Subject: Updated Czech translation of phpMyAdmin
From: Michal Cihar <cihar@email.cz>
To: swix@users.sourceforge.net
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 11:23:36 +0200
X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2]
Hi
I've updated (translated few added messages) Czech translation of phpMyAdmin. 
I send it to you in two encodings, because I thing that in distribution 
should be included version in ISO-8859-2 which is more standard than Windows 
1250.
Regards
    Michal Cihar

Filed under: Debian English phpMyAdmin SUSE 2 comments

The huge INBOX of death The one thing that is problematic with my use of Notmuch is that I end up with a ridiculously large INBOX folder. Before the cleanup I did this morning, I had over 10k emails in there, out of about 200k emails overall. Since I mostly work from my laptop these days, the Notmuch tags are only on the laptop, and not propagated to the server. This makes accessing the mail spool directly, from webmail or simply through a local client (say Mutt) on the server, really inconvenient, because it has to load a very large spool of mail, which is very slow in Mutt. Even worse, a bunch of mail that was archived in Notmuch shows up in the spool because it's just removed tags in Notmuch: the mails are still in the inbox, even though they are marked as read. So I was hoping that Notmuch would help me deal with the giant inbox of death problem, but in fact, when I don't use Notmuch, it actually makes the problem worse. Today, I did a bunch of improvements to my setup to fix that. The first thing I did was to kill procmail, which I was surprised to discover has been dead for over a decade. I switched over to Sieve for filtering, having already switched to Dovecot a while back on the server. I tried to use the procmail2sieve.pl conversion tool but it didn't work very well, so I basically rewrote the whole file. Since I was mostly using Notmuch for filtering, there wasn't much left to convert.

Sieve filtering But this is where things got interesting: Sieve is so simpler to use and more intuitive that I started doing more interesting stuff in bridging the filtering system (Sieve) with the tagging system (Notmuch). Basically, I use Sieve to split large chunks of emails off my main inbox, to try to remove as much spam, bulk email, notifications and mailing lists as possible from the larger flow of emails. Then Notmuch comes in and does some fine-tuning, assigning tags to specific mailing lists or topics, and being generally the awesome search engine that I use on a daily basis.

Dovecot and Postfix configs For all of this to work, I had to tweak my mail servers to talk sieve. First, I enabled sieve in Dovecot:

--- a/dovecot/conf.d/15-lda.conf
+++ b/dovecot/conf.d/15-lda.conf
@@ -44,5 +44,5 @@
 protocol lda  
   # Space separated list of plugins to load (default is global mail_plugins).
-  #mail_plugins = $mail_plugins
+  mail_plugins = $mail_plugins sieve
  

Then I had to switch from procmail to dovecot for local delivery, that was easy, in Postfix's perennial main.cf:

#mailbox_command = /usr/bin/procmail -a "$EXTENSION"
mailbox_command = /usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-lda -a "$RECIPIENT"

Note that dovecot takes the full recipient as an argument, not just the extension. That's normal. It's clever, it knows that kind of stuff. One last tweak I did was to enable automatic mailbox creation and subscription, so that the automatic extension filtering (below) can create mailboxes on the fly:

--- a/dovecot/conf.d/15-lda.conf
+++ b/dovecot/conf.d/15-lda.conf
@@ -37,10 +37,10 @@
 #lda_original_recipient_header =
 # Should saving a mail to a nonexistent mailbox automatically create it?
-#lda_mailbox_autocreate = no
+lda_mailbox_autocreate = yes
 # Should automatically created mailboxes be also automatically subscribed?
-#lda_mailbox_autosubscribe = no
+lda_mailbox_autosubscribe = yes
 protocol lda  
   # Space separated list of plugins to load (default is global mail_plugins).

Sieve rules Then I had to create a Sieve ruleset. That thing lives in ~/.dovecot.sieve, since I'm running Dovecot. Your provider may accept an arbitrary ruleset like this, or you may need to go through a web interface, or who knows. I'm assuming you're running Dovecot and have a shell from now on. The first part of the file is simply to enable a bunch of extensions, as needed:

# Sieve Filters
# http://wiki.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Examples
# https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5228
require "fileinto";
require "envelope";
require "variables";
require "subaddress";
require "regex";
require "vacation";
require "vnd.dovecot.debug";

Some of those are not used yet, for example I haven't tested the vacation module yet, but I have good hopes that I can use it as a way to announce a special "urgent" mailbox while I'm traveling. The rationale is to have a distinct mailbox for urgent messages that is announced in the autoreply, that hopefully won't be parsable by bots.

Spam filtering Then I filter spam using this fairly standard expression:

########################################################################
# spam 
# possible improvement, server-side:
# http://wiki.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Examples#Filtering_using_the_spamtest_and_virustest_extensions
if header :contains "X-Spam-Flag" "YES"  
  fileinto "junk";
  stop;
  elsif header :contains "X-Spam-Level" "***"  
  fileinto "greyspam";
  stop;
 

This puts stuff into the junk or greyspam folder, based on the severity. I am very aggressive with spam: stuff often ends up in the greyspam folder, which I need to check from time to time, but it beats having too much spam in my inbox.

Mailing lists Mailing lists are generally put into a lists folder, with some mailing lists getting their own folder:

########################################################################
# lists
# converted from procmail
if header :contains "subject" "FreshPorts"  
    fileinto "freshports";
  elsif header :contains "List-Id" "alternc.org"  
    fileinto "alternc";
  elsif header :contains "List-Id" "koumbit.org"  
    fileinto "koumbit";
  elsif header :contains ["to", "cc"] ["lists.debian.org",
                                       "anarcat@debian.org"]  
    fileinto "debian";
# Debian BTS
  elsif exists "X-Debian-PR-Message"  
    fileinto "debian";
# default lists fallback
  elsif exists "List-Id"  
    fileinto "lists";
 

The idea here is that I can safely subscribe to lists without polluting my mailbox by default. Further processing is done in Notmuch.

Extension matching I also use the magic +extension tag on emails. If you send email to, say, foo+extension@example.com then the emails end up in the foo folder. This is done with the help of the following recipe:

########################################################################
# wildcard +extension
# http://wiki.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Examples#Plus_Addressed_mail_filtering
if envelope :matches :detail "to" "*"  
  # Save name in $ name  in all lowercase except for the first letter.
  # Joe, joe, jOe thus all become 'Joe'.
  set :lower "name" "$ 1 ";
  fileinto "$ name ";
  #debug_log "filed into mailbox $ name  because of extension";
  stop;
 

This is actually very effective: any time I register to a service, I try as much as possible to add a +extension that describe the service. Of course, spammers and marketers (it's the same really) are free to drop the extension and I suspect a lot of them do, but it helps with honest providers and this actually sorts a lot of stuff out of my inbox into topically-defined folders. It is also a security issue: someone could flood my filesystem with tons of mail folders, which would cripple the IMAP server and eat all the inodes, 4 times faster than just sending emails. But I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there: anyone can flood my address and I have other mechanisms to deal with this. The trick is to then assign tags to all folders so that they appear in the Notmuch-emacs welcome view:

echo tagging folders
for folder in $(ls -ad $HOME/Maildir/$ PREFIX */   egrep -v "Maildir/$ PREFIX (feeds.* Sent.* INBOX/ INBOX/Sent)\$"); do
    tag=$(echo $folder   sed 's#/$##;s#^.*/##')
    notmuch tag +$tag -inbox tag:inbox and not tag:$tag and folder:$ PREFIX $tag
done

This is part of my notmuch-tag script that includes a lot more fine-tuned filtering, detailed below.

