If you are comming from an old SCM like subversion, you may have difficulties to internalize the new workflow. Peter Cottle created Learn Git Branching which is really nice.

Thanks for the group hug! Francesca started a DPL game and I've been mentioned a few times, by people I like deeply. Thank you! However I don't intend to run, and I hope I won't disappoint those who nominated me by saying so. But I don't think of it in terms of letting people down: I can't let anyone down since I never mentioned I'd like to run in the first place. Rather, I like to think that I've just received a wonderful group hug, and hey, wow, come here and let me hug you back! <3 And let me hug some more:

• Gregor Herrmann, I'm in a constant state of awe for what you have done with the Perl team. If you think that some of what you did could also be done as a DPL, please go for it!
• Bdale Garbee, I didn't think there could be such a thing as a reliable source of common sense until I got to know you. And you've been DPL and quite a good deal of other things and definitely know the drill. And you can't say you're busy with your day job. The last thing I want is for you to get bored after your retirement! :P
• Paul Tagliamonte, you seem to bring an incredible energy in everything you get involved with. Let's admit it: Zack's been a perfect DPL in many aspects, he has been incredibly, inhumanly smooth, but he was a bit boring. Zack has left Debian as a perfectly working train steaming on professionally towards awesomeness. Let's give it colours! Let's give it excitement! Let's give it creativity, and silliness! We need someone to cheer Christian up, and I if you can't do it, I can't think of anyone else who can!

I cannot think of a fourth DPL candidate right now and I don't want to postpone this post indefinitely. Think about it this way: you three are so good I can't think of a fourth one right now There are actually lots of people I admire in Debian. I tried to name a few without thinking, but I wasn't thinking so I lost count as soon as I ran out of fingers. I know however that many enjoy to stay out of the spotlight and keep their fun focused on a few specific things. I am one of those myself. Oh dear, FOSDEM was too short, can I have DebConf soon? In the meantime, let's have some fun with the DPL campaign.

It's that time of year again, my hair has all gone!

A new minor release RQuantLib 0.3.10 is now on CRAN and in Debian. RQuantLib combines (some of) the quantitative analytics of QuantLib with the R statistical computing environment and language. The discount curve building code in QuantLib has shown some overly large numerical instabilities. We have used the same example parameters (taken from the Swap example in QuantLib) for years; it currently fails to solve for a rate at some term further out the curve. So I made the decistion to disable this just in the examples in order to not upset the CRAN testing framework. The examples now use a flat curve instead. I also updated one function to silence some new warnings from R-devel about symbols from another packages's namespace (in this case rgl, and it is just for surface plots, a purely cosmetic function). Thanks to CRANberries, there is also a diff to the previous release 0.3.9. Full changelog details, examples and more details about this package are at my RQuantLib page.

Linux is a great platform for dealing with all kinds of different file systems, partition tables etc. But one of the few annoying situations when working in IT forensics are Microsoft Windows dynamic disks, AKA LDM (Logical Disk Manager). Thanks to libldm s ldmtool this is no longer true. A short demonstration from a real-life IT forensics investigation (actual IDs/data randomized for obvious reasons):

# ldmtool
ldm> scan /dev/sdc*
[
  "1bad5bbc-a4b5-42e1-8823-001014b00003"
]
ldm> show diskgroup 1bad5bbc-a4b5-42e1-8823-001014b00003
 
  "name" : "FOOBAR-Dg0",
  "guid" : "1bad5bbc-a4b5-42e1-8823-001014b00003",
  "volumes" : [
    "Volume1"
  ],
  "disks" : [
    "Disk1",
    "Disk2"
  ]
 
ldm> show volume 1bad5bbc-a4b5-42e1-8823-001014b00003 Volume1
 
  "name" : "Volume1",
  "type" : "striped",
  "size" : 3907039232,
  "chunk-size" : 128,
  "hint" : "D:",
  "partitions" : [
    "Disk1-01",
    "Disk2-01"
  ]
 
ldm> show partition 1bad5bbc-a4b5-42e1-8823-001014b00003 Disk1-01
 
  "name" : "Disk1-01",
  "start" : 1985,
  "size" : 1953519616,
  "disk" : "Disk1"
 
ldm> create all
Unable to create volume Volume1 in disk group 1bad5bbc-a4b5-42e1-8823-001014b00003: Disk Disk2 required by striped volume Volume1 is missing
[
]
ldm> scan /dev/sdd*
[
  "1bad5bbc-a4b5-42e1-8823-001014b00003"
]
ldm> create all
[
  "ldm_vol_FOOBAR-Dg0_Volume1"
]
ldm>

