
        linux    (loop)/install.amd/vmlinuz iso-scan/ask_second_pass=true iso-scan/filename=$isofile vga=788 -- quiet 
        initrd   /boot/debian/install.amd/initrd.gz
     
    ...
Again an important point, don t forget the two kernel command line options: iso-scan/ask_second_pass=true iso-scan/filename=$isofile, otherwise you probably will have to make the installer scan all disks and drives completely, which might take ages. With that in place, the stick now is back to full working, plus an added Grml. Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

21 May 2015

Jonathan McDowell: I should really learn systemd

As I slowly upgrade all my machines to Debian 8.0 (jessie) they re all ending up with systemd. That s fine; my laptop has been running it since it went into testing whenever it was. Mostly I haven t had to care, but I m dimly aware that it has a lot of bits I should learn about to make best use of it. Today I discovered systemctl is-system-running. Which I m not sure why I d use it, but when I ran it it responded with degraded. That s not right, thought I. How do I figure out what s wrong? systemctl --state=failed turned out to be the answer. 
# systemctl --state=failed
  UNIT                         LOAD   ACTIVE SUB    DESCRIPTION
  systemd-modules-load.service loaded failed failed Load Kernel Modules
LOAD   = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded.
ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB.
SUB    = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type.
1 loaded units listed. Pass --all to see loaded but inactive units, too.
To show all installed unit files use 'systemctl list-unit-files'.
Ok, so it s failed to load some kernel modules. What s it trying to load? systemctl status -l systemd-modules-load.service led me to /lib/systemd/systemd-modules-load which complained about various printer modules not being able to be loaded. Turned out this was because CUPS had dropped them into /etc/modules-load.d/cups-filters.conf on upgrade, and as I don t have a parallel printer I hadn t compiled up those modules. One of my other machines had also had an issue with starting up filesystem quotas (I think because there d been some filesystems that hadn t mounted properly on boot - my fault rather than systemd). Fixed that up and then systemctl is-system-running started returning a nice clean running. Now this is probably something that was silently failing back under sysvinit, but of course nothing was tracking that other than some output on boot up. So I feel that I ve learnt something minor about systemd that actually helped me cleanup my system, and sets me in better stead for when something important fails.

18 May 2015

Jonathan McDowell: Stepping down from SPI

I was first elected to the Software in the Public Interest board back in 2009. I was re-elected in 2012. This July I am up for re-election again. For a variety of reasons I ve decided not to stand; mostly a combination of the fact that I think 2 terms (6 years) is enough in a single stretch and an inability to devote as much time to the organization as I d like. I mentioned this at the May board meeting. I m planning to stay involved where I can. My main reason for posting this here is to cause people to think about whether they might want to stand for the board. Nominations open on July 1st and run until July 13th. The main thing you need to absolutely commit to is being able to attend the monthly board meeting, which is held on IRC at 20:30 UTC on the second Thursday of the month. They tend to last at most 30 minutes. Of course there s a variety of tasks that happen in the background, such as answering queries from prospective associated projects or discussing ongoing matters on the membership or board lists depending on circumstances. It s my firm belief that SPI do some very important work for the Free software community. Few people realise the wide variety of associated projects. SPI offload the boring admin bits around accepting donations and managing project assets (be those machines, domains, trademarks or whatever), leaving those projects able to concentrate on the actual technical side of things. Most project members don t realise the involvement of SPI, and that s largely a good thing as it indicates the system is working. However it also means that there can sometimes be a lack of people wanting to stand at election time, and an absence of diversity amongst the candidates. I m happy to answer questions of anyone who might consider standing for the board; #spi on irc.oftc.net is a good place to ask them - I am there as Noodles.

31 March 2015

Jonathan McDowell: Shipping my belongings across the globe

I previously wrote about tracking a ship around the world, but never followed up with the practical details involved with shipping my life from the San Francisco Bay Area back to Belfast. So here they are, in the hope they provide a useful data point for anyone considering a similar move. Firstly, move out. I was in a one bedroom apartment in Fremont, CA. At the time I was leaving the US I didn t have anywhere for my belongs to go - the hope was I d be back in the Bay Area, but there was a reasonable chance I was going to end up in Belfast or somewhere in England. So on January 24th 2014 I had my all of my belongings moved out and put into storage, pending some information about where I might be longer term. When I say all of my belongings I mean that; I took 2 suitcases and everything else went into storage. That means all the furniture for probably a 2 bed apartment (I d moved out of somewhere a bit larger) - the US doesn t really seem to go in for the concept of a furnished lease the same way as the UK does. I had deliberately picked a moving company that could handle the move out, the storage and the (potential) shipping. They handed off to a 3rd party for the far end bit, but that was to be expected. Having only one contact to deal with throughout the process really helped. Fast forward 8 months and on September 21st I contacted my storage company to ask about getting some sort of rough shipping quote and timescales to Belfast. The estimate came back as around a 4-6 week shipping time, which was a lot faster than I was expecting. However it turned out this was the slow option. On October 27th (delay largely due to waiting for confirmation of when I d definitely have keys on the new place) I gave the go ahead. Container pickup (I ended up with exclusive use of a 20ft container - not quite full, but not worth part shipment) from the storage location was originally due on November 7th. Various delays at the Port of Oakland meant this didn t happen until November 17th. It then sat in Oakland until December 2nd. At that point the ETA into Southampton was January 8th. Various other delays, including a week off the coast of LA (yay West Coast Port Backups) meant that the ship finally arrived in Southampton on January 13th. It then had to get to Belfast and clear customs. On January 22nd 2015, 2 days shy of a year since I d seen them, my belongings and I were reunited. So, on the face of it, the actual time on the ship was only slightly over 6 weeks, but all of the extra bits meant that the total time from Ship it to I have it was nearly 3 months. Which to be honest is more like what I was expecting. The lesson: don t forget to factor in delays at every stage. The relocation cost in the region of US$8000. It was more than I d expected, but far cheaper than the cost of buying all my furniture again (plus the fact there were various things I couldn t easily replace that were in storage). That cost didn t cover the initial move into storage or the storage fees - it covered taking things out, packing them up for shipment and everything after that. Including delivery to a (UK) 3rd floor apartment at the far end and insurance. It s important to note that I d included this detail before shipment - the quote specifically mentioned it, which was useful when the local end tried to levy an additional charge for the 3rd floor aspect. They were fine once I showed them the quote as including that detail. Getting an entire apartment worth of things I hadn t seen in so long really did feel a bit like a second Christmas. I d forgotten a lot of the things I had, and it was lovely to basically get a home in a container delivered.

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