Many team maintained packages in Debian are maintained in Subversion which makes a lot of sense if people agreed on a common workflow. If you want to use git to work on these packages you can still do so with a bit of configuration without changing anything for the other team members. Let's take system-config-printer as example. git-svn can be used to checkout the svn repository:

git svn clone svn+ssh://svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-gnome/ -T packages/unstable/system-config-printer -t tags/system-config-printer system-config-printer

Since the pkg-gnome team keeps all the packages in one huge SVN repository and splits the directories by release first and then by package the above command uses -T to point git-svn to system-config-printer's trunk and -t to point it to the tags directory. In simpler repositories where trunk, branches and tags are subdirectories of the same base directory using --stdlayout instead is enough. Since in SVN based packaging the upstream sources usually aren't kept in the repository git-buildpackage needs to know where to find them and how to combine things in the build-directory:

cd system-config-printer
cat <<EOF >.git/gbp.conf
[git-buildpackage]
# Build in a separate build-area
export-dir = ../build-area/
# Look for tarballs in ../tarballs
tarball-dir = ../tarballs/
# Overlay the upstream sources on top of it
overlay = True
# Don't use pristine-tar
pristine-tar = False
# Compression type of the tarball
compression = bzip2

Like with svn-buildpackage the orig-tarball is expected to be found in ../tarballs where you should put it now e.g. using the get-orig-source target of debian/rules (yes, git-buildpackage should support this implicitly). You can then work on the package as usual using all the nifty git commands like git-rebase, etc. and build the package (in this case using git-pbuilder):

git-buildpackage --git-pbuilder

or if you don't want to export the current branch's HEAD of your git repository but your working copy (which might contain uncommitted changes) to the build-area instead use:

git-buildpackage --git-pbuilder --git-export=WC

The built packages can then be found in ../build-area. Once the package is ready pushing the changes into the SVN remote repository is as simple as:

git svn dcommit
git svn tag -m"Tagging system-config-printer (1.2.3-0.2)" 1.2.3-0.2

The last command appropriately tags the new version. This saves a bit of typing. In order to fetch changes others have made use:

git svn rebase

This fragment of code was extracted from a direct-to-MX PHP spam cannon installed on a customer server. Yes, it contains a real DNS stub resolver written in PHP (which abuses the promiscuous cache of a local large ISP).

function dns_get_list($dns,$domains,$type=1)
 
        $sockets=array();
        foreach ($domains as $d=>$domain)
         
                $dns_packet = chr(0).chr($d).
                                chr(1).chr(0).
                                chr(0).chr(1).
                                chr(0).chr(0).
                                chr(0).chr(0).
                                chr(0).chr(0);
                $dns_packet_len=12;
                list($qname_len,$qname)=make_QNAME($domain);
                $dns_packet .= $qname.
                                chr(0).chr($type).
                                chr(0).chr(1);
                $dns_packet_len+=$qname_len+4;
                $sockets[$d]=fsockopen("udp://$dns", 53);
                fwrite($sockets[$d],$dns_packet,$dns_packet_len);
         
        foreach ($domains as $d=>$domain) socket_set_timeout($sockets[$d],3);
        $result=array();
        foreach ($domains as $d=>$domain)
         
[...]

FrOSCon was a blast. I had two booths of my own MirBSD and FreeWRT as well as shares of Debian and Grml. Well, MirBSD was run by Benny and gecko2 because I just didn t have any time for it, despite XTaran s help with the FreeWRT booth. All I did was the initial setup of both booths, while at the same time answering about three questions regarding FreeWRT in parallel. Wow. What a little small, open hardware can do to you. XTaran and I had fun and we ll do FreeWRT booths again; I managed to flash my two FON2100 devices ( La Fonera the FON2200 can use the same image, says nbd of OpenWrt) and will fix the port s remaining few bugs I found; XTaran will try to push the WL-500gPv2 development. The social part was nice as well, although I think the greek restaurant in the city will not be visited by me again. Anyway, if you didn t attend FrOSCon, your own fault Since the BitTorrent tracker used by MirOS is down, here s the link to the [updated 2010-08-28] current (FrOSCon 2010 Edition) snapshot s torrent, Triforce as usual. We ll probably rewrite torrent files for all our ISOs and publish them on the MirBSD website. I m currently considering OpenBitTorrent plus one or two DHT seed nodes with no statistics. Maybe with webseed. (Need to update the libtorrent/rtorrent MirPorts first, though ) Other options would be different trackers or running one of our own. I will announce the outcome as news entry, once done. On the plus side, the review process of mksh(1) in Android continues, and I fixed the realpath builtin to behave even more POSIX-ish.

