• #762672 - qt-at-spi: when this package is installed, other programs fail to run
• #740998 - NetworkManager and rdnssd do not play well together
• #756253 - Upgrade from 2.02~beta2-10 to 2.02~beta2-11 left grub unbootable
• #762638 - missing source: Configure
• #718624 - transmission-daemon: segfaults with systemd due to erroneous maintainer scripts
• #727149 - linux-image-3.10-3-amd64: Network adapter (Intel 82579V) hangs during TX, causing reset and undetected data corruption at the other side
• #755202 - network-manager: keeps creating and using new connection "eth0" that does not work
• #706877 - insserv: breaks dist-upgrade by installing before packages fix their init scripts
• #741464 - grub-pc-bin: freezes after "terminal_input at_keyboard"
• #764798 - grub2: Grub rescue shell with RAID 6 mdadm over 8 disks

• In Total: 1143 (Including 186 bugs affecting key packages)
  • Affecting Jessie: 274 (key packages: 131) That's the number we need to get down to zero before the release. They can be split in two big categories:
    • Affecting Jessie and unstable: 189 (key packages: 99) Those need someone to find a fix, or to finish the work to upload a fix to unstable:
      • 46 bugs are tagged 'patch'. (key packages: 27) Please help by reviewing the patches, and (if you are a DD) by uploading them.
      • 11 bugs are marked as done, but still affect unstable. (key packages: 5) This can happen due to missing builds on some architectures, for example. Help investigate!
      • 132 bugs are neither tagged patch, nor marked done. (key packages: 67) Help make a first step towards resolution!
    • Affecting Jessie only: 85 (key packages: 32) Those are already fixed in unstable, but the fix still needs to migrate to Jessie. You can help by submitting unblock requests for fixed packages, by investigating why packages do not migrate, or by reviewing submitted unblock requests.
      • 59 bugs are in packages that are unblocked by the release team. (key packages: 18)
      • 26 bugs are in packages that are not unblocked. (key packages: 14)

Server setup The first step is to install znc:

apt-get install znc

Make sure you get the 1.0 series (in jessie or trusty, not wheezy or precise) since it has much better multi-network support. Then, as a non-root user, generate a self-signed TLS certificate for it:

openssl req -x509 -sha256 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout znc.pem -nodes -out znc.crt -days 365

and make sure you use something like irc.example.com as the subject name, that is the URL you will be connecting to from your IRC client. Then install the certificate in the right place:

mkdir ~/.znc
mv znc.pem ~/.znc/
cat znc.crt >> ~/.znc/znc.pem

Once that's done, you're ready to create a config file for znc using the znc --makeconf command, again as the same non-root user:

• create separate znc users if you have separate nicks on different networks
• use your nickserv password as the server password for each network
• enable ssl
• say no to the chansaver and nickserv plugins

Finally, open the IRC port (tcp port 6697 by default) in your firewall:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 6697 -j ACCEPT

Client setup (irssi) On the client side, the official documentation covers a number of IRC clients, but the irssi page was quite sparse. Here's what I used for the two networks I connect to (irc.oftc.net and irc.mozilla.org):

servers = (
   
    address = "irc.example.com";
    chatnet = "OFTC";
    password = "fmarier/oftc:Passw0rd1!";
    port = "6697";
    use_ssl = "yes";
    ssl_verify = "yes";
    ssl_cafile = "~/.irssi/certs/znc.crt";
   ,
   
    address = "irc.example.com";
    chatnet = "Mozilla";
    password = "francois/mozilla:Passw0rd1!";
    port = "6697";
    use_ssl = "yes";
    ssl_verify = "yes";
    ssl_cafile = "~/.irssi/certs/znc.crt";
   
);

Of course, you'll need to copy your znc.crt file from the server into ~/.irssi/certs/znc.crt. Make sure that you're no longer authenticating with the nickserv from within irssi. That's znc's job now.

