Search Results: "ag"

28 January 2025

Russ Allbery: Review: Moose Madness

Review: Moose Madness, by Mar Delaney
Publisher: Kalikoi
Copyright: May 2021
ASIN: B094HGT1ZB
Format: Kindle
Pages: 68
Moose Madness is a sapphic shifter romance novella (on the short side for a novella) by the same author as Wolf Country. It was originally published in the anthology Her Wild Soulmate, which appears to be very out of print. Maggie (she hates the nickname Moose) grew up in Moose Point, a tiny fictional highway town in (I think) Alaska. (There is, unsurprisingly, an actual Moose Point in Alaska, but it's a geographic feature and not a small town.) She stayed after graduation and is now a waitress in the Moose Point Pub. She's also a shifter; specifically, she is a moose shifter like her mother, the town mayor. (Her father is a fox shifter.) As the story opens, the annual Moose Madness festival is about to turn the entire town into a blizzard of moose kitsch. Fiona Barton was Maggie's nemesis in high school. She was the cool, popular girl, a red-headed wolf shifter whose friend group teased and bullied awkward and uncoordinated Maggie mercilessly. She was also Maggie's impossible crush, although the very idea seemed laughable. Fi left town after graduation, and Maggie hadn't thought about her for years. Then she walks into Moose Point Pub dressed in biker leathers, with piercings and one side of her head shaved, back in town for a wedding in her pack. Much to the shock of both Maggie and Fi, they realize that they're soulmates as soon as their eyes meet. Now what? If you thought I wasn't going to read the moose and wolf shifter romance once I knew it existed, you do not know me very well. I have been saving it for when I needed something light and fun. It seemed like the right palette cleanser after a very disappointing book. Moose Madness takes place in the same universe as Wolf Country, which means there are secret shifters all over Alaska (and presumably elsewhere) and they have the strong magical version of love at first sight. If one is a shifter, one knows immediately as soon as one locks eyes with one's soulmate and this feeling is never wrong. This is not my favorite romance trope, but if I get moose shifter romance out of it, I'll endure. As you can tell from the setup, this is enemies-to-lovers, but the whole soulmate thing shortcuts the enemies to lovers transition rather abruptly. There's a bit of apologizing and air-clearing at the start, but most of the novella covers the period right after enemies have become lovers and are getting to know each other properly. If you like that part of the arc, you will probably enjoy this, but be warned that it's slight and somewhat obvious. There's a bit of tension from protective parents and annoying pack mates, but it's sorted out quickly and easily. If you want the characters to work for the relationship, this is not the novella for you. It's essentially all vibes. I liked the vibes, though! Maggie is easy to like, and Fi does a solid job apologizing. I wish there was quite a bit more moose than we get, but Delaney captures the combination of apparent awkwardness and raw power of a moose and has a good eye for how beautiful large herbivores can be. This is not the sort of book that gives a moment's thought to wolves being predators and moose being, in at least some sense, prey animals, so if you are expecting that to be a plot point, you will be disappointed. As with Wolf Country, Delaney elides most of the messier and more ethically questionable aspects of sometimes being an animal. This is a sweet, short novella about two well-meaning and fundamentally nice people who are figuring out that middle school and high school are shitty and sometimes horrible but don't need to define the rest of one's life. It's very forgettable, but it made me smile, and it was indeed a good palette cleanser. If you are, like me, the sort of person who immediately thought "oh, I have to read that" as soon as you saw the moose shifter romance, keep your expectations low, but I don't think this will disappoint. If you are not that sort of person, you can safely miss this one. Rating: 6 out of 10

27 January 2025

Sergio Talens-Oliag: Running a Debian Sid on Ubuntu

Although I am a Debian Developer (not very active, BTW) I am using Ubuntu LTS (right now version 24.04.1) on my main machine; it is my work laptop and I was told to keep using Ubuntu on it when it was assigned to me, although I don t believe it is really necessary or justified (I don t need support, I don t provide support to others and I usually test my shell scripts on multiple systems if needed anyway). Initially I kept using Debian Sid on my personal laptop, but I gave it to my oldest son as the one he was using (an old Dell XPS 13) was stolen from him a year ago. I am still using Debian stable on my servers (one at home that also runs LXC containers and another one on an OVH VPS), but I don t have a Debian Sid machine anymore and while I could reinstall my work machine, I ve decided I m going to try to use a system container to run Debian Sid on it. As I want to use a container instead of a VM I ve narrowed my options to lxc or systemd-nspawn (I have docker and podman installed, but I don t believe they are good options for running system containers). As I will want to take snapshots of the container filesystem I ve decided to try incus instead of systemd-nspawn (I already have experience with it and while it works well it has less features than incus).

Installing incusAs this is a personal system where I want to try things, instead of using the packages included with Ubuntu I ve decided to install the ones from the zabbly incus stable repository. To do it I ve executed the following as root: 
# Get the zabbly repository GPG key
curl -fsSL https://pkgs.zabbly.com/key.asc -o /etc/apt/keyrings/zabbly.asc
# Create the zabbly-incus-stable.sources file
sh -c 'cat <<EOF > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zabbly-incus-stable.sources
Enabled: yes
Types: deb
URIs: https://pkgs.zabbly.com/incus/stable
Suites: $(. /etc/os-release && echo $ VERSION_CODENAME )
Components: main
Architectures: $(dpkg --print-architecture)
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/zabbly.asc
EOF'
Initially I only plan to use the command line tools, so I ve installed the incus and the incus-extra packages, but once things work I ll probably install the incus-ui-canonical package too, at least for testing it: 
apt update
apt install incus incus-extra

Adding my personal user to the incus-admin groupTo be able to run incus commands as my personal user I ve added it to the incus-admin group: 
sudo adduser "$(id -un)" incus-admin
And I ve logged out and in again of my desktop session to make the changes effective.

Initializing the incus environmentTo configure the incus environment I ve executed the incus admin init command and accepted the defaults for all the questions, as they are good enough for my current use case.

Creating a Debian containerTo create a Debian container I ve used the default debian/trixie image: 
incus launch images:debian/trixie debian
This command downloads the image and creates a container named debian using the default profile. The exec command can be used to run a root login shell inside the container: 
incus exec debian -- su -l
Instead of exec we can use the shell alias: 
incus shell debian
which does the same as the previous command. Inside that shell we can try to update the machine to sid changing the /etc/apt/sources.list file and using apt: 
root@debian:~# echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free" \
  >/etc/apt/sources.list
root@debian:~# apt update
root@debian:~# apt dist-upgrade
As my machine has docker installed the apt update command fails because the network does not work, to fix it I ve executed the commands of the following section and re-run the apt update and apt dist-upgrade commands.

