The Rise of the Zamindar Around the 15th century when Babur Invaded Hindustan, he realized that Hindustan is too big a country to be governed alone. And Hindustan was much broader than independent India today. So he created the title of Zamindars. Interestingly, if you look at the Mughal period, they were much more in tune with Hindustani practices than the British who came later. They used the caste divisions and hierarchy wisely making sure that the status quo was maintained as far as castes/creed were concerned. While in-fighting with various rulers continued, it was more or less about land and power other than anything else. When the Britishers came they co-opted the same arrangement with a minor adjustment. While in the before system, the zamindars didn t have powers to be landowners. The Britishers gave them land ownerships. A huge percentage of thess zamindars especially in Bengal were from my own caste Banias or Baniyas. The problem and the solution for the Britishers had been this was a large land to control and exploit and the number of British officers and nobles were very less. So they gave virtually a lot of powers to the Banias. The only thing the British insisted on were very high rents from the newly minted Zamindars. The Zamindar in turn used the powers of personal fiefdom to give loans at very high interest rates when the poor were unable to pay the interest rate, they would take the land while at the same time slavery was forced on both men and women, many a time rapes and affairs. While there have been many records shedding light on it, don t think it could be any more powerful as enacted and shared by Shabana Azmi in Ankur:the Seedling. Another prominent grouping was formed around the same time was the Bhadralok. Now as shared Bhadralok while having all the amenities of belonging to the community, turned a blind eye to the excesses being done by the Zamindars. How much they played a hand in the decimation of Bengal has been a matter of debate, but they did have a hand, that much is not contested.

The Rise of Stock Exchanges Sadly and interestingly, many people believe and continue to believe that stock exchanges is recent phenomena. The first stock exchange though was the Calcutta Stock Exchange rather than the Bombay Stock Exchange. How valuable was Calcutta to the Britishers in its early years can be gauged from the fact that at one time it was made the capital of India in 1772 . In fact, after the Grand Trunk Road (on which there had been even Train names in both countries) x number of books have been written of the trade between Calcutta and Peshawar (Now in Pakistan). And it was not just limited to trade but also cultural give-and-take between the two centers. Even today, if you look at YT (Youtube) and look up some interviews of old people, you find many interesting anecdotes of people sharing both culture and trade.

The problem of the 60 s and rise of BSE
After India became independent and the Constitutional debates happened, the new elites understood that there cannot be two power centers that could govern India. On one hand, were the politicians who had come to power on the back of the popular vote, the other was the Zamindars, who more often than not had abused their powers which resulted in widespread poverty. The Britishers are to blame, but so do the middlemen as they became willing enablers to the same system of oppression. Hence, you had the 1951 amendment to the Constitution and the 1956 Zamindari Abolition Act. In fact, you can find much more of an in-depth article both about Zamindars and their final abolition here. Now once Zamindari was gone, there was nothing to replace it with. The Zamindars ousted of their old roles turned and tried to become Industrialists. The problem was that the poor and the downtrodden had already had experiences with the Zamindars. Also, some Industrialists from North and West also came to Bengal but they had no understanding of either the language or the cultural understanding of what had happened in Bengal. And notice that I have not talked about both the famines and the floods that wrecked Bengal since time immemorial and some of the ones which got etched on soul of Bengal and has marks even today The psyche of the Bengali and the Bhadralok has gone through enormous shifts. I have met quite a few and do see the guilt they feel. If one wonders as to how socialist parties are able to hold power in Bengal, look no further than Tarikh which tells and shares with you that even today how many Bengalis still feel somewhat lost.

The Rise of BSE Now, while Kolkata Stock Exchange had been going down, for multiple reasons other than listed above. From the 1950s onwards Jawaharlal Nehru had this idea of 5-year plans, borrowed from socialist countries such as Russia, China etc. His vision and ambition for the newly minted Indian state were huge, while at the same time he understood we were poor. The loot by East India Company and the Britishers and on top of that the division of wealth with Pakistan even though the majority of Muslims chose and remained with India. Travel on Indian Railways was a risky affair. My grandfather had shared numerous tales where he used to fill money in socks and put the socks on in boots when going between either Delhi Kolkata or Pune Kolkata. Also, as the Capital became Delhi, it unofficially was for many years, the transparency from Kolkata-based firms became less. So many Kolkata firms either mismanaged and shut down while Maharashtra, my own state, saw a huge boon in Industrialization as well as farming. From the 1960s to the 1990s there were many booms and busts in the stock exchanges but most were manageable.

While the 60s began on a good note as Goa was finally freed from the Portuguese army and influence, the 1962 war with the Chinese made many a soul question where we went wrong. Jawaharlal Nehru went all over the world to ask for help but had to return home empty-handed. Bollywood showed a world of bell-bottoms and cars and whatnot, while the majority were still trying to figure out how to put two square meals on the table. India suffered one of the worst famines in those times. People had to ration food. Families made do with either one meal or just roti (flatbread) rather than rice. In Bengal, things were much more severe. There were huge milk shortages, so Bengalis were told to cut down on sweets. This enraged the Bangalis as nothing else could. Note If one wants to read how bad Indians felt at that time, all one has to read is V.S. Naipaul s An Area of darkness . This was also the time when quite a few Indians took their first step out of India. While Air India had just started, the fares were prohibitive. Those who were not well off, either worked on ships or went via passenger or cargo ships to Dubai/Qatar middle-east. Some went to Russia and some even to States. While today s migr s want to settle in the west forever and have their children and grandchildren grow up in the West, in the 1960s and 70s the idea was far different. The main purpose for a vast majority was to get jobs and whatnot, save maximum money and send it back to India as a remittance. The idea was to make enough money in 3-5-10 years, come back to India, and then lead a comfortable life. Sadly, there has hardly been any academic work done in India, at least to my knowledge to document the sacrifices done by Indians in search of jobs, life, purpose, etc. in the 1960s and 1970s. The 1970s was also when alternative cinema started its journey with people like Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah who portrayed people s struggles on-screen. Most of them didn t have commercial success because the movies and the stories were bleak. While the acting was superb, most Indians loved to be captured by fights, car-chases, and whatnot rather than the deary existence which they had. And the alt cinema forced them to look into the mirror, which was frowned upon both by the masses and the classes. So cinema which could have been a wake-up call for a lot of Indians failed. One of the most notable works of that decade, at least to me, was Manthan. 1961 was also marked by the launch of Economic Times and Financial Express which tells that there was some appetite for financial news and understanding. The 1970s was also a very turbulent time in the corporate sector and stock exchanges. Again, the companies which were listed were run by the very well-off and many of them had been abroad. At the same time, you had fly-by-night operators. One of the happenings which started in this decade is you had corporate wars and hostile takeovers, quite a few of them of which could well have a Web series or two of their own. This was also a decade marked by huge labor unrest, which again changed the face of Bombay/Mumbai. From the 1950s till the 1970s, Bombay was known for its mills. So large migrant communities from all over India came to Bombay to become the next Bollywood star and if that didn t happen, they would get jobs in the mills. Bombay/Mumbai has/had this unique feature that somehow you will make money to make ends meet. Of course, with the pandemic, even that has gone for a toss. Labor unrest was a defining character of that decade. Three movies, Kaala Patthar, Kalyug, and Ankush give a broad outlook of what happened in that decade. One thing which is present and omnipresent then and now is how time and time again we lost our demographic dividend. Again there was an exodus of young people who ventured out to seek fortunes elsewhere. The 1970s and 80s were also famous for the license Raj which they bought in. Just like the Soviets, there were waiting periods for everything. A telephone line meant waiting for things anywhere from 4 to 8 years. In 1987, when we applied and got a phone within 2-3 months, most of my relatives both from my mother and father s side could not believe we paid 0 to get a telephone line. We did pay the telephone guy INR 10/- which was a somewhat princely sum when he was installing it, even then they could not believe it as in Northern India, you couldn t get a phone line even if your number had come. You had to pay anywhere from INR 500/1000 or more to get a line. This was BSNL and to reiterate there were no alternatives at that time.