Automated reports filtering Another thing I get a lot of is machine-generated "spam". Well, it's not commercial spam, but it's a bunch of Nagios, cron jobs, and god knows what software thinks it's important to send me emails every day. I get a lot less of those these days since I'm off work at Koumbit, but still, those can be useful for others as well:

if anyof (exists "X-Cron-Env",
          header :contains ["subject"] ["security run output",
                                        "monthly run output",
                                        "daily run output",
                                        "weekly run output",
                                        "Debian Package Updates",
                                        "Debian package update",
                                        "daily mail stats",
                                        "Anacron job",
                                        "nagios",
                                        "changes report",
                                        "run output",
                                        "[Systraq]",
                                        "Undelivered mail",
                                        "Postfix SMTP server: errors from",
                                        "backupninja",
                                        "DenyHosts report",
                                        "Debian security status",
                                        "apt-listchanges"
                                        ],
           header :contains "Auto-Submitted" "auto-generated",
           envelope :contains "from" ["nagios@",
                                      "logcheck@"])
     
    fileinto "rapports";
 
# imported from procmail
elsif header :comparator "i;octet" :contains "Subject" "Cron"  
  if header :regex :comparator "i;octet"  "From" ".*root@"  
        fileinto "rapports";
   
 
elsif header :comparator "i;octet" :contains "To" "root@"  
  if header :regex :comparator "i;octet"  "Subject" "\\*\\*\\* SECURITY"  
        fileinto "rapports";
   
 
elsif header :contains "Precedence" "bulk"  
    fileinto "bulk";
 

Refiltering emails Of course, after all this I still had thousands of emails in my inbox, because the sieve filters apply only on new emails. The beauty of Sieve support in Dovecot is that there is a neat sieve-filter command that can reprocess an existing mailbox. That was a lifesaver. To run a specific sieve filter on a mailbox, I simply run:

sieve-filter .dovecot.sieve INBOX 2>&1   less

Well, this doesn't do anything. To really execute the filters, you need the -e flags, and to write to the INBOX for real, you need the -w flag as well, so the real run looks something more like this:

sieve-filter -e -W -v .dovecot.sieve INBOX > refilter.log 2>&1

The funky output redirects are necessary because this outputs a lot of crap. Also note that, unfortunately, the fake run output differs from the real run and is actually more verbose, which makes it really less useful than it could be.

Archival I also usually archive my mails every year, rotating my mailbox into an Archive.YYYY directory. For example, now all mails from 2015 are archived in a Archive.2015 directory. I used to do this with Mutt tagging and it was a little slow and error-prone. Now, i simply have this Sieve script:

require ["variables","date","fileinto","mailbox", "relational"];
# Extract date info
if currentdate :matches "year" "*"   set "year" "$ 1 ";  
if date :value "lt" :originalzone "date" "year" "$ year "  
  if date :matches "received" "year" "*"  
    # Archive Dovecot mailing list items by year and month.
    # Create folder when it does not exist.
    fileinto :create "Archive.$ 1 ";
   
 

I went from 15613 to 1040 emails in my real inbox with this process (including refiltering with the default filters as well).

Notmuch configuration My Notmuch configuration is a in three parts: I have small settings in ~/.notmuch-config. The gist of it is:

[new]
tags=unread;inbox;
ignore=
#[maildir]
# synchronize_flags=true
# tentative patch that was refused upstream
# http://mid.gmane.org/1310874973-28437-1-git-send-email-anarcat@koumbit.org
#reckless_trash=true
[search]
exclude_tags=deleted;spam;

I omitted the fairly trivial [user] section for privacy reasons and [database] for declutter. Then I have a notmuch-tag script symlinked into ~/Maildir/.notmuch/hooks/post-new. It does way too much stuff to describe in details here, but here are a few snippets:

if hostname   grep angela > /dev/null; then
    PREFIX=Anarcat/
else
    PREFIX=.
fi

This sets a variable that makes the script work on my laptop (angela), where mailboxes are in Maildir/Anarcat/foo or the server, where mailboxes are in Maildir/.foo. I also have special rules to tag my RSS feeds, which are generated by feed2imap, which is documented shortly below:

echo tagging feeds
( cd $HOME/Maildir/ && for feed in $ PREFIX feeds.*; do
    name=$(echo $feed   sed "s#$ PREFIX feeds\\.##")
    notmuch tag +feeds +$name -inbox folder:$feed and not tag:feeds
done )

Another example that would be useful is how to tag mailing lists, for example, this removes the inbox tag and adds the notmuch tags to emails from the notmuch mailing list.

notmuch tag +lists +notmuch      -inbox tag:inbox and "to:notmuch@notmuchmail.org"

Finally, I have a bunch of special keybindings in ~/.emacs.d/notmuch-config.el:

;; autocompletion
(eval-after-load "notmuch-address"
  '(progn
     (notmuch-address-message-insinuate)))
; use fortune for signature, config is in custom
(add-hook 'message-setup-hook 'fortune-to-signature)
; don't remember what that is
(add-hook 'notmuch-show-hook 'visual-line-mode)
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;; keymappings
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
(define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "S"
  (lambda ()
    "mark message as spam and advance"
    (interactive)
    (notmuch-show-tag '("+spam" "-unread"))
    (notmuch-show-next-open-message-or-pop)))
(define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "S"
  (lambda (&optional beg end)
    "mark message as spam and advance"
    (interactive (notmuch-search-interactive-region))
    (notmuch-search-tag (list "+spam" "-unread") beg end)
    (anarcat/notmuch-search-next-message)))
(define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "H"
  (lambda ()
    "mark message as spam and advance"
    (interactive)
    (notmuch-show-tag '("-spam"))
    (notmuch-show-next-open-message-or-pop)))
(define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "H"
  (lambda (&optional beg end)
    "mark message as spam and advance"
    (interactive (notmuch-search-interactive-region))
    (notmuch-search-tag (list "-spam") beg end)
    (anarcat/notmuch-search-next-message)))
(define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "l" 
  (lambda (&optional beg end)
    "undelete and advance"
    (interactive (notmuch-search-interactive-region))
    (notmuch-search-tag (list "-unread") beg end)
    (anarcat/notmuch-search-next-message)))
(define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "u"
  (lambda (&optional beg end)
    "undelete and advance"
    (interactive (notmuch-search-interactive-region))
    (notmuch-search-tag (list "-deleted") beg end)
    (anarcat/notmuch-search-next-message)))
(define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "d"
  (lambda (&optional beg end)
    "delete and advance"
    (interactive (notmuch-search-interactive-region))
    (notmuch-search-tag (list "+deleted" "-unread") beg end)
    (anarcat/notmuch-search-next-message)))
(define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "d"
  (lambda ()
    "delete current message and advance"
    (interactive)
    (notmuch-show-tag '("+deleted" "-unread"))
    (notmuch-show-next-open-message-or-pop)))
;; https://notmuchmail.org/emacstips/#index17h2
(define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "b"
  (lambda (&optional address)
    "Bounce the current message."
    (interactive "sBounce To: ")
    (notmuch-show-view-raw-message)
    (message-resend address)
    (kill-buffer)))
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;; my custom notmuch functions
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
(defun anarcat/notmuch-search-next-thread ()
  "Skip to next message from region or point
This is necessary because notmuch-search-next-thread just starts
from point, whereas it seems to me more logical to start from the
end of the region."
  ;; move line before the end of region if there is one
  (unless (= beg end)
    (goto-char (- end 1)))
  (notmuch-search-next-thread))
;; Linking to notmuch messages from org-mode
;; https://notmuchmail.org/emacstips/#index23h2
(require 'org-notmuch nil t)
(message "anarcat's custom notmuch config loaded")

