I ve gotten a couple of complaints on the amount of daemons that is launched by default by any app built upon the KDE Frameworks, so I investigated one of them a bit.
The knotify daemon currently seems to do two things:
Dropbox is a popular service to synchronize files between multiple computers. The service is entirely proprietary but the company is Linux friendly and provides Linux binaries ready to use. They even provide Ubuntu packages that wrap the dropbox client and provide integration with Nautilus.
A bit of story
Unfortunately for Debian users, those packages do not work on Debian due to a dependency that can t be satisfied (because Ubuntu introduced an epoch on the version of their nautilus package that Debian doesn t have). This was even reported in a Squeeze review in Linux Weekly News.
At some point, Ivan Borzenkov introduced a dropbox package to Debian but it was not based on the above package, instead it packaged directly the proprietary binaries. This was a bad decision because the binaries bundle a set of LGPL libraries and nobody from Debian wanted to do the required work to provide the corresponding source code. So the package got dropped (see bug #610300).
More recently several persons filed ITP (Intent To Package) bugs stating their willingness to re-introduce dropbox in Debian, but after many months lingering in the bug tracking system (see #544499, #613788), they have been turned back to RFP (Request For Package) because they changed their minds.
What I did
Being a dropbox user myself (despite the recent proof that data stored on dropbox is not 100% private), I offered sponsorship to the volunteers who wanted to package dropbox. But it turns out this was not enough to motivate someone to complete the task.
In the mean time I was still using the old dropbox package that was removed (it used to be downloadable from snapshot.debian.org).
While this was good enough for me, it s clearly not OK in the long term and way too difficult for the majority of users. So this week-end I spent some hours to create a proper package.
It s loosely based on the package provided by Dropbox but I upgraded the packaging and changed the way it works. I patched the dropbox wrapper to provide a dropbox update command that downloads and updates the proprietary binaries. They are now stored in /var/lib/dropbox instead of having a copy in each user s home directory (~/.dropbox-dist/). This update command is run by the postinst so that installing the package immediately downloads the proprietary binaries.
Get the Dropbox packages for Debian
The package nautilus-dropbox has been uploaded to Debian unstable,apt-get install nautilus-dropbox (provided that you activated the non-free section since that s where the package is hosted, it can t be part of Debian since it requires the proprietary binaries to be useful).
In the mean time you can get the packages from the links below:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hertzog/nautilus-dropbox $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install nautilus-dropboxIt also includes packages for oneiric, but in theory once the package is accepted into Debian, it should appear in oneiric shortly after. Package maintenance I have done the initial packaging work but I don t really want to maintain it in the long term. I have more than enough to do with dpkg and my other packages. So if you are interested in maintaining this package, please get in touch with me. You should know a bit of python since there are Debian-specific patches of the upstream code. The package is maintained in a git repository. Feedback If you have encountered a problem with one of those packages, feel free to leave a comment. If you re an happy user of the above packages, click here to find out how you can thank me. I hope you enjoy the packages!
13 comments Liked this article? Click here. My blog is Flattr-enabled.
On June 8, 2011, will be World IPv6 Day. Major
web companies like Google, Yahoo! and Facebook will serve their
content through IPv6. While some of them already provide IPv6 content,
you either need to use a special URL or get your connection from some
selected providers, known to provide working IPv6 connection (the
selection is done through DNS).
We continuously conduct detailed measurements on the quality of IPv6 connectivity, and our latest results show that making Google services generally available over IPv6 at this time would lead to connection problems and increased latency for a small number of users. User experience is very important to us, and we do not want to impact users on networks that do not yet fully support IPv6. We will continue to re-evaluate the situation as the IPv6 Internet evolves.While content provider are invited to provide IPv6 content, network operator are expected to troubleshoot their customers problem (and they cannot withdraw themselves from this operation since the main change is done by content providers). If they can enable IPv6 connectivity, that would be great too but this is not mandatory. UPDATED: It s a shame but Microsoft s participation to World IPv6 day is a fix to prefer IPv4 over IPv6. Moreover, this fix will be reverted a few days later. Let s hope that network operators don t follow the lead by not setting up DNS hijacking to remove
AAAA
record.
apt-get install aiccu) or Hurricane Electric. Wikipedia has a
list of IPv6 tunnel brokers. Don t rely on any other
transition mechanism, they are unreliable.
