A couple of things here:
I took this picture seven months ago. I have only just today gotten
around to culling photos from that day, and this one stood out.
Today, I added a new feature, allowing to consolidate data for multiple arbitrary packages in a single graph. Such graphs can be generated with the following URL scheme (please don t over-abuse of it):
http://qa.debian.org/data/bts/graphs/multi/name0,name1,name2,etc.png
http://qa.debian.org/data/bts/graphs/multi/dehydra,diggler,iceape,iceweasel,libxml2,libxslt,livehttpheaders,mozilla-dom-inspector,nspr,nss,pyxpcom,venkman,vmfs-tools,webkit,xulrunner,zfs-fuse.png
http://qa.debian.org/data/bts/graphs/multi/iceape,icedove,iceowl,iceweasel,nspr,nss,xulrunner.pnghttp://qa.debian.org/data/bts/graphs/by-maint/address.png
I think I'm done with the redis filesystem for the moment. It does everything I need it to do, although I am curious to see how much faster it could go if it were to use non-blocking writes that isn't a major concern.
There is only one missing feature I'm planning to play with - and that is the ability to implement snapshots.
As a refresher redis is a key+value store, which mostly uses system memory. I've built a simple FUSE filesystem on top of that (now with symlink support!) and so all the file contents, meta-data, and similar is stored in memory.
Implementing snapshots could be done by two different routes:
If you ve ever gotten tired of waiting for a new Mono release to appear, and taken matters into your own hands by compiling your own copy of Mono, you ve likely faced the problem of missing libraries. That s weird, it says it can t find gtk-sharp, but I have that package!
This happens because every version of Mono on your system has what s called a Global Assembly Cache a location where all system-wide assemblies lives. So when you run an app like Tomboy, it loads its libraries such as GTK# from the GAC belonging to the Mono runtime being used. Ordinarily, this is in /usr/lib/mono/gac on a Debian/Ubuntu system.
When you have your parallel Mono, it doesn t share a GAC as a result, libraries in your main distro GAC are not available in your DIY GAC, as they were never registered in there.
Typically, the advice is to either start compiling every lib you need into a non-standard place too however, here s a better idea. Why not make Apt take care of not only your system s GAC but additional GACs too? We actually have structures in place to handle this, so it s not as hard as you think (merely relatively unknown). This guide does NOT take startup scripts into account it s your problem to ensure you re using the correct mono command to run your copy of MonoDevelop or Tomboy or whatever. You should probably learn about update-alternatives and $PATH for this. Oh, and this guide will BREAK HORRIBLY if you try to uninstall system mono completely. Don t try it.
Setup step 1: preparation
Don t install parallel Mono into /usr/local. I don t care what happens to you if you do. Use some random folder in /opt, usually a per-build prefix like /opt/mono-2.10
Setup step 2: duplicating existing magic
Open a terminal, and copy /usr/share/cli-common/runtimes.d/mono to a new filename, e.g. /usr/share/cli-common/runtimes.d/mono-2.10
Setup step 3: tweak duplicate magic
Open your copied file in an editor, and change the name value on line 27ish (e.g. from Mono\n to Mono (parallel 2.10 install)\n ). Then change the two places in the file, on lines 64ish and 120ish, from /usr/bin/gacutil to /opt/mono-2.8.2/bin/gacutil or equivalent.
Setup step 4: apply magic to existing packages
Run /usr/share/cli-common/gac-install mono-2.10 (or whatever filename you picked for your runtimes.d entry) as root. This will instantiate your parallel GAC(s).
From now on, every GAC library you install or uninstall will happen to every single runtime in runtimes.d.
To go back to how things were before, with only a single Mono runtime:
Uninstall step 1: empty out parallel GAC
Run /usr/share/cli-common/gac-remove mono-2.10 (or whatever filename you picked for your runtimes.d entry) as root. This will remove all packaged entried from your parallel GAC(s).
Uninstall step 2: remove magic
Delete your file from runtimes.d
A few days ago Conrad Sanderson released version 1.1.6 of his Armadillo templated C++ library for
linear algebra. Accordingly, I made a new release 0.2.14 of RcppArmadillo,
our Rcpp-based
integration into R which included a
few local fixes. However, while I updated SVN at the
R-Forge project I
didn't update the final tarball so Armadillo 1.1.6 wasn't in it. That is corrected in
the 0.2.15 upload which is now on CRAN and its mirrors.
