Search Results: "ag"

10 September 2023

Freexian Collaborators: Debian Contributions: /usr-merge updates, Salsa CI progress, DebConf23 lead-up, and more! (by Utkarsh Gupta)

Contributing to Debian is part of Freexian s mission. This article covers the latest achievements of Freexian and their collaborators. All of this is made possible by organizations subscribing to our Long Term Support contracts and consulting services.

/usr-merge work, by Helmut Grohne, et al. Given that we now have consensus on moving forward by moving aliased files from / to /usr, we will also run into the problems that the file move moratorium was meant to prevent. The way forward is detecting them early and applying workarounds on a per-package basis. Said detection is now automated using the Debian Usr Merge Analysis Tool. As problems are reported to the bug tracking system, they are connected to the reports if properly usertagged. Bugs and patches for problem categories DEP17-P2 and DEP17-P6 have been filed. After consensus has been reached on the bootstrapping matters, debootstrap has been changed to swap the initial unpack and merging to avoid unpack errors due to pre-existing links. This is a precondition for having base-files install the aliasing symbolic links eventually. It was identified that the root filesystem used by the Debian installer is still unmerged and a change has been proposed. debhelper was changed to recognize systemd units installed to /usr. A discussion with the CTTE and release team on repealing the moratorium has been initiated.

Salsa CI work, by Santiago Ruano Rinc n August was a busy month in the Salsa CI world. Santiago reviewed and merged a bunch of MRs that have improved the project in different aspects: The aptly job got two MRs from Philip Hands. With the first one, the aptly now can export a couple of variables in a dotenv file, and with the second, it can include packages from multiple artifact directories. These MRs bring the base to improve how to test reverse dependencies with Salsa CI. Santiago is working on documenting this. As a result of the mass bug filing done in August, Salsa CI now includes a job to test how a package builds twice in a row. Thanks to the MRs of Sebastiaan Couwenberg and Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues. Last but not least, Santiago helped Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues to complete the support for arm64-only pipelines.

DebConf23 lead-up, by Stefano Rivera Stefano wears a few hats in the DebConf organization and in the lead up to the conference in mid-September, they ve all been quite busy. As one of the treasurers of DebConf 23, there has been a final budget update, and quite a few payments to coordinate from Debian s Trusted Organizations. We try to close the books from the previous conference at the next one, so a push was made to get DebConf 22 account statements out of TOs and record them in the conference ledger. As a website developer, we had a number of registration-related tasks, emailing attendees and trying to estimate numbers for food and accommodation. As a conference committee member, the job was mostly taking calls and helping the local team to make decisions on urgent issues. For example, getting conference visas issued to attendees required getting political approval from the Indian government. We only discovered the full process for this too late to clear some complex cases, so this required some hard calls on skipping some countries from the application list, allowing everyone else to get visas in time. Unfortunate, but necessary.

Miscellaneous contributions
  • Rapha l Hertzog updated gnome-shell-extension-hamster to a new upstream git snapshot that is compatible with GNOME Shell 44 that was recently uploaded to Debian unstable/testing. This extension makes it easy to start/stop tracking time with Hamster Time Tracker. Very handy for consultants like us who are billing their work per hour.
  • Rapha l also updated zim to the latest upstream release (0.74.2). This is a desktop wiki that can be very useful as a note-taking tool to build your own personal knowledge base or even to manage your personal todo lists.
  • Utkarsh reviewed and sponsored some uploads from mentors.debian.net.
  • Utkarsh helped the local team and the bursary team with some more DebConf activities and helped finalize the data.
  • Thorsten tried to update package hplip. Unfortunately upstream added some new compressed files that need to appear uncompressed in the package. Even though this sounded like an easy task, which seemed to be already implemented in the current debian/rules, the new type of files broke this implementation and made the package no longer buildable. The problem has been solved and the upload will happen soon.
  • Helmut sent 7 patches for cross build failures. Since dpkg-buildflags now defaults to issue arm64-specific compiler flags, more care is needed to distinguish between build architecture flags and host architecture flags than previously.
  • Stefano pushed the final bit of the tox 4 transition over the line in Debian, allowing dh-python and tox 4 to migrate to testing. We got caught up in a few unusual bugs in tox and the way we run it in Debian package building (which had to change with tox 4). This resulted in a couple of patches upstream.
  • Stefano visited Haifa, Israel, to see the proposed DebConf 24 venue and meet with the local team. While the venue isn t committed yet, we have high hopes for it.