I got this in my Debian mailbox the other day (it s an invitation to Facebook, in French):

Bonjour Jonathan,

Je vous ai invit rejoindre Facebook r cemment et je voulais vous rappeler que d s que vous serez enregistr , vous pourrez vous connecter [...]

Poete Bellon a invit xxx@xxxx rejoindre Facebook. If you do not wish to receive this type of email from Facebook in the future, please follow the link below to unsubscribe.

<script type="text/javascript"> var flattr_wp_ver = '0.9.12'; var flattr_uid = '32970'; var flattr_url = 'http://www.jwiltshire.org.uk/content'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_tag = 'blog,wordpress,rss,feed'; var flattr_btn = 'large'; var flattr_tle = 'jwiltshire.org.uk'; var flattr_dsc = 'The public face of jwiltshire'; </script> <script src="https://api.flattr.com/js/0.5.0/load.js?mode=auto" type="text/javascript"></script>

Just echoing what happens in Planet Debian for people who follow my blog (or any other planet where it is syndicated) and is interested in DebConf processes I'm specially thinking about people interested in preparing a bid for hosting a future DebConf, as well as people organizing hacking conferences who are interesed in understanding how DebConf works: Richard Darst, a.k.a. our very invaluable MrBeige, started a series of posts describing various processes of DebConf organization. He explicitly asked me for comments while this series was still in planning/wiki stage, but I failed miserably at doing so ;-) So at least I'll publicize his work, linking from here:

1. DebConf and Debian: Introductory message, basically outlining (Richard's view on) the relation between Debian and DebConf. This is not yet a clear thing It seems we are converging on the fact that DebConf *is* part of Debian, but there are several things to clear before it is viewed as a done deal.
2. Timeline of a DebConf: Running a DebConf as a local team is not (just) becoming crazy for two weeks, leaving life behind ans working hard for having your friends and peers in your hometown. It is an interesting full two year process, with different phases and aspects for the work. Richard has been involved as an organizer for the last two years, and he summarizes the main periods here.
3. What is the DebConf team?: We talk about the localteam and the globalteam as if those terms make any sense. Then again, we have had people as part of localteam who live in different countries... What does this mean? What are the tasks of the teams? How do you join? What kind of work is expected from you? What is the real difference between the teams, if there is any?
4. The DebConf selection process: How does the next year's venue selected? How is this "contest" held? When do you have to submit your proposal? How is it ranked/judged/decided? As I have told several people, the first document you should check is always the location checklist (also linked from Richard's text), but having this timeline will surely help you know what to expect.

I don't know if MrBeige is planning further parts for this series; if the past four were interesting, you should check on his weblog.

Selecting a DebConf location hard, and can certainly get intense at times. This is an area where the DebConf team and the Debian project can work to improve our processes. There is a wiki page to collect our thoughts in preparation for a discussion later, as planned during the DebConf&Debian BOF.
First off, there is a time at DebConfN-2 for interested localteams to describe their rough plans. These are videoed, and you can view the events online if you would like: for dc11 at dc9, for dc12 at dc10 .There has been a nominal deadline of December 31, 20XX-2 for submitting a bid (not finalizing), but this has been bent in the past.While teams are preparing their bids, they should look at the location checklist. This summarize what past organizers know to look for in a location. There are questions sorted by category and priority.To organize their information so that people can understand, teams prepare bid documents on the wiki (DC10, DC11, here are the winning bid documents: DC10-New York City, DC11-Banja Luka). These start off by just answering all of the questions in the location checklist, but then get a lot of work to make the pages clear and complete. Anyone can browse the pages and ask questions of the teams anytime.There are several mini-meetings where teams describe their progress, and organizers and other interested people can ask questions. In these meetings, the channel is not moderated. Questions tend to be about the location checklist criteria related things.In February/March, there is a big selection meeting. This is the only DebConf meeting where the channel is moderated and only voiced people can speak. The voiced people historically are two moderators who keep things moving, two other past DebConf organizers to ask questions and relay questions from the audience discussion channel. (These facilitators have been self-selected in the past, usually in the minutes leading up to the meeting.) Then, there are two people per location whom are voiced. There is a audience channel for everyone else to discuss, and the moderators/helpers will look there for questions and relay them to the main channel. There have been unvoiced Q&A periods and periods which are designated for relaying questions from the discussion channel.These meetings are logged (dc10 selection, dc11 selection)Teams are rated based on the priority list. There has been a simple point list the last two years, -1 to +1 for each point on that list. For each item, there are debates on how many points each location should get. Points are added up, and a result appears. In the past, this has been a simple arithmetic sum, so all items are weighted the same (despite nominally having different weights). In the case of a tie or close call, there is more discussion. For DC10, there was a tie, and NYC won after opening the meeting to the audience and getting their opinions. I didn't pay enough attention to the DC11 selection process to be able to say how that close call was resolved.While this isn't really part of the selection process, local teams can give presentations at DebConfN-1 about their location and encourage attendance: dc10 at dc9, dc11 at dc10
So, there it is. Overall, there is a lot of openness in the process, but the exact rating schemes in the decision meeting could use discussion. The criteria are established, but can be refined each year based on what we learn.If you would like to comment on how to improve this in the future, please use the selection process wiki page (first person create it). We can follow up with a list discussion after our ideas have been fleshed out.Tags: debconf