Making the incusbr0 bridge work with DockerTo avoid problems with docker networking we have to add rules for the incusbr0 bridge to the DOCKER-USER chain as follows: 
sudo iptables -I DOCKER-USER -i incusbr0 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -I DOCKER-USER -o incusbr0 -m conntrack \
  --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
That makes things work now, but to make things persistent across reboots we need to add them each time the machine boots. As suggested by the incus documentation I ve installed the iptables-persistent package (my command also purges the ufw package, as I was not using it) and saved the current rules when installing: 
sudo apt install iptables-persistent --purge

Integrating the DNS resolution of the container with the hostTo make DNS resolution for the ictus containers work from the host I ve followed the incus documentation. To set up things manually I ve run the following: 
br="incusbr0";
br_ipv4="$(incus network get "$br" ipv4.address)";
br_domain="$(incus network get "$br" dns.domain)";
dns_address="$ br_ipv4%/* ";
dns_domain="$ br_domain:=incus ";
resolvectl dns "$br" "$ dns_address ";
resolvectl domain "$br" "~$ dns_domain ";
resolvectl dnssec "$br" off;
resolvectl dnsovertls "$br" off;
And to make the changes persistent across reboots I ve created the following service file: 
sh -c "cat <<EOF   sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/incus-dns-$ br .service
[Unit]
Description=Incus per-link DNS configuration for $ br 
BindsTo=sys-subsystem-net-devices-$ br .device
After=sys-subsystem-net-devices-$ br .device
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/resolvectl dns $ br  $ dns_address 
ExecStart=/usr/bin/resolvectl domain $ br  ~$ dns_domain 
ExecStart=/usr/bin/resolvectl dnssec $ br  off
ExecStart=/usr/bin/resolvectl dnsovertls $ br  off
ExecStopPost=/usr/bin/resolvectl revert $ br 
RemainAfterExit=yes
[Install]
WantedBy=sys-subsystem-net-devices-$ br .device
EOF"
And enabled it: 
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now incus-dns-$ br .service
If all goes well the DNS resolution works from the host: 
$ host debian.incus
debian.incus has address 10.149.225.121
debian.incus has IPv6 address fd42:1178:afd8:cc2c:216:3eff:fe2b:5cea

Using my host user and home dir inside the containerTo use my host user and home directory inside the container I need to add the user and group to the container. First I ve added my user group with the same GID used on the host: 
incus exec debian -- addgroup --gid "$(id --group)" --allow-bad-names \
  "$(id --group --name)"
Once I have the group I ve added the user with the same UID and GID as on the host, without defining a password for it: 
incus exec debian -- adduser --uid "$(id --user)" --gid "$(id --group)" \
  --comment "$(getent passwd "$(id --user -name)"   cut -d ':' -f 5)" \
  --no-create-home --disabled-password --allow-bad-names \
  "$(id --user --name)"
Once the user is created we can mount the home directory on the container (we add the shift option to make the container use the same UID and GID as we do on the host): 
incus config device add debian home disk source=$HOME path=$HOME shift=true
We have the shell alias to log with the root account, now we can add another one to log into the container using the newly created user: 
incus alias add ush "exec @ARGS@ -- su -l $(id --user --name)"
To log into the container as our user now we just need to run: 
incus ush debian
To be able to use sudo inside the container we could add our user to the sudo group: 
incus exec debian -- adduser "$(id --user --name)" "sudo"
But that requires a password and we don t have one, so instead we are going to add a file to the /etc/sudoers.d directory to allow our user to run sudo without a password: 
incus exec debian -- \
  sh -c "echo '$(id --user --name) ALL = NOPASSWD: ALL' /etc/sudoers.d/user"

Accessing the container using sshTo use the container as a real machine and log into it as I do on remote machines I ve installed the openssh-server and authorized my laptop public key to log into my laptop (as we are mounting the home directory from the host that allows us to log in without password from the local machine). Also, to be able to run X11 applications from the container I ve adusted the $HOME/.ssh/config file to always forward X11 (option ForwardX11 yes for Host debian.incus) and installed the xauth package. After that I can log into the container running the command ssh debian.incus and start using it after installing other interesting tools like neovim, rsync, tmux, etc.

Taking snapshots of the containerAs this is a system container we can take snapshots of it using the incus snapshot command; that can be specially useful to take snapshots before doing a dist-upgrade so we can rollback if something goes wrong. To work with container snapshots we run use the incus snapshot command, i.e. to create a snapshot we use de create subcommand: 
incus snapshot create debian
The snapshot sub commands include options to list the available snapshots, restore a snapshot, delete a snapshot, etc.

ConclusionSince last week I have a terminal running a tmux session on the Debian Sid container with multiple zsh windows open (I ve changed the prompt to be able to notice easily where I am) and it is working as expected. My plan now is to add some packages and use the container for personal projects so I can work on a Debian Sid system without having to reinstall my work machine. I ll probably write more about it in the future, but for now, I m happy with the results.

Russ Allbery: Review: The House That Fought

Review: The House That Fought, by Jenny Schwartz
Series: Uncertain Sanctuary #3
Publisher: Jenny Schwartz
Copyright: December 2020
Printing: September 2024
ASIN: B0DBX6GP8Z
Format: Kindle
Pages: 199
The House That Fought is the third and final book of the self-published space fantasy trilogy starting with The House That Walked Between Worlds. I read it as part of the Uncertain Sanctuary omnibus, which is reflected in the sidebar metadata. At the end of the last book, one of Kira's random and vibe-based trust decisions finally went awry. She has been betrayed! She's essentially omnipotent, the betrayal does not hurt her in any way, and, if anything, it helps the plot resolution, but she has to spend some time feeling bad about it first. Eventually, though, the band of House residents return to the problem of Earth's missing magic. By Earth here, I mean our world, which technically isn't called Earth in the confusing world-building of this series. Earth within this universe is an archetypal world that is the origin world for humans, the two types of dinosaurs, and Neanderthals. There are numerous worlds that have split off from it, including Human, the one world where humans are dominant, which is what we think of as Earth and what Kira calls Earth half the time. And by worlds, I mean entire universes (I think?), because traveling between "worlds" is dimensional travel, not space travel. But there is also space travel? The world building started out confusing and has degenerated over the course of the series. Given that the plot, such as it is, revolves around a world-building problem, this is not a good sign. Worse, though, is that the quality of the writing has become unedited, repetitive drivel. I liked the first book and enjoyed a few moments of the second book, but this conclusion is just bad. This is the sort of book that the maxim "show, don't tell" was intended to head off. The dull, thudding description of the justification for every character emotion leaves no room for subtlety or reader curiosity.
Evander was elf and I was human. We weren't the same. I had magic. He had the magic I'd unconsciously locked into his augmentations. We were different and in love. Speaking of our differences could be a trigger. I peeked at him, worried. My customary confidence had taken a hit. "We're different," he answered my unspoken question. "And we work anyway. We'll work to make us work."
There is page after page after page of this sort of thing: facile emotional processing full of cliches and therapy-speak, built on the most superficial of relationships. There's apparently a romance now, which happened with very little build-up, no real discussion or communication between the characters, and only the most trite and obvious relationship work. There is a plot underneath all this, but it's hard to make it suspenseful given that Kira is essentially omnipotent. Schwartz tries to turn the story into a puzzle that requires Kira figure out what's going on before she can act, but this is undermined by the confusing world-building. The loose ends the plot has accumulated over the previous two books are mostly dropped, sometimes in a startlingly casual way. I thought Kira would care who killed her parents, for example; apparently, I was wrong. The previous books caught my attention with a more subtle treatment of politics than I expect from this sort of light space fantasy. The characters had, I thought, a healthy suspicion of powerful people and a willingness to look for manipulation or ulterior motives. Unfortunately, we discover here that this is not due to an appreciation of the complexity of power and motive in governments. Instead, it's a reflexive bias against authority and structured society that sounds like an Internet libertarian complaining about taxes. Powerful people should be distrusted because all governments are corrupt and bad and steal your money in order to waste it. Oh, except for the cops and the military; they're generally good people you should trust. In retrospect, I should have expected this turn given the degree to which Schwartz stressed the independence of sorcerers. I thought that was going somewhere more interesting than sorcerers as self-appointed vigilantes who are above the law and can and should do anything they damn well please. Sadly, it was not. Adding to the lynch mob feeling, the ending of this book is a deeply distasteful bit of magical medieval punishment that I thought was vile, and which is, of course, justified by bad things happening to children. No societal problems were solved, but Kira got her petty revenge and got to be gleeful and smug about it. This is apparently what passes for a happy ending. I don't even know what to say about the bizarre insertion of Christianity, which makes little sense given the rest of the world-building. It's primarily a way for Kira to avoid understanding or thinking about an important part of the plot. As sadly seems to often be the case in books like this, Kira's faith doesn't appear to prompt any moral analysis or thoughtful ethical concern about her unlimited power, just certainty that she's right and everyone else is wrong. This was dire. It is one of those self-published books that I feel a little bad about writing this negative of a review about, because I think most of the problem was that the author's skill was not up to the story that she wanted to tell. This happens a lot in self-published fiction, particularly since Kindle Unlimited has started rewarding quantity over quality. But given how badly the writing quality degraded over the course of the series, and how offensive the ending was, I do want to warn other people off of the series. There is so much better fiction out there. Avoid this one, and probably the rest of the series unless you're willing to stop after the first book. Rating: 2 out of 10