9 September 2023

Dirk Eddelbuettel: Carmageddon by Daniel Knowles: A Brief Review

Carmageddon Daniel Knowles Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It is an entertaining, lucid, and well-written manifesto (to borrow a term from the author) aiming to get us all thinking a bit more about what cars do to society, and how to move on to a better outcome for all. The book alternates between historical context and background, lived experience (as the author is a foreign correspondent who had the opportunity to travel), and researched content. It is refreshingly free of formalities (no endless footnotes or endnotes with references, though I would have liked occassional references but hey we all went to school long enough to do a bit of research given a pointer or two). I learned or relearned a few things as I was for example somewhat unaware of the air pollution (micro-particle) impact stemming from tires and brake abrasions for which electronic vehicles do zilch, and for which the auto-obesity of ever larger and heavier cars is making things much worse. And some terms (even when re-used by Knowles) are clever such bionic duckweed. But now you need to read the book to catch up on it. Overall, the book argues its case rather well. The author brings sufficient evidence to make the formal guilty charge quite convincing. It is also recent having come out just months ago, making current figures even more relevant. I forget the exact circumstance but I think I came across the author in the context of our joint obsession with both Chicago and cycling (as there may have been a link from a related social media post) and/or the fact that I followed some of his colleagues at The Economist on social media. Either way, the number of Chicago and MidWest references made for some additional fun when reading the book over a the last few days. And for me another highlight was the ode to Tokyo which I wholeheartedly agree with: on my second trip to Japan I spent a spare day cycling across the city as the AirBnB host kindly gave me access to his bicycles. Great weather, polite drivers, moderate traffic, and just wicked good infrastructure made me wonder why I did not see more cyclists. I have little to criticize beyond the lack of any references. The repeated insistence on reminding us that Knowles comes from Birmingham gets a little old by the fifth or sixth repetition. It is all a wee bit anglo- or UK-centric. It obviously has a bit on France, Paris, and all the recent success of Anne Hidalgo (who, when I was in graduate school in France, was still a TV person rather than the very successful mayor she is now) but then does not mention the immense (and well known) success of the French train system which lead to a recent dictum to no longer allow intra-Frace air travel if train rides of under 2 1/2 hours are available which is rather remarkable. (Though in fairness that may have been enacted once the book was finished.) Lastly, the book appears to have a few sections available via Google Books. My copy will good back from one near-west suburban library to the neighbouring one. Overall a strong recommendation for a very good and timely book.

Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppFarmHash 0.0.3 on CRAN: Small Update

A minor maintenance release of the RcppFarmHash package is now on CRAN as version 0.0.3. RcppFarmHash wraps the Google FarmHash family of hash functions (written by Geoff Pike and contributors) that are used for example by Google BigQuery for the FARM_FINGERPRINT digest. This releases farms out the conversion to the integer64 add-on type in R to the new package RcppInt64 released a few days ago and adds some minor maintenance on continuous integration and alike. The brief NEWS entry follows:

Changes in version 0.0.3 (2023-09-09)
  • Rely on new RcppInt64 package and its header for conversion
  • Minor updates to continuous integration and README.md

If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

Bits from Debian: DebianDay Celebrations and comments

Debian Celebrates 30 years! We celebrated our birthday this year and we had a great time with new friends, new members welcomed to the community, and the world. We have collected a few comments, videos, and discussions from around the Internet, and some images from some of the DebianDay2023 events. We hope that you enjoyed the day(s) as much as we did! Maqsuel Maqson

"Debian 30 years of collective intelligence" -Maqsuel Maqson Brazil Thiago Pezzo

Pouso Alegre, Brazil Daniel Pimentel

Macei , Brazil Daniel Lenharo

Curitiba, Brazil Daniel Lenharo

The cake is there. :) phls Honorary Debian Developers: Buzz, Jessie, and Woody welcome guests to this amazing party. Carlos Melara Sao Carlos, state of Sao Paulo, Brazil Carlos Melara Stickers, and Fliers, and Laptops, oh my! phls Belo Horizonte, Brazil sergiosacj Bras lia, Brazil sergiosacj Bras lia, Brazil Mexico Jathan 30 a os! Jathan A quick Selfie Jathan We do not encourage beverages on computing hardware, but this one is okay by us. Germany h01ger

30 years of love h01ger

The German Delegation is also looking for this dog who footed the bill for the party, then left mysteriously. h01ger