The just created device mapper device then can be handled as usual:

# dmsetup ls   grep ldm
ldm_vol_FOOBAR-Dg0_Volume1        (254:4)
# mount /dev/mapper/ldm_vol_FOOBAR-Dg0_Volume1 /mnt/whatever

ldmtool just hit Debian unstable (and I intend to ship the tool with the upcoming version of Grml-Forensic).

Weblate recently got another new feature - charting of translation project activity. It counts and charts daily contributions in last month and weekly contributions in last year and draws nicely looking charts out of that: Originally I wanted to use some existing charting library and first implementation was actually done using PyCha, but in the end I ended up rendering charts using completely custom code, what allowed me to draw better graphs.

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Server management on daily basis in a growing environment could be a challenge. Most of the tasks is here done with ClusterSSH in help with a homebrew mail notification. Unfortunately this workflow is not scaling well for 200+ systems. I had a look into apt-dater but this seems not to fit our workflow. FAI looks a bit overengineered at the first glance. Maybe Puppet is an option? There seems to be many extensions for it, unfortunately ruby is needed on every single node. Is there a CTO-compatible overview about puppet, any other alternatives? ;) Update: Many thanks for the hints from Andr Lu s Lopes, Stig Sandbeck Mathisen, Phil Miller, Steve Kemp, Andrew Latham, Bob Proulx and Natxo Asenjo

• Chef
  • Packaged in Debian
  • Upstream Debian packages (no recent one)
• CFEngine3
  • No ruby/perl/python dependencies
  • Light, fast
  • (A bit) harder to understand
  • Packaged in Debian
  • Upstream Debian packages
• Salt
  • Very young
  • Packaged in Debian
• Ansible
  • Very flexible
  • Easy to understand
  • Relies on ssh
  • Open ITP
  • PPA
• MCollective
  • Framework for building server orchestration and parallel job execution
  • Could extend for example Puppet or Chef
  • Packaged in Debian
  • Upstream Debian packages (no recent one)
• Foreman
  • Puppet dashboard and node classifier
  • Open ITP
  • Upstream Debian packages

Old but conceptual still valid: www.infrastructures.org, for example Bootstrapping an Infrastructure Other thoughts: push- or pull-infrastructure? Software footprint (on nodes and your central instance)! Hints, rants and comments could be send to 'blog - at - waja - dot - info' or via @blogwajainfo.