The 1990s and the Harshad Mehta Scam The 90s was when I was a teenager. You do all the stupid things for love, lust, whatever. That is also the time you are introduced really to the world of money. During my time, there were only three choices, Sciences, Commerce, and Arts. If History were your favorite subject then you would take Arts and if it was not, and you were not studious, then you would up commerce. This is how careers were chosen. So I enrolled in Commerce. Due to my grandfather and family on my mother s side interested in stocks both as a saving and compounding tool, I was able to see Pune Stock Exchange in action one day. The only thing I remember that day is people shouting loudly with various chits. I had no idea that deals of maybe thousands or even lakhs. The Pune Stock Exchange had been newly minted. I also participated in a couple of mock stock exchanges and came to understand that one has to be aggressive in order to win. You had to be really loud to be heard over others, you could not afford to be shy. Also, spread your risks. Sadly, nothing about the stock markets was there in the syllabus. 1991 was also when we saw the Iraq war, the balance of payments crisis in India, and didn t know that the Harshad Mehta scam was around the corner. Most of the scams in India have been caught because the person who was doing it was flashy. And this was the reason that even he was caught as Ms. Sucheta Dalal, a young beat reporter from Indian Express who had been covering Indian stock market. Many of her articles were thought-provoking. Now, a brief understanding is required to know before we actually get to the scam. Because of the 1991 balance of payments crisis, IMF rescued India on the condition that India throws its market open. In the 1980s itself, Rajeev Gandhi had wanted to partially make India open but both politicians and Industrialists advised him not to do the same, we are/were not ready. On 21st May 1991, Rajeev Gandhi was assassinated by the LTTE. A month later, due to the sympathy vote, the Narsimha Rao Govt. took power. While for most new Governments there is usually a honeymoon period lasting 6 months or so till they get settled in their roles before people start asking tough questions. It was not to be for this Govt. Immediately, The problem had been building for a few years. Although, in many ways, our economy was better than it is today. The only thing India didn t do well at that time was managing foreign exchange. As only a few Indians had both the money and the opportunity to go abroad and need for electronics was limited. One of the biggest imports of the time then and still today is Energy, Oil. While today it is Oil/Gas and electronics, at that time it was only OIl. The Oil import bill was ballooning while exports were more or less stagnant and mostly comprised of raw materials rather than finished products. Even today, it is largely this, one of the biggest Industrialists in India Ambani exports gas/oil while Adani exports coal. Anyways, the deficit was large enough to trigger a payment crisis. And Narsimha Rao had to throw open the Indian market almost overnight. Some changes became quickly apparent, while others took a long time to come.

Satellite Television and Entry of Foreign Banks Almost overnight, from 1 channel we became multi-channel. Star TV (Rupert Murdoch) bought us Bold and Beautiful, while CNN broadcasted the Iraq War. It was unbelievable for us that we were getting reports of what had happened 24-48 hours earlier. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was still very much a teenager to understand the import of what was happening. Even in my college, except for one or two-person, it wasn t a topic for debate or talk or even the economy. We were basically somehow cocooned in our own little world. But this was not the case for the rest of India and especially banks. The entry of foreign banks was a rude shock to Indian banks. The foreign banks were bringing both technology and sophistication in their offerings, and Indian Banks needed and wanted fast money to show hefty profits. Demand for credit wasn t much, at least nowhere the level it today is. At the same time, default on credit was nowhere high as today is. But that will require its own space and article. To quench the thirst for hefty profits by banks, Enter Harshad Mehta. At that point in time, banks were not permitted at all to invest in the securities/share market. They could only buy Government securities or bonds which had a coupon rate of say 8-10% which was nowhere enough to satisfy the need for hefty profits as desired by Indian banks. On top of it, that cash was blocked for a long time. Most of these Government bonds had anywhere between 10-20 year maturity date and some even longer. Now, one loophole in that was that the banks themselves could not buy these securities. They had to approach a registered broker of the share market who will do these transactions on their behalf. Here is where Mr. Mehta played his game. He shared both legal and illegal ways in which both the bank and he would prosper. While banking at one time was thought to be conservative and somewhat cautious, either because they were too afraid that Western private banks will take that pie or whatever their reasons might be, they agreed to his antics. To play the game, Harshad Mehta needed lots of cash, which the banks provided him in the guise of buying securities that were never bought, but the amounts were transferred to his account. He actively traded stocks, at the same time made a group, and also made the rumor mill work to his benefit. The share market is largely a reactionary market. It operates on patience, news, and rumor-mill. The effect of his shenanigans was that the price of a stock that was trending at say INR 200 reached the stratospheric height of INR 9000/- without any change in the fundamentals or outlook of the stock. His thirst didn t remain restricted to stocks but also ventured into the unglamorous world of Govt. securities where he started trading even in them in large quantities. In order to attract new clients, he coveted a fancy lifestyle. The fancy lifestyle was what caught the eye of Sucheta Dalal, and she started investigating the deals he was doing. Being a reporter, she had the advantage of getting many doors to open and get information that otherwise would be under lock and key. On 23rd April 1992, Sucheta Dalal broke the scam.

The Impact The impact was almost like a shock to the markets. Even today, it can be counted as one of the biggest scams in the Indian market if you adjust it for inflation. I haven t revealed much of the scam and what happened, simply because Sucheta Dalal and Debasis Basu wrote The Scam for that purpose. How do I shorten a story and experience which has been roughly written in 300 odd pages in one or two paragraphs, it is simply impossible. The impact though was severe. The Indian stock market became a bear market for two years. Sucheta Dalal was kicked out/made to resign out of Indian Express. The thing is simple, all newspapers survive on readership and advertisements with advertisements. Companies who were having a golden run, whether justified or not, on the bourses/Stock Exchange. For many companies, having a good number on the stock exchange was better than the company fundamentals. There was supposed to be a speedy fast-track court setup for Financial crimes, but it worked only for the Harshad Mehta case and still took over 5 years. It led to the creation of NSE (National Stock Exchange). It also led to the creation of SEBI, perhaps one of the most powerful regulators, giving it a wide range of powers and remit but on the ground more often that proved to be no more than a glorified postman. And the few times it used, it used on the wrong people and people had to go to courts to get justice. But then this is not about SEBI nor is this blog post about NSE. I have anyways shared about Absolute power above, so will not repeat the link here. The Anecdotal impact was widespread. Our own family broker took the extreme step. For my grandfather on the mother s side, he was like the second son. The news of his suicide devastated my grandfather quite a bit, which we realized much later when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer s. Our family stockbroker had been punting, taking lots of cash from the market at very high rates, betting on stocks wildly as the stock market was reaching for the stars when the market crashed, he was insolvent. How the family survived is a tale in itself. They had just got married just a few years ago and had a cute boy and girl soon after. While today, both are grown-up, at that time what the wife faced only she knows. There were also quite a few shareholders who also took the extreme step. The stock markets in those days were largely based on trust and even today is unless you are into day-trading. So there was always some money left on the table for the share/stockbroker which would be squared off in the next deal/transaction where again you will leave something. My grandfather once thought of going over and meeting them, and we went to the lane where their house is, seeing the line of people who had come for recovery of loans, we turned back with a heavy heart. There was another taboo that kinda got broken that day. The taboo was that the stock market is open to scams. From 1992 to 2021 has been a cycle of scams. Even now, today, the stock market is at unnatural highs. We know for sure that a lot of hot money is rolling around, a lot of American pension funds etc. Till it will work, it will work, some news something and that money will be moved out. Who will be left handing the can, the Indian investors? A Few days back, Ambani writes about Adani. Now while the facts shared are correct, is Adani the only one, the only company to have a small free float in the market. There probably are more than 1/4th or 1/3rd of well-respected companies who may have a similar configuration, the only problem is it is difficult to know who the proxies are. Now if I were to reflect and compare this either with the 1960s or even the 1990s I don t find much difference apart from the fact that the proxy is sitting in Mauritius. At the same time, today you can speculate on almost anything. Whether it is stocks, commodities, derivatives, foreign exchange, cricket matches etc. the list is endless. Since 2014, the rise in speculation rather than investment has been dramatic, almost stratospheric. Sadly, there are no studies or even attempts made to document this. How much official and unofficial speculation is there in the market nobody knows. Money markets have become both fluid and non-transparent. In theory, you have all sorts of regulators, but it is still very much like the Wild West. One thing to note that even Income tax had to change and bring it provisions to account for speculative income.So, starting from being totally illegitimate, it has become kind of legal and is part of Income Tax. And if speculation is not wrong, why not make Indian cricket officially a speculative event, that will be honest and GOI will get part of the proceeds.

Conclusion I wish there was some positive conclusion I could drive, but sadly there is not. Just today read two articles about the ongoing environmental issues in Himachal Pradesh. As I had shared even earlier, the last time I visited those places in 2011, and even at that time I was devastated to see the kind of construction going on. Jogiwara Road which they showed used to be flat single ground/first floor dwellings, most of which were restaurants and whatnot. I had seen the water issues both in Himachal and UT (Uttarakhand) back then and this is when they made huge dams. In U.S. they are removing dams and here we want more dams

Use Pipenv to manage library dependencies when developing Python applications. See Managing Application Dependencies for more details on using pipenv.