During DebConf, I managed to squeeze out of the middle of everything for long enough to write a column, a short article for a participation I have every three months, for Mexican Software Gur magazine. All in all, I liked the resulting text The current number's main topic is alternative user interfaces. I find it sometimes hard to define what Software Gur 's audience is Probably, project leaders in software development; not the actual developers, but people who actually understand about coding... but care more about The Big Picture, Processes, Architecture Engineering and Buzzword Compliance. It is an interesting magazine, all in all, but with a focus and viewpoint I often feel myself not precisely comfortable with. So, if this trimester's topic was alternative user interfaces, I decided to write on the history and future of the man-machine interface (Spanish only) (version in the magazine's site). My viewpoint comes from the fact that I do not believe we are in a state of so great, innovative changes that everybody is trumpeting, and I'd rather get others to really think on whether user interfaces have gone different in the last decades. Yes, there are many changes, but in form rather than essence. Anyway, I shared this text with some friends. Some days later, when I was back in Mexico, Pooka/Alejandro Miranda lent me a very interesting book: Hacer clic: Hacia Una Sociosemiotica De Las Interacciones Digitales (Do click: Towards a Socio-semiotics of Digital Interaction (Cibercultura)), by Carlos Scolari. I am not yet even halfway through it, but I am enjoying it This book speaks, so far, about the meanings of interfaces, and of the history of interfaces themselves, even forgetting that nowadays we (mostly) refer to interfaces as what we have between the man and the machine. Sadly, I cannot find this book in English, as it is very well worth a read. But if the topic sounds interesting and you can understand the language, don't hesitate and pick up the book. It gives an interesting insight on the topic, for a group of people (us techies) used to looking at things in a much more human-cognitive-process-oriented way. [update] I found this nice overview of the "Hacer clic" book, written as a presentation for the book. It explains precisely the part I am currently reading - The four metafora for interaction: Conversational, instrumental, superficial and spatial.

This is my third video of me while doing my tattoo, hopefully it won t get removed again due to licensing, because I tried to provide all the necessary copyright. This is its first time showing up on Planet Debian, so I might even hear some criticism? If any please don t be too harsh on me I d like to have this one on as some kind of personal zeitgeist moment if anything, and I m definitely not making any other versions of this video. I have why I did it , and all the other things written in my previous posts related to this video. Enjoy <object height="324" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/edKUKCTOpo0&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/edKUKCTOpo0&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425"></embed></object> Related posts: Linux/Unix sex
Chimaira / Linux sex v2.0