So, the price of heating my apartment has gone up significantly since last year and a lot of people have noticed the same trend. As a geek, I want not just any solutions, but geekiest solutions possible to that enter a Smart Home system. The heating in my apartment is separated from all other apartments with a separate heat meter that measures both heating water flow and the temperature difference on the incoming and outgoing pipes, so if I reduce the heating consumption I will immediately see that in lower heating bills. This particular smart home system is very simple and made in Latvia and also relatively cheap, so I decided to give this a try. The start was very simple I filled out a form on their home page and got a call the next day to verify the specifics. They already knew my building and had experience installing there, so they offered me two options: I could have two thermal sensors and a radiator controller on each of the 3 radiators in my apartment or (seeing how my apartment is relatively small and well ventilated thus reducing the efficiency of per-room control) one thermal sensor and one radiator controller installed on a new valve that they would build into the heating pipe just outside my apartment. I chose the second option as that was cheaper, simpler and involved less installation for me. Also they offered a nice discount. A plumber of my building installed the valve at some point during the day, I did not even have to be there or arrange anything special, it was all included in the main bill. Then the next day a friendly guy came by to my office and gave me three very cute boxes. The packaging was very, very Apple-like. The three devices were named mother , spy and puller basically that is a base station, a temperature sensor and a radiator regulator a wireless stepper motor. The installation was straight forward I connected the base station (something very similar to this thin in size and looks) to Ethernet and power, went to the web address specified on the sticker on the base station, completed a registration process there, entered a code from the base of the base station into the website and it just found it. After that I pressed a button on the temperature sensor (a Zippo lighter sized box with a built-in Li-Ion battery rechargeable via microUSB once a year or so) and put that on a shelf. I secured it with some double-sided tape after the cat got to it once and played some hockey while I was away. The temperature sensor immediately showed up in the Web UI and I could assign it to a room. The regulator installation was the most complex bit, but it was trivial as well all I had to do was insert some AA batteries (helpfully included in the box, should last a couple years by their estimates), then go outside to the newly installed inlet valve, put this thing on, screw the thread with my hands and then push and hold a button for 10 seconds. After that the controller came to life, connected with the base station and started spinning the valve, testing its operational range I presume. The range is very good you can see 13% signal in the screenshots that is across the whole of the apartment, trough 3 solid walls and another 5 meters out in the hallway inside another wall. As soon as that was done, the Web UI showed the controller and asked my to assign it to a room. So now I have 1 room defined with 1 temperature sensor and one controller. That is all that is needed. From the charts I have already found out that at current inside/outside temperatures my apartment cools down at around 0.3 degrees C per hour and with current radiator settings it heats up by around 1 degree C per hour. I should turn the radiators up a bit thus increasing the rate at which the system is able to heat things up. Also I should try to re-inspect all possible cold spots to see why the cooldown speed is so high. I expected it to be lower. At least now I have real data to compare things. At this point you can either fire up your web browser or a Android/iOS client on you mobile device to monitor and control the temperature of the apartment. But that was not enough for me I opted for the PRO upgrade which includes the ability to program a weekly cycle of desired temperatures. The programming is limited and thus simple to do there are three temperature modes: day, night and eco. The idea is that you have the night mode every night, then at some time during the day, you have the day mode (to wake up), then you switch to eco mode (when noone is home) and then in the evening you go back to day mode and later to night mode. There are separate sliders for each day of the week and temperature settings for each of the modes for every programmed room. Total investment so far 210 Ls (or around 3 months worth of just heating bills). The experience of other users tells of 30-50% heating bill reduction, so this should pay for itself in 2-3 years. In addition I get a more stable and predictable temperature at home and some more geeky stuff to brag about yay! These guys have their work cut out for them I have no idea how/of they do international orders, I would definately like to see more information in the web site about how my system is working (more temperature history, valve state history, wireless signal and battery history, mobile apps are a bit wonky it feels like the mobile app does not respect the temperature set over the web and tries to reassert itself when opened and it often shows out-of-date temperature data with no indication that it is out-of-date + the mobile apps are missing charts. All in all this is a great start: easy, quite cheap and stylish home heating automation. Good work! P.S. I am pretty sure they use Linux, but it is so packaged, that there is basically no way to confirm or deny that. P.P.S. Also check out this overnight chart, there is definitely some mode switch anticipation going on

After a release cycle longer than between each beta (which is slightly sad, but I can t spend all my time on Debian), here comes the first release candidate of the Debian Installer for Wheezy. The Debian Installer 7.0 RC1 announce on the website has links to relevant bug reports in the Debian BTS, and the errata page lists things you probably want to know about (including gotchas with grub-install we ve been having for a while, now diagnosed, and hopefully fixed for the next release candidate). According to Arwen s sleepy attitude, it s officially time for a nap!

Server management on daily basis in a growing environment could be a challenge. Most of the tasks is here done with ClusterSSH in help with a homebrew mail notification. Unfortunately this workflow is not scaling well for 200+ systems. I had a look into apt-dater but this seems not to fit our workflow. FAI looks a bit overengineered at the first glance. Maybe Puppet is an option? There seems to be many extensions for it. Is there a CTO-compatible overview about puppet, any other alternatives? ;) Hints, rants and comments could be send to 'blog - at - waja - dot - info'.

Following up on using Debian on the WeTab with GNOME Shell I've put together a bit of GTK+3 CSS to make it more touch friendly. It's in the same git repo as the OSK extension. If you put the gtk.css into ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css scrollbars will be a bit larger and the padding between widgets will be increased over the default theme: This will need more work since some of the sliders look a bit a awkward now so any enhancements will be greatly appreciated. The docs for GTK3's CSS are here. This blog is flattr enabled.