This is way too long: in my opinion, a bunch of that stuff should be factored in upstream, but some features have been hard to get in. For example, Notmuch is really hesitant in marking emails as deleted. The community is also very strict about having unit tests for everything, which makes writing new patches a significant challenge for a newcomer, which will often need to be familiar with both Elisp and C. So for now I just have those configs that I carry around. Emails marked as deleted or spam are processed with the following script named notmuch-purge which I symlink to ~/Maildir/.notmuch/hooks/pre-new:

#!/bin/sh
if hostname   grep angela > /dev/null; then
    PREFIX=Anarcat/
else
    PREFIX=.
fi
echo moving tagged spam to the junk folder
notmuch search --output=files tag:spam \
        and not folder:$ PREFIX junk \
        and not folder:$ PREFIX greyspam \
        and not folder:Koumbit/INBOX \
        and not path:Koumbit/** \
      while read file; do
          mv "$file" "$HOME/Maildir/$ PREFIX junk/cur"
      done
echo unconditionnally deleting deleted mails
notmuch search --output=files tag:deleted   xargs -r rm

Oh, and there's also customization for Notmuch:

;; -*- mode: emacs-lisp; auto-recompile: t; -*-
(custom-set-variables
 ;; from https://anarc.at/sigs.fortune
 '(fortune-file "/home/anarcat/.mutt/sigs.fortune")
 '(message-send-hook (quote (notmuch-message-mark-replied)))
 '(notmuch-address-command "notmuch-address")
 '(notmuch-always-prompt-for-sender t)
 '(notmuch-crypto-process-mime t)
 '(notmuch-fcc-dirs
   (quote
    ((".*@koumbit.org" . "Koumbit/INBOX.Sent")
     (".*" . "Anarcat/Sent"))))
 '(notmuch-hello-tag-list-make-query "tag:unread")
 '(notmuch-message-headers (quote ("Subject" "To" "Cc" "Bcc" "Date" "Reply-To")))
 '(notmuch-saved-searches
   (quote
    ((:name "inbox" :query "tag:inbox and not tag:koumbit and not tag:rt")
     (:name "unread inbox" :query "tag:inbox and tag:unread")
     (:name "unread" :query "tag:unred")
     (:name "freshports" :query "tag:freshports and tag:unread")
     (:name "rapports" :query "tag:rapports and tag:unread")
     (:name "sent" :query "tag:sent")
     (:name "drafts" :query "tag:draft"))))
 '(notmuch-search-line-faces
   (quote
    (("deleted" :foreground "red")
     ("unread" :weight bold)
     ("flagged" :foreground "blue"))))/
 '(notmuch-search-oldest-first nil)
 '(notmuch-show-all-multipart/alternative-parts nil)
 '(notmuch-show-all-tags-list t)
 '(notmuch-show-insert-text/plain-hook
   (quote
    (notmuch-wash-convert-inline-patch-to-part notmuch-wash-tidy-citations notmuch-wash-elide-blank-lines notmuch-wash-excerpt-citations)))
 )

I think that covers it.

Offlineimap So of course the above works well on the server directly, but how do run Notmuch on a remote machine that doesn't have access to the mail spool directly? This is where OfflineIMAP comes in. It allows me to incrementally synchronize a local Maildir folder hierarchy with a a remote IMAP server. I am assuming you already have an IMAP server configured, since you already configured Sieve above. Note that other synchronization tools exist. The other popular one is isync but I had trouble migrating to it (see courriels for details) so for now I am sticking with OfflineIMAP. The configuration is fairly simple:

[general]
accounts = Anarcat
ui = Blinkenlights
maxsyncaccounts = 3
[Account Anarcat]
localrepository = LocalAnarcat
remoterepository = RemoteAnarcat
# refresh all mailboxes every 10 minutes
autorefresh = 10
# run notmuch after refresh
postsynchook = notmuch new
# sync only mailboxes that changed
quick = -1
## possible optimisation: ignore mails older than a year
#maxage = 365
# local mailbox location
[Repository LocalAnarcat]
type = Maildir
localfolders = ~/Maildir/Anarcat/
# remote IMAP server
[Repository RemoteAnarcat]
type = IMAP
remoteuser = anarcat
remotehost = anarc.at
ssl = yes
# without this, the cert is not verified (!)
sslcacertfile = /etc/ssl/certs/DST_Root_CA_X3.pem
# do not sync archives
folderfilter = lambda foldername: not re.search('(Sent\.20[01][0-9]\..*)', foldername) and not re.search('(Archive.*)', foldername)
# and only subscribed folders
subscribedonly = yes
# don't reconnect all the time
holdconnectionopen = yes
# get mails from INBOX immediately, doesn't trigger postsynchook
idlefolders = ['INBOX']

Critical parts are:

• postsynchook: obviously, we want to run notmuch after fetching mail
• idlefolders: receives emails immediately without waiting for the longer autorefresh delay, which means that most mailboxes don't see new emails until 10 minutes in the worst case. unfortunately, doesn't run the postsynchook so I need to hit G in Emacs to see new mail
• quick=-1, subscribedonly, holdconnectionopen: makes most runs much, much faster as it skips unchanged or unsubscribed folders and keeps the connection to the server

The other settings should be self-explanatory.

RSS feeds I gave up on RSS readers, or more precisely, I merged RSS feeds and email. The first time I heard of this, it sounded like a horrible idea, because it means yet more emails! But with proper filtering, it's actually a really nice way to process emails, since it leverages the distributed nature of email. For this I use a fairly standard feed2imap, although I do not deliver to an IMAP server, but straight to a local Maildir. The configuration looks like this:

---
include-images: true
target-refix: &target "maildir:///home/anarcat/Maildir/.feeds."
feeds:
- name: Planet Debian
  url: http://planet.debian.org/rss20.xml
  target: [ *target, 'debian-planet' ]

I have obviously more feeds, the above is just and example. This will deliver the feeds as emails in one mailbox per feed, in ~/Maildir/.feeds.debian-planet, in the above example.