Now that I've mentioned the general timeline of a DebConf, let's talk about the "global team", "local team", and decision processes.Who is the "global team"? Basically, it is the active people on the debconf-team IRC channel and mailing list. Anyone can contribute, but we know who is who. Those with the most moral authority tend to be those who have organized a past DebConf or been involved for many years, and their opinions always have a high weight. Many of them are still around.So then how are decisions made? It's a combination of consensus-based and "whoever want to, do it". We discuss ideas based on what experienced people have seen work/not work, what new people want to try, and perhaps most importantly, who can make it happen. (this is where you fit in). There aren't necessarily leaders picked beforehand, instead leaders develop themselves. Overall, this is similar to any other team in Debian.There aren't formal gatekeepers who can veto anything, but if someone sees a problem, they should speak up and get critical mass of people to fix things. Those who hold the money (SPI, FFIS, the DPL) of course will monitor our processes and would intervene if someone started going off course.Typical global team tasks are fundraising, travel sponsorship selection, talks, registration.The local team starts out as the winning bid team. They started out figuring out local logistics for their venue, and up until arrival, they are the ones who are handling the local tasks (venue, food, accommodation, entertainment, day trip, Debian Day outreach). They should keep the global team updated on their status and what they are arranging, so that the experienced ones on the global team can give feedback. Global people will, of course, get involved here where they see fit and can help.The local team shouldn't exist in isolation though, anyone local is highly encouraged to get involved in "global team" tasks. The more coordination and bi-directional help we have, the better.It isn't the job of the local team to put on all of DebConf themselves. They aren't selected and left with free reign, they should integrate with and understand the history of DebConf, and then work on whatever improvements they want, whether they are local or global.
So in short, there are the names "global team" and "local team", but really, it's all one big Debian team. Those who are interested work and make things happen through a consensus-driven process. Things aren't always perfect: we have conflict, disorganization, leadership turn-over, lack of volunteers, lack of time, all the usual things that happen in volunteer organizations. I think most people want to work towards this ideal, and we hope that this series of posts will help us to improve. Most importantly, when you see something you'd like to work on, you can get involved.Tags: debconf

Did the global climate change in 1975? Tamino has a nice blog entry on statistical analysis of temperature changes, showing a kink in the upward curve at 1975. This has been seen in a number of places, but no clear atttribution to a climate-state-change has been physically identified: perhaps its due to cleaner air, with aerosols removed in the 1970's. Recently, a colleague Dr. Shiyu Wang at ICHEC did some work on a more local problem: has the climate changed recently in Ireland ? Over the last three years we've seen record-breaking rainfall during the winter: in November 2009, many parts of Ireland saw twice the usual rainfall, in some places threefold increases. After three miserable winters, people were asking: is this the new norm? So Shiyu did some analysis for the Environmental Protection Agency, and the short answer is: it appears to be just a statistical fluctuation, for the moment. More would be needed to confirm a trend (you can see a poster presented on this here). But as part of this, he demonstrated that we did shift to wetter weather from about 1978 onwards. How can clearer skies over Europe cause this? another piece of the global warming attribution puzzle? Tags climate, ichec, precipitation, rainfall

Released just a few hours ago:

We are pleased to announce this maintenance release of xf86-video-geode. It features a plethora of bug fixes, a few documentation updates and one performance enhancement. This release also marks the return of Advanced Micro Devices to the development team. Please read the content of NEWS for more details.

In practice, this Geode 2.11.9 release mostly fixes the growing number of rendering issues that were exposed with each successive release of the X.org server core. Among other things, it restores the ability to correctly view video streams on Totem and other media players, it fixes icon rendering bugs that affected various desktop environments and web browsers, it removes all remaining compiler warnings and, as a byproduct of fixing one rendering issue, the speed of our driver improved dramatically. This is one release that will definitely please users of the OLPC XO-1 and of thin client hardware running on LTSP!

Recently I blogged a serious complain about Facebook marketing practices.
I must note, that, while writing this, this is still a standing fact.
And it somehow leads me to the question why I use facebook (and similar portals like Xing or Meinvz at all) at all.

I would say that I'm a person, who values security. Probably I need to, because my job involves security aspects, even if its only to protect data.
Additionally I value privacy. I would never go onto a toilet in a glass case, where everybody could watch me doing my business.
The idea to keep the door to my flat open all the time would trigger all alarm bells inside of me.
But on the other hand I have a blog on which I write about technical topics, and personal topics. Like the death of my grandma or how my neighbours disturb me. And I use Facebook. And MeinVZ.

I'm well aware of how this makes it easier to trace me. How this could be used against me, if I happen to search for a job. Aware of the everlasting memorization of the internet who will keep this.. eventually forever.
And I have friends who have a serious antipathy against this and probably would never use such a portal at all.
So why do I use it?