The short NEWS file extract for both releases follows, also containing
Conrad's entry for 1.1.6. A few minor tweaks were added but no user-visible
changes:
0.2.15 2011-03-04
o Upgraded to Armadillo Version 1.1.6 Baby Carpet Shark
* fixed size matrices and vectors can use auxiliary (external) memory
* .in_range() can use span() arguments
* subfields can use span() arguments
0.2.14 2011-03-02
o Support Run-Time Type Information (RTTI) on matrices by setting the
state variable vec_state in Row and Col instantiation, with thanks to
Conrad Sanderson for the hint
o fastLm code simplified further by instantiating the Armadillo matrix
and vector directly from the SEXP coming from R
o inst/doc/Makefile now respects $R_HOME environment variable
And courtesy of
CRANberries, here are
the diffs
to.2.14
ChangeLog 14 - DESCRIPTION 8 inst/NEWS 10 inst/doc/RcppArmadillo-unitTests.pdf binary inst/doc/unitTests-results/RcppArmadillo-unitTests.html 10 inst/doc/unitTests-results/RcppArmadillo-unitTests.txt 39 +- inst/include/armadillo_bits/Col_meat.hpp 51 +++ inst/include/armadillo_bits/Col_proto.hpp 3 inst/include/armadillo_bits/Cube_meat.hpp 52 +++ inst/include/armadillo_bits/Cube_proto.hpp 7 inst/include/armadillo_bits/Mat_meat.hpp 51 +++ inst/include/armadillo_bits/Mat_proto.hpp 12 inst/include/armadillo_bits/Row_meat.hpp 51 +++ inst/include/armadillo_bits/Row_proto.hpp 3 inst/include/armadillo_bits/arma_version.hpp 6 inst/include/armadillo_bits/config.hpp 9 inst/include/armadillo_bits/field_meat.hpp 220 ++++++++++++++-- inst/include/armadillo_bits/field_proto.hpp 20 + inst/unitTests/runit.RcppArmadillo.R 16 + 19 files changed, 521 insertions(+), 61 deletions(-)and to the previous release 0.2.13, respectivel
ChangeLog 14 ++++++ DESCRIPTION 6 +- inst/NEWS 11 +++++ inst/doc/Makefile 15 +++++-- inst/doc/RcppArmadillo-unitTests.pdf binary inst/doc/unitTests-results/RcppArmadillo-unitTests.html 18 ++++---- inst/doc/unitTests-results/RcppArmadillo-unitTests.txt 34 ++++++++-------- inst/include/RcppArmadillo/Col_meat.h 24 ++++++----- inst/include/RcppArmadillo/Row_meat.h 19 ++++---- src/fastLm.cpp 15 ++----- 10 files changed, 94 insertions(+), 62 deletions(-)More information is on the RcppArmadillo page. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the R-Forge page.
I'm a complete font n00b. How does one install Type1 fonts as part of
a Debian package in such a way that:
The test suite for recently added ODBC support in Gammu was consistently failing on Win64 platform (all others were just fine). It took me some time to figure out why. The reason is SQLLEN type, which is in some sort special, that generated code for it is broken.
All started with pretty much standard retrieving value from ODBC result:
SQLLEN size;
SQLRETURN ret;
/* Figure out string length */
ret = SQLGetData(res->odbc, 1, SQL_C_CHAR, NULL, 0, &size);
if (!SQL_SUCCEEDED(ret))
return NULL;
/* Did not we get NULL? */
if (size == SQL_NULL_DATA)
return NULL;
/* Allocate buffer for string */
out = reallocate(out, size + 1);
Filed under: English Gammu 0 comments Flattr this!