ss -6l. All the tips below are meant for very
simple setup. Ensure that net.ipv6.bindv6only is set to 0. Here is
what I have done:
ListenAddress
directive if you have one.nginx -V) use listen [::]:80 instead of listen 80. Apache
is equally easy to configure and should even work out of the box
since the Listen 80 directive will listen to both IPv4 and IPv6
by default. lighttpd also supports IPv6. An easy way to
get started is to use server.use-ipv6 = "enable".:: by default which means any IPv4 or IPv6 address as
long as net.ipv6.bindv6only is set to 0. Unfortunately, there is
still some daemons that do not support IPv6.AAAA record to your DNS because providing
IPv6 services is of little use if your users (including you) cannot
access them without typing the appropriate IP address. You may also
want to provide a NS record reachable through IPv6.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 | ip6tables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT ip6tables -A OUTPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT for chain in INPUT OUTPUT; do ip6tables -A $chain -m rt --rt-type 0 -j DROP ip6tables -A $chain -p icmpv6 --icmpv6-type neighbor-solicitation \ -m hl --hl-eq 255 -j ACCEPT ip6tables -A $chain -p icmpv6 --icmpv6-type neighbor-advertisement \ -m hl --hl-eq 255 -j ACCEPT ip6tables -A $chain -m state --state NEW \ -p icmpv6 --icmpv6-type echo-request -j ACCEPT done ip6tables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT ip6tables -A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT # Put your rules here! ip6tables -N REJECT_ALL ip6tables -A REJECT_ALL -p tcp -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset ip6tables -A REJECT_ALL -p udp -j REJECT --reject-with icmp6-adm-prohibited ip6tables -A REJECT_ALL -j DROP for chain in INPUT OUTPUT FORWARD; do ip6tables -A $chain -j LOG --log-prefix "$chain-reject: " ip6tables -A $chain -j REJECT_ALL done |
Wonderful concert on Friday evening at Symphony Center:
Charles Lloyd
(Wikipedia; ts, flute, vocals) was in town with both his quartet and trio.
The first part of the set was performed with
Zakir Hussain (Wikipedia;
tabla, vocals) and up-and-coming drummer
Eric Harland (Wikipedia; drums). For the second half,
Lloyd and Harland were joined by
Jason Moran (Wikipedia; piano) -- who
happens to also be a 2010 MacArthur Fellow -- and
Larry Grenadier (Wikipedia; bass) before Hussain returned for the final piece and
encores.
It was evident how much joy Charles Lloyd still gets from performing live at his somewhat advanced age of 73. Surrounded by some
extraordinary musicians, and clearly enjoying himself on stage. Great evening with wonderful jazz music from somewhere in between modern
post-whatever, free, bop and hard bop, world music and everything else in between. I regret not having seen him earlier in
life. Very much recommended.
I'm trying to resume some activity in OSM maintenance.
As many people, I mapped most parts ofmy neighbourhood, as one can see
when looking at Maurepas,
France on the map.
I stopped about 20 months ago because it was becoming too
addictive..:-)
I'll start resuming this work by focusing on things I can easily map:
my tracks from running sessions. What's good in them is that I know
most of these places by heart and can easily remember the terrain
features when working on the map. Also, it means only a few dozens of
minutes to work on a GPS track, so that's manageable.
Another goal I set to myself is improving the map around our country
house in Normandy. As you can see there, there is much more to
do...but when I'm over there, I have more free time..:-)
So, let's see if I can manage my addictability!
Looking North towards where I entered.
Two pictures from slightly different angles that are roughly East from where I was standing in the center of the crowd.
Pictures looking east through the band when people were starting to leave and looking south towards the exit I chose while on the way out.
As I write this, it's the morning of June 5th, 1981. A few people scattered
across the US are waking up, going in to work, sitting down at their terminal
with a coffee, and reading Usenet. Usenet is only getting a trickle of posts
each day -- it's still in that period where it's easy to read every message
posted to it.
Many things lie in Usenet's future. It's still running A-News,
which doesn't even have a real From header yet. Later this year it will switch
over to B-News, and volume will begin to increase. In 1987
there will be The great renaming. And of course in 1994,
the first spam will be posted to Usenet.
But that's all a long way off, here in 1981. Right now, they're talking
about 500 mb disk drives that only cost $38000.
And rms is inciting flames about nuclear proliferation.
And Postel is publishing an RFC for the new Mail Transfer Protocol.
Good morning, Usenet. Who knows what will come next in this fledgeling
electronic communications medium!
a ten year real-time historical exhibit
This morning, I'm announcing a new site: Olduse.net
It's Usenet, updated in real time as it was thirty years ago. Planned to be
available for the next ten years, unless I run out of inodes (again).