• Source only uploads and building of weels for all platforms on PyPI infrastructure this way we could have wheels everywhere and remove the need to compile anything in pip install
• Standard tooling: pip has been and still is the tool of choice for packaging in Python. For some time now, you also need twine in order to upload your packages. setup.py upload still exists, but hasn t worked for months on my machines. It would be great to have something that improves the virtualenv handling and dependency management. We do have some tools with overlapping use-cases, like poetry and pipenv. pipenv is heavily advertised and an actual PyPA project, but it feels immature in terms of scope, release history (and emojis!) compared to poetry. poetry is gaining a lot of traction, but it is apparently not receiving much love from PyPA, which brings me to:
• Unbiased tool recommendations. I don t understand why PyPA is trying so hard to make us believe pipenv would be the standard tool for Python packaging. Instead of making such claims, please provide a list of competitors and provide a fair feature comparison. PyPA is providing great packaging tutorials and is a valuable source of information around this topic. But when it comes to the tool recommendations, I do challenge PyPA s objectiveness.

• Ansible has a big pot of global variables; Transilience has a well defined set of role-specific variables.
• Roles in Ansible are little more than a chunk of playbook that one includes; Roles in Transilience are self-contained and isolated, support pipelined batches of tasks, and can use full Python logic.
• Transilience does not have a template action: the equivalent is a copy action that uses the Role's rendering engine to render the template.
• Handlers in Ansible are tasks identified by a name in a global namespace; handlers in Transilience are Roles, identified by their Python classes.

        candidates = []
        for key in task_info.keys():
            if key in ("name", "args", "notify"):
                continue
            candidates.append(key)
        if len(candidates) != 1:
            raise RoleNotLoadedError(f"could not find a known module in task  task_info!r ")
        modname = candidates[0]
        if modname.startswith("ansible.builtin."):
            name = modname[16:]
        else:
            name = modname

$ ./provision --help
usage: provision [-h] [-v] [--debug] [-C] [--ansible-to-python role]
                 [--ansible-to-ast role]
Provision my VPS
optional arguments:
[...]
  -C, --check           do not perform changes, but check if changes would be
                        needed
  --ansible-to-ast role
                        print the AST of the given Ansible role as understood
                        by Transilience

     
      "node": "task",
      "action": "builtin.blockinfile",
      "parameters":  
        "path":  
          "node": "parameter",
          "type": "scalar",
          "value": "/etc/aliases"
         ,
        "block":  
          "node": "parameter",
          "type": "template_string",
          "value": "root:  postmaster \n % for name, dest in aliases.items() % \n name :  dest \n % endfor % \n"
         
       ,
      "ansible_yaml":  
        "name": "configure /etc/aliases",
        "blockinfile":  ,
        "notify": "reread /etc/aliases"
       ,
      "notify": [
        "RereadEtcAliases"
      ]
     ,

     
      "node": "task",
      "action": "builtin.copy",
      "parameters":  
        "dest":  
          "node": "parameter",
          "type": "scalar",
          "value": "/etc/dovecot/local.conf"
         ,
        "src":  
          "node": "parameter",
          "type": "template_path",
          "value": "dovecot.conf"
         
       ,
      "ansible_yaml":  
        "name": "configure dovecot",
        "template":  ,
        "notify": "restart dovecot"
       ,
      "notify": [
        "RestartDovecot"
      ]
     ,

    def get_role_class(self) -> Type[Role]:
        # If we have handlers, instantiate role classes for them
        handler_classes =  
        for name, ansible_role in self.handlers.items():
            handler_classes[name] = ansible_role.get_role_class()
        # Create all the functions to start actions in the role
        start_funcs = []
        for task in self.tasks:
            start_funcs.append(task.get_start_func(handlers=handler_classes))
        # Function that calls all the 'Action start' functions
        def role_main(self):
            for func in start_funcs:
                func(self)
        if self.uses_facts:
            role_cls = type(self.name, (Role,),  
                "start": lambda host: None,
                "all_facts_available": role_main
             )
            role_cls = dataclass(role_cls)
            role_cls = with_facts(facts.Platform)(role_cls)
        else:
            role_cls = type(self.name, (Role,),  
                "start": role_main
             )
            role_cls = dataclass(role_cls)
        return role_cls

$ ./provision --help
usage: provision [-h] [-v] [--debug] [-C] [--ansible-to-python role]
                 [--ansible-to-ast role]
Provision my VPS
optional arguments:
[...]
  --ansible-to-python role
                        print the given Ansible role as Transilience Python
                        code
  --ansible-to-ast role
                        print the AST of the given Ansible role as understood
                        by Transilience

$ ./provision --ansible-to-python mailserver
from __future__ import annotations
from typing import Any
from transilience import role
from transilience.actions import builtin, facts
# Role classes generated from Ansible handlers!
class ReloadPostfix(role.Role):
    def start(self):
        self.add(
            builtin.systemd(unit='postfix', state='reloaded'),
            name='reload postfix')
class RestartDovecot(role.Role):
    def start(self):
        self.add(
            builtin.systemd(unit='dovecot', state='restarted'),
            name='restart dovecot')
# The role, including a standard set of facts
@role.with_facts([facts.Platform])
class Role(role.Role):
    # These are the variables used by Jinja2 template files and strings. I need
    # to use Any, since Ansible variables are not typed
    aliases: Any = None
    myhostname: Any = None
    postmaster: Any = None
    virtual_domains: Any = None
    def all_facts_available(self):
        ...
        # A Jinja2 string inside a string list!
        self.add(
            builtin.command(
                argv=[
                    'certbot', 'certonly', '-d',
                    self.render_string('mail. ansible_domain '), '-n',
                    '--apache'
                ],
                creates=self.render_string(
                    '/etc/letsencrypt/live/mail. ansible_domain /fullchain.pem'
                )),
            name='obtain mail.* letsencrypt certificate')
        # A converted template task!
        self.add(
            builtin.copy(
                dest='/etc/dovecot/local.conf',
                src=self.render_file('templates/dovecot.conf')),
            name='configure dovecot',
            # Notify referring to the corresponding Role class!
            notify=RestartDovecot)
        # Referencing a variable collected from a fact!
        self.add(
            builtin.copy(dest='/etc/mailname', content=self.ansible_domain),
            name='configure /etc/mailname',
            notify=ReloadPostfix)
        ...

• All actions defined in Transilience's builtin.* namespace
• Ansible's template module (without block_start_string, block_end_string, lstrip_blocks, newline_sequence, output_encoding, trim_blocks, validate, variable_end_string, variable_start_string)
• Jinja2 templates in string parameters, even when present inside lists and dicts and nested lists and dicts
• Variables from facts provided by transilience.actions.facts.Platform
• Variables used in jitsi templates, both in strings and in files, provided by host vars, group vars, role parameters, and facts
• Notify using handlers defined within the role. Notifying handlers from other roles is not supported, since roles in Transilience are self-contained

• /exec
• /fset
• /set
• /unset
• /plugin
• /script
• /python
• /perl
• /ruby
• /lua
• /tcl
• /guile
• /javascript
• /php
• /secure
• /upgrade
• /quit

/set relay.weechat.commands *,!exec,!fset,!set,!unset,!plugin,!script,!python,!perl,!ruby,!lua,!tcl,!guile,!javascript,!php,!secure,!upgrade,!quit
/save

• 0.1 C resolution.
• Regulable hysteresis in the range +/- [0.1 1.0].

• 3 profiles to select (in fact I think 2 would be enough, but one more shouldn't hurt).
• Each profile will have each own target temperature and hysteresis.