RedirectPermanent /docs/linuxload.html /2010/07/manually_calculating_process_times/
[Fri Mar 04 14:40:17 2011] [warn] [client 172.16.242.1] incomplete redirection target of '/2010/07/manually_calculating_process_times/' for URI '/docs/linuxload.html' modified to 'http://enc.com.au/2010/07/manually_calculating_process_times/
Also, URL-path must be a fully qualified URL, not a relative path, even when used with .htaccess files or inside of <directory> sections.But I m running Apache 2.2 and the 2.2 mod_alias page says:
The new URL should be an absolute URL beginning with a scheme and hostname, but a URL-path beginning with a slash may also be used, in which case the scheme and hostname of the current server will be added.That s it, you two choices:
RedirectPermanent /docs/linuxload.html http://enc.com.au/2010/07/manually_calculating_process_times/
Time for a seventh Debian XSF News issue!
xorg-server 1.10 coming up
(read below), as well as X stack s migration to testing, to
consider before thinking of backporting though.intel cards (see
our FAQ entry). According
to Chris Wilson, current kernels/intel drivers are better for 855+,
but 830/845 still need a miracle.nouveau
driver and the Linux kernel version. As mentioned in
my mail to debian-release@
that would be quite self-contained otherwise. Bottom line: we re
waiting for the kernel.debian-x@,
the plan is to wait for this migration to happen before uploading
new upstream releases of libdrm, the intel driver, and mesa
to unstable. Both libdrm and mesa were prepared for Ubuntu, and
will be likely uploaded to experimental soon. The intel driver
was prepared, but only built against xorg-server 1.10 and
uploaded to experimental for now.xorg-server 1.10 side, the (very late) RandR patches were
proven broken,
so
reverting RandR 1.4
was decided. With some minor tweaks (to the radeon driver), that
went quite well, and xorg-server 1.10 got
released. Unfortunately, there s still some missing fix for the
build system, which explains why I didn t upload a final 1.10 to experimental yet; several
patches were proposed already (I checked a bunch of them), but
we re still
waiting for a final patch.experimental, built against 1.10rc* (see
DXN#6), since I only needed to upload the
following video drivers again: ati, dummy, fbdev, intel,
mach64, nouveau, r128, vesa. It might make sense to add
cirrus to that list next time, for tests under kvm and the like.kbd, mouse, and synaptics, which I uploaded both to
unstable (built against 1.9), and to experimental (built
against 1.10).synaptics device, make sure
you have no configuration issues in xorg.conf; even if that used
to work somehow, autoconfiguration might fail if there s a
misconfigured device (for example, wrong Device option
there). You might want to have a look at our
how to configure input
documentation.1.9/unstable, Tormod Volden prepared
updates for the mga and savage video drivers, which I
sponsored.unstable.Dm-Upload-Allowed field to yes
since he s doing a pretty good job already. It s currently sitting
in NEW accordingly.MultiArch-ify both libx11 and
xorg; both were uploaded.mesa built against wayland libraries (to get the
wayland EGL platform), and the needed mesa bits are (last I
asked) only in master for now.ati and intel video drivers, as
well as on xorg-server again, along with the xorg meta
package. (Clicking on a bug graph below leads to a cached full-year
view.)
| x-x-video-ati | x-x-video-intel | xorg-server | xorg |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
distributions config file to add the wheezy
distribution with a suite of testing and a pull policy of
everything. Change the suite of squeeze to stable and the pull
policy to arch-all. (These are pull policies defined elsewhere
in my configuration that do what they say.) Change the suite of lenny
to oldstable.
incoming config file to map the suites to new
release code names.
env GNUPGHOME=/srv/debian/keyring reprepro -b /srv/debian pull
reprepro -b /srv/debian --delete createsymlinks
reprepro -b /srv/debian createsymlinks
Warning: this is a rant against BSD (specifically FreeBSD , but don t let
me get started on DragonFly, who think it s wise to drop all shells except
ash from the base system and rely on pkgsrc yay let s compile a dozen
packages just to get a shell with tab completion, not to mention boxen with
no network access for the task although others seem to go into that
direction too ; you know, there s BSD, and then there s FreeBSD ) don t
like, don t read.
If you want to change something in the BSD world, you gotta fork your
own BSD no other way around the thickheads. Ok, back then, I ran into
a particularily thick one, but others tend to not be much better. Users
share the thickness. If you want to change something in the GNU/Linux
world, just make a package, have someone upload it, prod (or pay, Hanno
got a Radler) people to do it, or just upload it yourself.
At the BSD booth at FOSDEM, despite me bringing the Windows Mobile
6 Professional devive, strictly for Geocaching mind you, Macintosh boxen
had a share of more than 50% I didn t manage to tip the scale. At the
Debian booth, almost everyone had a I want to buy a new laptop some day,
but it just keeps on working and doesn t break pre-Lenovo IBM laptop.