We took the party outside Stefano Rivera

We brought the party back inside at CCCamp Belgium Stefano Rivera

Cake and Diversity in Belgium El Salvador Gato Barato Canel n Pulgosky

Food and Fellowship in El Salvador South Africa highvoltage

Debian is also very delicious! highvoltage

All smiles waiting to eat the cake Reports Debian Day 30 years in Macei - Brazil Debian Day 30 years in S o Carlos - Brazil Debian Day 30 years in Pouso Alegre - Brazil Debian Day 30 years in Belo Horizonte - Brazil Debian Day 30 years in Curitiba - Brazil Debian Day 30 years in Bras lia - Brazil Debian Day 30 years online in Brazil Articles & Blogs Happy Debian Day - going 30 years strong - Liam Dawe Debian Turns 30 Years Old, Happy Birthday! - Marius Nestor 30 Years of Stability, Security, and Freedom: Celebrating Debian s Birthday - Bobby Borisov Happy 30th Birthday, Debian! - Claudio Kuenzier Debian is 30 and Sgt Pepper Is at Least Ninetysomething - Christine Hall Debian turns 30! -Corbet Thirty years of Debian! - Lennart Hengstmengel Debian marks three decades as 'Universal Operating System' - Sam Varghese Debian Linux Celebrates 30 Years Milestone - Joshua James 30 years on, Debian is at the heart of the world's most successful Linux distros - Liam Proven Looking Back on 30 Years of Debian - Maya Posch Cheers to 30 Years of Debian: A Journey of Open Source Excellence - arindam Discussions and Social Media Debian Celebrates 30 Years - Source: News YCombinator Brand-new Linux release, which I'm calling the Debian ... Source: News YCombinator Comment: Congrats @debian !!! Happy Birthday! Thank you for becoming a cornerstone of the #opensource world. Here's to decades of collaboration, stability & #software #freedom -openSUSELinux via X (formerly Twitter) Comment: Today we #celebrate the 30th birthday of #Debian, one of the largest and most important cornerstones of the #opensourcecommunity. For this we would like to thank you very much and wish you the best for the next 30 years! Source: X (Formerly Twitter -TUXEDOComputers via X (formerly Twitter) Happy Debian Day! - Source: Reddit.com Video The History of Debian The Beginning - Source: Linux User Space Debian Celebrates 30 years -Source: Lobste.rs Video Debian At 30 and No More Distro Hopping! - LWDW388 - Source: LinuxGameCast Debian Celebrates 30 years! - Source: Debian User Forums Debian Celebrates 30 years! - Source: Linux.org

8 September 2023

Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in August 2023

Welcome to the August 2023 report from the Reproducible Builds project! In these reports we outline the most important things that we have been up to over the past month. As a quick recap, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, almost all software is distributed to end users as pre-compiled binaries. The motivation behind the reproducible builds effort is to ensure no flaws have been introduced during this compilation process by promising identical results are always generated from a given source, thus allowing multiple third-parties to come to a consensus on whether a build was compromised. If you are interested in contributing to the project, please visit our Contribute page on our website.

Rust serialisation library moving to precompiled binaries Bleeping Computer reported that Serde, a popular Rust serialization framework, had decided to ship its serde_derive macro as a precompiled binary. As Ax Sharma writes:
The move has generated a fair amount of push back among developers who worry about its future legal and technical implications, along with a potential for supply chain attacks, should the maintainer account publishing these binaries be compromised.
After intensive discussions, use of the precompiled binary was phased out.

Reproducible builds, the first ten years On August 4th, Holger Levsen gave a talk at BornHack 2023 on the Danish island of Funen titled Reproducible Builds, the first ten years which promised to contain:
[ ] an overview about reproducible builds, the past, the presence and the future. How it started with a small [meeting] at DebConf13 (and before), how it grew from being a Debian effort to something many projects work on together, until in 2021 it was mentioned in an executive order of the president of the United States. (HTML slides)
Holger repeated the talk later in the month at Chaos Communication Camp 2023 in Zehdenick, Germany: A video of the talk is available online, as are the HTML slides.

Reproducible Builds Summit Just another reminder that our upcoming Reproducible Builds Summit is set to take place from October 31st November 2nd 2023 in Hamburg, Germany. Our summits are a unique gathering that brings together attendees from diverse projects, united by a shared vision of advancing the Reproducible Builds effort. During this enriching event, participants will have the opportunity to engage in discussions, establish connections and exchange ideas to drive progress in this vital field. If you re interested in joining us this year, please make sure to read the event page, the news item, or the invitation email that Mattia Rizzolo sent out, which have more details about the event and location. We are also still looking for sponsors to support the event, so do reach out to the organizing team if you are able to help. (Also of note that PackagingCon 2023 is taking place in Berlin just before our summit, and their schedule has just been published.)