Troubleshooting You will fail at writing the sieve filters correctly, and mail will (hopefully?) fall through to your regular mailbox. Syslog will tell you things fail, as expected, and details are in your .dovecot.sieve.log file in your home directory. I also enabled debugging on the Sieve module

--- a/dovecot/conf.d/90-sieve.conf
+++ b/dovecot/conf.d/90-sieve.conf
@@ -51,6 +51,7 @@ plugin  
        # deprecated imapflags extension in addition to all extensions were already
   # enabled by default.
   #sieve_extensions = +notify +imapflags
+  sieve_extensions = +vnd.dovecot.debug
   # Which Sieve language extensions are ONLY available in global scripts. This
   # can be used to restrict the use of certain Sieve extensions to administrator

This allowed me to use debug_log function in the rulesets to output stuff directly to the logfile.

Further improvements Of course, this is all done on the commandline, but that is somewhat expected if you are already running Notmuch. Of course, it would be much easier to edit those filters through a GUI. Roundcube has a nice Sieve plugin, and Thunderbird also has such a plugin as well. Since Sieve is a standard, there's a bunch of clients available. All those need you to setup some sort of thing on the server, which I didn't bother doing yet. And of course, a key improvement would be to have Notmuch synchronize its state better with the mailboxes directly, instead of having the notmuch-purge hack above. Dovecot and Maildir formats support up to 26 flags, and there were discussions about using those flags to synchronize with notmuch tags so that multiple notmuch clients can see the same tags on different machines transparently. This, however, won't make Notmuch work on my phone or webmail or any other more generic client: for that, Sieve rules are still very useful. I still don't have webmail setup at all: so to read email, I need an actual client, which is currently my phone, which means I need to have Wifi access to read email. "Internet Caf s" or "this guy's computer" won't work as well, although I can always use ssh to login straight to the server and read mails with Mutt. I am also considering using X509 client certificates to authenticate to the mail server without a passphrase. This involves configuring Postfix, which seems simple enough. Dovecot's configuration seems a little more involved and less well documented. It seems that both [OfflimeIMAP][] and K-9 mail support client-side certs. OfflineIMAP prompts me for the password so it doesn't get leaked anywhere. I am a little concerned about building yet another CA, but I guess it would not be so hard... The server side of things needs more documenting, particularly the spam filters. This is currently spread around this wiki, mostly in configuration.

Security considerations The whole purpose of this was to make it easier to read my mail on other devices. This introduces a new vulnerability: someone may steal that device or compromise it to read my mail, impersonate me on different services and even get a shell on the remote server. Thanks to the two-factor authentication I setup on the server, I feel a little more confident that just getting the passphrase to the mail account isn't sufficient anymore in leveraging shell access. It also allows me to login with ssh on the server without trusting the machine too much, although that only goes so far... Of course, sudo is then out of the question and I must assume that everything I see is also seen by the attacker, which can also inject keystrokes and do all sorts of nasty things. Since I also connected my email account on my phone, someone could steal the phone and start impersonating me. The mitigation here is that there is a PIN for the screen lock, and the phone is encrypted. Encryption isn't so great when the passphrase is a PIN, but I'm working on having a better key that is required on reboot, and the phone shuts down after 5 failed attempts. This is documented in my phone setup. Client-side X509 certificates further mitigates those kind of compromises, as the X509 certificate won't give shell access. Basically, if the phone is lost, all hell breaks loose: I need to change the email password (or revoke the certificate), as I assume the account is about to be compromised. I do not trust Android security to give me protection indefinitely. In fact, one could argue that the phone is already compromised and putting the password there already enabled a possible state-sponsored attacker to hijack my email address. This is why I have an OpenPGP key on my laptop to authenticate myself for critical operations like code signatures. The risk of identity theft from the state is, after all, a tautology: the state is the primary owner of identities, some could say by definition. So if a state-sponsored attacker would like to masquerade as me, they could simply issue a passport under my name and join a OpenPGP key signing party, and we'd have other problems to deal with, namely, proper infiltration counter-measures and counter-snitching.

• Scarlett Clark: Kubuntu: Debian: KDE: Outreachy! Yay! Upcoming changes
• Satyam Zode: Google Summer of Code 2016 With Debian Reproducible Builds : Introduction

• #719845 (make the file order within the data,control .tar.gz .deb members deterministic)
• #819194 (add -fdebug-prefix-map to the compilers options)

• Alexis uploaded texlive-bin to our repo improving the existing patches.
• pdftex upstream discussion by Alexis Bienven e began at tex-k mailing list to make \today honour SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. Upstream already commited enhanced versions of the proposed patches.
• Similar discussion on the luatex side at luatex mailing list. Upstream is working on it, and already committed some changes.

• crawl/2:0.18.0-1 by Adam Borowski, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.
• eigenbase-resgen/1.3.0.13768-3 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• fpga-icestorm/0~20160218gitf2b2549-2 by Ruben Undheim, original patch by Daniel Shahaf.
• gap/4r8p3-3 by Bill Allombert, original patch by Jerome Benoit.
• libksba/1.3.4-1 by Andreas Metzler.
• libusb/2:0.1.12-29 by Aurelien Jarno, original patch by Daniel Shahaf.
• milkytracker/0.90.86+dfsg-1 by James Cowgill.
• mp4h/1.3.1-15 by Axel Beckert.
• rdtool/0.6.38-4 by Christian Hofstaedtler, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.
• sympow/1.023-7 by Jerome Benoit.

• freefem++/3.46+dfsg1-2 by Dimitrios Eftaxiopoulosis, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.
• jaligner/1.0+dfsg-2 by Michael R. Crusoe.
• keyutils/1.5.9-9 by Christian Kastner.
• shotwell/0.22.1-1 by J rg Frings-F rst.

• emoslib/2:4.4.1-1 by Alastair McKinstry, original patch by boyska.

• #823174 against ros-pluginlib by Daniel Shahaf: use printf instead of echo to fix implementation-specific behavior.
• #823239 against gspiceui by Alexis Bienven e: sort list of object files for linking binary.
• #823241 against unhide by Alexis Bienven e: sort list of source files passed to compiler.
• #823393 against kdbg by Alexis Bienven e: fix changelog encoding and call grep in text mode.
• #823452 against khronos-opengl-man4 by Daniel Shahaf: sort file lists deterministically.

• All packages from all tested suites have finally been built on i386.
• Due to GCC supporting SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH sid/armhf has finally reached 20k reproducible packages and sid/amd64 has even reached 21k reproducible packages. (These numbers are about our test setup. The numbers for the Debian archive are still all 0. dpkg and dak need to be fixed to get the numbers above 0.)
• IRC notifications for non-Debian related jenkins job results go to #reproducible-builds now, while Debian related notifications stay on #debian-reproducible. (h01ger)
• profitbricks-build4-amd64 has been fully set up now and is running 398 days in the future. Next: update coreboot/OpenWrt/Fedora/Archlinux/FreeBSD/NetBSD scripts to use it. Help (in form of patches to existing shell scripts) very much welcome! (Other help is much welcome (and needed) too, but some things might take longer to merge or explain )

In order to solve a long-standing problem with list fusion, a new compiler transformation, 'Call Arity' is developed and implemented in the Haskell compiler GHC. It is formally proven to not degrade program performance; the proof is machine-checked using the interactive theorem prover Isabelle. To that end, a formalization of Launchbury s Natural Semantics for Lazy Evaluation is modelled in Isabelle, including a correctness and adequacy proof.