Accessibility This is perhaps one of the strangest ways and yet also perhaps the straightest way to start the blog post. For the past weeks/months, a strange experience has been there. I am using a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse for almost a decade. Now, for the past few months and weeks we observed a somewhat rare phenomena . While in-between us we have a single desktop computer. So me and mum take turns to be on the Desktop. At times, however, the system would sit idle and after some time it goes to low-power mode/sleep mode after 30 minutes. Then, when you want to come back, you obviously have to give your login credentials. At times, the keyboard refuses to input any data in the login screen. Interestingly, the mouse still functions. Much more interesting is the fact that both the mouse and the keyboard use the same transceiver sensor to send data. And I had changed batteries to ensure it was not a power issue but still no input :(. While my mother uses and used the power switch (I did teach her how to hold it for few minutes and then let it go) but for self, tried another thing. Using the mouse I logged of the session thinking perhaps some race condition or something might be in the session which was not letting the keystrokes be inputted into the system and having a new session might resolve it. But this was not to be Luckily, on the screen you do have the option to reboot or power off. I did a reboot and lo, behold the system was able to input characters again. And this has happened time and again. I tried to find GOK and failed to remember that GOK had been retired. I looked up the accessibility page on Debian wiki. Very interesting, very detailed but sadly it did not and does not provide the backup I needed. I tried out florence but found that the app. is buggy. Moreover, the instructions provided on the lightdm screen does not work. I do not get the on-screen keyboard while I followed the instructions. Just to be clear this is all on Debian testing which is gonna be Debian stable soonish I even tried the same with xvkbd but no avail. I do use mate as my desktop-manager so maybe the instructions need some refinement ???? $ cat /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf grep keyboard
# a11y-states = states of accessibility features: name save state on exit, -name
disabled at start (default value for unlisted), +name enabled at start. Allowed names: contrast, font, keyboard, reader.
keyboard=xvkbd no-gnome focus &
# keyboard-position = x y[;width height] ( 50%,center -0;50% 25% by default) Works only for onboard
#keyboard= Interestingly, Debian does provide two more on-screen keyboards, matchbox as well as onboard which comes from Ubuntu. While I have both of them installed. I find xvkbd to be enough for my work, the only issue seems to be I cannot get it from the drop-down box of accessibility at the login screen. Just to make sure that I have not gone to Gnome-display manager, I did run

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 Only to find out that I am indeed running lightdm. So I am a bit confused why it doesn t come up as an option when I have the login window/login manager running. FWIW I do run metacity as the window manager as it plays nice with all the various desktop environments I have, almost all of them. So this is where I m stuck. If I do get any help, I probably would also add those instructions to the wiki page, so it would be convenient to the next person who comes with the same issue. I also need to figure out some way to know whether there is some race-condition or something which is happening, have no clue how would I go about it without having whole lot of noise. I am sure there are others who may have more of an idea. FWIW, I did search unix.stackexchange as well as reddit/debian to see if I could see any meaningful posts but came up empty.

Freenode I had not been using IRC for quite some time now. The reasons have been multiple issues with Riot (now element) taking the whole space on my desktop. I did get alerted to the whole thing about a week after the whole thing went down. Somebody messaged me DM. I *think* I put up a thread or a mini-thread about IRC or something in response to somebody praising telegram/WhatsApp or one of those apps. That probably triggered the DM. It took me a couple of minutes to hit upon this. I was angry and depressed, seeing the behavior of the new overlords of freenode. I did see that lot of channels moved over to Libera. It was also interesting to see that some communities were thinking of moving to some other obscure platform, which again could be held hostage to the same thing. One could argue one way or the other, but that would be tiresome and fact is any network needs lot of help to be grown and nurtured, whether it is online or offline. I also saw that Libera was also using a software Solanum which is ircv3 compliant. Now having done this initial investigation, it was time to move to an IRC client. The Libera documentation is and was pretty helpful in telling which IRC clients would be good with their network. So I first tried hexchat. I installed it and tried to add Libera server credentials, it didn t work. Did see that they had fixed the bug in sid/unstable and now it s in testing. But at the time it was in sid, the bug-fixed and I wanted to have something which just ran the damn thing. I chanced upon quassel. I had played around with quassel quite a number of times before, so I knew I could play/use it. Hence, I installed it and was able to use it on the first try. I did use the encrypted server and just had to tweak some settings before I could use it with some help with their documentation. Although, have to say that even quassel upstream needs to get its documentation in order. It is just all over the place, and they haven t put any effort into streamlining the documentation, so that finding things becomes easier. But that can be said of many projects upstream. There is one thing though that all of these IRC clients lack. The lack of a password manager. Now till that isn t fixed it will suck because you need another secure place to put your password/s. You either put it on your desktop somewhere (insecure) or store it in the cloud somewhere (somewhat secure but again need to remember that password), whatever you do is extra work. I am sure there will be a day when authenticating with Nickserv will be an automated task and people can just get on talking on channels and figuring out how to be part of the various communities. As can be seen, even now there is a bit of a learning curve for both newbies and people who know a bit about systems to get it working. Now, I know there are a lot of things that need to be fixed in the anonymity, security place if I put that sort of hat. For e.g. wouldn t it be cool if either the IRC client or one of its add-on gave throwaway usernames and passwords. The passwords would be complex. This would make it easier who are paranoid about security and many do and would have. As an example we can see of Fuchs. Now if the gentleman or lady is working in a professional capacity and would come to know of their real identity and perceive rightly or wrongly the role of that person, it will affect their career. Now, should it? I am sure a lot of people would be divided on the issue. Personally, as far as I am concerned, I would say no because whether right or wrong, whatever they were doing they were doing on their own time. Not on company time. So it doesn t concern the company at all. If we were to let companies police the behavior outside the time, individuals would be in a lot of trouble. Although, have to say that is a trend that has been seen in companies that are firing people either on the left or right. A recent example that comes to mind is Emily Wilder who was fired by Associated Press. Interestingly, she was interviewed by Democracy now, and it did come out that she is a Jew. As can be seen and understood there is a lot of nuance to her story and not the way she was fired. It doesn t give a good taste in the mouth, but then getting fired nobody does. On few forums, people did share of people getting fired of their job because they were dancing (cops). Again, it all depends, for me again, hats off to anybody who feels like dancing or whatever because there are just so many depressing stories all around.

Banned and FOE On few forums I was banned because I was talking about Brexit and American imperialism, both of which are seem to ruffle a few feathers in quite a few places. For instance, many people for obvious reasons do not like this video

Now I m sorry I am not able to and have not been able to give invidious links for the past few months. The reason being invidious itself went through some changes and the changes are good and bad. For e.g. now you need to share your google id with a third-party which at least to my mind is not a good idea. But that probably is another story altogether and it probably will need its own place. Coming back to the video itself, this was shared by Anthony hazard and the Title is The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you . I did see this video quite a few years ago and still find it hard to swallow that tens of millions of Africans were bought as slaves to the Americas, although to be fair it does start with the Spanish settlement in the land which would be called the U.S. but they bought slaves with themselves. They even got the American natives, i.e. people from different tribes which made up America at that point. One point to note is that U.S. got its independence on July 4, 1776 so all the people before that were called as European settlers for want of a better word. Some or many of these European settlers would be convicts who were sent from UK. But as shared in the article, that would only happen with U.S. itself is mature and open enough for that discussion. Going back to the original point though, these European or American settlers bought lot of slaves from Africa. The video does also shed some of the cruelty the Europeans or Americans did on the slaves, men and women in different ways. The most revelatory part though which I also forget many a times that because lot of people were taken from Africa and many of them men, it did lead to imbalances in the African societies not just in weddings but economics in general. It also developed a theory called Critical Race theory in which it tries to paint the Africans as an inferior race otherwise how would Christianity work where their own good book says All men are born equal . That does in part explain why the African countries are still so far behind their European or American counterparts. But Africa can still be proud as they are richer than us, yup India. Sadly, I don t think America is ready to have that conversation anytime soon or if ever. And if it were to do, it would have to out-do any truth and reconciliation Committee which the world has seen. A mere apology or two would not just cut it. The problems of America sadly are not limited to just Africans but the natives of the land, for e.g. the Lakota people. In 1868, they put a letter stating we will give the land back to the Lakota people forever, but then the gold rush happened. In 2007, when the Lakota stated their proposal for independence, the U.S. through its force denied. So much for the paper, it was written on. Now from what I came to know over the years, the American natives are called First nations . Time and time again the American Govt. has tried or been foul towards them. Some of the examples include The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository . The same is and was the case with The Keystone pipeline which is now dead. Now one could say that it is America s internal matter and I would fully agree but when they speak of internal matters of other countries, then we should have the same freedom. But this is not restricted to just internal matters, sadly. Since the 1950 s i.e. the advent of the cold war, America s foreign policy made Regime changes all around the world. Sharing some of the examples from the Cold War

Iran 1953
Guatemala 1954
Democratic Republic of the Congo 1960
Republic of Ghana 1966
Iraq 1968
Chile 1973
Argentina 1976
Afghanistan 1978-1980s
Grenada
Nicaragua 1981-1990
1. Destabilization through CIA assets
2. Arming the Contras
El Salvador 1980-92
Philippines 1986 Even after the Cold War ended the situation was anonymolus, meaning they still continued with their old behavior. After the end of Cold War

Guatemala 1993
Serbia 2000
Iraq 2003-
Afghanistan 2001 ongoing There is a helpful Wikipedia article titled History of CIA which basically lists most of the covert regime changes done by U.S. The abvoe is merely a sub-set of the actions done by U.S. Now are all the behaviors above of a civilized nation ? And if one cares to notice, one would notice that all the above countries in the list which had the regime change had either Oil or precious metals. So U.S. is and was being what it accuses China, a profiteer. But this isn t just the U.S. China story but more about the American abuse of its power. My own country, India paid IMF loans till 1991 and we paid through the nose. There were economic sanctions against India. But then, this is again not just about U.S. India. Even with Europe or more precisely Norway which didn t want to side with America because their intelligence showed that no WMD were present in Iraq, the relationship still has issues.