No hyping of Google either. (Last year s CLT saw BSD people advocating
pro-Schily the guy with the broken encoding in his name shockingly.)
Honestly, tcsh, FreeBSD people? Sorry. While I agree that there is
merit on having the same script and interactive shell, as someone has
pointed out (copy-paste examples into the command line), there s those
zsh users who use mksh or GNU bash
for scripting. Or just POSIX shell. And that s with an interactive shell
which can be used for scripting. On
the other hand, the
C shell (both csh and tcsh) cannot.
And what s with pretending the accent
gravis is non-combining, called backtick (such a thing does not
exist); and advocating it? Sorry, if your csh/tcsh doesn t handle the
POSIX $( ) you should just drop it. (By the way, there is
a convention that example command lines are prefixed with % for
csh and $ for sh (or # but we write $ sudo
instead, these days). Use it. Or leave it. If you have examples that
substitute another process output, be specific.) It s funny to see how
one person tries to defuse my arguments against csh by telling me it s
just an interactive shell , while the other argues that people copy-paste
between them, to which that was my response. Read the thread!
And please, get your facts right. I would prefer that the standard shell
be at least Bourne-compatible. You don t want Bourne ( ^ instead of
for pipes), you want POSIX. That GNU bash is called the Bourne-Again Shell
in one of their usual semi-bad puns doesn t help the global perception of
such things any. Also, the root shell and /bin/sh are disjunct.
(Plus, why change the root shell, use sudo(8), plain and simple.)
ObNote: in jupp (should I package that
for Debian, btw? rather upload, packages are ready ) the key is used
as pr fix for Ctrl-X ( X) or to directly enter numerical (decimal,
octal, sedecimal/hexadecadic) ASCII, 8-bit or Unicode codepoints. Yay! One of features for Gammu SMSD which was for quite a long time in my head was ODBC support. With unified SQL backend we have right now it should be pretty easy to add support for it so I gave it a try.
It really did not take to long and the ODBC driver is committed to git and will be part of next release. The great benefit of this is that we get native database support on Windows without need to linking against database libraries, which is always painful.
The ODBC driver behaves like any other SQL based driver for SMSD, so if you are familiar with it, the configuration won't surprise you:
[smsd]
service = sql
driver = odbc
host = dsn_of_your_database
user = username
password = password
Filed under: English Gammu 0 comments Flattr this!
#!/bin/sh
set -e
WORKDIR=" dirname $ 0 /post"
find $ WORKDIR -name "*.sh" -exec " " ";"
#!/bin/sh
set -e
OUTPUT_PATH= grep output $ HOME /.chroniclerc cut -d= -f2 tr -d [:blank:]
sed -ne'/<\?xml version/,/blosxomFirstDayDiv/ /blosxomFirstDayDiv/b;p ' \
$ OUTPUT_PATH /index.html > $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html
cat dirname $ 0 /imprint.data >> $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html
echo -e "\n" >> $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html
sed -ne'/imprint_match/,$p' $ OUTPUT_PATH /index.html >> $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html
mv $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html $ OUTPUT_PATH /imprint.html
#!/bin/sh
set -e
OUTPUT_PATH= grep output $ HOME /.chroniclerc cut -d= -f2 tr -d [:blank:]
sed -nre'/<\?xml version/,/blosxomFirstDayDiv/ /blosxomFirstDayDiv/b;p ' \
$ OUTPUT_PATH /index.html > $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html
cat dirname $ 0 /imprint.data >> $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html
echo -e "\n" >> $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html
sed -ne'/imprint_match/,$p' $ OUTPUT_PATH /index.html >> $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html
mv $ HOME /tmp/imprint.html $ OUTPUT_PATH /imprint.html
Christian is a figure of Debian, not only because of the tremendous coordination work that he does within the translation project, but also because he s very involved at the social level. He s probably in the top 5 of the persons who attended most often the Debian conference.
Christian is a friend (thanks for hosting me so many times when I come to Paris for Debian related events) and I m glad that he accepted to be interviewed. He likes to speak and that shows in the length of his answers 
but you ll be traveling the world while reading him.
My questions are in bold, the rest is by Christian.
Who are you?