26 January 2025

Russ Allbery: Review: Dark Matters

Review: Dark Matters, by Michelle Diener
Series: Class 5 #4
Publisher: Eclipse
Copyright: October 2019
ISBN: 0-6454658-6-0
Format: Kindle
Pages: 307
Dark Matters is the fourth book in the science fiction semi-romance Class 5 series. There are spoilers for all of the previous books, and although enough is explained that you could make sense of the story starting here, I wouldn't recommend it. As with the other books in the series, it follows new protagonists, but the previous protagonists make an appearance. You will be unsurprised to hear that the Tecran kidnapped yet another Earth woman. The repetitiveness of the setup would be more annoying if the book took itself too seriously, but it doesn't, and so I mostly find it entertaining. I thought Diener was going to dodge the obvious series structure, but now I am wondering if we're going to end up with one woman per Class 5 ship after all. Lucy is not on a ship, however, Tecran or otherwise. She is a captive in a military research facility on the Tecran home world. The Tecran are in very deep trouble given the events of the previous book and have decided that Lucy's existence is a liability. Only the intervention of some sympathetic Tecran scientists she partly befriended during her captivity lets her escape the facility before it's destroyed. Now she's alone, on an alien world, being hunted by the military. It's not entirely the fault of this book that it didn't tell the story that I wanted to read. The setup for Dark Matters implies this book will see the arrival of consequences for the Tecran's blatant violations of the Sentient Beings Agreement. I was looking forward to a more political novel about how such consequences could be administered. This is the sort of problem that we struggle with in our politics: Collective punishment isn't acceptable, but there have to be consequences sufficient to ensure that a state doesn't repeat the outlawed behavior, and yet attempting to deliver those consequences feels like occupation and can set off worse social ruptures and even atrocities. I wasn't expecting that deep of political analysis of what is, after all, a lighthearted SF adventure series, but Diener has been willing to touch on hard problems. The ethics of violence has been an ongoing theme of the series. Alas for me, this is not what we get. The arriving cavalry, in the form of a Class 5 and the inevitable Grih hunk to serve as the love interest du jour, quickly become more interested in helping Lucy elude pursuers (or escape captors) than in the delicate political situation. The conflict between the local population is a significant story element, but only as backdrop. Instead, this reads like a thriller or an action movie, complete with alien predators and a cinematic set piece finale. The political conflict between the Tecran and the United Council does reach a conclusion of sorts, but it's not that satisfying. Perhaps some of the political fallout will happen in future books, but here Diener simplifies the morality of the story in the climax and dodges out of the tricky ethical and social challenge of how to punish a sovereign nation. One of the things I like about this series is that it takes moral indignation seriously, but now that Diener has raised the (correct) complication that people have strong motivations to find excuses for the actions of their own side, I hope she can find a believable political resolution that isn't simple brute force. This entry in the series wasn't bad, but it didn't grab me. Lucy was fine as a protagonist; her ability to manipulate the Tecran into making mistakes fits the longer time she's had to study them and keeps her distinct from the other protagonists. But the small bit of politics we do see is unsatisfying and conveniently simplistic, and this book mostly degenerates into generic action sequences. Bane, the Class 5 ship featured in this story, is great when he's active, and I continue to be entertained by the obsession the Class 5 ships have with Earth women, but he's sidelined for too much of the story. I felt like Diener focused on the least interesting part of the story setup. If you've read this far, there's nothing wrong with this entry. You'll probably want to keep reading. But it felt like a missed opportunity. Followed in publication order by Dark Ambitions, a novella that returns to Rose to tell a side story. The next novel is Dark Class, in which we'll presumably see the last kidnapped Earth woman. Rating: 6 out of 10

Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppBDT 0.2.7 on CRAN: Maintenance

Another minor maintenance release for the RcppBDT package is now on CRAN. The RcppBDT package is an early adopter of Rcpp and was one of the first packages utilizing Boost and its Date_Time library. The now more widely-used package anytime is a direct descentant of RcppBDT. This release follows the recent updates of other package updating their C++ compilation standard along with other standard package updates. No feature or interface changes. The NEWS entry follows:

Changes in version 0.2.7 (2025-01-25)
  • The package no longer sets a C++ compilation standard
  • Package infrastructure, documentation and continuous integration support have been updated
  • Several manual pages now have package anchors for the code link
  • A demo/ file has been move to inst/examples/

Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for this release. For questions, suggestions, or issues please use the issue tracker at the GitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub.

Otto Kek l inen: 10 habits to help becoming a Debian Maintainer

Featured image of post 10 habits to help becoming a Debian MaintainerBecoming a Debian maintainer is a journey that combines technical expertise, community collaboration, and continuous learning. In this post, I ll share 10 key habits that will both help you navigate the complexities of Debian packaging without getting lost, and also enable you to contribute more effectively to one of the world s largest open source projects.

1. Read and re-read the Debian Policy, the Developer s Reference and the git-buildpackage manual Anyone learning Debian packaging and aspiring to become a Debian maintainer is likely to wade through a lot of documentation, only to realize that much of it is outdated or sometimes outright incorrect. Therefore, it is important to learn right from the start which sources are the most reliable and truly worth reading and re-reading. I recommend these documents, in order of importance:
  • The Debian Policy Manual: Describes the structure of the operating system, the package archive, and requirements for packages to be included in the Debian archive.
  • The Developer s Reference: A collection of best practices and process descriptions Debian packagers are expected to follow while interacting with one another.
  • The git-buildpackage man pages: While the Policy focuses on the end result and is intentionally void of practical instructions on creating or maintaining Debian packages, the Developer s Reference goes into greater detail. However, it too lacks step-by-step instructions. For the exact commands, consult the man pages of git-buildpackage and its subcommands (e.g., gbp clone, gbp import-orig, gbp pq, gbp dch, gbp push). See also my post on Debian source package git branch and tags for an easy to understand diagrams.