Pandemic and the World So I do find that this whole blaming of China by U.S. quite theatrical and full of double-triple standards. Very early during the debates, it came to light that the Spanish Flu actually originated in Kensas, U.S.

What was also interesting as I found in the Pentagon Papers much before The Watergate scandal came out that U.S. had realized that China would be more of a competitor than Russia. And this itself was in 1960 s itself. This shows the level of intelligence that the Americans had. From what I can recollect from whatever I have read of that era, China was still mostly an agri-based economy. So, how the U.S. was able to deduce that China will surpass other economies is beyond me even now. They surely must have known something that even we today do not. One of the other interesting observations and understanding that I got while researching that every year we transfer an average of 7500 diseases from animal to humans and that should be a scary figure. I think more than anything else, loss of habitat and use of animals from food to clothing to medicine is probably the reason we are getting such diseases. I am also sure that there probably are and have been similar number of transfer of diseases from humans to animals as well but for well-known biases and whatnot those studies are neither done or are under-funded. There are and have been reports of something like 850,000 undiscovered viruses which various mammals and birds have. Also I did find that most of such pandemics are hard to identify, for e.g. SARS 1 took about 15 years, Ebola we don t know till date from where it came. Even HIV has questions for us. Hell, even why does hearing go away is a mystery to us. In all of this, we want to say China is culpable. And while China may or may not be culpable, only time will tell, this is surely the opportunity for all countries to spend and make capacities in public health. Countries which will take lessons from it and improve their public healthcare models will hopefully will not suffer as those who will suffer and are continuing to suffer now To those who feel that habitat loss of animals is untrue, I would suggest them to see Sherni which depicts the human/animal conflict in all its brutality. I am gonna warn in advance that the ending is not nice but what can you expect from a country in which forest area cover has constantly declined and the Govt. itself is only interested in headline management

The only positive story I can share from India is that finally the Modi Govt. has said we will do free vaccine immunization for everybody. Although the pace is nothing to write home about. One additional thing they relaxed was instead of going to Cowin or any other portal, people could simply walk in using their identity papers. Although, given the pace of vaccinations, it is going to take anywhere between 13-18 months or more depending on availability of vaccines.

Looking forward to all and any replies have a virtual keyboard, preferably xvkbd as that is good enough for my use-case.

• While looking at Kurento Media Server, we stumbled over forked portions of code that are not uploadable to Debian as is (kmsjsoncpp, kms-gstreamer). These components would contain old and unmaintained, but also KMS-patched copies of code. Uploading those would violate Debian policy (which in short forbids code duplications in the archive). We are in touch with Kurento upstream and they have removing these forked projects on their development roadmap, although it is unclear when this might be ready for productive use.
• At the same time, we read BBB developer posts that suggested Janus WebRTC as a possible alternative to Kurento Media Server. As our main directive is getting BigBlueButton into Debian, we might drop the Kurento packaging initiative and spend resources on other components (as Janus WebRTC, thanks to Jonas Smedegaard, already is in Debian).
• The coming week (what a great coincidence), BigBlueButton World 2021 [2] will be held online and the schedule promises a lot of interesting talks and speakers. If interested, join up for free registration. Amongst others, Paulo Lanzarin will be speaking about "BigBlueButton s Media Stack: Overview and the Road Ahead" (12:30 EST(!), June 23rd). For the complete schedule, see [3].

• Thanks to Paul Wise, who joined the packaging effort last week.
• Thanks to Ingo Wichmann from Linuxhotel who is my point of contact on this to the sponsor (German Unix Users Group e.V.) of this endeavour.

All of the faces they could see were certainly nice. Both the men and women looked kind and wise, and they seemed to come of a handsome race. But after the children had gone a few steps down the room they came to faces that looked a little different. These were very solemn faces. You felt you would have to mind your P's and Q's, if you ever met living people who looked like that. When they had gone a little farther, they found themselves among faces they didn't like: this was about the middle of the room. The faces here looked very strong and proud and happy, but they looked cruel. A little further on, they looked crueller. Further on again, they were still cruel but they no longer looked happy. They were even despairing faces: as if the people they belonged to had done dreadful things and also suffered dreadful things.

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

class Role(role.Role):
    """
    Postfix mail server configuration
    """
    # Postmaster username
    postmaster: str = None
    # Public name of the mail server
    myhostname: str = None
    # Email aliases defined on this mail server
    aliases: Dict[str, str] = field(default_factory=dict)

class Role:
    # [...]
    def render_file(self, path: str, **kwargs):
        """
        Render a Jinja2 template from a file, using as context all Role fields,
        plus the given kwargs.
        """
        ctx = asdict(self)
        ctx.update(kwargs)
        return self.template_engine.render_file(path, ctx)
    def render_string(self, template: str, **kwargs):
        """
        Render a Jinja2 template from a string, using as context all Role fields,
        plus the given kwargs.
        """
        ctx = asdict(self)
        ctx.update(kwargs)
        return self.template_engine.render_string(template, ctx)

# From ansible/module_utils/facts/system/platform.py
@dataclass
class Platform(Facts):
    """
    Facts from the platform module
    """
    ansible_system: Optional[str] = None
    ansible_kernel: Optional[str] = None
    ansible_kernel: Optional[str] = None
    ansible_kernel_version: Optional[str] = None
    ansible_machine: Optional[str] = None
    # [...]
    ansible_userspace_architecture: Optional[str] = None
    ansible_machine_id: Optional[str] = None
    def summary(self):
        return "gather platform facts"
    def run(self, system: transilience.system.System):
        super().run(system)
        # ... collect facts

# Postfix mail server configuration
@role.with_facts([actions.facts.Platform])
class Role(role.Role):
    # Postmaster username
    postmaster: str = None
    # Public name of the mail server
    myhostname: str = None
    # Email aliases defined on this mail server
    aliases: Dict[str, str] = field(default_factory=dict)
    # All fields from actions.facts.Platform are inherited here!
    def have_facts(self, facts):
        # self.ansible_domain comes from actions.facts.Platform
        self.add(builtin.command(
            argv=["certbot", "certonly", "-d", f"mail. self.ansible_domain ", "-n", "--apache"],
            creates=f"/etc/letsencrypt/live/mail. self.ansible_domain /fullchain.pem"
        ), name="obtain mail.* certificate")
        # the template context will have the Role variables, plus the variables
        # of all the Facts the Role uses
        with self.notify(ReloadPostfix):
            self.add(builtin.copy(
                dest="/etc/postfix/main.cf",
                content=self.render_file("roles/mailserver/templates/main.cf"),
            ), name="configure /etc/postfix/main.cf")

    runner.add_role(
            "mailserver",
            postmaster="enrico",
            myhostname="mail.enricozini.org",
            aliases= 
                "me": "enrico",
             ,
    )

• Roles can use variables without risking interfering with each other.
• Variables from facts can have well defined meanings across roles.
• Roles are classes, and can easily be made inheritable.

Popular Python Tools 2021Python tools make life much easier for any developer and provide ample opportunities for creating effective applications or sites. These solutions help to automate different processes and minimize routine tasks.In fact, their functionality varies considerably. Some are made for full-fledged complex multi-level development, while others have a simplified interface that allows you to develop individual modules and blocks. Before choosing a tool, you need to define objectives and understand goals. In this case, it will become clear what exactly to use.

MailtrapAs you may probably know, in order to send an email, you need SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). This is because you can't just send a letter to the recipient. It needs to be sent to the server from which the recipient will download this letter using IMAP and POP3.Mailtrap provides an opportunity to send emails in python. Moreover, Mailtrap provides #rest #api to access current emails. It can be used to automate email testing, which will improve your email marketing campaigns. For example, you can check the password recovery form in the Selenium Test and immediately see if an email was sent to the correct address. Then take a new password from the email and try to enter the site with it. Cool, isn't it?

Pros

• All emails are in one place.
• Mailtrap provides multiple inboxes.
• Shared access is present.
• It is easy to set up.
• RESTful API

ConsNo visible disadvantages were found.

Django

Django is a free and open-source full-stack framework. It is one of the most important and popular among Python developers. It helps you move from a prototype to a ready-made working solution in a short time since its main task is to automate processes and speed up work through associations and libraries. It s a great choice for a product launch.You can use Django if at least a few of the following points interest you:

• There is a need to develop the server-side of the API.
• You need to develop a web application.
• In the course of work, many changes are made, you have to constantly deploy the application and make edits.
• There are many complex tasks that are difficult to solve on your own, and you will need the help of the community.
• ORM support is needed to avoid accessing the database directly.
• There is a need to integrate new technologies such as machine learning.