I am a French citizen (which is easy to guess unless you correct my
usual mistakes in what follows). I m immensely proud of being married
for nearly 26 years with Elizabeth (who deserves a statue from Debian
for being so patient with my passion and my dedication to the
project).
I m also the proud father of 3 wonderful kids , aged 19 to
23.
I work as team manager in the Networks and Computers Division of Onera
the French Aerospace lab , a public research institute about
Aeronautics, Space and Defense. My team provides computer management
services for research divisions of Onera, with a specific focus put on
individual computing.
I entered the world of free software as one of the very first users of
Linux in France. Back in the early 1990 s, I happened (though the BBS
users communities) to be a friend of several early adopters of Linux
and/or BSD386/FreeBSD/NetBSD in France. More specifically, I
discovered Linux thanks with my friend Ren Cougnenc (all my free
software talks are dedicated to Ren , who passed away in 1996).
You re not a programmer, not even a packager. How did you come
to Debian?
I m definitely not a programmer and I never studied computing (I
graduated in Materials Science and worked in that area for a few years
after my PhD).
However, my daily work always involved computing (I redesigned the
creep testing laboratory and its acquisition system all by myself
during my thesis research work). An my hobbies often involved
playing with home computers, always trying to learn about something
new.
So, first learning about a new operating system then trying to
figure out how to become involved in its development was quite a
logical choice.
Debian is my distro of choice since it exists. I used Slackware on work
machines for a while, but my home server, kheops,
first ran Debian 1.1 when I stopped running a BBS on an MS-DOS machine
to host a news server. That was back in October 1996.
I then happened to be a user, and more specifically a user of
genealogy software, also participating very actively in Usenet from
this home computer and server, that was running this Debian thing.
So, progressively, I joined mailing lists and, being a passionate
person, I tried to figure out how I could bring my own little
contribution to all this.
This is why I became a packager (yes, I am one!) by taking over the
geneweb package, which I was using to publish my genealogy
research. I applied as DD in January 2001, then got my account in July
2001. My first upload to the Debian archive occurred on August 22nd
2001: that was of course geneweb, which I still maintain.
Quite quickly, I became involved in the work on French localization. I
have always been a strong supporter of localized software (I even
translated a few BBS software back in the early 90 s) as one of the
way to bring the power and richness of free software to more users.
Localization work lead me to work on the early version of Debian
Installer, during those 2003-2005 years where the development of D-I
was an incredibly motivating and challenging task, lead by Joey Hess
and his inspiring ideas.
From user to contributor to leader, I suddenly discovered, around
2004, that I became the coordinator of D-I i18n (internationalization)
without even noticing
You re the main translation coordinator in Debian. What plans
and goals have you set for Debian Wheezy?
As always: paint the world in red.
Indeed, this is my goal for years. I would like our favorite distro to
be able to be used by anyone in the world, whether she speaks
English, Northern Sami, Wolof, Uyghur or Secwepemcts n.
As a matter of symbol, I use the installer for this. My stance is that
one should be able to even install Debian in one s own language. So,
for about 7 years, I use D-I as a way to attract new localization
contributors.
This progress is represented on
this
page where the world
is gradually painted in red as long as the installer supports more
languages release after release. The map above tries to illustrate
this by painting in red countries when the most spoken language in the
country is supported in Debian Installer.
However, that map does not give enough reward to many great efforts
made to support very different kind of languages. Not only various
national languages, but also very different ones: all regional
languages of Spain, many of the most spoken languages in India,
minority languages such as Uyghur for which an effort is starting,
Northern Sami because it is taught in a few schools in Norway, etc.,
etc.
Still, the map gives a good idea of what I would like to see better
supported: languages from Africa, several languages in Central
Asia. And, as a very very personal goal, I m eagerly waiting for
support of Tibetan in Debian Installer, the same way we support its
sister language, Dzongkha from Bhutan.
For this to happen, we have to make contribution to localization as
easy as possible. The very distributed nature of Debian development
makes this a challenge, as material to translate (D-I components,
debconf screens, native packages, packages descriptions, website,
documentation) is very widely spread.
A goal, for years, is to set a centralized place where
translators could work easily without even knowing about SVN/GIT/BZR
or having to report bugs to send their work. The point, however, would
be to have this without making compromises on translation quality. So,
with peer review, use of thesaurus and translation memory and all such
techniques.