If you missed it the first time around, this is your chance to follow
Usenet's flowering.
made possible by
--ftp-master-rejects an alias for the ftp-master profile. This means that you will get the same behavior from Lintian and from the ftp-master auto-reject mechanism. The only issue is that the overrides are silently ignored.
We also made dropped the default profile symlink in favor of using dpkg-vendor to find the best profile. This causes a slight conflict with solving #626476. I have asked the dpkg maintainers if that part of the libdpkg-perl API is stable enough for us to use.
Finally I fixed an issue where profiles would ignore all display settings (--display-info etc.) and just show all tags (except experimental tags).
Beyond the vendor profile branch, there are also a number of interesting changes applied in the master branch.
Together with some people from #debian-python (ScottK and jwilk as I recall), I prepared some python related goodies. Particularly we fixed a false-positive missing-python-build-dependency with python3 and marked dh_pycentral and dh_python as deprecated. On a related note, we have also removed the tag uses-dh-python-with-no-pycompat.
Based on feedback from Eric Lavarde, we redefined the classpath-contains-relative-path tag. It now only emits the bad parts of the Classpath and relative entries are allowed in they exists or point to /usr/share/java/$file.jar and there is a strong libX-java dependency. While the change breaks overrides, according to lintian.d.o we do not have any yet.
The next release will feature a check for non-empty dependency_libs fields in la files and a fix to a flaw in logic for architecture dependent overrides.
We will be reducing our dependency of dpkg-dev to a Suggests (#626476). Currently the xz-utils is in the pseudo-essential set, but it may not stay that way. So in the future you may need to explicitly install xz-utils for Lintian to support .xz source packages.
Last, but not least, if you have felt that the lintianrc file has been rather useless to you, then you are not alone. I have made a prototype patch to improve the situation and hopefully soon you get to specify default options in your lintianrc.
This is for my own reference more than anything else; periodically I find myself needing to boot DOS. Usually because I want to upgrade a BIOS and the upgrade tool only works with Windows or DOS. Yes, I'm aware of flashrom, but the scary messages about toasting laptops means I'm much happier going the DOS route there. So I need a writable medium with a DOS boot image. The easy way to do it is to find a DOS floppy image and write that to a USB stick with dd, but it's basically a one off and means you can't fit a whole lot on the image. I wanted to do a native USB boot. The following did the trick for me.
Firstly, this is all on a Debian testing box, in particular with dosfstools (3.0.9-1), mbr (1.1.11-4) and syslinux (2:4.04+dfsg-2). I don't think I'm using anything particularly new from these tools, so I suspect Debian stable will work just fine.
In the below my USB stick is on /dev/sdb, I've got a copy of FreeDOS in ~/FreeDOS/ (I extracted the files from a balder10.img floppy image that's easy enough to find, but all you need is kernel.sys and command.com), and I wanted things neatly in their own subdirectories so I could try and keep the key for repeated use and know which bits I wanted to keep and which were transient. I also added a copy of the Debian Installer for convenience; it would need a copy of the netinst ISO dropped into the root to actually be useful, as there's not enough to do a full netboot from the wider Internet using just the HD initrd.
# Create a single bootable LBA VFAT partition spanning entire stick.
echo 0,,C,* sfdisk /dev/sdb
# Format as VFAT and give it a disk label.
mkfs.vfat -n 'DOS BOOT' /dev/sdb1
# Install an MBR
install-mbr /dev/sdb
# Mount it and create some directories for our files.
mount /dev/sdb1 /media/DOS\ BOOT/
cd /media/DOS\ BOOT/
mkdir boot
mkdir boot/syslinux/
mkdir FreeDOS
# Copy the chain.c32 syslinux tool over.
cp /usr/lib/syslinux/chain.c32 boot/syslinux/
# Copy FreeDOS over and move the important bits to /
cp ~/FreeDOS/* FreeDOS/
mv FreeDOS/command.com .
mv FreeDOS/autoexec.bat .
mv FreeDOS/fdconfig.sys .
# Add the Debian Installer
mkdir boot/d-i/
cd boot/d-i/
wget http://cdn.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/initrd.gz
wget http://cdn.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/vmlinuz
# Install syslinux
syslinux -d boot /dev/sdb1
boot/syslinux.help file containing:
Available boot options are: FreeDOS d-i
boot/syslinux.cfg with:
prompt 1
display syslinux.help
default FreeDOS
label FreeDOS
COM32 /boot/syslinux/chain.c32
APPEND freedos=/FreeDOS/kernel.sys
label d-i
KERNEL /boot/d-i/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/d-i/initrd.gz
chain.c32 to load kernel.sys rather than having to use a FreeDOS provided boot sector image.
