I played around some with with
vmdebootstrap,
my little toy to generate a disk image with a pre-installed Debian system.
I added some more features, and to show them off, created a simplistic,
proof-of-concept image to demostrate what
FreedomBox might do.
The image includes Apache and an SSH server, and a pre-configured
user. You can use SFTP to put files on the server, and HTTP to access
them. An instant file-sharing appliance.
A real FreedomBox should, of course, do all sorts of other things,
and this filesharing should probably be done differently, too. This
is not a demonstration of the FreedomBox. It's a demonstration of
vmdebootstrap.
The following command builds the image. Passwords are fixed, so you'll
want to not run the image on a public network.
sudo vmdebootstrap \
--log fboxlite.log \
--log-level debug \
--image fboxlite.img \
--hostname fboxlite \
--size 1G \
--verbose \
--enable-dhcp \
--package ssh \
--package apache2 \
--mirror http://mirror.lan/debian/ \
--customize=./fboxlite-customize \
--root-password=password1
You'll need the following customization script as well:
#!/usr/bin/python
import crypt
import os
import subprocess
import sys
def runcmd(argv, stdin='', ignore_fail=False, **kwargs):
p = subprocess.Popen(argv, stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
**kwargs)
out, err = p.communicate(stdin)
if p.returncode != 0:
msg = 'command failed: %s\n%s\n%s' % (argv, out, err)
if not ignore_fail:
raise Exception(msg)
return out
print 'Customizing fboxlite'
rootdir = sys.argv[1]
# Create a fboxlite account.
runcmd(['chroot', rootdir, 'adduser', '--gecos', 'Freedombox Lite',
'--disabled-password', 'fboxlite'])
encrypted = crypt.crypt('password1', '..')
runcmd(['chroot', rootdir, 'usermod', '-p', encrypted, 'fboxlite'])
# Create /srv/shared for holding shared files.
shared = os.path.join(rootdir, 'srv', 'shared')
os.mkdir(shared)
runcmd(['chroot', rootdir, 'chown', 'fboxlite:fboxlite', 'srv/shared'])
os.chmod(shared, 0775)
# Configure Apache to serve /srv/shared as /shared.
conf = os.path.join(rootdir, 'etc', 'apache2', 'sites-available', 'default')
text = open(conf, 'r').read()
lines = text.splitlines()
new_lines = [
'Alias /shared "/srv/shared"',
'<Directory "/srv/shared/">',
'Options Indexes',
'</Directory>',
]
lines = lines[:-1] + new_lines + lines[-1:]
text = ''.join('%s\n' % line for line in lines)
open(conf, 'w').write(text)
If you're using libvirt with KVM, you can then use the following command
to deploy the disk image:
virt-install --connect qemu:///system -n fboxlite -r 512 \
--os-type linux --os-variant debiansqueeze \
--disk $(pwd)/fboxlite.img --vnc --import
Log in via the emulated console, and run
ip addr to see what
the IP address of the virtual machine is (and if you can find a way
to query libvirt what the address is, please tell me). Then you can
use the following URLs (in, for example, Nautilus):
sftp://fboxlite@192.168.122.133/srv/shared/
http://192.168.122.133/shared/
Replace the correct IP address in the above URLs and off you go.
Hi, been offline for a while and now after my mid-term exams I m glad to tell that I ll be working on this year s GSoC project called: Compute Clusters Integration for Debian Development and Building . The main idea for this project is to give Debian developers and downstream developers a set of tools for helping them to leverage the power of a cloud-based infrastructure for their development duties. This is specially targeted to porters, multi-arch and cross-development, So I ll ask such teams for feedback on the subject over the next days.
People at Eucalyptus has been very helpful and willing to cooperate with us to make this project a success. We expect to get them involved on the packaging and probably as Debian contributors, if not developers, also. Next week is the official coding phase start, but I ve been talking and working together with my mentor Steffen and the Eucalyptus people already. We ll be starting working on the qemu ARM images, reusing and resuming the job did by Dominique Belhachemi in the past GSoC.
Of course I welcome as much feedback as you might find useful. I plan to post a project update every two weeks.
I was hosting my 
Images Moved
Back indoors this week, took a shot of my wife, daughter and my own hands. I wanted an image for our bedroom wall that represented our family.
A while ago, MusicBrainz used a technique called
That was a damn busy week.
It was mostly centered about attending 
So Blogger had a hiccough, and I've seen people in blogs I read being
confused about why their posts and comments to posts seemed to vanish.
I wish that people had more autonomy over their data and didn't just
feel it could vanish like that when someone messes up. Giving nontechnical
people that autonomy is hard, things have to be made quite simple,
and they have to be educated to want it.
Liw and I are trying to take preservation of user data
The only hard part of this for the user is the ssh key distribution,
which is currently a cut and paste affair. Monkeysphere, I've got my
eye on you..
By the way, I was stunned to see that GitHub does not support automatic
git pushes out of GitHub. Although it can notify a million CIA-type
services, the actual data is thus very subtly encouraged to be siloed.
This feature seems to have been requested since at least 2009. Can't
be that hard can it? (I didn't see a way to make Gitorious do it either.)
With two screens, the organization is different. The two icon managers
at the bottom are on their own screens. The pager is between the two
screens and the other elements are on the upper left of the right screen.
If I am using a single screen and I plug another one, I do something
like this to get my setup updated:
You know, GNOME Shell and I are not really strangers to each other for a long time now. I have been using it almost daily as my main desktop since late 2009, when I started shipping it to Debian experimental. That means that I had ample opportunity to both get used to it and witness the huge improvements it had with every new release.
My general feeling towards GNOME 3 is this: . Yes, I love it! I love the new themes, I love the window borders, I love the top panel, the overview, the dynamic workspaces, I love the Me menu, I love the clock and the calendar, the system indicators with the beautiful symbolic icons, being able to search for applications in such a nice way, the window animations, the multi-screen support, the new nautilus, the dash, looking glass. It s hard for me to even express how thankful I am and how much admiration I have for the awesome folks who helped bring this to life. Thanks so much!
While swearing at my bank's automated phone attention system, I was thinking that taking advantage in the fact they already usually say that "the call will be recorded to improve service quality" call center operators/programmers should record all user activity and, just for laughs, play back the grumbles angry users shout at the system. Of course, at random intervals, on loudspeakers, over the crowded call centers.
Oh, they do it already?