That I started using that portals were some kind of peer pressure. I'm a person who likes beeing "thereby" and I like beeing present. Many of my friends were already using those portals and so I followed an invitation to use it, too. But I did think about several points:

• Could this affect my career plans? The answer is yes. But it can have positive and negative aspects. I'm active in the Open Source movement. Therefore I am already present in the world wide web. As an IT-guy that s not the worst that can happen. If you are interested in working for one of those big prominent companies and if its only peripheral, being present in the web is a good thing, because there is a chance of being perceived. On the other hand I'm a somehow crazy person in my private life. I like doing party and some people would probably call me freaky. Most likely this could show in such a portal.. or in my blog. If it affects my carrier plans in a negative manner, well there are several things to consider. For example if I really want to work for a company, which decides to decline me just because I have a real life next to the job. I probably don't.
• Can these portals store information about me that I don't want to be public?Yes and no. Its a fact that these portals are designed to collect as many information about as many persons as possible. But they also give you some tools to control what is known about you. If you don't want to show nude photos, then don't post them. If you don't want to be seen as a person always drinking too much then don't write about it and don't show photos of you being drunk. And if others post such stuff about you: Use the tools to get it removed and eventually ask yourself if the persons doing it are really friends.
• Are the companies behind those portals evil?Hard question. In many ways they are acting in a way that makes them look evil. Like that aggresive advertising, I wrote about earlier. But on the other hand they are serving a need of people who like to keep in touch and they are really just doing business. What they do is required for their business. They collect data because they need it to make their free portals financable (e.g. by showing targeted advertising). If you want you can still think of them as the great evil but you are not really being forced to use their service.
• Is every facebook friend a friend?Uhm.. no. Its so easy to request friendship on a social network platform that people collect "friends" on them as other people collect knickknack.
  Personally I consider my friend list on these portals to be a collection of people I know. Some of them are friends but not all of them.
• Do I really need those social networking platforms?And here is the most important question. The answer is No.
  No one does. If you really want to keep in touch with persons you like you can always do. By telephone, by writing a letter, by visiting them etc.
  But its convenient. An example:
  I have friends in different parts of the world. In the United States for example. Or people living in my country (but in a distance) or people travelling around a lot. I can keep in touch with them via email or instant messenging etc. but those social networks give me the chance to keep up-to-date with their lifes (in which I'm really interested if they are friends) without direct contact the whole time (for which we may not always find time and occasion). Its easy, its fast.

I came to the conclusion that there are pros and cons for and against using these services. And I found that I can live with the cons due to the convenience they bring to me. And that I could always stop using them.

However: That does not mean that I have to "Eat or die" what they serve.

Oh and on a side note: I found "Facebook, Br ste und die Currywurst" to be an interesting article about the topic. Its a recommended reading, although only for the people who understand German.

Since I started using Linux I've used several window managers. I felt used to blackbox and fluxbox and eventually used enlightenment and some others in the past, but nowadays its been a while since I became the user of an Desktop Environment. I'm using GNOME because it provides what I need and I don't need to spend an hour to configure it before it suits my needs. After all I'm lazy.
With respect to the fact that I'm quiet satisfied with GNOME, there is one feature I were always missing.
Because I spend much time with tiling and arranging windows on my desktops I noticed that I could need
a tiling feature. Something which was already a feature back in Windows 3.11.
GNOME/metacity does not have this features and given that a wishlist bug about this is open since almost 7 years
its unlikley that this will ever change. There are separate tools, which I recently learned about that can assist me with this. For example the perl script 'wumwum'. But this seems to be the wrong solution to a real problem. Additional wumwum does not work properly with metacity and so I'd need to another WM anyway, which lead to the point where I started thinking about integrating a true tiling wm into GNOME... once again.

First, I looked into awesome, which is a window manager I used some time ago.
But documentation about configuring it is basically an API documentation, with no obvious entry point.
It seems to be the best to study the whole API just to set some simple settings (e.g. a padding for the GNOME panel and some always-floating applications). I even thought about learning LUA, because it seems like a language which is quick and easy to learn, but honestly if I need to study a programming language and a whole API documentation just to configure a window manager then IMHO there is something conceptionally wrong with that piece of software.
After all I came to Xmonad. This window manager is using Haskell and I fear I need to learn this language as well if I want to configure weird things. But the wanted scenario is well documented and documentation for more common configuration settings exists all over the place so that I don't really feel inclined to learn more then needed.
Remember? I'm lazy.