OPTIONS="$OPTIONS --basepath '$BASE'"and then using it with:
pdebuild --pbuilder "$BUILDER" -- $OPTIONS(with some additional complexity). I expected, since
$OPTIONS was
not quoted, that this would expand $OPTIONS and then do shell
parsing again, which would strip off the other level of quotes. But this
doesn't seem to actually work; instead, the quotes are left in, at least
for some shells.
This is apparently some corner of shell quoting that I don't understand.
The chances of the base path containing shell metacharacters is quite low,
so I just went with the solution that feels "underquoted."
Anyway, you can get the latest version from my
scripts page.
My last update about running activities is dated back to Paris
Marathon (April 10th). Time for a new update, then.
After a very busy end March-early April, with that crazy succession of
55km Ecotrail and 42km Paris marathon with only two weeks between both, I
needed a kind of "break".
Moreover, I had another goal set with the 35m trail race named "Trail
des Cerfs", on May 15th, in my neighbourhood.
So, end of April was a little bit quieter. Still, one week after
Paris marathon, I completed a very hard trail run in Seine Valley:
only 18km, but about 600-700m positive slope. That was indeed a good
moutain-style run (yes, in Seine valley....) and a good way to check
that I recovered quite well.
Later on, I slowed down a little with even a Sunday (24th) where I
*didn't run at all*..:-).. Just a few short uns during the week and a
short Saturday run.
Well, that was indeed Easter Sunday and Monday is a holiday in France,
so I ran an half-marathon on 25th...:-)...on a loop where I already
have some references, the fastest being 1h46. This time it was
1h52'...but, well, that was two weeks after a marathon...
Still, a small pain at the back of my ankle decided me to stop running
long distances until May 15th. So, I only did short trainings up to no
more than 12km, even during my stay in Germany for SambaXP.
As a consequence, I was very well for the 35km (600m positive slope)
Trail
des Cerfs, which I completed in 3h31', 168th out of 328
runners. More interestingly, I completed it in negative split with a
much faster second half, ending up at about 12km/h. For seomthing that
(given the slope and the nature of the paths) is comparable to a
marathon, that's very promising.
The rest of May was spent quietly with a standard training and
progressively resuming longer distances. I originally planned to do my
spring solo marathon on May 28th in Versailles Castle park, but I
stopped at km28 and completed the distance two days after with a 14km
run..:-)... Stopping was wiser as I was feeling that the last loop
would have been a great pain. That was indeed the first time I give up
on a marathon. I prefer this to happen for a non official race, after
all!
June will not see any "big goal". I might be running one race
somewhere in my neighbourhood but the point will mostly be
accumulating kilometers before summer. Summer (which includes DebConf
that makes training a little bit more hectic) will not see any race,
probably (unless I find one in banja Luka!) but more some specific
preparation for Berlin marathon. Here, the "safe" target for me is,
first, breaking my record. I'm probably not ready for 3h30 and even
3h35 might be difficult. It seems that I'm now reaching a barrier
where progress becomes harder. Before Berlin, I'll run the Bois d'Arcy
half-marathon, two weeks before. Last year, I managed to set a very
good mark, there, with 1h37. Not sure that i'll try to break this only
two weeks before Berlin.
After Berlin? We'll see, but my last big goal of the year will be the
67km "Le Puy-Firminy" night race, in November (no web site, this is indeed a
"small" local race). Yet another adventure beyond
marathon distances, in the unknown...
Erich Schubert's blog
post
reminded me that I've been meaning to writeup a post detailing how
I'm keeping parts of my $HOME in git
repositories.
My goal has been to keep my home directory in a version control system
effectively. I have a number of constraints however. I want the
system to be modular. I don't always need X related config files in
my home directory. Sometimes I want just my zsh related files and my
emacs related files. I have multiple machines I check email from, and
on those want to keep my notmuch/offlineimap files in sync, but I
don't need these on every machine I'm on, expecially since those
configurations have more sensitive data. I played around with
laysvn for a while, but it never
really seemed comfortable. I more recently discovered that
madduck had started a
"vcs-home" website and mailing list,
talking about doing what I'm trying to do.