2. Make reading man pages a habit In addition to the above, try to make a habit of checking out the man page of every new tool you use to ensure you are using it as intended. The best place to read accurate and up-to-date documentation is manpages.debian.org. The manual pages are maintained alongside the tools by their developers, ensuring greater accuracy than any third-party documentation. If you are using a tool in the way the tool author documented, you can be confident you are doing the right thing, even if it wasn t explicitly mentioned in some third-party guide about Debian packaging best practices.

3. Read and write emails While members of the Debian community have many channels of communication, the mailing lists are by far the most prominent. Asking questions on the appropriate list is a good way to get current advice from other people doing Debian packaging. Staying subscribed to lists of interest is also a good way to read about new developments as they happen. Note that every post is public and archived permanently, so the discussions on the mailing lists also form a body of documentation that can later be searched and referred to. Regularly writing short and well-structured emails on the mailing lists is great practice for improving technical communication skills a useful ability in general. For Debian specifically, being active on mailing lists helps build a reputation that can later attract collaborators and supporters for more complex initiatives.

4. Create and use an OpenPGP key Related to reputation and identity, OpenPGP keys play a central role in the Debian community. OpenPGP is used to various degrees to sign git commits and tags, sign and encrypt email, and most importantly to sign Debian packages so their origin can be verified. The process of becoming a Debian Maintainer and eventually a Debian Developer culminates in getting your OpenPGP key included in the Debian keyring, which is used to control who can upload packages into the Debian archive. The earlier you create a key and start using it to gain reputation for that specific key that is used to sign your work, the better. Note that due to a recent schism in the OpenPGP standards working group, it is safest to create an OpenPGP key using GnuPG version 2.2.x (not 2.4.x), or using Sequoia-PGP.

5. Integrate Salsa CI in all work One reason Debian remains popular, even 30 years after its inception, is due to its culture of maintaining high standards. For a newcomer, learning all the quality assurance tools such as Lintian, Piuparts, Adequate, various build variations, and reproducible builds may be overwhelming. However, these tasks are easier to manage thanks to Salsa CI, the continuous integration pipeline in Debian that runs tests on every commit at salsa.debian.org. The earlier you activate Salsa CI in the package repository you are working on, the faster you will achieve high quality in your package with fewer missteps. You can also further customize a package specific salsa-ci.yml to have more testing coverage. Example Salsa CI pipeline with customizations

6. Fork on Salsa and use draft Merge Requests to solicit feedback All modern Debian packages are hosted on salsa.debian.org. If you want to make a change to any package, it is easy to fork, make an initial attempt at the change, and publish it as a draft Merge Request (MR) on Salsa to solicit feedback. People might have surprising reasons to object to the change you propose, or they might need time to get used to the idea before agreeing to it. Also, some people might object to a vague idea out of suspicion but agree once they see the exact implementation. There may also be a surprising number of people supporting your idea, and if there is an MR, they have a place to show their support at. Don t expect every Merge Request to be accepted. However, proposing an idea as running code in an MR is far more effective than raising the idea on a mailing list or in a bug report. Get into the habit of publishing plenty of merge requests to solicit feedback and drive discussions toward consensus.

7. Use git rebase frequently Linear git history is much easier to read. The ease of reading git log and git blame output is vital in Debian, where packages often have updates from multiple people spanning many years even decades. Debian packagers likely spend more time than the average software developer reading git history. Make sure you master git commands such as gitk --all, git citool --amend, git commit -a --fixup <commit id>, git rebase -i --autosquash <target branch>, git cherry-pick <commit id 1> <id 2> <id 3>, and git pull --rebase. If rebasing is not done on your initiative, rest assured others will ask you to do it. Thus, if the commands above are familiar, rebasing will be quick and easy for you.

8. Reviews: give some, get some In open source, the larger a project becomes, the more it attracts contributions, and the bottleneck for its growth isn t how much code developers can create but how much code submissions can be properly reviewed. At the time of writing, the main Salsa group Debian has over 800 open merge requests pending reviews and approvals. Feel free to read and comment on any merge request you find. You don t have to be a subject matter expert to provide valuable feedback. Even if you don t have specific feedback, your comment as another human acknowledging that you read the MR and found no issues is viewed positively by the author. Besides, if you spend enough time reviewing MRs in a specific domain, you will eventually become an expert in it. Code reviews are not just about providing feedback to the submitter; they are also great learning opportunities for the reviewer. As a rule of thumb, you should review at least twice as many merge requests as you submit yourself.

9. Improve Debian by improving upstream It is common that while packaging software for Debian, bugs are uncovered and patched in Debian. Do not forget to submit the fixes upstream, and add a Forwarded field to the file in debian/patches! As the person building and packaging something in Debian, you automatically become an authority on that software, and the upstream is likely glad to receive your improvements. While submitting patches upstream is a bit of work initially, getting improvements merged upstream eventually saves time for everyone and makes packaging in Debian easier, as there will be fewer patches to maintain with each new upstream release.

10. Don t hold any habits too firmly Last but not least: Once people learn a specific way of working, they tend to stick to it for decades. Learning how to create and maintain Debian packages requires significant effort, and people tend to stop learning once they feel they ve reached a sufficient level. This tendency to get stuck in a local optimum is understandable and natural, but try to resist it. It is likely that better techniques will evolve over time, so stay humble and re-evaluate your beliefs and practices every few years. Mastering these habits takes time, but each small step brings you closer to making a meaningful impact on Debian. By staying curious, collaborative, and adaptable, you can ensure your contributions stand the test of time just like Debian itself. Good luck on your journey toward becoming a Debian Maintainer!

25 January 2025

Bits from Debian: Infomaniak Platinum Sponsor of DebConf25

infomaniaklogo We are pleased to announce that Infomaniak has committed to sponsor DebConf25 as a Platinum Sponsor. Infomaniak is Switzerland s leading developer of Web technologies. With operations all over Europe and based exclusively in Switzerland, the company designs and manages its own data centers powered by 100% renewable energy, and develops all its solutions locally, without outsourcing. With millions of users and the trust of public and private organizations across Europe - such as RTBF, the United Nations, central banks, over 3,000 radio and TV stations, as well as numerous cities and security bodies - Infomaniak stands for sovereign, sustainable and independent digital technology. The company offers a complete suite of collaborative tools, cloud hosting, streaming, marketing and events solutions, while being owned by its employees and self-financed exclusively by its customers. With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Infomaniak is contributing to the Debian annual Developers' conference, directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software. Infomaniak contributes to strengthen the community that collaborates on Debian projects from all around the world throughout all of the year. Thank you very much, Infomaniak, for your support of DebConf25! Become a sponsor too! DebConf25 will take place from 14th to July 20th 2025 in Brest, France, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 7th to 13th July 2025. DebConf25 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations should contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, or visit the DebConf25 website at https://debconf25.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/.