I am in some way flattered (en_FR?) that some people think that I should stand as DPL candidate (here, or there, or there). Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your confidence, it's appreciated. Still, I won't stand and I feel like I should explain why. Yes, I now have some experience in the Debian Project after more than 11 years as DD. Yes, I like to represent the project and I think I don't do that so badly when I do it (which is not as often as one might imagine). Yes, I feel like I have some experience in acting as a "leader" though I often have doubts about this, probably just like many people who have management duties in their professional life. Yes, I often define myself as a non-technical person which helps in dealing with problems and projects with different perspectives. Still, this is often not so true and that extends to my professionnal activity. I *am* indeed a technical person but I'm more a "specialist of everything and nothing" in this aspect. That's probably good for a DPL. But, still I won't stand. There are indeed many reasons for this and I'll try to give them here. First of all, Debian has always been a hobby for me. A hobby that sometimes ate several hours a day and still eats part of my time. But still a hobby. It can't become the major part of my life. And I think that someone spending one year as DPL "has" to do it as the major part of her his life. I can't free time from my work schedule. My work, though being in IT, has few to relate with Free Software, and I can't divert part of it with Debian duties...or merge it with Debian duties. For about 3 years, I compensate the loss of two people in my team by working hard and VERY fast, in a constant stress....connecting with Onera nearly all time long and maintaining the level of services our users deserve as high as I can. And I like it. I can't free time from my family schedule. Of course, my children don't request much attention right now, they all live their own lives. Jean-Baptiste is now having a full-time paid job and does great things in a geeky style I recognize very well. Sophie will soon be a great graduated social worker and will start working in next Summer. And Magali is studying physical therapy so that she can later help me recovering after too hard running races..:-). However, last and definitely not least, I have a wonderful wife who I want to share as much as I can with. And I can't share Debian with her. Indeed, Elizabeth is the very first reason for my reasoning.....because she is the center of my life for more than 30 years now. You also know that I happen to run a little bit..:-)...and that requires time too. Something I won't sacrifice as it brought more equilibrium in my life (and a great health, at an age where one has to care about one's health, now). All this doesn't leave much room. And I indeed noticed that my involvement in Debian has reduced noticeably in the past months. That is indeed the most important point: I'm "slowing down" in Debian...or, at least, I'm trying to find an equilibrium where it represents only a part of my hobbies....and not an ever-growing one. Last...maybe not least, I'm somehow pessimistic about the future of the project. You may have read that subtly in my writings, here or there. I feel like we are slowing down in innovation and are slowly feeling short of resources. Renewal in project members doesn't come as fast as it used to. You are free to disagree with me and I hope you'll be right to. But, still, that won't remove my pessimism. And, well, it's hard to lead a project when you're partly pessimistic about it, isn't it? In short, all in all, I'm currently "fighting" in some way to keep motivation for something I deeply love being involved in. And that's really important. And that's why I can't stand: it wouldn't be a good service to the project. It would be good for my ego, certainly (yes, I have one....and sometimes not a small one)....but it wouldn't be a good service to the project, and I also feel it could very well lead me to burnout. And, if you "nominated" me...or think I would candidate for DPL, you don't want me to burnout and vanish from Debian, right? So, this is why I won't stand. And this is why you'll continue to have great Cheese and Wine parties at Debconfs....or boring l10n reports....or, here or there, some broken uploads in the archive..:-)....but not another French DPL, at least not /me. PS: by the way, I have my own list of preferred candidates. Not sure I want it to be public, though...:-)...you'll see soon if I change my mind!

Soile, my beloved, is running a second Kickstarter campaign to fund her first feature-length movie, Maria Eveliina. This time, she and her producer are seeking funding to pay an editor to do the final, professional cut of the movie. They've found a professional editor who'd like to work on the project, but need some payment. The Kickstarter page explains more. It also has a "Back this project" button if you feel so inclined.

Playing the DPL Game: here are my nominations for the Fantastic Four:

• Cyril Brulebois
• Ansgar Burchardt
• Scott Kitterman
• Pino Toscano

P.S. Sorry Joss, I m not your man

digest version 0.6.3 is now on CRAN, and I'll upload the Debian package in a minute. This is a minor bug release regarding just the recently-added sha512 support. Turns out the wrong initial buffer size was used on the R side. Hannes fixed that within hours after we got the bug report; but I was a little swamped with multiple deadlines and failed to upload this right away. CRANberries provides the usual summary of changes to version 0.6.2. Our package is available via the R-Forge page leading to svn and tarball access, my digest page, the local directory here as well as via Debian and its mirrors.