I'm now going with madduck's idea of using git with detached work
trees, so that I can have multiple git repositories all using $HOME as
their $GIT_WORK_TREE. I have a script inspired by his
vcsh
script that will create a subshell where the GIT_DIR, GIT_WORK_TREE
variables are set for me. I can do my git operations related to just
one git repository in that shell, while still operating directly on my
config files in $HOME, and avoiding any kind of nasty symlinking or
hardlinking. Since I am usually using my script to allow me to
quickly "move in" to a new host, I named my script "movein". It can
be found here. Here's how I'll
typically use it:
stew@guppy:~$ movein init
git server hostname? git.vireo.org
path to remote repositories? [~/git]
Local repository directory? [~/.movein]
Location of .mrconfig file? [~/.mrconfig]
stew@guppy:~$
stew@guppy:~$ ls .zshrc
ls: cannot access .zshrc: No such file or directory
stew@guppy:~$ movein add shell
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/stew/.movein/shell.git/
remote: Counting objects: 42, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (39/39), done.
remote: Total 42 (delta 18), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (42/42), done.
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/shell
* [new branch] master -> origin/master
stew@guppy:~$ ls .zshrc
.zshrc
stew@guppy:~$ movein add emacs
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/stew/.movein/emacs.git/
remote: Counting objects: 77, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (63/63), done.
remote: Total 77 (delta 10), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (77/77), done.
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/emacs
* [new branch] emacs21 -> origin/emacs21
* [new branch] master -> origin/master
stew@guppy:~$ ls .emacs
.emacs
stew@guppy:~$
stew@guppy:~$ git status
fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
stew@guppy:~ $ movein login shell
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master>*) $ echo >> .zshrc
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master>*) $ git add .zshrc
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master>*) $ git commit -m "adding a newline to the end of .zshrc"
[master 81b7311] adding a newline to the end of .zshrc
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master>*) $ git push
Counting objects: 8, done.
Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
Writing objects: 100% (6/6), 546 bytes, done.
Total 6 (delta 4), reused 0 (delta 0)
To ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/shell.git
d24bf2d..81b7311 master -> master
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master*) $ exit
stew@guppy:~ $
stew@guppy:~ $ touch methere
stew@guppy:~ $ touch mealsothere
stew@guppy:~ $ movein new oohlala methere mealsothere
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/stew/git/oohlala.git/
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/stew/.movein/oohlala.git/
[master (root-commit) 7abe5ba] initial checkin
0 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 mealsothere
create mode 100644 methere
Counting objects: 3, done.
Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 224 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/oohlala.git
* [new branch] master -> master
movein new oohlala methere mealsothere
says "create a new repository containing two files: methere,
mealsothere". A bare repository is created on the remote machine, a
repository is created in the .movein directory, the files are
committed, and the new commit is pushed to the remote repository. New
on some other machine, I could run movein add oohlala to get these
two new files.
The movein script maintains a .mrconfig file, so that joeyh's
mr tool can be used to manage the repositories in bulk. Commands
like "mr update", "mr commit", "mr push" will act on all the known
repositories. Here's an example:
stew@guppy:~ $ cat .mrconfig
[DEFAULT]
include = cat /usr/share/mr/git-fake-bare
[/home/stew/.movein/emacs.git]
checkout = git_fake_bare_checkout 'ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/emacs.git' 'emacs.git' '../../'
[/home/stew/.movein/shell.git]
checkout = git_fake_bare_checkout 'ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/shell.git' 'shell.git' '../../'
[/home/stew/.movein/oohlala.git]
checkout = git_fake_bare_checkout 'ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/oohlala.git' 'oohlala.git' '../../'
stew@guppy:~ $ mr update
mr update: /home/stew//home/stew/.movein/emacs.git
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/emacs
* branch master -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.
mr update: /home/stew//home/stew/.movein/oohlala.git
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/oohlala
* branch master -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.
mr update: /home/stew//home/stew/.movein/shell.git
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/shell
* branch master -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.
mr update: finished (3 ok)
stew@guppy:~ $ mr update
stew@guppy:~$ movein init
git server hostname? git.vireo.org
path to remote repositories? [~/git]
Local repository directory? [~/.movein]
Location of .mrconfig file? [~/.mrconfig]
stew@guppy:~$
stew@guppy:~$ ls .zshrc
ls: cannot access .zshrc: No such file or directory
stew@guppy:~$ movein add shell
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/stew/.movein/shell.git/
remote: Counting objects: 42, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (39/39), done.
remote: Total 42 (delta 18), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (42/42), done.
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/shell
* [new branch] master -> origin/master
stew@guppy:~$ ls .zshrc
.zshrc
stew@guppy:~$ movein add emacs
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/stew/.movein/emacs.git/
remote: Counting objects: 77, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (63/63), done.
remote: Total 77 (delta 10), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (77/77), done.