Tools for this exist: we, for instance, worked with the developers of
Pootle to help making it able to cope with the huge amount of material
in Debian (think about packages descriptions translations). However, as
of now, the glue between such tools and the raw material (that often
lies in packages) didn t come.
So, currently, translation work in Debian requires a great knowledge
of how things are organized, where is the material, how it can be
possible to make contribution reach packages, etc.
And, as I m technically unable to fulfill the goal of building the
infrastructure, I m fulfilling that role of spreading out the
knowledge. This is how I can define my coordinator role.
Ubuntu uses a web-based tool to make it easy to contribute
translations directly in Launchpad. At some point you asked Canonical to
make it free software. Launchpad has been freed in the mean time. Have you
(re)considered using it?
Why not? After all, it more or less fills in the needs I just
described. I still don t really figure out how we could have all
Debian material gathered in Rosetta/Launchpad .and also how Debian
packagers could easily get localized material back from the framework
without changing their development processes.
I have always tried to stay neutral wrt Ubuntu. As many people now in
Debian, I feel like we have reached a good way to achieve our mutual
development. When it comes at localization work, the early days where
the everything in Rosetta and translates who wants stanza did a lot
of harm to several upstream localization projects is, I think, way
over.
Many people who currently contribute to D-I localization were indeed
sent to me by Ubuntu contributors .and by localizing D-I, apt,
debconf, package descriptions, etc., they re doing translation work
for Ubuntu as well as for Debian.
Let s say I m a Debian user and I want to help translate Debian
in my language. I can spend 1 hour per week on this activity. What should
I do to start?
Several language teams use Debian mailing lists to coordinate their
work. If you re lucky enough to be a speaker of one of these
languages, try joining debian-l10n-<yourlanguage>
and follow what s happening there. Don t try to immediately jump in some
translation work. First, participate to peer reviews: comment on
others translations. Learn about the team s processes, jargon and
habits.
Then, progressively, start working on a few translations: you may want
to start with translations of debconf templates: they are short, often
easy to do. That s perfect if you have few time.
If no language team exists for your language, try joining debian-i18n
and ask about existing effort for your language. I may be able to
point you to individuals working on Debian translations (very often
along with other free software translation efforts). If I am not, then
you have just been named coordinator for your language I may
even ask you if you want to work on translating the Debian Installer.
What s the biggest problem of Debian?
We have no problems, we only have solutions
We are maybe facing a growth problem for a few years. Despite the
increased welcoming aspects of our processes (Debian Maintainers),
Debian is having hard times in growing. The overall number of active
contributors is probably stagnating for quite a while. I m still
amazed, however, to see how we can cope with that and still be able to
release over the years. So, after all, this is maybe not a
problem
Many people would point communication problems here. I don t. I
think that communication inside the Debian project is working fairly
well now. Our famous flame wars do of course still happen from time
to time, but what large free software project doesn t have flame wars?
In many areas, we indeed improved communication very significantly. I
want to take as an example the way the release of squeeze has been
managed. I think that the release team did, even more this time, a
very significant and visible effort to communicate with the entire
project. And the release of squeeze has been a great success in that
matter.
So, there s nearly nothing that frustrates me in Debian. Even when a
random developer breaks my beloved 100% completeness of French
translations, I m not frustrated for more than 2 minutes.
You re known in the Debian community as the organizer of the
Cheese & Wine Party during DebConf. Can you tell us what this is
about?
This is an interesting story about how things build themselves in
Debian.
It all started in July 2005, before DebConf 5 in Helsinki. Denis
Barbier, Nicolas Fran ois and myself agreed to bring at Debconf a few
pieces of French cheese as well as 1 or 2 bottles of French wine and
share them with some friends. Thus, we settled an informal meeting in
the French room where we invited some fellows: from memory, Benjamin
Mako Hill, Hannah Wallach, Matt Zimmermann and Moray Allan. All of
us fond of smelly cheese, great wine plus some extra p t
home-made by Denis in Toulouse.
It finally happened that, by word of mouth, a few dozens of other
people slowly joined in that French room and turned the whole thing
into an improvized party that more or less lasted for the entire
night.