• corosync: start the system service (the daemon) with the default Debian configuration
• pacemaker: start the system services (corosync and pacemaker daemons) with the default Debian configuration.
• crmsh: start the system services (corosync, pacemaker) and then add a basic resource (a virtual IP address) and do some tests (start the resource, stop, delete...)

      total   used    free   shared  buff/cache  available
Mem:    15G   3.7G    641M     222M         11G        11G
Swap:   15G   194M     15G

• Free memory because free is not used!
• The Cached value recall this is made up of the Page Cache plus the Reclaimable part of Slab
• The buffers

• HID mode working as keyboard and sending keystrokes
• CCID mode (smartcard) for PIV / GnuPG / OpenGPG functionality
• NFC for communication with your mobile

• various OTP: Yubico OTP (against a special server), TOTP, OATH-HOTP, Static PW, Challenge-Response
• Fido U2F mode universal two-factor authentication mode
• OpenGPG smartcard support 4 slots for private keys
• PIV

$ ykpersonalize -m86
Firmware version 3.4.3 Touch level 1792 Unconfigured
 
The USB mode will be set to: 0x86
 
Commit? (y/n) [n]: y
$

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS idVendor =="1050", ATTRS idProduct =="0116", TAG+="uaccess"

$ ykpersonalize -2 -ochal-resp -ochal-hmac -ohmac-lt64 -oserial-api-visible
...
Commit? (y/n) [n]: y
$

$ mkdir $HOME/.yubico
$ ykpamcfg -2 -v
...
Stored initial challenge and expected response in '/home/norbert/.yubico/challenge-123456'.
$

$ mkdir gpgtmp
$ chmod go-rwx gpgtmp
$ gpg2 --homedir gpgtmp --list-keys
gpg: keybox 'gpgtmp/pubring.kbx' created
gpg: gpgtmp/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created

$ gpg-connect-agent --homedir gpgtmp --hex "scd apdu 00 f1 00 00" /bye"
gpg-connect-agent: no running gpg-agent - starting '/usr/bin/gpg-agent'
gpg-connect-agent: waiting for the agent to come up ... (5s)
gpg-connect-agent: connection to agent established
D[0000]  01 00 10 90 00                                     .....           
OK

$ gpg2 --homedir gpgtmp --card-edit
 
Reader ...........: 1050:0116:X:0
Application ID ...: D2760001240102000006036457190000
Version ..........: 2.0
Manufacturer .....: Yubico
Serial number ....: 03645719
Name of cardholder: [not set]
Language prefs ...: [not set]
Sex ..............: unspecified
URL of public key : [not set]
Login data .......: [not set]
Signature PIN ....: forced
Key attributes ...: rsa2048 rsa2048 rsa2048
Max. PIN lengths .: 127 127 127
PIN retry counter : 3 3 3
Signature counter : 0
Signature key ....: [none]
Encryption key....: [none]
Authentication key: [none]
General key info..: [none]
 
gpg/card> admin
Admin commands are allowed
 
gpg/card> passwd
gpg: OpenPGP card no. D2760001240102000006036457190000 detected
 
1 - change PIN
2 - unblock PIN
3 - change Admin PIN
4 - set the Reset Code
Q - quit
 
Your selection? 3
PIN changed.
 
1 - change PIN
2 - unblock PIN
3 - change Admin PIN
4 - set the Reset Code
Q - quit
 
Your selection? 1
PIN changed.
 
1 - change PIN
2 - unblock PIN
3 - change Admin PIN
4 - set the Reset Code
Q - quit
 
Your selection? q
 
gpg/card> quit

gpg/card> name
Cardholder's surname: Preining
Cardholder's given name: Norbert
 
gpg/card> sex
Sex ((M)ale, (F)emale or space): M
 
gpg/card> lang
Language preferences: de
 
gpg/card> login
Login data (account name): norbert
 
gpg/card> url
URL to retrieve public key: https://www.preining.info/preining-norbert.asc
 
gpg/card> list
 
Reader ...........: 1050:0116:X:0
Application ID ...: D2760001240102000006036457190000
Version ..........: 2.0
Manufacturer .....: Yubico
Serial number ....: 03645719
Name of cardholder: Norbert Preining
Language prefs ...: de
Sex ..............: male
URL of public key : https://www.preining.info/preining-norbert.asc
Login data .......: norbert
Signature PIN ....: forced
Key attributes ...: rsa2048 rsa2048 rsa2048
Max. PIN lengths .: 127 127 127
PIN retry counter : 3 3 3
Signature counter : 0
Signature key ....: [none]
Encryption key....: [none]
Authentication key: [none]
General key info..: [none]
 
gpg/card> quit

$ gpg2 --edit-key $MASTERKEY
gpg (GnuPG) 2.1.11; Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
 
Secret key is available.
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb  rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> key 2
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb* rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb  rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> keytocard
Please select where to store the key:
   (1) Signature key
   (3) Authentication key
Your selection? 1
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb* rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb  rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> key 2
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb  rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> key 3
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb* rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> keytocard
Please select where to store the key:
   (2) Encryption key
Your selection? 2
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb* rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> key 3
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb  rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> key 4
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb  rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb* rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> keytocard
Please select where to store the key:
   (3) Authentication key
Your selection? 3
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb  rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb* rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> key 4
 
sec  rsa4096/0x6CACA448860CDC13
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: SC  
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb  rsa4096/0xD1D2BD14810F62B3
     created: 2010-09-14  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0xEC00B8DAD32266AA
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: S   
ssb  rsa2048/0xBF361ED434425B4C
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: E   
ssb  rsa2048/0x9C7CA4E294F04D49
     created: 2016-02-07  expires: 2017-02-06  usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
[ultimate] (2)  Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>
[ultimate] (3)  Norbert Preining <preining@debian.org>
[ultimate] (4)  Norbert Preining <preining@jaist.ac.jp>
[ultimate] (5)  [jpeg image of size 4185]
 
gpg> save

• Logging into my computer: I need to have the key plugged in, otherwise authentication will not succeed.
• GPG activities (signing, encryption): Key needs to be plugged in, GnuPG will ask the User pin.
• TOTP (Google, GitHub, WordPress, DropBox login): I use my mobile (Nexus 6p) and the Yubico Authenticator, touch the phone with the Yubikey, and see the TOTPs in the application windows.
• OpenKeychain (Android app) integrates with K-9 Mail signing, encryption and decryption is possible on the mobile via NFC (touching the device with the key)