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/emacs
* [new branch] emacs21 -> origin/emacs21
* [new branch] master -> origin/master
stew@guppy:~$ ls .emacs
.emacs
stew@guppy:~$
stew@guppy:~$ git status
fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
stew@guppy:~ $ movein login shell
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master>*) $ echo >> .zshrc
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master>*) $ git add .zshrc
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master>*) $ git commit -m "adding a newline to the end of .zshrc"
[master 81b7311] adding a newline to the end of .zshrc
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master>*) $ git push
Counting objects: 8, done.
Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
Writing objects: 100% (6/6), 546 bytes, done.
Total 6 (delta 4), reused 0 (delta 0)
To ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/shell.git
d24bf2d..81b7311 master -> master
stew@guppy:~ (shell:master*) $ exit
stew@guppy:~ $
stew@guppy:~ $ touch methere
stew@guppy:~ $ touch mealsothere
stew@guppy:~ $ movein new oohlala methere mealsothere
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/stew/git/oohlala.git/
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/stew/.movein/oohlala.git/
[master (root-commit) 7abe5ba] initial checkin
0 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 mealsothere
create mode 100644 methere
Counting objects: 3, done.
Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 224 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/oohlala.git
* [new branch] master -> master
movein new oohlala methere mealsothere
says "create a new repository containing two files: methere,
mealsothere". A bare repository is created on the remote machine, a
repository is created in the .movein directory, the files are
committed, and the new commit is pushed to the remote repository. New
on some other machine, I could run movein add oohlala to get these
two new files.
The movein script maintains a .mrconfig file, so that joeyh's
mr tool can be used to manage the repositories in bulk. Commands
like "mr update", "mr commit", "mr push" will act on all the known
repositories. Here's an example:
stew@guppy:~ $ cat .mrconfig
[DEFAULT]
include = cat /usr/share/mr/git-fake-bare
[/home/stew/.movein/emacs.git]
checkout = git_fake_bare_checkout 'ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/emacs.git' 'emacs.git' '../../'
[/home/stew/.movein/shell.git]
checkout = git_fake_bare_checkout 'ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/shell.git' 'shell.git' '../../'
[/home/stew/.movein/oohlala.git]
checkout = git_fake_bare_checkout 'ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/oohlala.git' 'oohlala.git' '../../'
stew@guppy:~ $ mr update
mr update: /home/stew//home/stew/.movein/emacs.git
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/emacs
* branch master -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.
mr update: /home/stew//home/stew/.movein/oohlala.git
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/oohlala
* branch master -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.
mr update: /home/stew//home/stew/.movein/shell.git
From ssh://git.vireo.org//home/stew/git/shell
* branch master -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.
mr update: finished (3 ok)
stew@guppy:~ $ mr update
Hello, this is the official project report for the Debian GSoC admins and everyone. It s been few days since the official coding phase started. Most of the time I ve been figuring out the details regarding integration of non-x86 images to the Eucalyptus IaaS and working on the ARM image, as you ll learn later. I m also in the process of starting to design the set of tools we ll be delivering as part of the project.
The project s goal is to be a useful resource for Debian developers and porters. I ve joined some porters list in order to learn what are the things they are struggling with and how the project can help to address them. I ll be starting a wiki page with such topics.
Bonding period:
DECLARATIVE DIVERSIONS
======================
Introduction
A diversion is when it is possible to have dpkg not overwrite a file when it
reinstalls the package it belongs to, and to have it put the file from the
package somewhere else instead.
Declarative diversions involves a new control file with a declarative
syntax which dpkg will parse and process directly as part of the package unpack
and removal phases, eliminating the problems resulting from non-atomic
handling of diversions.
Topics
There are a number of topics involved in implementing this kind of project
* What syntax do we use for the new control file?
* What dpkg does with the control file
* How do we handle diversions to a non-existant directory?
* How do we order unpacking a new package which adds a diversion?
* How do we order unpacking a new package that removes a diversion?
* How do we order removing a package which had a diversion?
* How do we handle errors?
* What happens to dpkg-divert?
-
Details - Control File Syntax
-
It will conform to RFC2822 style with the following format:
* Divert-From:
* Divert-To:
* Blank lines and lines beginning with # will be comments
Divert-To will be optional and if it is ommitted then files being diverted
will have their filename changed to file.distrib
The above style has it s advantages, one of the main ones being that there is
no need to escape whitespace within filenames.
-
Details - Control File Handling
-
Within control.tar.gz the file should be named diversions
This file is then copied to /var/lib/info/$package.diversions
This is ensuring we have a copy of the control file just in case it is needed.