Django is a great Python Web Framework that does its job. It is not for nothing that it is one of the most popular, and is actively used by millions of developers.

ProsDjango has quite a few advantages. It contains a large number of ready-made solutions, which greatly simplifies development. Admin panel, database migration, various forms, user authentication tools are extremely helpful. The structure is very clear and simple.A large community helps to solve almost any problem. Thanks to ORM, there is a high level of security and it is comfortable to work with databases.

ConsDespite its powerful capabilities, Django's Python Web Framework has drawbacks. It is very massive, monolithic, therefore it develops slowly. Despite the many generic modules, the development speed of Django itself is reduced.

CherryPy

CherryPy is a micro-framework. It is designed to solve specific problems, capable of running the program on any operating system. CherryPy is used in the following cases:

• To create an application with small code size.
• There is a need to manage several servers at the same time.
• You need to monitor the performance of applications.

CherryPy refers to Python Frameworks, which are designed for specific tasks. It's clear, user-friendly, and ideal for Android development.

ProsCherryPy Python tool has a friendly and understandable development environment. This is a functional and complete framework, which can be used to build good applications. The source code is open, so the platform is completely free for developers, and the community, although not too large, is very responsive, and always helps to solve problems.

ConsThere are not so many cons to this Python tool. It is not capable of performing complex tasks and functions, it is intended more for specific solutions, for example, for the development of certain plugins or modules.

Pyramid

Python Pyramid tool is designed for programming complex objects and solving multifunctional problems. It is used by professional programmers and is traditionally used for identification and routing. It is aimed at a wide audience and is capable of developing API prototypes.It is used in the following cases:

• You need problem indicator tools to make timely adjustments and edits.
• You use several programming languages at once;
• You work with reporting and financial calculations, forecasting;
• You need to quickly create a simple application.

At the same time, the Python Web Framework Pyramid allows you to create complex applications with great functionality like a translation software.

ProsPyramid does an excellent job of developing basic applications quickly. It is quite flexible and easy to learn. In fact, the key to the success of this framework is that it is completely based on fundamental principles, using simple and basic programming techniques. It is minimalistic, but at the same time offers users a lot of freedom of action. It is able to work with both small applications and powerful multifunctional programs.

ConsIt is difficult to deviate from the basic principles. This Python tool makes the decision for you. Simple programs are very easy to implement. But to do something complex and large-scale, you have to completely immerse yourself in the study of the environment and obey it.

Grok

Grok is a Python tool that works with templates. Its main task is to eliminate repetitions in the code. If the element is repeated, then the template that was already created earlier is simply applied. This greatly simplifies and speeds up the work.Grok suits developers in the following cases:

• If a programmer has little experience and is not yet ready to develop his modules.
• There is a need to quickly develop a simple application.
• The functionality of the application is simple, straightforward, and the interface does not play a key role.

ProsThe Grok framework is a child of Zope3, which was released earlier. It has a simplified structure of work, easy installation of modules, more capabilities, and better flexibility. It is designed to develop small applications. Yes, it is not intended for complex work, but due to its functionality, it allows you to quickly implement a project.

ConsThe Grok community is not very large, as this Python tool has not gained widespread popularity. Nevertheless, it is used by Python adepts for comfortable development. It is impossible to implement complex tasks on it since the possibilities are quite limited.Grok is one of the best Python Web Frameworks. It is understandable and has enough features for comfortable development.

Web2Py

Web2Py is a Python tool that has its own IDEwhich, which includes a code editor, debugger, and deployment. It works great without the need for configuration or installation, provides a high level of data security, and is suitable for work on various platforms.Web2Py is great in the following cases:

• When there is a need to develop something on different operating systems.
• If there is no way to install and configure the framework.
• When a high level of data security is required, for example, when developing financial applications or sales performance management tools.
• If you need to carefully track bugs right during development, and not during the testing phase.

ProsWeb2Py is capable of working with different protocols, has a built-in error tracker, and has a backward compatibility feature that helps to work on the basis of previous versions of the framework. This means that code maintenance becomes much easier and cheaper. It's free, open-source, and very flexible.

ConsAmong the many Python tools, there are not many that require the latest version of the language. Web2Py is one of those and won't work on Python 3 and below. Therefore, you need to constantly monitor the updates.Web2Py does an excellent job of its tasks. It is quite simple and accessible to everyone.

BlueBream

BlueBream used to be called Zope3 before. It copes well with tasks of the medium and high level of complexity and is suitable for working on serious projects.

ProsThe BlueBream build system is quite powerful and suitable for complex tasks. You can create functional applications on it, and the principle of reuse of components makes the code easier. At the same time, the speed of development increases. The software can be scaled, and a transactional object database provides an easy path to store it. This means that queries are processed quickly and database management is simple.

ConsThis is not a very flexible framework, it is better to know clearly in advance what is required of it. In addition, it cannot withstand heavy loads. When working with 1000 users at the same time, it can crash and give errors. Therefore, it should be used to solve narrow problems.Python frameworks are often designed for specific tasks. BlueBream is one of these and is suitable for applications where database management plays a key role.

ConclusionPython tools come in different forms and have vastly different capabilities. There are quite a few of them, but in 2021 these will be the most popular and in demand. Experienced programmers always choose several development tools for their comfortable work.

• Abhijith PA did 7.0h (out of 14h assigned and 12h from April), thus carrying over 19h to June.
• Anton Gladky did 12h (out of 12h assigned).
• Ben Hutchings did 16h (out of 13.5h assigned plus 4.5h from April), thus is carrying over 2h for June.
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Holger Levsen s work was coordinating/managing the LTS team, he did 5.5h and gave back 6.5h to the pool.
• Markus Koschany did 15h (out of 29.75h assigned and 15h from April), thus carrying over 29.75h to June.
• Ola Lundqvist did 12h (out of 12h assigned and 4.5h from April), thus carrying over 4.5h to June.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 7.5h (out of 27.5h assigned and 27h from April), and gave back 47h to the pool.
• Sylvain Beucler did 29.75h (out of 29.75h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 29.75h (out of 29.75h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 29.75h (out of 29.75h assigned).

• Platinum sponsors:
  • TOSHIBA (for 69 months)
  • GitHub (for 59 months)
  • Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 37 months)
• Gold sponsors:
  • Blablacar (for 84 months)
  • Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 80 months)
  • Linode (for 74 months)
  • Babiel GmbH (for 63 months)
  • Plat Home (for 62 months)
  • University of Oxford (for 19 months)
  • Deveryware (for 6 months)
  • VyOS
• Silver sponsors:
  • The Positive Internet Company (for 85 months)
  • Domeneshop AS (for 84 months)
  • Nantes M tropole (for 78 months)
  • Univention GmbH (for 70 months)
  • Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 70 months)
  • Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 64 months)
  • Exonet B.V. (for 53 months)
  • Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 47 months)
  • CINECA (for 37 months)
  • Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 31 months)
  • Cloudways Ltd (for 20 months)
  • Dinahosting SL (for 18 months)
  • Platform.sh (for 13 months)
  • Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 12 months)
  • Moxa Intelligence Co., Ltd. (for 6 months)
  • sipgate GmbH (for 4 months)
  • OVH US LLC
  • Tilburg University
• Bronze sponsors:
  • Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 85 months)
  • Evolix (for 84 months)
  • Linuxhotel GmbH (for 82 months)
  • Intevation GmbH (for 81 months)
  • Daevel SARL (for 80 months)
  • Bitfolk LTD (for 79 months)
  • Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 79 months)
  • Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 78 months)
  • NUMLOG (for 78 months)
  • WinGo AG (for 77 months)
  • Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 73 months)
  • Entr ouvert (for 69 months)
  • Adfinis AG (for 66 months)
  • Tesorion (for 61 months)
  • GNI MEDIA (for 60 months)
  • Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 60 months)
  • Bearstech (for 52 months)
  • LiHAS (for 52 months)
  • People Doc (for 48 months)
  • Catalyst IT Ltd (for 46 months)
  • Demarcq SAS (for 40 months)
  • Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 26 months)
  • TouchWeb SAS (for 18 months)
  • SPiN AG (for 15 months)
  • CoreFiling (for 11 months)
  • Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod (for 6 months)
  • Observatoire des Sciences de l Univers de Grenoble

class Role(role.Role):
    def main(self):
        self.add(builtin.apt(
            name=["fail2ban"],
            state="present",
        ))
        self.add(builtin.copy(
            content=inline("""
                [postfix]
                enabled = true
                [dovecot]
                enabled = true
            """),
            dest="/etc/fail2ban/jail.local",
            owner="root",
            group="root",
            mode=0o644,
        ), name="configure fail2ban")