• A total of 136 packages have been added, 63 removed, 213 upgraded to a new upstream release, and 145 updated. We are now maintaining 892 packages (+12.34%).
• OpenJDK 8 is now the default Java runtime in testing/unstable. OpenJDK 7 has been removed, as well as several packages that couldn't be upgraded to work with OpenJDK 8 (avian, eclipse).
• OpenJDK 9 is available in experimental. As a reminder, it won't be part of the next release; OpenJDK 8 will be the only Java runtime supported for Stretch.
• Netbeans didn't make it into Jessie, but it is now back and up to date.
• The main build tools are close to their latest upstream releases, especially Maven and Gradle which were seriously lagging behind.
• Scala has been upgraded to the version 2.11. We are looking for Scala experts to maintain the package and its dependencies.
• Freemind has been removed due to lack of maintenance, Freeplane is recommended instead.
• The reproducibility rate has greatly improved, climbing from 50% to 75% in the past year.
• Backports are continuously provided for the key packages and applications: OpenJDK 8, OpenJFX, Ant, Maven, Gradle, Tomcat 7 & 8, Jetty 8 & 9, jEdit.
• The transition to Maven 3 has been completed, and packages are no longer built with Maven 2.
• We replaced several obsolete libraries and transitioned them to their latest versions - for example, asm2, commons-net1 and commons-net2. Groovy 1.x was replaced with Groovy 2, and we upgraded BND, an important tool to develop with OSGi, and more than thirty of its reverse-dependencies from the 1.x series to version 2.4.1.
• New packaging tools have been created to work with Gradle (gradle-debian-helper) and Ivy (ivy-debian-helper).

• We have several difficult transitions ahead: BND 3, Tomcat 7 to 8, Jetty 8 to 9, ASM 5, and of course Java 9. Any help would be welcome.
• Eclipse is severely outdated and currently not part of testing. We would like to update this important piece of software and its corresponding modules to the latest upstream release, but we need more active people who want to maintain them. If you care about the Eclipse ecosystem, please get in touch with us.
• We still are in the midst of removing old libraries like asm3, commons-httpclient and the servlet 2.5 API, which is part of the Tomcat 6 source package.
• Want to see Azureus/Vuze in Stretch again? Packaging is almost complete but we are looking for someone who can clarify remaining licensing issues with upstream and wants to maintain the software for the foreseeable future.
• Do you have more ideas and want to get involved with the Java Team? Just send your suggestions to debian-java@lists.debian.org or chat with us on IRC at irc.debian.org, #debian-java.

• The Java Team is not the only team that maintains Java software in Debian. DebianMed, DebianScience and the Android Tools Maintainers rely heavily on Java. By helping the Java Team and working together, you can improve the Java ecosystem and further the efforts of multiple other fields of endeavor all at once.

• ant (1.9.7)
• elasticsearch (1.6.2)
• gradle (2.10)
• groovy2 (2.4.5)
• japi-compliance-checker (1.5)
• jedit (5.3.0)
• jetty8 (8.1.19)
• jetty9 (9.2.14)
• maven (3.3.9)
• openjdk-7-jre-dcevm (7u79)
• openjdk-8 (8u72-b15)
• openjfx (8u60-b27)
• tomcat7 (7.0.69)
• tomcat8 (8.0.32)

• avian
• clojure1.2
• clojure1.4
• eclipse-cdt
• eclipse-cdt-pkg-config
• eclipse-egit
• eclipse-linuxtools
• eclipse-mercurialeclipse
• eclipse-mylyn
• eclipse-mylyn-tasks-github
• eclipse-ptp
• eclipse-subclipse
• eclipse-wtp
• freemind
• groovy
• maven2
• openjdk-7
• openjdk-7-jre-dcevm

• apache-directory-server (2.0.0~M15)
• dokujclient (3.8.1)
• elasticsearch (1.7.3)
• ivyplusplus (1.14)
• jetty9 (9.2.16)
• netbeans (8.1)
• openjdk-8 (8u91-b14)
• openjdk-8-jre-dcevm (8u74)
• openjfx (8u60-b27)

• activemq (5.13.2)
• ant (1.9.7)
• aspectj (1.8.9)
• bnd (2.4.1)
• checkstyle (6.15)
• eclipse-gef (3.9.100)
• electric (9.06)
• felix-main (5.0.0)
• findbugs (3.0.1)
• fop (2.1)
• freeplane (1.3.15)
• gant (1.9.11)
• gradle (2.10)
• groovy2 (2.4.5)
• hsqldb (2.3.3)
• icedtea-web (1.6.2)
• ivy (2.4.0)
• jajuk (1.10.9)
• jakarta-jmeter (2.13)
• japi-compliance-checker (1.7)
• jasmin-sable (2.5.0)
• java-common (0.57)
• java-package (0.61)
• jedit (5.3.0)
• jetty8 (8.1.19)
• jftp (1.60)
• jgit (3.7.1)
• jruby (1.7.22)
• jtreg (4.2-b01)
• libapache-mod-jk (1.2.41)
• maven (3.3.9)
• nailgun (0.9.1)
• pleiades (1.6.0)
• proguard (5.2.1)
• robocode (1.9.2.5)
• sablecc (3.7)
• scala (2.11.6)
• service-wrapper-java (3.5.26)
• simplyhtml (0.16.13)
• svnkit (1.8.12)
• sweethome3d-textures-editor (1.4)
• tomcat-native (1.1.33)
• tomcat7 (7.0.69)
• tomcat8 (8.0.32)
• triplea (1.8.0.9)
• uimaj (2.8.1)
• weka (3.6.13)
• zookeeper (3.4.8)

• The Go packaging group (added just a couple of weeks ago).
• The Perl packaging group.
• qa.debian.org.
• svn.debian.org.
• git.debian.org.

• Kali Linux s Experience of a Debian Derivative Based on Testing (Talk)
• 2 Years of Work of Paid Contributors in the Debian LTS Project (Talk)
• Using Debian Money to Fund Debian Projects (BoF)

• #820288: a request to keep the wordpress package installable in older releases (due to renaming of many php packages)
• #820660: request support of by-hash indices in reprepro
• #820867: possibility to apply overrides on already installed packages in reprepro
• #821070: jessie to stretch upgrade problem with samba-vfs-modules
• #822157: python-future hides and breaks python-configparser
• #822669: dh_installinit inserts useless autoscript for System V init script when package doesn t contain any
• #822670: dh-systemd should be merged into debhelper, we have systemd by default and debhelper should have proper support for it by default

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1. No source package will be generated. Packages will be built directly from a checkout of a VCS repository.
2. Additional dependencies can be downloaded during build. Packaging individually each dependency is a painstaking work, notably when you have to deal with some fast-paced ecosystems like Java, Javascript and Go.
3. The produced packages may bundle dependencies. This is likely to raise some concerns about security and long-term maintenance, but this is a common trade-off in many ecosystems, notably Java, Javascript and Go.

Pragmatic packages 101 In the Debian archive, you have two kinds of packages: the source packages and the binary packages. Each binary package is built from a source package. You need a name for each package. As stated in the introduction, we won t generate a source package but we will work with its unpacked form which is any source tree containing a debian/ directory. In our examples, we will start with a source tree containing only a debian/ directory but you are free to include this debian/ directory into an existing project. As an example, we will package memcached, a distributed memory cache. There are four files to create:

• debian/compat,
• debian/changelog,
• debian/control, and
• debian/rules.