Any input on this subject would be appreciated.
-
Details - Handling Diversions to non-existant directories
-
Diverting files to directories that don t exist can cause a number of problems.
If the package does not own the directory it may be left orphaned on
removal of the package
The package is responsible for ensuring the availability of the target directory in the unpack phase.
-
Details - Ordering Requirements
-
=>Unpacking a new package that adds a diversion
*1. Unpack folders
*2. Add diversions
*3. Unpack files
==Notes==
Performing diversions this way avoids trouble with creating folders and
accidentally overwrtiting the wrong version of files.
If we don t use this method the problems that can occur include creating
folders before the package itself would create them which may cause
permission errors.
Another major problem would be extracting a new version of the file and
overwriting the old one.
This might cause the wrong version of the file to be diverted and the
package to break.
=>Unpacking a new package that removes a diversion
*1. Unpack folders
*2. Add diversions
*3. Unpack files
==Notes==
=>Removing a package which had a diversion
*1. Remove files
*2. Remove diversions
*3. Remove folders
==Notes==
This ensures that all files, diversions and folders are removed correctly
Details - Error handling
Errors in diversions will have to handled with a great deal of care due to
the fact that if they are not the package could be broken.
This means that a great deal of checks must be done to ensure that all the files
can be diverted properly before any actual diverting takes place. If they can t
the package installation/update must be stopped and rolled back to avoid the
package being installed incorrectly or broken.
-
Details - dpkg-divert
-
When we impliment the new diversion method we should keep the current
dpkg-divert. This allows maintainers to catch up with the new method without
breaking their packages. It also allows maintainers to perform some operations
that aren t support by the new method.
Example Usage #1
The file to be diverted is /usr/share/foo
It needs to be moved to /usr/share/bar
The syntax of the control file would be:
#Start File
Divert-From: /usr/share/foo
Divert-To: /usr/share/bar
#End File
Example Usage #2
In this example the maintainer doesn t want to move the file to any specific
folder
The syntax of the control file would be:
#Start File
Divert-From: /usr/share/foo
#End File
This would divert the file to /usr/share/foo.distrib
-
Footnotes
-
RFC2822 Guide:
* http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html
First Email Thread on Declarative Diversions (First Message in Thread):
* http://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2011/05/msg00102.html
Declarative Diversions Wiki:
* http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2011/DeclarativeDiversions
My Blog for this Project:
* http://blog.sam-dunne.com
The beginning of this Google Summer of Code has been busy and pretty cool. Not a lot of code was produced but I did learn a lot of things.pub 1024D/F144A319 2008-10-18pub 4096R/EE2BBBC7 2011-05-03hg clone http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/jdk8 jdk8cd jdk8 && sh get_sources.shhg clone http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jigsaw/jigsaw jigsawcd jigsaw && sh get_sources.shcd jigsaw. jigbuild. jdk/make/jdk_generic_profile.shexport ALLOW_DOWNLOADS=truemake sanitymake allmake modules-sanitymake modulesALLOW_DOWNLOADS=true. module test.hello @ 1
requires jdk.base @ 7-ea;
class test.hello.Main;
This is my monthly summary of my Debian related activities. If you re among the people who made a donation to support my work, then you can learn how I spent your money. Otherwise it s just an interesting status update on my various projects.
I have been
Doing some work towards Debian Rolling
At the start of the month, the discussions about Debian rolling were still very active on debian-devel. Declaring that testing would be rolling did not make it (as I hoped), the argument that some RC bugs last for far too long in that distribution carried the discussion and thus the most consensual proposition ended up being the one of Josselin Mouette were rolling would be testing plus a few selected cherry-picked packages from unstable.
I believe it s a workable solution if we only care about a subset of architectures. Otherwise the same reasons that keep the fixed packages out of testing would probably also apply for rolling.
Given this, I did setup britney (the software that controls testing) on my laptop to investigate how we can create rolling. It turns out britney is a very specialized software with very few configuration knobs.
At the same time Joachim Breitner made a proposition that immediately grabbed my attention. He suggests to use SAT solvers to find out the set of packages that should migrate from unstable to testing. I thought that rolling would be a good testbed for this new implementation of britney (which he calls SAT-britney) so I jumped right in this project.
I was not at all familiar with this science field, so I looked up quite some documentation: I learned that all SAT solvers expect the problem to be presented in CNF form, and that DIMACS was the file format of choice to represent those boolean constraints. Several SAT solvers are available in Debian and picosat appears to be one of the best.