Now I'm feeling quiet happy with this combination. It didn't cost me much time to get used to the most basic keyboard shortcuts or setting the whole thing up. GNOME and Xmonad work together like a dream team. I feel more productive now. As an additional plus I reinstalled the vimperator firefox plugin, because with my new desktop environment I more often use the keyboard for ordinary tasks like switching between apps or desks and I felt beeing able to quickly operate firefox with the keyboard, too, would be a plus. Well, it is.

long time no RC bug posting. in july I was at the Munich BSP, & during DebCamp/DebConf I had the excuse of being one of the judges of the RCBC (which was the only reason for the freeze, I'm sure :)).

to keep up with the tradition of posting about my other RC bug activities, here comes a short list. as you can see most of the work was done in or around the pkg-perl group; luckily I often only have to upload packages prepared by ansgar, carnil, & others.

• #560634 src:libparse-debianchangelog-perl: "libparse-debianchangelog-perl: FTBFS: tests failed"
  upload NMU prepared by Ansgar
• #578458 src:libcoro-perl: "libcoro-perl: FTBFS: E: Caught signal 'Terminated': terminating immediately"
  use different backends for different architectures - didn't work :/ (pkg-perl)
• #580479 libdbd-mysql-perl: "libdbd-mysql-perl can access out of string and call craches"
  upload new upstream release, prepared by Ansgar (pkg-perl)
• #582410 libgtk2-perl: "libgtk2-perl: FTBFS on mips: Failed test 'callbacks encountered'"
  don't run tests that need an X server (pkg-perl)
• #585471 webgui: "webgui: License of www/extras/yui/examples/treeview/assets/js/json.js is considered non-free"
  upload new upstream release prepard by SquOnk
• #588118 libmoose-perl: "libmoose-perl [ia64]: test failures"
  upload with patch from Niko (pkg-perl)
• #590409 src:libdbd-anydata-perl: "libdbd-anydata-perl: FTBFS: Can't call method "params" on unblessed reference at /usr/lib/perl5/DBI/DBD/SqlEngine.pm line 721."
  upload NMU prepared by Ansgar (pkg-perl)
• #590453 libgtk2-perl: "libgtk2-perl: Gtk2::Dialog and descendents signal produces different response to ->run()"
  upload new version prepared by Jeffrey (pkg-perl)
• #591108 src:jabref-plugin-oo: "jabref-plugin-oo: FTBFS: package org.antlr.runtime does not exist"
  add .jar to classpath
• #591113 src:libwebservice-youtube-perl: "libwebservice-youtube-perl: FTBFS: tests failed"
  upload fixed package prepared by carnil (pkg-perl)
• #591120 src:libhtml-formfu-perl: "libhtml-formfu-perl: FTBFS: failed test"
  upload fixed package prepard by carnil (pkg-perl)
• #591166 src:nama: "nama: FTBFS: tests failed"
  upload new upstream release prepared by ansgar (pkg-perl)
• #592981 src:jifty: "FTBFS: failed tests t/TestApp-Plugin-SetupWizard/t/001-basic.t with libyaml-syck-perl 1.12-1"
  upload patched package prepared by ansgar (pkg-perl)
• #593012 src:libdevel-ebug-perl: "FTBFS: test t/pad.t fails with libyaml-syck-perl 1.12"
  upload patched package prepared by carnil (pkg-perl)

I hope we as a project can keep up the momentum to fix the remaining RC bugs, & see a release in a not so far future.

DebConf launched with a bang the day I arrived by bike I was up until 3am meeting and greeting in the basement lounge of the Carmen Columbia dormitory, where I was staying. No idea how I managed to be so awake for that. The rest of the week alternated between hacking like crazy on code for my talk and spending a lot of time socializing with Debian folks new and old. For the day trip to Coney Island, I joined the dkg-led bike expedition which ended up running to nearly 30 miles, which was a bit more than expected. The fact that this was all in actual dense city really drove home the scale difference between Boston and New York (I'd never been to NYC before this). We took several breaks to lounge around and eat and drink, so it took quite a long time even given the distance. I hadn't planned on seeing the baseball game that was a part of the trip, but I ended up going anyway and it turns out that a bunch of geeks at a minor league game is actually quite a lot of fun! I hope someone else will put some pictures from the bike ride and game online soon, since I didn't really take any myself. This was the first DebConf where I gave a talk, which resulted in me skipping almost all of the other talks, because my talk was on the last day and I reaaally wasn't ready at the start of the conference due to the rest of life being pretty crazy this summer. I missed some things I would have liked to see because of this, but ultimately I think it was worth it. The good news is: it went well! I was nervous until I actually started talking (never given a talk at a conference before), and then it was fine. If you missed it, the talk video is on the web in low and high quality; slides are here. The audience was great there were excellent questions and people were excited and interested in the project. I couldn't have asked for a better reception. After the talk finished I spent some time aisle-chatting with some folks, and totally failed to recognize Joey despite having met him before, because he'd shaved off his hair. DebConf was, like usual, both inspiring and exhausting. I haven't managed to follow up on much that happened during the conference yet. I definitely plan to do so, though, now that real life is calming down again. I'd hate to waste the post-conference buzz about SD. My todo list includes:

• Working more on the SD debbugs bridge to make it more stable.
  • I ran into Jesse soon after coming back and now have a better idea of how I'm going to handle a lack of history properly.
• Getting my patch to the Debbugs SOAP interface merged.
• Looking into the read-write SOAP interface work that was done as a Summer of Code project.
• After talking with Jesse I also kind of want to hack up a RESTful interface that could be used alongside the SOAP interface. It seems like doing so will make development of and using the Debbugs web API less painful in the future. This may be a rabbit hole that I don't actually want to jump down, but it's an idea.
• Maybe other help on Debbugs proper!
• Fixing SD bugs and generating more documentation.
• Thinking about and thanking people for talk feedback!
• Playing around with monkeysphere for authentication on my personal machines.
• Watching videos of talks I missed (this includes basically everything that didn't have to do with bugtracking).

If the Debian package of the day website were still alive, I would post this there. Since I still have the backups lying in my harddrive waiting to be restored in some other place, I'll post here. In the graphviz package there is a neat shell script called vimdot that will open vim and a X window showing your progress with the drawing, updated each time you save. Simple but really useful, probably not much people know it exists. Tags: Planet Debian, Planet Lugfi, tips

Yesterday I handed out how to vote (HTV) cards for the Australian Greens. The experience was very different to the one I had when I handed out cards for the Greens in the Victorian state election in 2006 [1]. The Labor party (ALP) hadn t spread any gross lies about the Greens and there were no representatives from the insane parties (Family First and Citizens Electoral Council/Commission (CEC)). So we didn t have any arguments among the people handing out the HTV cards. The atmosphere among the volunteers that were present was a good match for some ideals of a sporting contest. Everyone wanted their own team to win but acted in a sporting manner. When no voters were around we had some friendly conversations. One thing that was interesting to note was the significant number of families where the parents in their 40s deliberately snubbed me while their children in the 18-22 age range took the Greens cards. It seemed that for families with adult children there were two likely voting patterns, one was children voting Green and parents not liking it, and the other was when the entire family voted informal (when someone refuses all offers of HTV cards it s a safe bet that they will cast an informal vote). In Australia submitting a vote card is mandatory but making it legible and formal is optional. The last report I heard suggested that about 5% of the total votes were informal. This seems to be strong evidence showing that civics lessons are needed in high school. Also there were a disturbing number of people who stated that they didn t know which party to vote for when they were collecting the HTV cards. A HTV card has one or two sentences about the party and there are almost no requirements for truth in such statements. Anyone who votes according to such brief summaries of the parties is quiet unlikely to end up casting a vote that gives the result that they desire. The result of the election is a significant swing to the Greens, more senators and the first Green MP! For the lower house it seems that Labor will have great difficulty in forming government even when in a coalition with the Greens and some independents. It seems unlikely that the Liberal party could ever make a deal with the Greens, the Liberal position on almost every significant issue contradicts that of the Green policy, but there is a chance of a Liberal coalition with independent MPs. In any case it seems that the Greens will have the balance of power in the senate so the excesses of the Howard government can t be repeated. If you like the nail-biting drama of watching several columns of figures slowly changing over the course of several days then you would love watching the analysis of this election! Whatever coalition government is created is not likely to be stable and we can probably expect another election in a year or two.

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2006/11/26/supporting-an-electrion-campaign/

Between work and parenthood, I'm struggling to keep on top of things a bit at the moment, but so I'm a bit late to the party. Debian turned 17 during the week. I think the first thing that brought the fact to my attention was someone sent me a thank you note for maintaining dstat (of all things) via thanks.debian.net, which Marga set up. I've been a Debian Developer for 7 of those 17 years now, and it's been great. I've learned heaps about Linux and Linux software packaging, and been able to give something back to the distro that I love. My time commitment waxes and wanes as real life permits, and my involvement in the community has dropped to almost nothing, again for time reasons, but I hope to be able to get more involved again in the future.