24 January 2025

Scarlett Gately Moore: KDE: Snaps bug fixes and Kubuntu: Noble updates

Fixed a major crash bug in our apps that use webengine, I also went ahead and updated these to core24 https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/2095418 andhttps://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=498663 Fixed okular
Can t import certificates to digitally sign in Okular https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=498558 Can t open files https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421987 and https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=415711 Skanpage won t launch https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=493847 in edge please help test. Ghostwriter https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481258
Kalm - Breathing techniques
New KDE Snaps! Kalm Breathing techniques
Telly-skout Display TV guides Kubuntu: Plasma 5.27.12 has been uploaded to archive proposed and should make the .2 release! I hate asking but I am unemployable with this broken arm fiasco. If you could spare anything it would be appreciated! https://gofund.me/573cc38e

Sam Hartman: Feeling Targeted: Executive Order Ending Wasteful DEIA Efforts

As most here know, I m totally blind. One of my roles involves a contract for the US Government, under which I have a government email account. The department recently received a message talking about our work to end, to the maximum extend permitted by law, all diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts in the government in accordance with the recently signed executive order. We are all reminded that if we timely identify the contracts and positions that are related to these efforts, there will be no consequences. There are a lot of times in my life when I have felt marginalized frustrated and angry that people weren t interested in working with me to make the small changes that would help me fit in. As an example with this government job, I asked to have access to a screen reader so that I could use my computer. My preferred adaptive software was not approved, even though it was thousands of dollars cheaper than the option the government wanted and could have been installed instantly rather than waiting for a multi-week ordering process. When the screen reader eventually became available, the government-provided installer was not accessible: a blind person could not use it. When I asked for help, the government added an additional multi-week delay because they weren t sure that the license management technology for the software they had chosen met the government s security and privacy policies. Which is to say that even with people actively working toward accessibility, sharing a commitment that accessibility is important, we have a lot of work to do. I feel very targeted at the current time. Now we are removing as many of the resources that help me be effective and feel welcome as we can. Talking about the lack of consequences now is just a way to remind everyone that there will be consequences later and get the fear going. The witch hunt is coming, and if people do a good enough job of turning in all the people who could help me feel welcome, they won t face consequences. Yes, I understand that the Americans with Disabilities act is still law, but its effectiveness will be very different in a climate where you need to eliminate accessibility positions to avoid consequences than in a climate where accessibility is a goal.

comment count unavailable comments

Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 286 released

The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 286. This version includes the following changes: 
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Bug fixes:
  - When passing files on the command line, don't call specialize(..) before
    we've checked that the files are identical. In the worst case, this was
    resulting in spinning up binwalk and extracting two entire filesystem
    images merely to confirm that they were indeed filesystem images..
    before simply concluding that they were identical anyway.
  - Do not exit with a traceback if paths are inaccessible, either directly,
    via symbolic links or within a directory. (Closes: #1065498)
  - Correctly identify changes to only the line-endings of files; don't mark
    them as "Ordering differences only".
  - Use the "surrogateescape" mechanism of str. decode,encode  to avoid a
    UnicodeDecodeError and crash when decoding zipinfo output that is not
    valid UTF-8. (Closes: #1093484)
* Testsuite changes:
  - Don't mangle newlines when opening test fixtures; we want them untouched.
  - Move to assert_diff in test_text.py.
* Misc:
  - Remove unnecessary return value from check_for_ordering_differences in
    the Difference class.
  - Drop an unused function in iso9600.py
  - Inline a call/check of Config().force_details; no need for an additional
    variable.
You find out more by visiting the project homepage.

23 January 2025

Dirk Eddelbuettel: qlcal 0.0.14 on CRAN: Calendar Updates

The fourteenth release of the qlcal package arrivied at CRAN today, following the QuantLib 1.37 release two days ago. qlcal delivers the calendaring parts of QuantLib. It is provided (for the R package) as a set of included files, so the package is self-contained and does not depend on an external QuantLib library (which can be demanding to build). qlcal covers over sixty country / market calendars and can compute holiday lists, its complement (i.e. business day lists) and much more. Examples are in the README at the repository, the package page, and course at the CRAN package page. This releases synchronizes qlcal with the QuantLib release 1.37 (made this week), and moves a demo/ file to examples/.

Changes in version 0.0.14 (2025-01-23)
  • Synchronized with QuantLib 1.37 released two days ago
  • Calendar updates for United States and New Zealand
  • The demo/ file is now in inst/examples/

This update includes the inclusion of the January 9, 2025, holiday for the memorial of President Carter that was observed at the NYSE and shown by the allUScalendars.R example: 
edd@rob:~/git/qlcal-r/inst/examples(master)$ Rscript allUScalendars.R 
           LiborImpact NYSE GovernmentBond NERC FederalReserve SOFR
2025-01-01        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2025-01-09          NA TRUE             NA   NA             NA   NA
2025-01-20        TRUE TRUE           TRUE   NA           TRUE TRUE
2025-02-17        TRUE TRUE           TRUE   NA           TRUE TRUE
2025-04-18          NA TRUE           TRUE   NA             NA TRUE
2025-05-26        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2025-06-19        TRUE TRUE           TRUE   NA           TRUE TRUE
2025-07-04        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2025-09-01        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2025-10-13        TRUE   NA           TRUE   NA           TRUE TRUE
2025-11-11        TRUE   NA           TRUE   NA           TRUE TRUE
2025-11-27        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2025-12-25        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
edd@rob:~/git/qlcal-r/inst/examples(master)$
Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is a diffstat report for this release. See the project page and package documentation for more details, and more examples. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

Sergio Talens-Oliag: Ghostty Terminal Emulator

For a long time I ve been using the Terminator terminal emulator on Linux machines, but last week I read a LWN article about a new emulator called Ghostty that looked interesting and I decided to give it a try. The author sells it as a fast, feature-rich and cross-platform terminal emulator that follows the zero configuration philosophy.

Installation and configurationI installed the debian package for Ubuntu 24.04 from the ghostty-ubuntu project and started playing with it. The first thing I noticed is that the zero configuration part is true; I was able to use the terminal without a configuration file, although I created one to change the theme and the font size, but other than that it worked OK for me; my $HOME/.config/ghostty/config file is as simple as: 
font-size=14
theme=/usr/share/ghostty/themes/iTerm2 Solarized Light

Starting the terminal maximizedAfter playing a little bit with the terminal I was turned off by the fact that there was no option to start it maximized, but is seemed to me that someone should have asked for the feature, or, if not, I could ask for it. I did a quick search on the project and I found out that there was a merged PR that added the option, so I downloaded the source code, installed Zig and built the program on my machine. As the change is going to be included on the next version on the package I replaced the binary with my version and started playing with the terminal.

Accessing remote machinesThe first thing I noticed was that when logging into remote machines using ssh the terminal variable was not known, but on the help section of the project documentation there was an entry about how to fix it copying the terminfo configuration to remote machines, it is as simple as running the following: 
infocmp -x   ssh YOUR-SERVER -- tic -x -

Dead keys on UbuntuWith that sorted out everything looked good to me until I tried to add an accented character when editing a file and the terminal stopped working. Again, I looked at the project issues and found one that matched what was happening to me, and it remembered me about one of the best things about actively maintained open source software. It turns out that the issue is related to a bug on ibus, but other terminals were working right, so the ghostty developer was already working on a fix on the way the terminal handles the keyboard input on GTK, so I subscribed to the issue and stopped using ghostty until there was something new to try again (I use an Spanish keyboard map and I can t use a terminal that does not support dead keys). Yesterday I saw some messages about things being almost fixed, so I pulled the latest changes on my cloned repository, compiled it and writing accented characters works now, there is a small issue with the cursor (the dead key pressed is left on the block cursor unless you change the window focus), but that is something manageable for me.