Vagrant Cascadian on the Sustain podcast Vagrant Cascadian was interviewed on the SustainOSS podcast on reproducible builds:
Vagrant walks us through his role in the project where the aim is to ensure identical results in software builds across various machines and times, enhancing software security and creating a seamless developer experience. Discover how this mission, supported by the Software Freedom Conservancy and a broad community, is changing the face of Linux distros, Arch Linux, openSUSE, and F-Droid. They also explore the challenges of managing random elements in software, and Vagrant s vision to make reproducible builds a standard best practice that will ideally become automatic for users. Vagrant shares his work in progress and their commitment to the last mile problem.
The episode is available to listen (or download) from the Sustain podcast website. As it happens, the episode was recorded at FOSSY 2023, and the video of Vagrant s talk from this conference (Breaking the Chains of Trusting Trust is now available on Archive.org: It was also announced that Vagrant Cascadian will be presenting at the Open Source Firmware Conference in October on the topic of Reproducible Builds All The Way Down.

On our mailing list Carles Pina i Estany wrote to our mailing list during August with an interesting question concerning the practical steps to reproduce the hello-traditional package from Debian. The entire thread can be viewed from the archive page, as can Vagrant Cascadian s reply.

Website updates Rahul Bajaj updated our website to add a series of environment variations related to reproducible builds [ ], Russ Cox added the Go programming language to our projects page [ ] and Vagrant Cascadian fixed a number of broken links and typos around the website [ ][ ][ ].

Software development In diffoscope development this month, versions 247, 248 and 249 were uploaded to Debian unstable by Chris Lamb, who also added documentation for the new specialize_as method and expanding the documentation of the existing specialize as well [ ]. In addition, Fay Stegerman added specialize_as and used it to optimise .smali comparisons when decompiling Android .apk files [ ], Felix Yan and Mattia Rizzolo corrected some typos in code comments [ , ], Greg Chabala merged the RUN commands into single layer in the package s Dockerfile [ ] thus greatly reducing the final image size. Lastly, Roland Clobus updated tool descriptions to mark that the xb-tool has moved package within Debian [ ].
reprotest is our tool for building the same source code twice in different environments and then checking the binaries produced by each build for any differences. This month, Vagrant Cascadian updated the packaging to be compatible with Tox version 4. This was originally filed as Debian bug #1042918 and Holger Levsen uploaded this to change to Debian unstable as version 0.7.26 [ ].

Distribution work In Debian, 28 reviews of Debian packages were added, 14 were updated and 13 were removed this month adding to our knowledge about identified issues. A number of issue types were added, including Chris Lamb adding a new timestamp_in_documentation_using_sphinx_zzzeeksphinx_theme toolchain issue.
In August, F-Droid added 25 new reproducible apps and saw 2 existing apps switch to reproducible builds, making 191 apps in total that are published with Reproducible Builds and using the upstream developer s signature. [ ]
Bernhard M. Wiedemann published another monthly report about reproducibility within openSUSE.

Upstream patches The Reproducible Builds project detects, dissects and attempts to fix as many currently-unreproducible packages as possible. We endeavour to send all of our patches upstream where appropriate. This month, we wrote a large number of such patches, including:

Testing framework The Reproducible Builds project operates a comprehensive testing framework (available at tests.reproducible-builds.org) in order to check packages and other artifacts for reproducibility. In August, a number of changes were made by Holger Levsen:
  • Debian-related changes:
    • Disable Debian live image creation jobs until an OpenQA credential problem has been fixed. [ ]
    • Run our maintenance scripts every 3 hours instead of every 2. [ ]
    • Export data for unstable to the reproducible-tracker.json data file. [ ]
    • Stop varying the build path, we want reproducible builds. [ ]
    • Temporarily stop updating the pbuilder.tgz for Debian unstable due to #1050784. [ ][ ]
    • Correctly document that we are not variying usrmerge. [ ][ ]
    • Mark two armhf nodes (wbq0 and jtx1a) as down; investigation is needed. [ ]
  • Misc:
    • Force reconfiguration of all Jenkins jobs, due to the recent rise of zombie processes. [ ]
    • In the node health checks, also try to restart failed ntpsec, postfix and vnstat services. [ ][ ][ ]
  • System health checks:
    • Detect Debian live build failures due to missing credentials. [ ][ ]
    • Ignore specific types of known zombie processes. [ ][ ]
In addition, Vagrant Cascadian updated the scripts to use a predictable build path that is consistent with the one used on buildd.debian.org. [ ][ ]
If you are interested in contributing to the Reproducible Builds project, please visit our Contribute page on our website. However, you can get in touch with us via:

Enrico Zini: Regular virus scan

Image of clamav running and a COVID lateral flow test Debian: when you're more likely to get a virus than your laptop

Thomas Lange: FAI.me service now support backports for Debian 12 (bookworm)

The FAI.me service for creating customized installation and cloud images now supports the backports kernel for the stable release Debian 12 (aka bookworm). If you enable the backports option in the web interface, you currently get kernel 6.4. This will help you if you have newer hardware that is not support by the default kernel 6.1. The backports option is also still available for the older distributions. The web interface of the FAI.me service is available at https://fai-project.org/FAIme