I got tired of having to authenticate as root to change printer settings like paper size or printout mode via a GUI. Since system-config-printer uses PolicyKit things like allow myself to change printer settings when logged into the system should be possible without having to mess with cupsd.conf or sudo, are they? Which printer related actions are governed by PolicyKit:

pkaction   grep printer

shows about the following if you have cups-pk-helper installed. The later is used by system-config-printer to interface with PolicyKit:

org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.printer-enable
org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.printer-local-edit
org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.printer-remote-edit
org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.printer-set-default
org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.printeraddremove

So org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.printer-local-edit seems to be what I'm looking for. Let's change the policy for this action:

cat <<EOF >/etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/99-local.pkla 
[EditPrinters]
Identity=unix-user:foo
Action=org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.printer-local-edit
ResultAny=no
ResultInactive=no
ResultActive=yes
EOF

This allows user foo to perform the action org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.printer-local-edit if the user is logged into a local interactive session. The pklocalauthority(8) manpage has all the details. PolicyKit will pick up the configuration file changes on the fly. Lets see if this worked by getting the process id of the running system-config-printer and checking via pkcheck if the process is authorized to use that action:

PID=$(ps a   awk '/[p]ython .*system-config-printer/   print $1  ')
pkcheck --action-id org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.printer-local-edit --process $PID
echo $?

If pkcheck returns with a zero return value everything is fine and user foo won't need any password to modify local printer settings from now on. Check the output of pkaction(1) to list more actions that can be setup this way.

DebConf10 ended 2 weeks ago, I m back in Bosnia and I needed some time to recalculate everything that happened to me in last month This was my third time in NYC, and NYC as a city never left me empty handed, in every possible sense! And am seriously considering option of moving back one day, whether to get my Masters/phD or just do work we ll see what future holds for me DebConf10 I was in organization team for DebConf10, but if you put me aside, what s particularly interesting is that there was a total number of 7 Bosnians on DebConf10, two of which were government officials. I must note this wasn t our complete team, and what s most important of all is that they all pretty much volunteered as much as they could, of course, besides good will to help Debian, but also to at least somehow prepare themselves for organization of DebConf11. It s also worth noting that this was their first DebConf, and I as a leader of the team must say I m proud on how well they performed. I m sure by being highly active in volunteering they have learned as much as they could when it comes to how it s done and were able to see good and bad sides of DebConf10 organization team. Of course, I d also like to thank DebConf10 team for their superb work, perfect Venue selection, their hospitality and being incredibly friendly and helpful to all of us. As I said in one of my lectures, it s kinda unwritten rule that every next DebConf has to top the previous one, and that being said it s going to be almost impossible to compete with this year bid, but being Bosnians we re up for the challenge My DebConf10 Pictures: Semi-private album FaceBook public link (no registration required) DebConf11 DebConf10 was busy period for all of us, but I don t want to start complaining since even though we ve done enormous amounts of work so far, the real challenge lays ahead of us. With DebConf10 behind us, the thing we should process now is it s our turn now, we re next Before anything, I d like to thank Government of Republika Srpska for their full financial support, which was one of the preconditions to even get this bid. With their full support + sponsors, we ll be able to get great amount for sponsorships, for you to come to Banja Luka from the most remote places, and also in case you need visa for them to help you in getting one. Government support is just too precious in any way you want to take it. We would also like to invite you to DebConf11 in Bosnia (Banja Luka) next summer, we also invite all of you to our communication channels (mailing list, irc) since we would really like to get involved as many people as we can. Besides all of you enjoying DebConf11 next year, we would like you to help us in giving directions since we re a young team Besides Debian people, I d like to invite anyone who think he/she could help, or want to get involved, especially individuals/organizations/LUG from whole region! It s also important to stress that in all of our communication means, we do speak English, so please do not hesitate if you have any sort of question/suggestion/whatever. For those interested in next DebConf11, most important page you should follow is our wiki page, where you can find all information and which we keep updated in timely manner: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf11/BanjaLuka Communication/Links Languages we officially support are: English, Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian Mailing list:
http://lists.debconf.net/mailman/listinfo/debconf11-bosnia IRC:
#debconf11-bosnia on irc.debian.org / irc.oftc.net Twitter:
#debconf11 tag
http://twitter.com/absinthesyringe (shameless self promotion ) Facebook:
Official DebConf11 FaceBook group DebConf10 Adnan Hodzic DebConf11 in Bosnia (Introduction and Invitation):
Lecture video high quality (205mb)

See you next year!