ConclusionI think that ghostty is a good terminal emulator and I m going to keep using it on my laptop unless I find something annoying that I can t work with (i hope that the cursor issue will be fixed soon and I can live with it as the only thing I need to do to recover from it is changing the widow focus, and that can be done really quickly using keyboard shortcuts). As it is actively maintained and the developer seems to be quite active I don t expect problems and is nice to play with new things from time to time.

22 January 2025

Jonathan McDowell: Christmas Movies

I watch a lot of films. Since completing the IMDB Top 250 back in 2016 I ve kept an eye on it, and while I don t go out of my way to watch the films that newly appear in it I generally sit at over 240 watched. I should note I don t consider myself a film buff/critic, however. I watch things for enjoyment, and a lot of the time that s kicking back and relaxing and disengaging my brain. So I don t get into writing reviews, just high level lists of things I ve watched, sometimes with a few comments. With that in mind, let s talk about Christmas movies. Yes, I appreciate it s the end of January, but generally during December we watch things that have some sort of Christmas theme. New ones if we can find them, but also some of what we consider classics . This almost always starts with Scrooged after we ve put up the tree. I don t always like Bill Murray (I couldn t watch The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and I think Lost in Translation is overrated), but he s in a bunch of things I really like, and Scrooged is one of those. I don t care where you sit on whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not, it s a good movie and therefore regularly gets a December watch. Die Hard 2 also fits into that category of sequel at least as good as the original , though Helen doesn t agree. We watched it anyway, and I finally made the connection between the William Sadler hotel scene and Michael Rooker s in Mallrats. It turns out I m a Richard Curtis fan. Love Actually has not aged well; most times I watch it I find something new questionable about it, and I always end up hating Alan Rickman for cheating on Emma Thompson, but I do like watching it. He had a new one, That Christmas, out this year, so we watched it as well. Another new-to-us film this year was Spirited. I generally like Ryan Reynolds, and Will Ferrell is good as long as he s not too overboard, so I had high hopes. I enjoyed it, but for some reason not as much as I d expected, and I doubt it s getting added to the regular watch list. Larry doesn t generally like watching full length films, but he (and we), enjoyed The Grinch, which I actually hadn t seen before. He s not as fussed on The Muppet Christmas Carol, but we watched it every year, generally on Christmas or Boxing Day. Favourite thing I saw on the Fediverse in December was Do you know there s a book of The Muppet Christmas Carol, and they don t mention that there s muppets in it once? There are a various other light hearted Christmas films we regularly watch. This year included The Holiday (I have so many issues with even just the practicalities of a short notice house swap), and Last Christmas (lots of George Michael music, what s not to love? Also it was only on this watch through that we realised the lead character is the Mother of Dragons). We started, but could not finish, Carry On. I saw it described somewhere as copaganda, and that feels accurate. It does not accurately reflect any of my interactions with TSA at airports, especially during busy periods. Things we didn t watch this year, but are regularly in the mix, include Fatman, Violent Night (looking forward to the sequel, hopefully this year), and Lethal Weapon. Klaus is kinda at the other end of the spectrum, but very touching, and we ve watched it a couple of years now. Given what we seem to like, any suggestions for other films to add? It s nice to have enough in the mix that we get some variety every year.

21 January 2025

Dirk Eddelbuettel: ttdo 0.0.10 on CRAN: Small Extension

A new minor release of our ttdo package arrived on CRAN a few days ago. The ttdo package extends the excellent (and very minimal / zero depends) unit testing package tinytest by Mark van der Loo with the very clever and well-done diffobj package by Brodie Gaslam to give us test results with visual diffs (as shown in the screenshot below) which seemingly is so compelling an idea that it eventually got copied by another package which shall remain unnamed And as of this release, we also support visual diffs as provided by tinysnapshot by Vincent Arel-Bundock. ttdo screenshot This release chiefly adds support for visual diff plots. As we extend tinytest for use in the R autograder we maintain and deploy within the lovely PrairieLearn framework, we need to encode the diffplot that has been produced by the autograder (commonly in a separate Docker process) to communicate it back to the controlling (Docker also) instance of PrairieLearn. We also did the usual bits of package maintenance keeping badges, URLs, continuous integration and minor R coding standards current. As usual, the NEWS entry follows.

Changes in ttdo version 0.0.10 (2025-01-21)
  • Regular packaging updates to badges and continuous integration setup
  • Add support for a 'visual difference' taking advantage of a tinysnapshot feature returning a ttvd-typed result
  • Added (versioned) dependency on tinysnapshot (to also get the plot 'style' enhancement in the most recent version) and base64enc
  • Return ttdo-typed result if diffobj-printed result is returned
  • Ensure all package-documentation links in manual page have anchors to the package

Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for this release. For questions, suggestions, or issues please use the issue tracker at the GitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub.