#!/usr/bin/python3
import sys
from transilience.system import Mitogen
from transilience.runner import Runner
@Runner.cli
def main():
    system = Mitogen("my server", "ssh", hostname="server.example.org", username="root")
    runner = Runner(system)
    # Send roles to the server
    runner.add_role("general")
    runner.add_role("fail2ban")
    runner.add_role("prosody")
    # Run until all roles are done
    runner.main()
if __name__ == "__main__":
    sys.exit(main())

from transilience import actions, role
from transilience.actions import builtin
from .handlers import RestartProsody
class Role(role.Role):
    """
    Set up prosody XMPP server
    """
    def main(self):
        self.add(actions.facts.Platform(), then=self.have_facts)
        self.add(builtin.apt(
            name=["certbot", "python-certbot-apache"],
            state="present",
        ), name="install support packages")
        self.add(builtin.apt(
            name=["prosody", "prosody-modules", "lua-sec", "lua-event", "lua-dbi-sqlite3"],
            state="present",
        ), name="install prosody packages")
    def have_facts(self, facts):
        facts = facts.facts  # Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich!
        domain = facts["domain"]
        ctx =  
            "ansible_domain": domain
         
        self.add(builtin.command(
            argv=["certbot", "certonly", "-d", f"chat. domain ", "-n", "--apache"],
            creates=f"/etc/letsencrypt/live/chat. domain /fullchain.pem"
        ), name="obtain chat certificate")
        with self.notify(RestartProsody):
            self.add(builtin.copy(
                content=self.template_engine.render_file("roles/prosody/templates/prosody.cfg.lua", ctx),
                dest="/etc/prosody/prosody.cfg.lua",
            ), name="write prosody configuration")
            self.add(builtin.copy(
                src="roles/prosody/templates/firewall-ruleset.pfw",
                dest="/etc/prosody/firewall-ruleset.pfw",
            ), name="write prosody firewall")
    # ...

        a = self.add(builtin.copy(
            owner="root",
            group="root",
            mode=0o644,
            dest="/etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-buster-backports.list",
            content="deb [arch=amd64] https://mirrors.gandi.net/debian/ buster-backports main contrib",
        ), name="enable backports")
        self.add(builtin.apt(
            update_cache=True
        ), name="update after enabling backports",
           # Run only if the previous copy changed anything
           when= a: ResultState.CHANGED ,
        )

$ time ansible-playbook vps.yaml
[...]
servername       : ok=55   changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
real    2m10.072s
user    0m33.149s
sys 0m10.379s

$ export ANSIBLE_STRATEGY=mitogen_linear
$ time ansible-playbook vps.yaml
[...]
servername       : ok=55   changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
real    0m24.428s
user    0m8.479s
sys 0m1.894s

$ time ./provision
[...]
real    0m2.585s
user    0m0.659s
sys 0m0.034s

• polishing the packaging, adding a setup.py, publishing to PIP, packaging in Debian
• adding example playbooks
• porting more Ansible modules to Transilience actions
• improving the command line interface
• test other ways to feed actions to pipelines
• test other pipeline primitives
• add backends besides Local and Mitogen
• prototype a parser to turn a subsets of YAML playbook syntax into transilience actions
• adopt it into your multinational organization infrastructure to speed up provisioning times by orders of magnitude at the cost of the development time that it takes to turn this prototype into something solid and road tested
• create a startup and get millions in venture capital to disrupt the provisioning ecosystem

Installing Ikiwiki dependencies Here are all of the extra Debian packages I had to install on my server:

apt install ikiwiki ikiwiki-hosting-common gcc libauthen-passphrase-perl libcgi-formbuilder-perl libcrypt-sslauthen-passphrase-perl libcgi-formbuilder-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libjson-xs-perl librpc-xml-perl python-docutils libxml-feed-perl libsearch-xapian-perl libmailtools-perl highlight-common libsearch-xapian-perl xapian-omega
apt install --no-install-recommends ikiwiki-hosting-web libgravatar-url-perl libmail-sendmail-perl libcgi-session-perl
apt purge libnet-openid-consumer-perl

Then I enabled the CGI module in Apache:

a2enmod cgi

and un-commented the following in /etc/apache2/mods-available/mime.conf:

AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

Creating a separate user account Since Ikiwiki needs to regenerate my blog whenever a new article is pushed to the git repo or a comment is accepted, I created a restricted user account for it:

adduser blog
adduser blog sshuser
chsh -s /usr/bin/git-shell blog

git setup Thanks to Branchable storing blogs in git repositories, I was able to import my blog using a simple git clone in /home/blog (the srcdir):

git clone --bare git://feedingthecloud.branchable.com/ source.git

Note that the name of the directory (source.git) is important for the ikiwikihosting plugin to work. Then I pulled the .setup file out of the setup branch in that repo and put it in /home/blog/.ikiwiki/FeedingTheCloud.setup. After that, I deleted the setup branch and the origin remote from that clone:

git branch -d setup
git remote rm origin

Following the recommended git configuration, I created a working directory (the repository) for the blog user to modify the blog as needed:

cd /home/blog/
git clone /home/blog/source.git FeedingTheCloud

I added my own ssh public key to /home/blog/.ssh/authorized_keys so that I could push to the srcdir from my laptop. Finaly, I generated a new ssh key without a passphrase:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519

and added it as deploy key to the GitHub repo which acts as a read-only mirror of my blog.

Ikiwiki config While I started with the Branchable setup file, I changed the following things in it:

adminemail: webmaster@fmarier.org
srcdir: /home/blog/FeedingTheCloud
destdir: /var/www/blog
url: https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz
cgiurl: https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/blog.cgi
cgi_wrapper: /var/www/blog/blog.cgi
cgi_wrappermode: 675
add_plugins:
- goodstuff
- lockedit
- comments
- blogspam
- sidebar
- attachment
- favicon
- format
- highlight
- search
- theme
- moderatedcomments
- flattr
- calendar
- headinganchors
- notifyemail
- anonok
- autoindex
- date
- relativedate
- htmlbalance
- pagestats
- sortnaturally
- ikiwikihosting
- gitpush
- emailauth
disable_plugins:
- brokenlinks
- fortune
- more
- openid
- orphans
- passwordauth
- progress
- recentchanges
- repolist
- toggle
- txt
sslcookie: 1
cookiejar:
  file: /home/blog/.ikiwiki/cookies
useragent: ikiwiki
git_wrapper: /home/blog/source.git/hooks/post-update
urlalias:
- http://feeds.cloud.geek.nz/
- http://www.feeding.cloud.geek.nz/
owner: francois@fmarier.org
hostname: feeding.cloud.geek.nz
emailauth_sender: login@fmarier.org
allowed_attachments: admin()

Then I created the destdir:

mkdir /var/www/blog
chown blog:blog /var/www/blog

and generated the initial copy of the blog as the blog user:

ikiwiki --setup .ikiwiki/FeedingTheCloud.setup --wrappers --rebuild

One thing that failed to generate properly was the tag cloug (from the pagestats plugin). I have not been able to figure out why it fails to generate any output when run this way, but if I push to the repo and let the git hook handle the rebuilding of the wiki, the tag cloud is generated correctly. Consequently, fixing this is not high on my list of priorities, but if you happen to know what the problem is, please reach out.

Apache config Here's the Apache config I put in /etc/apache2/sites-available/blog.conf:

<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName feeding.cloud.geek.nz
    SSLEngine On
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/feeding.cloud.geek.nz/fullchain.pem
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/feeding.cloud.geek.nz/privkey.pem
    Header set Strict-Transport-Security: "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload"
    Include /etc/fmarier-org/blog-common
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName www.feeding.cloud.geek.nz
    ServerAlias feeds.cloud.geek.nz
    SSLEngine On
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/feeding.cloud.geek.nz/fullchain.pem
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/feeding.cloud.geek.nz/privkey.pem
    Redirect permanent / https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName feeding.cloud.geek.nz
    ServerAlias www.feeding.cloud.geek.nz
    ServerAlias feeds.cloud.geek.nz
    Redirect permanent / https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/
</VirtualHost>

and the common config I put in /etc/fmarier-org/blog-common:

ServerAdmin webmaster@fmarier.org
DocumentRoot /var/www/blog
LogLevel core:info
CustomLog $ APACHE_LOG_DIR /blog-access.log combined
ErrorLog $ APACHE_LOG_DIR /blog-error.log
AddType application/rss+xml .rss
<Location /blog.cgi>
        Options +ExecCGI
</Location>

before enabling all of this using:

a2ensite blog
apache2ctl configtest
systemctl restart apache2.service

The feeds.cloud.geek.nz domain used to be pointing to Feedburner and so I need to maintain it in order to avoid breaking RSS feeds from folks who added my blog to their reader a long time ago.