Valhalla's Things: Banners and Signs

Posted on September 8, 2023
I forgot to write down the details back when it happened, but now that the surprise has been delivered I can write about it. A triangular fabric banner, black with a reflective grey border, and a penguin outline where part of the outline is in the shape of Lake Como screenprinted in white and light blue. Some time ago, I decided to make a small banner with the GL-Como penguin for a friend, because reasons. However, this friend has a big problem, he, well, is from Pisa (no, I m not from Leghorn, why do you ask?), and I had a screen printing kit, openclipart and no inhibitions. Three fabric banners: one is the one mentioned above, two are square with a yellow corded border, a yellow triangle and a tower of Pisa in black in the middle. The yellow triangles aren't perfectly flat yellow, but somewhat ruined, one more than the other. So, with the encouragement of a few friends who were in the secret, this happened. In two copies, because the first attempt at the print had issues. And yesterday we finally met that friend again, gave him all of the banners, and no violence happened, but he liked them :D An ISO 7071-style triangle warning sign with a simplified tower of Pisa in black on yellow background. If somebody is interested, the source image I used is on openclipart, with links to all of the sources I ve used. I don t remember exactly how it happened, but when I was working on the Pisani sign I also stumbled on the no dogs sign and decided that the world needed a mandatory cat sign, and well, here is the full set (all images are a link to the openclipart page). ISO 7071 no dogs sign, a black dog on white background with a red circle with a diagonal line. ISO 7071-style mandatory cats sign, a white cat on blue circle background. ISO 7071-style mandatory dogs sign, a white dog on blue circle background. ISO 7071-style no cats , a black cat on white background with a red circle with a diagonal line.

Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 250 released

The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 250. This version includes the following changes: 
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Fix compatibility with file 5.45. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#351)
[ Vagrant Cascadian ]
* Add external tool references for GNU Guix (for html2text and ttx).
You find out more by visiting the project homepage.

7 September 2023

Dirk Eddelbuettel: x13binary 1.1.57-4 on CRAN: Minor Update

Release 1.1.57-4 of the x13binary package providing the X-13ARIMA-SEATS program by the US Census Bureau arrived earlier on CRAN. This release sets an explicit download timeout option value at the request of CRAN who, just like everybody else, were bitten a little by the instability at GitHub this week. Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for this release showing changes to the previous release. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in August 2023

FTP master This month I accepted 347 and rejected 39 packages. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 349. Debian LTS This was my hundred-tenth month that I did some work for the Debian LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian. During my allocated time I uploaded: The open CVE for ffmpeg was already fixed in a previous upload and could be marked as such.
I also started to work on amanda and did some work on security-master. Last but not least I did some days of frontdesk duties and took part in the LTS meeting. Debian ELTS This month was the sixty-first ELTS month. During my allocated time I uploaded: Yeah, finally openssl1.0 was uploaded! I also started to work on amanda, but for whatever reason the package does not build in my chroot. Why do I always choose the packages with quirks? Last but not least I did some days of frontdesk duties. debian-printing This month I tried to update package hplip. Unfortunately upstream added some new compressed files that need to appear uncompressed in the package. Even though this sounded like an easy task, which seemed to be already implemented in the current debian/rules, the new type of files broke this implementation and made the package no longer buildable. There is also an RC-bug waiting that needs some love. I still hope to upload the package soon. This work is generously funded by Freexian! Other stuff Unfortunately $job demanded lots of attention this month, so I only uploaded: Due to the recent license change of Hashicorp, I am no longer willing to spend time working on their products. I therefore filed RM-bugs for golang-github-hashicorp-go-gcp-common, golang-github-hashicorp-go-tfe, golang-github-hashicorp-go-slug and golang-github-hashicorp-terraform-json.
As there seemed to be others involved in golang-github-hashicorp-terraform-svchost and golang-github-hashicorp-go-azure-helpers, I only orphaned both packages. I hope OpenTF will be successful!

6 September 2023

Jonathan McDowell: DebConf 23 Key Signing + setting up a new key

I ve just finalised the OpenPGP key list for the DebConf 23 Keysigning party. This will follow the new style approach of being a continuous keysigning throughout the course of the conference, with an introduction session up front to confirm no one s fingerprint is corrupted and that we all calculated the same hash of the file. Participants will then verify each other s identities over the conference week, hopefully being able to build up a better level of verification than a one shot key signing session. Those paying attention will note that my key details have changed this year; I am finally make a concerted effort to migrate to an elliptic curve based key. I managed to bootstrap it sufficiently at OMGWTFBBQ, but I m keen to ensure it s well integrated into the web of trust, so please do come talk to me at DebConf so we can exchange fingerprints! 
pub   ed25519 2023-08-19 [C] [expires: 2025-08-18]
      419F B4B6 567E 6EF7 DEAF  80A0 9026 108F B942 BEA4
uid           [ultimate] Jonathan McDowell <noodles@earth.li>
(I ve no reason to suspect problems with my old key and will be making a graceful changeover in the Debian keyring at some point in October after I ve performed the September keyring update; that ll give things a couple of months to catch up before it s my turn to do an update again.)