The tradition was later firmly settled in 2006, first in Debconf 6 in
Mexico where I challenged the French DDs to bring as many great cheese
as possible, then during the Debian i18n meeting in Extremadura (Sept
2006) where we reached the highest amount of cheese per participant
ever. I think that the Creofonte building in Casar de C ceres hasn t
fully recovered from it and is still smelling cheese 5 years after.
This party later became a real tradition for DebConf, growing over
and over each year. I see it as a wonderful way to illustrate the
diversity we have in Debian, as well as the mutual enrichment we
always felt during DebConfs.
My only regret about it is that it became so big over the years that
organizing it is always a challenge and I more and more feel pressure
to make it successful. However, over the years, I always found
incredible help by DebConf participants (including my own son, last
year a moment of sharing which we will both remember for years, i think).
And, really, in 2010, standing up on a chair, shouting (because the
microphone wasn t working) to thank everybody, was the most emotional
moment I had at Debconf 10.
Is there someone in Debian that you admire for their
contributions?
So many people. So, just like it happens in many awards ceremonies, I
will be very verbose to thank people, sorry in advance for this.
The name that comes first is Joey Hess. Joey is someone who has a
unique way to perceive what improvements are good for Debian and a
very precise and meticulous way to design these improvements. Think
about debconf. It is designed for so long now and still reaching its
very specific goal. So well designed that it is the entire basis for
Joey s other achievement: designing D-I. Moreover, I not only admire
Joey for his technical work, but also for his interaction with
others. He is not he loudest person around, he doesn t have to .just
giving his point in discussion and, guess what? Most of the time, he s
right.
Someone I would like to name here, also, is Colin Watson. Colin is
also someone I worked with for years (the D-I effect, again ) and,
here again, the very clever way he works on technical improvements as
well as his very friendly way to interact with others just make it.
And, how about you, Rapha l? I m really admirative of the way you
work on promoting technical work on Debian. Your natural ability to
explain things (as good in English as it is in French) and your
motivation to share your knowledge are a great benefit for the
project. Not to mention the technical achievements you made with
Guillem on dpkg of course!
Another person I d like to name here is Steve Langasek. We both
maintain samba packages for years and collaboration with him has
always been a pleasure. Just like Colin, Steve is IMHO a model to
follow when it comes at people who work for Canonical while continuing
their involvment in Debian. And, indeed, Steve is so patient with my
mistakes and stupid questions in samba packaging that he deserves a
statue.
We re now reaching the end of the year where Stefano Zacchiroli was
the Debian Project Leader. And, no offense intended to people who were
DPL before him (all of them being people I consider to be friends of
mine), I think he did the best term ever. Zack is wonderful in sharing
his enthusiasm about Debian and has a unique way to do it. Up to the
very end of his term, he has always been working on various aspects of
the project and my only hope is that he ll run again (however, I would
very well understand that he wants to go back to his hacking
activities!). Hat off, Zack!I again have several other people to name in this Bubulle hall of
Fame : Don Armstrong, for his constant work on improving Debian BTS,
Margarita Manterola as one of the best successes of Debian Women (and
the most geeky honeymoon ever), Denis Barbier and Nicolas Fran ois
because i18n need really skilled people, Cyril Brulebois and Julien
Cristau who kept X.org packaging alive in lenny and squeeze, Otavio
Salvador who never gave up on D-I even when we were so few to care
about it.
I would like to make a special mention for Frans Pop. His loss in 2010
has been a shock for many of us, and particularly me. Frans and I had
a similar history in Debian, both mostly working on so-called non
technical duties. Frans has been the best release manager for D-I (no
offense intended, at all, to Joey or Otavio .I know that both of
them share this feeling with me). His very high involvment in his work
and the very meticulous way he was doing it lead to great achievements
in the installer. The Installation Guide work was also a model and
indeed a great example of non technical work that requires as many
skills as more classical technical work. So, and even though he was
sometimes so picky and, I have to admit, annoying, that explains why
I m still feeling sad and, in some way, guilty about Frans loss.
One of my goals for wheezy is indeed to complete some things Frans
left unachieved. I just found one in bug #564441: I will make this
work reach the archive, benefit our users and I know that Frans would
have liked that.
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It looks like many peoples decided it is right time to bloat my system with stuff I don't use.