Server-side improvements Since I'm now in control of the server configuration, I was able to make several improvements to how my blog is served. First of all, I enabled the HTTP/2 and Brotli modules:

a2enmod http2
a2enmod brotli

and enabled Brotli compression by putting the following in /etc/apache2/conf-available/compression.conf:

<IfModule mod_brotli.c>
  <IfDefine !TRANSFER_COMPRESSION>
    Define TRANSFER_COMPRESSION BROTLI_COMPRESS
  </IfDefine>
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
  <IfDefine !TRANSFER_COMPRESSION>
    Define TRANSFER_COMPRESSION DEFLATE
  </IfDefine>
</IfModule>
<IfDefine TRANSFER_COMPRESSION>
  <IfModule mod_filter.c>
    AddOutputFilterByType $ TRANSFER_COMPRESSION  text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType $ TRANSFER_COMPRESSION  application/x-javascript application/javascript application/ecmascript
    AddOutputFilterByType $ TRANSFER_COMPRESSION  application/rss+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType $ TRANSFER_COMPRESSION  application/xml
  </IfModule>
</IfDefine>

and replacing /etc/apache2/mods-available/deflate.conf with the following:

# Moved to /etc/apache2/conf-available/compression.conf as per https://bugs.debian.org/972632

before enabling this new config:

a2enconf compression

Next, I made my blog available as a Tor onion service by putting the following in /etc/apache2/sites-available/blog.conf:

<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName feeding.cloud.geek.nz
    ServerAlias xfdug5vmfi6oh42fp6ahhrqdjcf7ysqat6fkp5dhvde4d7vlkqixrsad.onion
    Header set Onion-Location "http://xfdug5vmfi6oh42fp6ahhrqdjcf7ysqat6fkp5dhvde4d7vlkqixrsad.onion% REQUEST_URI s"
    Header set alt-svc 'h2="xfdug5vmfi6oh42fp6ahhrqdjcf7ysqat6fkp5dhvde4d7vlkqixrsad.onion:443"; ma=315360000; persist=1'
    ... 

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName xfdug5vmfi6oh42fp6ahhrqdjcf7ysqat6fkp5dhvde4d7vlkqixrsad.onion
    Include /etc/fmarier-org/blog-common
</VirtualHost>

Then I followed the Mozilla Observatory recommendations and enabled the following security headers:

Header set Content-Security-Policy: "default-src 'none'; report-uri https://fmarier.report-uri.com/r/d/csp/enforce ; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' ; img-src 'self' https://seccdn.libravatar.org/ ; script-src https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/ikiwiki/ https://xfdug5vmfi6oh42fp6ahhrqdjcf7ysqat6fkp5dhvde4d7vlkqixrsad.onion/ikiwiki/ http://xfdug5vmfi6oh42fp6ahhrqdjcf7ysqat6fkp5dhvde4d7vlkqixrsad.onion/ikiwiki/ 'unsafe-inline' 'sha256-pA8FbKo4pYLWPDH2YMPqcPMBzbjH/RYj0HlNAHYoYT0=' 'sha256-Kn5E/7OLXYSq+EKMhEBGJMyU6bREA9E8Av9FjqbpGKk=' 'sha256-/BTNlczeBxXOoPvhwvE1ftmxwg9z+WIBJtpk3qe7Pqo=' ; base-uri 'self'; form-action 'self' ; frame-ancestors 'self'"
Header set X-Frame-Options: "SAMEORIGIN"
Header set Referrer-Policy: "same-origin"
Header set X-Content-Type-Options: "nosniff"

Note that the Mozilla Observatory is mistakenly identifying HTTP onion services as insecure, so you can ignore that failure. I also used the Mozilla TLS config generator to improve the TLS config for my server. Then I added security.txt and gpc.json to the root of my git repo and then added the following aliases to put these files in the right place:

Alias /.well-known/gpc.json /var/www/blog/gpc.json
Alias /.well-known/security.txt /var/www/blog/security.txt

I also followed these instructions to create a sitemap for my blog with the following alias:

Alias /sitemap.xml /var/www/blog/sitemap/index.rss

Finally, I simplified a few error pages to save bandwidth:

ErrorDocument 301 " "
ErrorDocument 302 " "
ErrorDocument 404 "Not Found"

Monitoring 404s Another advantage of running my own web server is that I can monitor the 404s easily using logcheck by putting the following in /etc/logcheck/logcheck.logfiles:

/var/log/apache2/blog-error.log 

Based on that, I added a few redirects to point bots and users to the location of my RSS feed:

Redirect permanent /atom /index.atom
Redirect permanent /comments.rss /comments/index.rss
Redirect permanent /comments.atom /comments/index.atom
Redirect permanent /FeedingTheCloud /index.rss
Redirect permanent /feed /index.rss
Redirect permanent /feed/ /index.rss
Redirect permanent /feeds/posts/default /index.rss
Redirect permanent /rss /index.rss
Redirect permanent /rss/ /index.rss

and to tell them to stop trying to fetch obsolete resources:

Redirect gone /~ff/FeedingTheCloud
Redirect gone /gittip_button.png
Redirect gone /ikiwiki.cgi

I also used these 404s to discover a few old Feedburner URLs that I could redirect to the right place using archive.org:

Redirect permanent /feeds/1572545745827565861/comments/default /posts/watch-all-of-your-logs-using-monkeytail/comments.atom
Redirect permanent /feeds/1582328597404141220/comments/default /posts/news-feeds-rssatom-for-mythtvorg-and/comments.atom
...
Redirect permanent /feeds/8490436852808833136/comments/default /posts/recovering-lost-git-commits/comments.atom
Redirect permanent /feeds/963415010433858516/comments/default /posts/debugging-openwrt-routers-by-shipping/comments.atom

I also put the following robots.txt in the git repo in order to stop a bunch of authentication errors coming from crawlers:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog.cgi
Disallow: /ikiwiki.cgi

Future improvements There are a few things I'd like to improve on my current setup. The first one is to remove the iwikihosting and gitpush plugins and replace them with a small script which would simply git push to the read-only GitHub mirror. Then I could uninstall the ikiwiki-hosting-common and ikiwiki-hosting-web since that's all I use them for. Next, I would like to have proper support for signed git pushes. At the moment, I have the following in /home/blog/source.git/config:

[receive]
    advertisePushOptions = true
    certNonceSeed = "(random string)"

but I'd like to also reject unsigned pushes. While my blog now has a CSP policy which doesn't rely on unsafe-inline for scripts, it does rely on unsafe-inline for stylesheets. I tried to remove this but the actual calls to allow seemed to be located deep within jQuery and so I gave up. Update: now fixed. Finally, I'd like to figure out a good way to deal with articles which don't currently have comments. At the moment, if you try to subscribe to their comment feed, it returns a 404. For example:

[Sun Jun 06 17:43:12.336350 2021] [core:info] [pid 30591:tid 140253834704640] [client 66.249.66.70:57381] AH00128: File does not exist: /var/www/blog/posts/using-iptables-with-network-manager/comments.atom

This is obviously not ideal since many feed readers will refuse to add a feed which is currently not found even though it could become real in the future. If you know of a way to fix this, please let me know.

QSoas> load kcat-vs-ph.dat
QSoas> split-on-values pH x /flags=data

QSoas> k
Normal stack:
	 F  C	Rows	Segs	Name	
#0	(*) 1	43	1	'kcat-vs-ph_subset_22.dat'
#1	(*) 1	44	1	'kcat-vs-ph_subset_21.dat'
#2	(*) 1	43	1	'kcat-vs-ph_subset_20.dat'
...

stats /meta=pH /output=true /stats=x_average,x_stddev

QSoas> run-for-datasets process-one.cmds flagged:data

l kcat-vs-ph.dat
split-on-values pH x /flags=data
output result.dat /overwrite=true
run-for-datasets process-one.cmds flagged:data
l result.dat
apply-formula tmp=y2;y2=y;y=x;x=tmp
dataset-options /yerrors=y2

• the stats command can work with datasets other than the current one, by supplying them to the /buffers= option, so that it is not necessary to use run-for-datasets;
• the use of the output file can by replaced by the use of the accumulator.

l kcat-vs-ph.dat
split-on-values pH x /flags=data
stats /meta=pH /accumulate=* /stats=x_average,x_stddev /buffers=flagged:data
pop
apply-formula tmp=y2;y2=y;y=x;x=tmp
dataset-options /yerrors=y2