Debian Brasil: Debian Day 30 years in Bras lia - Brazil

This year's Debian Day was a pretty special one, we were celebrating 30 years! Given the importance of this event, the Brazilian community planned a very special week. Instead of only local gatherings, we had a week of online talks streamed via Debian Brazil's YouTube channel (soon the recordings will be uploaded to Debian's PeerTube instance. Nonetheless the local celebrations happened around the country and we've organized one in Bras lia at University of Bras lia on the Gama campus. The event happened on August 29th and went on the whole afternoon. We had two talks made to two different classes at the university, the first of 30 students and then to a class of 80. Each conversation lasted about 2 hours. The talks were about: Debian helped us with coffee break where we had the chance to talk to the participants, and finished with a group photo (check this one and many others below). We announced the event in instant communication groups such as Telegram of technology courses of the University of Bras lia. Promotional folder Photos taken during the event: Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 Presentation about debian in first class. Photo 1 Photo 2 Presentation about free software on auditorium.

Jonathan Dowland: VW Lupo mirror-adjustment knob

VW Lupo wing mirror adjustment knob
I designed and printed a replacement knob for the wing-mirror adjustment on a Volkswagen Lupo. The original had a "pineapple" style texture on it. For my print, I sliced with Prusa Slicer and turned on "fuzzy surfaces" to get a texture on the grip-side of the knob.

Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppInt64 0.0.1 on CRAN: New Package!

Happy to share that a new package RcppInt64 arrived on CRAN earlier today after a brief one-day inspection round. RcppInt64 collects some of the previous conversions between 64-bit integer values in R and C++, and regroups them in a single package. A single header is provided. It actually offers two interfaces: both a more standard as<>() converter from R values along with its companions wrap() to return to R, as well as more dedicated functions from and to . A key difficulty faced when supporting 64 bit integer payloads is that R has no proper type for it so the standard template-based approaches use by Rcpp do not apply. To carry 64 bit integers, the clever approach by Jens Oehlschl gel and his bit64 package is used. However, its use of a double to transport the int64 payload means we must take care to not uninentionally interpret the double variables as, well, double. So we use an simple S3 class in R, and check for it. With some care (as provided by these helper functions) this works well. The RcppInt64 packages contains both an example function, as well as an entire example package to demonstrate how to use these facilities in your package. We hope others will find this useful. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

5 September 2023

Bits from Debian: Siemens welcomed as a Platinum Sponsor of DebConf23!

siemenslogo We are pleased to announce that Siemens has committed to sponsor DebConf23 as Platinum Sponsor. Siemens is a technology company focused on industry, infrastructure and transport. From resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation, and advanced healthcare, the company creates technology with purpose adding real value for customers. By combining the real and the digital worlds, Siemens empowers its customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to transform the everyday for billions of people. With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Siemens is contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year. Thank you very much Siemens, for your support of DebConf23!