The first think I did not like when squeeze went out was libpcsclite1 pulling pcsd and hal into my system. This is being solved on two fronts - porting pcsd to udev (in #612971) and disabling libpcslite1 support in wpasupplicant. Both of them being good ideas.
What actually drove me to writing this post is today's update, where aptitude suddenly wanted to install whole latex and thus using about 760MiB of extra disk space. I know disk space is supposed to be cheap these days, but it's not that cheap with SSD in notebook. The culprit turned out to be doxygen, which up to now happily lived without single bit of latex, but now needs it (though temporarily according to changelog).
I know it is tempting to enable every possible feature in your package, but in same cases it is really not something what most of people would appreciate.
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Our technology is built using some of the best and most secure tools in the industry. We have partnered with infrastructure providers who handle some of the most sensitive data in the UK (such as medical and financial records). Both the digital and physical security measures we have implemented are amongst the strongest available anywhere. This includes full encryption of all data at all times, full implementation of secure socket layers, security certificates and physical restriction of access to the data, our servers and our offices. Our systems have been fully penetration tested (that means we ve asked people to try and break in).(There are other suitable assertions in various places they even have a set of principles about safeguarding data.) Unfortunately, this promise is rather undermined in several ways after noticing the first couple, I did a little digging to see what else was exploitable. Here s the final part of the joining process, where you choose a username and password combination:
The text I ve cropped too eagerly says Choosing a secure password is an essential part of protecting your personal information , or thereabouts. I duly chose a complex password that fitted the requirements, and to my surprise it was rejected. I tried another, and it was rejected; then a third and a fourth. By trial and error I worked out what was going on:
1. The password must contain only the listed special characters, not just include one of them.
That s a bit of a problem, because even assuming a basic ASCII set, 15 characters are unavailable to users; 80 are left, so that s about a 15% fall in the available combinations*. Not a good start.
More concerning is the presence of a security question field. It s used for resetting the password in the event losing it, but this technique for recovery has long been ridiculed the shared secret is often common knowledge amongst friends, and sometimes (as in this case) the available questions are fairly easy for an attacker to find the answer to in public records or solicit from the victim without arousing much suspicion:
2. The security questions available include First pet s name and worse, First school name .
It s pretty pointless enforcing stringent password requirements, and then bypassing them with something so susceptible to a dictionary attack.
I was pleased to find that failing to log in to an account more than a few times results in a temporary lockout, which should deter casual brute force attacks. But I wanted to know how that security question would be used, so I forgot my password and followed the links to reset it. Here s the form:
Actually the first form, not shown here, initially just asks for a username, giving an error message if it isn t registered, and here s another problem:
3. The password reset process confirms the existence, or non-existence, of a given username half the credentials required to log in to any visitor.
I d be prepared to take a bet that most users will choose What was the name of your first school? as a security question. The first pet you have is often at such a young age you can t remember it clearly; the name of the street you grew up on might change a couple of times if you moved house. But first school I attended? I ll never forget that, so it makes most sense to use as a backup password . It s also the best one for an attacker to try and find out from public sources.
But that aside, as you can see the password is not generated at random and communicated to the real account holder out-of-band, in the manner of many other sites. Instead:
4. A new password is immediately set to a value already known by the attacker.
Once inside, an attacker can also change the security question or answer, or both, so you can t even regain your account by telephoning the company unless you can convince them you re genuine, in which case the security question was a total waste of time anyway. I awarded some marks for notifying the user by email that the password has been changed, but immediately docked them again because bingo! You re now a victim of identity theft!
Let s assume you ve been locked out, the security question has been changed and you want your account back. ALLOW don t let you telephone them; you either have to dig around and find an address to send an email, which we all know can be intercepted, or (and you re encouraged to) contact them through a form on the site. You ll probably include some personal details, because you want to convince them of your real identity; indeed, two of the options on the form are I ve got a question and Something doesn t work . I sent my findings through this very form, under the latter heading, and to my surprise:
5. Despite promises of full encryption of all data at all times, full implementation of secure socket layers , the contact form is transmitted to ALLOW in the clear, with no protection whatsoever.
So now anyone listening in your connection knows all about you too: your ISP, any of the peers along the route, the deep packet inspection advertisers if your ISP is less than reputable, and the neighbour who connects to your wireless and slips you a fiver every month for the privilege. Nice work, privacy specialists.
(For the record:
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