Ravi Dwivedi: The Arduous Luxembourg Visa Process

In 2024, I was sponsored by The Document Foundation (TDF) to attend the LibreOffice annual conference in Luxembourg from the 10th to the 12th of October. Being an Indian passport holder, I needed a visa to visit Luxembourg. However, due to my Kenya trip coming up in September, I ran into a dilemma: whether to apply before or after the Kenya trip. To obtain a visa, I needed to submit my application with VFS Global (and not with the Luxembourg embassy directly). Therefore, I checked the VFS website for information on processing time, which says:
As a rule, the processing time of an admissible Schengen visa application should not exceed 15 calendar days (from the date the application is received at the Embassy).
It also mentions:
If the application is received less than 15 calendar days before the intended travel date, the Embassy can deem your application inadmissible. If so, your visa application will not be processed by the Embassy and the application will be sent back to VFS along with the passport.
If I applied for the Luxembourg visa before my trip, I would run the risk of not getting my passport back in time, and therefore missing my Kenya flight. On the other hand, if I waited until after returning from Kenya, I would run afoul of the aforementioned 15 working days needed by the embassy to process my application. I had previously applied for a Schengen visa for Austria, which was completed in 7 working days. My friends who had been to France told me they got their visa decision within a week. So, I compared Luxembourg s application numbers with those of other Schengen countries. In 2023, Luxembourg received 3,090 applications from India, while Austria received 39,558, Italy received 52,332 and France received 176,237. Since Luxembourg receives a far fewer number of applications, I expected the process to be quick. Therefore, I submitted my visa application with VFS Global in Delhi on the 5th of August, giving the embassy a month with 18 working days before my Kenya trip. However, I didn t mention my Kenya trip in the Luxembourg visa application. For reference, here is a list of documents I submitted: I submitted flight reservations instead of flight tickets . It is because, in case of visa rejection, I would have lost a significant amount of money if I booked confirmed flight tickets. The embassy also recommends the same. After the submission of documents, my fingerprints were taken. The expenses for the visa application were as follows:
Service Description Amount (INR)
Visa Fee 8,114
VFS Global Fee 1,763
Courier 800
Total 10,677
Going by the emails sent by VFS, my application reached the Luxembourg embassy the next day. Fast-forward to the 27th of August 14th day of my visa application. I had already booked my flight ticket to Nairobi for the 4th of September, but my passport was still with the Luxembourg embassy, and I hadn t heard back. In addition, I also obtained Kenya s eTA and got vaccinated for Yellow Fever, a requirement to travel to Kenya. In order to check on my application status, I gave the embassy a phone call, but missed their calling window, which was easy to miss since it was only 1 hour - 12:00 to 1:00 PM. So, I dropped them an email explaining my situation. At this point, I was already wondering whether to cancel the Kenya trip or the Luxembourg one, if I had to choose. After not getting a response to my email, I called them again the next day. The embassy told me they would look into it and asked me to send my flight tickets over email. One week to go before my flight now. I followed up with the embassy on the 30th by a phone call, and the person who picked up the call told me that my request had already been forwarded to the concerned department and is under process. They asked me to follow up on Monday, 2nd September. During the visa process, I was in touch with three other Indian attendees.1 In the meantime, I got to know that all of them had applied for a Luxembourg visa by the end of the month of August. Back to our story, over the next two days, the embassy closed for the weekend. I began weighing my options. On one hand, I could cancel the Kenya trip and hope that Luxembourg goes through. Even then, Luxembourg wasn t guaranteed as the visa could get rejected, so I might have ended up missing both the trips. On the other hand, I could cancel the Luxembourg visa application and at least be sure of going to Kenya. However, I thought it would make Luxembourg very unlikely because it didn t leave 15 working days for the embassy to process my visa after returning from Kenya. I also badly wanted to attend the LibreOffice conference because I couldn t make it two years ago. Therefore, I chose not to cancel my Luxembourg visa application. I checked with my travel agent and learned that I could cancel my Nairobi flight before September 4th for a cancelation fee of approximately 7,000 INR. On the 2nd of September, I was a bit frustrated because I hadn t heard anything from the embassy regarding my request. Therefore, I called the embassy again. They assured me that they would arrange a call for me from the concerned department that day, which I did receive later that evening. During the call, they offered to return my passport via VFS the next day and asked me to resubmit it after returning from Kenya. I immediately accepted the offer and was overjoyed, as it would enable me to take my flight to Nairobi without canceling my Luxembourg visa application. However, I didn t have the offer in writing, so it wasn t clear to me how I would collect my passport from VFS. The next day, I would receive it when I would be on my way to VFS in the form of an email from the embassy which read:
Dear Mr. Dwivedi, We acknowledge the receipt of your email. As you requested, we are returning your passport exceptionally through VFS, you can collect it directly from VFS Delhi Center between 14:00-17:00 hrs, 03 Sep 2024. Kindly bring the printout of this email along with your VFS deposit receipt and Original ID proof. Once you are back from your trip, you can redeposit the passport with VFS Luxembourg for our processing. With best regards,
Consular Section GRAND DUCHY OF LUXEMBOURG
Embassy in New Delhi
I took a printout of the email and submitted it to VFS to get my passport. This seemed like a miracle - just when I lost all hope of making it to my Kenya flight and was mentally preparing myself to miss it, I got my passport back exceptionally and now I had to mentally prepare again for Kenya. I had never heard of an embassy returning passport before completing the visa process before. The next day, I took my flight to Nairobi as planned. In case you are interested, I have written two blog posts on my Kenya trip - one on the OpenStreetMap conference in Nairobi and the other on my travel experience in Kenya. After returning from Kenya, I resubmitted my passport on the 17th of September. Fast-forward to the 25th of September; I didn t hear anything from the embassy about my application process. So, I checked with TDF to see whether the embassy reached out to them. They told me they confirmed my participation and my hotel booking to the visa authorities on the 19th of September (6 days ago). I was wondering what was taking so long after the verification. On the 1st of October, I received a phone call from the Luxembourg embassy, which turned out to be a surprise interview. They asked me about my work, my income, how I came to know about the conference, whether I had been to Europe before, etc. The call lasted around 10 minutes. At this point, my travel date - 8th of October - was just two working days away as the 2nd of October was off due to Gandhi Jayanti and 5th and 6th October were weekends, leaving only the 3rd and the 4th. I am not sure why the embassy saved this for the last moment, even though I submitted my application 2 months ago. I also got to know that one of the other Indian attendees missed the call due to being in their college lab, where he was not allowed to take phone calls. Therefore, I recommend that the embassy agree on a time slot for the interview call beforehand. Visa decisions for all the above-mentioned Indian attendees were sent by the embassy on the 4th of October, and I received mine on the 5th. For my travel date of 8th October, this was literally the last moment the embassy could send my visa. The parcel contained my passport and a letter. The visa was attached to a page in the passport. I was happy that my visa had been approved. However, the timing made my task challenging. The enclosed letter stated:
Subject: Your Visa Application for Luxembourg
Dear Applicant, We would like to inform you that a Schengen visa has been granted for the 8-day duration from 08/10/2024 to 30/10/2024 for conference purposes in Luxembourg. You are requested to report back to the Embassy of Luxembourg in New Delhi through an email (email address redacted) after your return with the following documents:
  • Immigration Stamps (Entry and Exit of Schengen Area)
  • Restaurant Bills
  • Shopping/Hotel/Accommodation bills
Failure to report to the Embassy after your return will be taken into consideration for any further visa applications.
I understand the embassy wanting to ensure my entry and exit from the Schengen area during the visa validity period, but found the demand for sending shopping bills excessive. Further, not everyone was as lucky as I was as it took a couple of days for one of the Indian attendees to receive their visa, delaying their plan. Another attendee had to send their father to the VFS center to collect their visa in time, rather than wait for the courier to arrive at their home. Foreign travel is complicated, especially for the citizens of countries whose passports and currencies are weak. Embassies issuing visas a day before the travel date doesn t help. For starters, a last-minute visa does not give enough time for obtaining a forex card as banks ask for the visa. Further, getting foreign currency (Euros in our case) in cash with a good exchange rate becomes difficult. As an example, for the Kenya trip, I had to get US Dollars at the airport due to the plan being finalized at the last moment, worsening the exchange rate. Back to the current case, the flight prices went up significantly compared to September, almost doubling. The choice of airlines also got narrowed, as most of the flights got booked by the time I received my visa. With all that said, I think it was still better than an arbitrary rejection. Credits: Contrapunctus, Badri, Fletcher, Benson, and Anirudh for helping with the draft of this post.
  1. Thanks to Sophie, our point of contact for the conference, for putting me in touch with them.