Russ Allbery: Review: Before We Go Live

Review: Before We Go Live, by Stephen Flavall
Publisher: Spender Books
Copyright: 2023
ISBN: 1-7392859-1-3
Format: Kindle
Pages: 271
Stephen Flavall, better known as jorbs, is a Twitch streamer specializing in strategy games and most well-known as one of the best Slay the Spire players in the world. Before We Go Live, subtitled Navigating the Abusive World of Online Entertainment, is a memoir of some of his experiences as a streamer. It is his first book. I watch a lot of Twitch. For a long time, it was my primary form of background entertainment. (Twitch's baffling choices to cripple their app have subsequently made YouTube somewhat more attractive.) There are a few things one learns after a few years of watching a lot of streamers. One is that it's a precarious, unforgiving living for all but the most popular streamers. Another is that the level of behind-the-scenes drama is very high. And a third is that the prevailing streaming style has converged on fast-talking, manic, stream-of-consciousness joking apparently designed to satisfy people with very short attention spans. As someone for whom that manic style is like nails on a chalkboard, I am therefore very picky about who I'm willing to watch and rarely can tolerate the top streamers for more than an hour. jorbs is one of the handful of streamers I've found who seems pitched towards adults who don't need instant bursts of dopamine. He's calm, analytical, and projects a relaxed, comfortable feeling most of the time (although like the other streamers I prefer, he doesn't put up with nonsense from his chat). If you watch him for a while, he's also one of those people who makes you think "oh, this is an interestingly unusual person." It's a bit hard to put a finger on, but he thinks about things from intriguing angles. Going in, I thought this would be a general non-fiction book about the behind-the-scenes experience of the streaming industry. Before We Go Live isn't really that. It is primarily a memoir focused on Flavall's personal experience (as well as the experience of his business manager Hannah) with the streaming team and company F2K, supplemented by a brief history of Flavall's streaming career and occasional deeply personal thoughts on his own mental state and past experiences. Along the way, the reader learns a lot more about his thought processes and approach to life. He is indeed a fascinatingly unusual person. This is to some extent an expos , but that's not the most interesting part of this book. It quickly becomes clear that F2K is the sort of parasitic, chaotic, half-assed organization that crops up around any new business model. (Yes, there's crypto.) People who are good at talking other people out of money and making a lot of big promises try to follow a startup fast-growth model with unclear plans for future revenue and hope that it all works out and turns into a valuable company. Most of the time it doesn't, because most of the people running these sorts of opportunistic companies are better at talking people out of money than at running a business. When the new business model is in gaming, you might expect a high risk of sexism and frat culture; in this case, you would not be disappointed. This is moderately interesting but not very revealing if one is already familiar with startup culture and the kind of people who start businesses without doing any of the work the business is about. The F2K principals are at best opportunistic grifters, if not actual con artists. It's not long into this story before this is obvious. At that point, the main narrative of this book becomes frustrating; Flavall recognizes the dysfunction to some extent, but continues to associate with these people. There are good reasons related to his (and Hannah's) psychological state, but it doesn't make it easier to read. Expect to spend most of the book yelling "just break up with these people already" as if you were reading Captain Awkward letters. The real merit of this book is that people are endlessly fascinating, Flavall is charmingly quirky, and he has the rare mix of the introspection that allows him to describe himself without the tendency to make his self-story align with social expectations. I think every person is intriguingly weird in at least some ways, but usually the oddities are smoothed away and hidden under a desire to present as "normal" to the rest of society. Flavall has the right mix of writing skill and a willingness to write with direct honesty that lets the reader appreciate and explore the complex oddities of a real person, including the bits that at first don't make much sense. Parts of this book are uncomfortable reading. Both Flavall and his manager Hannah are abuse survivors, which has a lot to do with their reactions to their treatment by F2K, and those reactions are both tragic and maddening to read about. It's a good way to build empathy for why people will put up with people who don't have their best interests at heart, but at times that empathy can require work because some of the people on the F2K side are so transparently sleazy. This is not the sort of book I'm likely to re-read, but I'm glad I read it simply for that time spent inside the mind of someone who thinks very differently than I do and is both honest and introspective enough to give me a picture of his thought processes that I think was largely accurate. This is something memoir is uniquely capable of doing if the author doesn't polish all of the oddities out of their story. It takes a lot of work to be this forthright about one's internal thought processes, and Flavall does an excellent job. Rating: 7 out of 10