Then I started some early coding/prototyping to play with the concept. You can find the result in this git repository, you can grab a copy with git clone git://git.debian.org/~hertzog/sat-britney.git.
There s not much yet, except some Python code to generate a SAT problem that can be fed to a SAT solver. But I really look forward to this project.
Representing Debian during Solutions Linux
During the second week, I spent 3 days in Paris to help manage the Debian booth at Solutions Linux.
We have responded to lots of queries but most visitors already knew Debian, and many of them use it at work and/or at home. We tried to recruit those people as new members for Debian France, the local association. We also sold all our remaining goodies.
The Ubuntu people were interviewed by France 3 (an important TV channel) and we took this opportunity (with the consent of the Ubuntu guys) to show our Debian t-shirts in the background: you can watch the video here (in French), you can see me with Carl Chenet at 1:21.
We have also been interviewed by Intelli n TV: here and here (both in French). I m not very good at this exercise. 
Improving dpkg triggers
The third week was a vacation week, in theory I should have stayed away from my computer but I really wanted to take this opportunity to improve the state of dpkg triggers in Debian.
I already covered my work in another article: Trying to make dpkg triggers more useful and less painful.
The result is not merged yet, I just asked a question to all package maintainers who are using triggers to be able to decide whether I ll merge it as is, or if I can make the new behavior the default one.
Supporting users after Alioth s migration
When I came back from my vacation, many services provided by Alioth.debian.org were non-functional after a migration to a new setup that involves two machines instead of one. Given that I used to be an Alioth admin, I know that in those periods you tend to be get bogged down on many user support requests. So I re-joined #alioth on IRC and tried to help a bit.
I did investigate some of the reported problems and prepared fixes (updated scripts, configuration files, etc.) for some of the issues. I also created a list of remaining issues that should have lasted only a few days but that s still active because there are still regressions left.
The most important things still missing are:
One comment Liked this article? Click here. My blog is Flattr-enabled.
So I just read that Google will only support modern browsers starting 2 months from now.
As of August 1st, we will discontinue support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.Given the importance of Google, the impact is huge. This company has acquired the power to basically dictate what browser you can provide to your users - otherwise they won t be able to access what many of them now consider vital functionality. Such a decision denotes a grave misunderstanding of the workstation ecosystem from the Google people. It means they consider their only target to be nerdy users with home computers they can (and want to) upgrade and break every 3 months with the latest version of Windows or Fedora. What about corporate computers? What about non-techy people who buy a computer and stick with the OS that was sold with it for 4 years? I m afraid they are still the vast majority of web users. You can t decide to deploy a new version of IE of Firefox on a large number of computers for next month. Sometimes, this is not even possible (hello Windows 2000/XP users). For Debian squeeze, this means no more Firefox for you. Epiphany and Konqueror might still work, but Google loves sending JavaScript that make old versions of Webkit struggle. And anyway, this is just the beginning. In a few months they will tell us to upgrade again to Firefox 4.2 and IE 12. One week after their release, yeah! Let s quote a comment which should help understanding the reasoning behind such decisions.
Andy, while I understand staying on LTS, I think it's a little bit silly to use a mission critical machine for web browsing in that way. Also, there is no reason your browser has to be tied in lockstep to your OS. Two simple solutions:Belief #1: the browser can (and should) be independent from the OS . It s interesting to note that the same people who say this are the ones who also jerk off at the idea of desktops and phones with tight web integration. This integration comes at a cost: this restricts your ability to change everything in the browser from one day to another. Belief #2: long-term OSes are for mission-critical servers only . Yeah sure, that s why Windows has a lifecycle of 3 years. Desktops are no different at all from servers on this matter. You don t upgrade your desktop every 6 months when you do serious work with it; the cost and the risk are just too high. And anyway, this comes again from the same people who want to upgrade every single component of said mission-critical servers every 2 months to install the latest version of their preferred web framework. Belief #3: people can upgrade their browsers or OSes . No really they can t. Many people wouldn t know how to do this, even with a step-by-step documentation. And in enterprise deployments, they are restricted from doing so. Thanks for spreading the clich that web developers are clueless, spotty nerds, incapable of understanding the needs of production environments. Apparently Google is not exempt from this disease.
1. Don't use the built-in browser for your main web browsing. Install Chrome, for example. or,
2. Since LTS is designed for servers and other "can't have any chance of downtime" machines, quit using that machine as your web browsing box and use a personal laptop for such things, which you can keep up to date with the current OS release instead of waiting 2 years.
Next.