20 January 2025

Divine Attah-Ohiemi: Progress Report: First Half of My Outreachy Internship

Hello everyone!, I m excited to share a progress report on my Outreachy internship with the Debian community. As I reach the halfway point of this journey, I want to reflect on what I ve accomplished so far and outline my modified goals for the second half of the internship. In truth, there wasn t a strict timeline for my project migrating Debian webpage content to Hugo because the original repository contained thousands of pages. The initial goal was to develop a proof of concept for: Thanks to our daily standups, where we brainstorm and revise contributions, we ve made significant progress. The wiki documentation discussing the technical decisions taken to meet these goals is currently in progress here. During the first half of my internship, I have improved and refined my skills in several areas. I learned new Markdown syntaxes, studied and utilized Apache's mod_rewrite, and halfway studied GNU Make to use Perl scripts for processing data for dynamic content. I recommend Managing Projects with GNU Make by Robert Mecklenburg it's a great book for beginners! While I didn t get stuck on any particular goal, the most challenging aspect was adding Hugo aliases to help with Apache's multilingual content negotiation. The way the webwml repository generates multilingual content differs from debianhugo. For instance, in webwml, the structure looks like this: english/index.wml -> /index.en.html (with a symlink from index.html to index.en.html) and french/index.wml -> /index.fr.html. In contrast, debianhugo uses en/_index.md -> /index.html and fr/_index.md -> /fr/index.html. Apache's multilingual content negotiation checks for index.<user preferred lang code>.html in the current directory, which works well with webwml since all related translations are generated in the same directory. However, with debianhugo using subdirectories for languages other than English, we had to set up aliases for every other language page to be generated in the frontmatter. For example, in fr/_index.md, we added this to the front matter:
...
aliases:
  - /index.fr.html
...
This setup allows Hugo to generate multilingual HTML files in the initial home directory solely for the purpose of setting up a 301 redirect to the same page in the language subdirectory. However, if the client sets their preferred language to English, Apache content negotiation tries to find /index.en.html. If it doesn t find it, it defaults to any other language-suffixed file, which can lead to unexpected behavior. For example, if English is set as the preferred language, accessing the site may serve /index.fr.html, which then redirects to /fr/index.html. This was a significant challenge, and you can see a demo of this hosted here. If I were to start the project over, I would document every decision as I make them in the wiki, no matter how rough the documentation turns out. Waiting until the midpoint of the project to document was not a good idea. As I move into the second half of my internship, the goals we ve set include improving our project wiki documentation and continuing the migration process while enhancing the user experience of complicated sections. I m looking forward to making even more progress and sharing my journey with you all. Happy coding!

Jonathan Dowland: dsafilter 20th Anniversary

Happy 20th birthday, dsafilter! dsafilter is a mail filter I wrote two decades ago to solve a problem I had: I was dutifully subscribed to debian-security-announce to learn of new security package updates, but most were not relevant to me. The filter creates a new, summarizing mail, reporting on whether the DSA was applicable to any package installed on the system running the filter, and attached the original DSA mail for reference. Users can then choose to drop mails for packages that aren't relevant. In 2005 I'd been a Debian user for about 6 years, I'd met a few Debian developers in person and I was interested in getting involved. I started my journey to Developer later that same year. I published dsafilter, and I think I sent an announcement to debian-devel, but didn't do a great deal to socialise it, so I suspect nobody else is using it. That said, I have been for the two decades, and I still am! What's notable to me about that is that I haven't had to modify the script at all to keep up with software changes, in particular, from the interpreter. I wrote it as a Ruby script. If I had chosen Perl, it would probably be the same story, but if I'd chosen Python, there's no chance at all that it would still be working today. If it sounds interesting to you, please give it a try. I think it might be due some spring cleaning.

Jaldhar Vyas: Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Happy Martin Luther King Day! Trump dance moves

Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppMsgPack 0.2.4 on CRAN: Maintenance

Another maintenance release of RcppMsgPack got onto CRAN today. MessagePack itself is an efficient binary serialization format. It lets you exchange data among multiple languages like JSON. But it is faster and smaller. Small integers are encoded into a single byte, and typical short strings require only one extra byte in addition to the strings themselves. RcppMsgPack brings both the C++ headers of MessagePack as well as clever code (in both R and C++) Travers wrote to access MsgPack-encoded objects directly from R. This is the first release in over six years, and contains mostly maintenance. One somewhat embarassing aspect is that Travers and I forgot about a PR that had been ready all this since the last release, it has now been integrated. Details follow from the NEWS file.

Changes in version 0.2.4 (2025-01-19)
  • Use Rcpp::RawVector instead of std::vector<unsigned char> saving extra copy (Travers in #16)
  • Several updates to README.md with R Journal paper, add badges, add Authors@R, add CITATION file, add repo info to DESCRIPTION
  • Update continuous integration via r-ci
  • Update to no longer require compilation standard

Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for this release. For questions, suggestions, or issues please use the [issue tracker][issue tickets] at the GitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub.

19 January 2025

Fran ois Marier: Blocking comment spammers on an Ikiwiki blog

Despite comments on my ikiwiki blog being fully moderated, spammers have been increasingly posting link spam comments on my blog. While I used to use the blogspam plugin, the underlying service was likely retired circa 2017 and its public repositories are all archived. It turns out that there is a relatively simple way to drastically reduce the amount of spam submitted to the moderation queue: ban the datacentre IP addresses that spammers are using.

Looking up AS numbers It all starts by looking at the IP address of a submitted comment: From there, we can look it up using whois: 
$ whois -r 2a0b:7140:1:1:5054:ff:fe66:85c5
% This is the RIPE Database query service.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
%
% The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.
% See https://docs.db.ripe.net/terms-conditions.html
% Note: this output has been filtered.
%       To receive output for a database update, use the "-B" flag.
% Information related to '2a0b:7140:1::/48'
% Abuse contact for '2a0b:7140:1::/48' is 'abuse@servinga.com'
inet6num:       2a0b:7140:1::/48
netname:        EE-SERVINGA-2022083002
descr:          servinga.com - Estonia
geoloc:         59.4424455 24.7442221
country:        EE
org:            ORG-SG262-RIPE
mnt-domains:    HANNASKE-MNT
admin-c:        CL8090-RIPE
tech-c:         CL8090-RIPE
status:         ASSIGNED
mnt-by:         MNT-SERVINGA
created:        2020-02-18T11:12:49Z
last-modified:  2024-12-04T12:07:26Z
source:         RIPE
% Information related to '2a0b:7140:1::/48AS207408'
route6:         2a0b:7140:1::/48
descr:          servinga.com - Estonia
origin:         AS207408
mnt-by:         MNT-SERVINGA
created:        2020-02-18T11:18:11Z
last-modified:  2024-12-11T23:09:19Z
source:         RIPE
% This query was served by the RIPE Database Query Service version 1.114 (SHETLAND)
The important bit here is this line: 
origin:         AS207408
which referts to Autonomous System 207408, owned by a hosting company in Germany called Servinga.

Looking up IP blocks Autonomous Systems are essentially organizations to which IPv4 and IPv6 blocks have been allocated. These allocations can be looked up easily on the command line either using a third-party service: 
$ curl -sL https://ip.guide/as207408   jq .routes.v4 >> servinga
$ curl -sL https://ip.guide/as207408   jq .routes.v6 >> servinga
or a local database downloaded from IPtoASN. This is what I ended up with in the case of Servinga: 
[
  "45.11.183.0/24",
  "80.77.25.0/24",
  "194.76.227.0/24"
]
[
  "2a0b:7140:1::/48"
]

Preventing comment submission While I do want to eliminate this source of spam, I don't want to block these datacentre IP addresses outright since legitimate users could be using these servers as VPN endpoints or crawlers. I therefore added the following to my Apache config to restrict the CGI endpoint (used only for write operations such as commenting): 
<Location /blog.cgi>
        Include /etc/apache2/spammers.include
        Options +ExecCGI
        AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
</Location>
and then put the following in /etc/apache2/spammers.include: 
<RequireAll>
    Require all granted
    # https://ipinfo.io/AS207408
    Require not ip 46.11.183.0/24
    Require not ip 80.77.25.0/24
    Require not ip 194.76.227.0/24
    Require not ip 2a0b:7140:1::/48
</RequireAll>
Finally, I can restart the website and commit my changes: 
$ apache2ctl configtest && systemctl restart apache2.service
$ git commit -a -m "Ban all IP blocks from Servinga"

Future improvements I will likely automate this process in the future, but at the moment my blog can go for a week without a single spam message (down from dozens every day). It's possible that I've already cut off the worst offenders. I have published the list I am currently using.

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