1 September 2023

Simon Josefsson: Trisquel on ppc64el: Talos II

The release notes for Trisquel 11.0 Aramo mention support for POWER and ARM architectures, however the download area only contains links for x86, and forum posts suggest there is a lack of instructions how to run Trisquel on non-x86. Since the release of Trisquel 11 I have been busy migrating x86 machines from Debian to Trisquel. One would think that I would be finished after this time period, but re-installing and migrating machines is really time consuming, especially if you allow yourself to be distracted every time you notice something that Really Ought to be improved. Rabbit holes all the way down. One of my production machines is running Debian 11 bullseye on a Talos II Lite machine from Raptor Computing Systems, and migrating the virtual machines running on that host (including the VM that serves this blog) to a x86 machine running Trisquel felt unsatisfying to me. I want to migrate my computing towards hardware that harmonize with FSF s Respects Your Freedom and not away from it. Here I had to chose between using the non-free software present in newer Debian or the non-free software implied by most x86 systems: not an easy chose. So I have ignored the dilemma for some time. After all, the machine was running Debian 11 bullseye , which was released before Debian started to require use of non-free software. With the end-of-life date for bullseye approaching, it seems that this isn t a sustainable choice. There is a report open about providing ppc64el ISOs that was created by Jason Self shortly after the release, but for many months nothing happened. About a month ago, Luis Guzm n mentioned an initial ISO build and I started testing it. The setup has worked well for a month, and with this post I want to contribute instructions how to get it up and running since this is still missing. The setup of my soon-to-be new production machine: According to the notes in issue 14 the ISO image is available at https://builds.trisquel.org/debian-installer-images/ and the following commands download, integrity check and write it to a USB stick: 
wget -q https://builds.trisquel.org/debian-installer-images/debian-installer-images_20210731+deb11u8+11.0trisquel14_ppc64el.tar.gz
tar xfa debian-installer-images_20210731+deb11u8+11.0trisquel14_ppc64el.tar.gz ./installer-ppc64el/20210731+deb11u8+11/images/netboot/mini.iso
echo '6df8f45fbc0e7a5fadf039e9de7fa2dc57a4d466e95d65f2eabeec80577631b7  ./installer-ppc64el/20210731+deb11u8+11/images/netboot/mini.iso'   sha256sum -c
sudo wipefs -a /dev/sdX
sudo dd if=./installer-ppc64el/20210731+deb11u8+11/images/netboot/mini.iso of=/dev/sdX conv=sync status=progress
Sadly, no hash checksums or OpenPGP signatures are published. Power off your device, insert the USB stick, and power it up, and you see a Petitboot menu offering to boot from the USB stick. For some reason, the "Expert Install" was the default in the menu, and instead I select "Default Install" for the regular experience. For this post, I will ignore BMC/IPMI, as interacting with it is not necessary. Make sure to not connect the BMC/IPMI ethernet port unless you are willing to enter that dungeon. The VGA console works fine with a normal USB keyboard, and you can chose to use only the second enP4p1s0f1 network card in the network card selection menu. If you are familiar with Debian netinst ISO s, the installation is straight-forward. I complicate the setup by partitioning two RAID1 partitions on the two NVMe sticks, one RAID1 for a 75GB ext4 root filesystem (discard,noatime) and one RAID1 for a 900GB LVM volume group for virtual machines, and two 20GB swap partitions on each of the NVMe sticks (to silence a warning about lack of swap, I m not sure swap is still a good idea?). The 3x18TB disks use DM-integrity with RAID1 however the installer does not support DM-integrity so I had to create it after the installation. There are two additional matters worth mentioning: I have re-installed the machine a couple of times, and have now finished installing the production setup. I haven t ran into any serious issues, and the system has been stable. Time to wrap up, and celebrate that I now run an operating system aligned with the Free System Distribution Guidelines on hardware that aligns with Respects Your Freedom Happy Hacking indeed!

Scarlett Gately Moore: KDE: Weekly report and News, 23.08.0 Snaps call for testing!

Another busy week in the KDE snap world. Most of the release-service apps are in candidate channel waiting to be tested. Testing is the bottle neck in the process, so I am trying something new and calling for help! Please test your favorite apps and report on https://discuss.kde.org/t/all-things-snaps-questions-concerns-praise/ any issues and which apps tested. Thanks! There are some very big fixes in this release: The KF6 content pack is coming along nicely using qt-framework-sdk snap! Qt5 content snap using KDE patch set is nearly complete! I believe I have a solution for our PIM applications by creating an Akondai dbus provider snap and setting all the PIM applications as consumers. I am waiting for manual review to pass. I have a pile of new applications waiting for reserved name approvals. Igor has pinged the relevant people to speed this normally quick process up. The pushback on per repository snapcraft files has stopped, so I have begun the process, which will take some time. This is a huge step in automating snap builds and cutting down my manual work so I can do more exciting things like plasma snaps! Some big news on my project, a big thank you goes out to Kevin Ottens for reaching out, his company does exactly what I need to move it forward. I will update as we hash out the details, but it looks like my project isn t dead after all! I know many have asked Why haven t you given up already?? The answer in short, I am stubborn. I refuse to give up on anything until I am given a good reason to. When I started my path in computers oh so many years ago, you would be surprised how many people told me to give it up, you ll never make it as a woman. Challenge accepted. Here I am, still going strong. When I want something, I go get it, no matter what it takes! I still need to have a ( somewhat desperate ) call for donations. This will hopefully end soon, but for now, please consider donating to my September survival fund! Please share with anyone you that may find my work useful in any way. Thanks for your consideration
PS: Debian uploads for bubble-gum are moving along. Please if you have any packaging you need done in Debian proper, let me know and I will get on it, time allowing of course.

Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities August 2023

Focus This month I didn't have any particular focus. I just worked on issues in my info bubble.

Changes

Debugging
  • Investigated test failures after Debian pybuild distutils update

Issues

Review
  • Debian BTS usertags: changes for the month

Administration
  • Debian IRC: rescue an alternate channel and make it harder to join accidentally
  • Debian wiki: unblock IP addresses, approve accounts, update emails for accounts

Communication
  • Respond to queries from Debian users and contributors on the mailing lists and IRC

Sponsors The libpst work was sponsored. All other work was done on a volunteer basis.

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