The first one is easy. Just put 9 in it:

echo 9 > debian/compat

The second one has the following content:

memcached (0-0) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium
  * Fake entry
 -- Happy Packager <happy@example.com>  Tue, 19 Apr 2016 22:27:05 +0200

The only important information is the name of the source package, memcached, on the first line. Everything else can be left as is as it won t influence the generated binary packages.

The control file debian/control describes the metadata of both the source package and the generated binary packages. We have to write a block for each of them.

Source: memcached
Maintainer: Vincent Bernat <bernat@debian.org>
Package: memcached
Architecture: any
Description: high-performance memory object caching system

The source package is called memcached. We have to use the same name as in debian/changelog. We generate only one binary package: memcached. In the remaining of the example, when you see memcached, this is the name of a binary package. The Architecture field should be set to either any or all. Use all exclusively if the package contains only arch-independent files. In doubt, just stick to any. The Description field contains a short description of the binary package.

The build recipe The last mandatory file is debian/rules. It s the recipe of the package. We need to retrieve memcached, build it and install its file tree in debian/memcached/. It looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/make -f
DISTRIBUTION = $(shell lsb_release -sr)
VERSION = 1.4.25
PACKAGEVERSION = $(VERSION)-0~$(DISTRIBUTION)0
TARBALL = memcached-$(VERSION).tar.gz
URL = http://www.memcached.org/files/$(TARBALL)
%:
    dh $@
override_dh_auto_clean:
override_dh_auto_test:
override_dh_auto_build:
override_dh_auto_install:
    wget -N --progress=dot:mega $(URL)
    tar --strip-components=1 -xf $(TARBALL)
    ./configure --prefix=/usr
    make
    make install DESTDIR=debian/memcached
override_dh_gencontrol:
    dh_gencontrol -- -v$(PACKAGEVERSION)

The empty targets override_dh_auto_clean, override_dh_auto_test and override_dh_auto_build keep debhelper from being too smart. The override_dh_gencontrol target sets the package version³ without updating debian/changelog. If you ignore the slight boilerplate, the recipe is quite similar to what you would have done with fpm:

DISTRIBUTION=$(lsb_release -sr)
VERSION=1.4.25
PACKAGEVERSION=$ VERSION -0~$ DISTRIBUTION 0
TARBALL=memcached-$ VERSION .tar.gz
URL=http://www.memcached.org/files/$ TARBALL 
wget -N --progress=dot:mega $ URL 
tar --strip-components=1 -xf $ TARBALL 
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install DESTDIR=/tmp/installdir
# Build the final package
fpm -s dir -t deb \
    -n memcached \
    -v $ PACKAGEVERSION  \
    -C /tmp/installdir \
    --description "high-performance memory object caching system"

You can review the whole package tree on GitHub and build it with dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b.

Pragmatic packages 102 At this point, we can iterate and add several improvements to our memcached package. None of those are mandatory but they are usually worth the additional effort.

Build dependencies Our initial build recipe only work when several packages are installed, like wget and libevent-dev. They are not present on all Debian systems. You can easily express that you need them by adding a Build-Depends section for the source package in debian/control:

Source: memcached
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9),
               wget, ca-certificates, lsb-release,
               libevent-dev

Always specify the debhelper (>= 9) dependency as we heavily rely on it. We don t require make or a C compiler because it is assumed that the build-essential meta-package is installed and it pulls those. dpkg-buildpackage will complain if the dependencies are not met. If you want to install those packages from your CI system, you can use the following command⁴:

mk-build-deps \
    -t 'apt-get -o Debug::pkgProblemResolver=yes --no-install-recommends -qqy' \
    -i -r debian/control

You may also want to investigate pbuilder or sbuild, two tools to build Debian packages in a clean isolated environment.

Runtime dependencies If the resulting package is installed on a freshly installed machine, it won t work because it will be missing libevent, a required library for memcached. You can express the dependencies needed by each binary package by adding a Depends field. Moreover, for dynamic libraries, you can automatically get the right dependencies by using some substitution variables:

Package: memcached
Depends: $ misc:Depends , $ shlibs:Depends 

The resulting package will contain the following information:

$ dpkg -I ../memcached_1.4.25-0\~unstable0_amd64.deb   grep Depends
 Depends: libc6 (>= 2.17), libevent-2.0-5 (>= 2.0.10-stable)

Integration with init system Most packaged daemons come with some integration with the init system. This integration ensures the daemon will be started on boot and restarted on upgrade. For Debian-based distributions, there are several init systems available. The most prominent ones are:

• System-V init is the historical init system. More modern inits are able to reuse scripts written for this init, so this is a safe common denominator for packaged daemons.
• Upstart is the less-historical init system for Ubuntu (used in Ubuntu 14.10 and previous releases).
• systemd is the default init system for Debian since Jessie and for Ubuntu since 15.04.

Writing a correct script for the System-V init is error-prone. Therefore, I usually prefer to provide a native configuration file for the default init system of the targeted distribution (Upstart and systemd).

System-V If you want to provide a System-V init script, have a look at /etc/init.d/skeleton on the most ancient distribution you want to target and adapt it⁵. Put the result in debian/memcached.init. It will be installed at the right place, invoked on install, upgrade and removal. On Debian-based systems, many init scripts allow user customizations by providing a /etc/default/memcached file. You can ship one by putting its content in debian/memcached.default.

Upstart Providing an Upstart job is similar: put it in debian/memcached.upstart. For example:

description "memcached daemon"
start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]
respawn
respawn limit 5 60
expect daemon
script
  . /etc/default/memcached
  exec memcached -d -u $USER -p $PORT -m $CACHESIZE -c $MAXCONN $OPTIONS
end script

When writing an Upstart job, the most important directive is expect. Be sure to get it right. Here, we use expect daemon and memcached is started with the -d flag.

systemd Providing a systemd unit is a bit more complex. The content of the file should go in debian/memcached.service. For example:

[Unit]
Description=memcached daemon
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/memcached
ExecStart=/usr/bin/memcached -d -u $USER -p $PORT -m $CACHESIZE -c $MAXCONN $OPTIONS
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

We reuse /etc/default/memcached even if it is not considered a good practice with systemd⁶. Like for Upstart, the directive Type is quite important. We used forking as memcached is started with the -d flag. You also need to add a build-dependency to dh-systemd in debian/control:

Source: memcached
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9),
               wget, ca-certificates, lsb-release,
               libevent-dev,
               dh-systemd

And you need to modify the default rule in debian/rules:

%:
    dh $@ --with systemd

The extra complexity is a bit unfortunate but systemd integration is not part of debhelper⁷. Without those additional modifications, the unit will get installed but you won t get a proper integration and the service won t be enabled on install or boot.

Dedicated user Many daemons don t need to run as root and it is a good practice to ship a dedicated user. In the case of memcached, we can provide a _memcached user⁸. Add a debian/memcached.postinst file with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
case "$1" in
    configure)
        adduser --system --disabled-password --disabled-login --home /var/empty \
                --no-create-home --quiet --force-badname --group _memcached
        ;;
esac
#DEBHELPER#
exit 0

There is no cleanup of the user when the package is removed for two reasons:

1. Less stuff to write.
2. The user could still own some files.

The utility adduser will do the right thing whatever the requested user already exists or not. You need to add it as a dependency in debian/control:

Package: memcached
Depends: $ misc:Depends , $ shlibs:Depends , adduser

The #DEBHELPER# marker is important as it will be replaced by some code to handle the service configuration files (or some other stuff). You can review the whole package tree on GitHub and build it with dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b.

Pragmatic packages 103 It is possible to leverage debhelper to reduce the recipe size and to make it more declarative. This section is quite optional and it requires understanding a bit more how a Debian package is built. Feel free to skip it.

The big picture There are four steps to build a regular Debian package:

1. debian/rules clean should clean the source tree to make it pristine.
2. debian/rules build should trigger the build. For an autoconf-based software, like memcached, this step should execute something like ./configure && make.
3. debian/rules install should install the file tree of each binary package. For an autoconf-based software, this step should execute make install DESTDIR=debian/memcached.
4. debian/rules binary will pack the different file trees into binary packages.

You don t directly write each of those targets. Instead, you let dh, a component of debhelper, do most of the work. The following debian/rules file should do almost everything correctly with many source packages:

#!/usr/bin/make -f
%:
    dh $@

For each of the four targets described above, you can run dh with --no-act to see what it would do. For example:

$ dh build --no-act
   dh_testdir
   dh_update_autotools_config
   dh_auto_configure
   dh_auto_build
   dh_auto_test

Each of those helpers has a manual page. Helpers starting with dh_auto_ are a bit magic . For example, dh_auto_configure will try to automatically configure a package prior to building: it will detect the build system and invoke ./configure, cmake or Makefile.PL. If one of the helpers do not do the right thing, you can replace it by using an override target:

override_dh_auto_configure:
    ./configure --with-some-grog

Those helpers are also configurable, so you can just alter a bit their behaviour by invoking them with additional options:

override_dh_auto_configure:
    dh_auto_configure -- --with-some-grog

This way, ./configure will be called with your custom flag but also with a lot of default flags like --prefix=/usr for better integration. In the initial memcached example, we overrode all those magic targets. dh_auto_clean, dh_auto_configure and dh_auto_build are converted to no-ops to avoid any unexpected behaviour. dh_auto_install is hijacked to do all the build process. Additionally, we modified the behavior of the dh_gencontrol helper by forcing the version number instead of using the one from debian/changelog.

Automatic builds As memcached is an autoconf-enabled package, dh knows how to build it: ./configure && make && make install. Therefore, we can let it handle most of the work with this debian/rules file:

#!/usr/bin/make -f
DISTRIBUTION = $(shell lsb_release -sr)
VERSION = 1.4.25
PACKAGEVERSION = $(VERSION)-0~$(DISTRIBUTION)0
TARBALL = memcached-$(VERSION).tar.gz
URL = http://www.memcached.org/files/$(TARBALL)
%:
    dh $@ --with systemd
override_dh_auto_clean:
    wget -N --progress=dot:mega $(URL)
    tar --strip-components=1 -xf $(TARBALL)
override_dh_auto_test:
    # Don't run the whitespace test
    rm t/whitespace.t
    dh_auto_test
override_dh_gencontrol:
    dh_gencontrol -- -v$(PACKAGEVERSION)

The dh_auto_clean target is hijacked to download and setup the source tree⁹. We don t override the dh_auto_configure step, so dh will execute the ./configure script with the appropriate options. We don t override the dh_auto_build step either: dh will execute make. dh_auto_test is invoked after the build and it will run the memcached test suite. We need to override it because one of the test is complaining about odd whitespaces in the debian/ directory. We suppress this rogue test and let dh_auto_test executes the test suite. dh_auto_install is not overriden either, so dh will execute some variant of make install. To get a better sense of the difference, here is a diff:

--- memcached-intermediate/debian/rules 2016-04-30 14:02:37.425593362 +0200
+++ memcached/debian/rules  2016-05-01 14:55:15.815063835 +0200
@@ -12,10 +12,9 @@
 override_dh_auto_clean:
-override_dh_auto_test:
-override_dh_auto_build:
-override_dh_auto_install:
    wget -N --progress=dot:mega $(URL)
    tar --strip-components=1 -xf $(TARBALL)
-   ./configure --prefix=/usr
-   make
-   make install DESTDIR=debian/memcached
+
+override_dh_auto_test:
+   # Don't run the whitespace test
+   rm t/whitespace.t
+   dh_auto_test

It is up to you to decide if dh can do some work for you, but you could try to start from a minimal debian/rules and only override some targets.

Install additional files While make install installed the essential files for memcached, you may want to put additional files in the binary package. You could use cp in your build recipe, but you can also declare them:

• files listed in debian/memcached.docs will be copied to /usr/share/doc/memcached by dh_installdocs,
• files listed in debian/memcached.examples will be copied to /usr/share/doc/memcached/examples by dh_installexamples,
• files listed in debian/memcached.manpages will be copied to the appropriate subdirectory of /usr/share/man by dh_installman,

Here is an example using wildcards for debian/memcached.docs:

doc/*.txt

If you need to copy some files to an arbitrary location, you can list them along with their destination directories in debian/memcached.install and dh_install will take care of the copy. Here is an example:

scripts/memcached-tool usr/bin

Using those files make the build process more declarative. It is a matter of taste and you are free to use cp in debian/rules instead. You can review the whole package tree on GitHub.

Other examples The GitHub repository contains some additional examples. They all follow the same scheme:

• dh_auto_clean is hijacked to download and setup the source tree
• dh_gencontrol is modified to use a computed version

Notably, you ll find daemons in Java, Go, Python and Node.js. The goal of those examples is to demonstrate that using Debian tools to build Debian packages can be straightforward. Hope this helps.

---

1. People may remember the time before debhelper 7.0.50 (circa 2009) where debian/rules was a daunting beast. However, nowaday, the boilerplate is quite reduced.
2. The complexity is not the only reason. Those alternative tools enable the creation of RPM packages, something that Debian tools obviously don t.
3. There are many ways to version a package. Again, if you want to be pragmatic, the proposed solution should be good enough for Ubuntu. On Debian, it doesn t cover upgrade from one distribution version to another, but we assume that nowadays, systems get reinstalled instead of being upgraded.
4. You also need to install devscripts and equivs package.
5. It s also possible to use a script provided by upstream. However, there is no such thing as an init script that works on all distributions. Compare the proposed with the skeleton, check if it is using start-stop-daemon and if it sources /lib/lsb/init-functions before considering it. If it seems to fit, you can install it yourself in debian/memcached/etc/init.d/. debhelper will ensure its proper integration.
6. Instead, a user wanting to customize the options is expected to edit the unit with systemctl edit.
7. See #822670
8. The Debian Policy doesn t provide any hint for the naming convention of those system users. A common usage is to prefix the daemon name with an underscore (like _memcached). Another common usage is to use Debian- as a prefix. The main drawback of the latest solution is that the name is likely to be replaced by the UID in ps and top because of its length.
9. We could call dh_auto_clean at the end of the target to let it invoke make clean. However, it is assumed that a fresh checkout is used before each build.