Wrapper scripts So far, this is a pretty standard znc+irssi setup. What makes it work with my workflow is the wrapper script I wrote to enable znc before starting irssi and then prompt to turn it off after exiting:

#!/bin/bash
ssh irc.example.com "pgrep znc   znc"
irssi
read -p "Terminate the bouncer? [y/N] " -n 1 -r
echo
if [[ $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]
then
  ssh irc.example.com killall -sSIGINT znc
fi

Now, instead of typing irssi to start my IRC client, I use irc. If I'm exiting irssi before commuting or because I need to reboot for a kernel update, I keep the bouncer running. At the end of the day, I say yes to killing the bouncer. That way, I don't have a backlog to go through when I wake up the next day.

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

• In Total: 1213 (Including 210 bugs affecting key packages)
  • Affecting Jessie: 342 (key packages: 152) That's the number we need to get down to zero before the release. They can be split in two big categories:
    • Affecting Jessie and unstable: 260 (key packages: 119) Those need someone to find a fix, or to finish the work to upload a fix to unstable:
      • 37 bugs are tagged 'patch'. (key packages: 20) Please help by reviewing the patches, and (if you are a DD) by uploading them.
      • 12 bugs are marked as done, but still affect unstable. (key packages: 3) This can happen due to missing builds on some architectures, for example. Help investigate!
      • 211 bugs are neither tagged patch, nor marked done. (key packages: 96) Help make a first step towards resolution!
    • Affecting Jessie only: 82 (key packages: 33) Those are already fixed in unstable, but the fix still needs to migrate to Jessie. You can help by submitting unblock requests for fixed packages, by investigating why packages do not migrate, or by reviewing submitted unblock requests.
      • 65 bugs are in packages that are unblocked by the release team. (key packages: 26)
      • 17 bugs are in packages that are not unblocked. (key packages: 7)

• Kazoo (ZooKeeper)
• Zake
• memcached
• redis
• SysV IPC (only for distributed locks for now)
• PostgreSQL (only for distributed locks for now)
• MySQL (only for distributed locks for now)

root@rsync ~ # dpkg --list   grep ^ii   wc -l
294

root@rsync ~ # dpkg --list   grep ^ii   awk '  print $2 " " $3 '  head -n 4
acpi 1.6-1skx1
acpi-support-base 0.140-5+deb7u3skx1
acpid 1:2.0.16-1+deb7u1skx1
adduser 3.113+nmu3skx1

Depends: base-files (>= 2.1.12), debianutils (>= 2.15)

Depends: base-files (>= 2.1.12skx1), debianutils (>= 2.15skx1)

• backup removal
• encryption

disclaimer Note: this is not a real benchmark! i would probably need to port bup and attic to liw's seivot software to report on this properly (and that would amazing and really interesting, but it's late now). even worse, this was done on a production server with other stuff going on so take results with a grain of salt.

procedure and results Here's what I did. I setup backups of my ridiculously huge ~/src directory on the external hard drive where I usually make my backups. I ran a clean backup with attic, than redid it, then I ran a similar backup with bup, then redid it. Here are the results:

anarcat@marcos:~$ sudo apt-get install attic # this installed 0.13 on debian jessie amd64
[...]
anarcat@marcos:~$ attic init /mnt/attic-test:
Initializing repository at "/media/anarcat/calyx/attic-test"
Encryption NOT enabled.
Use the "--encryption=passphrase keyfile" to enable encryption.
anarcat@marcos:~$ time attic create --stats /mnt/attic-test::src ~/src/
Initializing cache...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive name: src
Archive fingerprint: 7bdcea8a101dc233d7c122e3f69e67e5b03dbb62596d0b70f5b0759d446d9ed0
Start time: Tue Nov 18 00:42:52 2014
End time: Tue Nov 18 00:54:00 2014
Duration: 11 minutes 8.26 seconds
Number of files: 283910
                       Original size      Compressed size    Deduplicated size
This archive:                6.74 GB              4.27 GB              2.99 GB
All archives:                6.74 GB              4.27 GB              2.99 GB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
311.60user 68.28system 11:08.49elapsed 56%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 122824maxresident)k
15279400inputs+6788816outputs (0major+3258848minor)pagefaults 0swaps
anarcat@marcos:~$ time attic create --stats /mnt/attic-test::src-2014-11-18 ~/src/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive name: src-2014-11-18
Archive fingerprint: be840f1a49b1deb76aea1cb667d812511943cfb7fee67f0dddc57368bd61c4bf
Start time: Tue Nov 18 00:05:57 2014
End time: Tue Nov 18 00:06:35 2014
Duration: 38.15 seconds
Number of files: 283910
                       Original size      Compressed size    Deduplicated size
This archive:                6.74 GB              4.27 GB            116.63 kB
All archives:               13.47 GB              8.54 GB              3.00 GB
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
30.60user 4.66system 0:38.38elapsed 91%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 104688maxresident)k
18264inputs+258696outputs (0major+36892minor)pagefaults 0swaps
anarcat@marcos:~$ sudo apt-get install bup # this installed bup 0.25
anarcat@marcos:~$ free && sync && echo 3   sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches && free # flush caches
anarcat@marcos:~$ export BUP_DIR=/mnt/bup-test
anarcat@marcos:~$ bup init
D p t Git vide initialis  dans /mnt/bup-test/
anarcat@marcos:~$ time bup index ~/src
Indexing: 345249, done.
56.57user 14.37system 1:45.29elapsed 67%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 85236maxresident)k
699920inputs+104624outputs (4major+25970minor)pagefaults 0swaps
anarcat@marcos:~$ time bup save -n src ~/src
Reading index: 345249, done.
bloom: creating from 1 file (200000 objects).
bloom: adding 1 file (200000 objects).
bloom: creating from 3 files (600000 objects).
Saving: 100.00% (6749592/6749592k, 345249/345249 files), done.
bloom: adding 1 file (126005 objects).
383.08user 61.37system 10:52.68elapsed 68%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 194256maxresident)k
14638104inputs+5944384outputs (50major+299868minor)pagefaults 0swaps
anarcat@marcos:attic$ time bup index ~/src
Indexing: 345249, done.
56.13user 13.08system 1:38.65elapsed 70%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 133848maxresident)k
806144inputs+104824outputs (137major+38463minor)pagefaults 0swaps
anarcat@marcos:attic$ time bup save -n src2 ~/src
Reading index: 1, done.
Saving: 100.00% (0/0k, 1/1 files), done.
bloom: adding 1 file (1 object).
0.22user 0.05system 0:00.66elapsed 42%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 17088maxresident)k
10088inputs+88outputs (39major+15194minor)pagefaults 0swaps

Disk usage is comparable:

anarcat@marcos:attic$ du -sc /mnt/*attic*
2943532K        /mnt/attic-test
2969544K        /mnt/bup-test

People are encouraged to try and reproduce those results, which should be fairly trivial.

Observations Here are interesting things I noted while working with both tools:

• attic is Python3: i could compile it, with dependencies, by doing apt-get build-dep attic and running setup.py - i could also install it with pip if i needed to (but i didn't)
• bup is Python 2, and has a scary makefile
• both have an init command that basically does almost nothing and takes little enough time that i'm ignoring it in the benchmarks
• attic backups are a single command, bup requires me to know that i first want to index and then save, which is a little confusing
• bup has nice progress information, especially during save (because when it loaded the index, it knew how much was remaining) - just because of that, bup "feels" faster
• bup, however, lets me know about its deep internals (like now i know it uses a bloom filter) which is probably barely understandable by most people
• on the contrary, attic gives me useful information about the size of my backups, including the size of the current increment
• it is not possible to get that information from bup, even after the fact - you need to du before and after the backup
• attic modifies the files access times when backing up, while bup is more careful (there's a pull request to fix this in attic, which is how i found out about this)
• both backup systems seem to produce roughly the same data size from the same input

Summary attic and bup are about equally fast. bup took 30 seconds less than attic to save the files, but that's not counting the 1m45s it took indexing them, so on the total run time, bup was actually slower. attic is also (almost) two times faster on the second run as well. but this could be within the margin of error of this very quick experiment, so my provisional verdict for now would be that they are about as fast. bup may be more robust (for example it doesn't modify the atimes), but this has not been extensively tested and is more based with my familiarity with the "conservatism" of the bup team rather than actual tests. considering all the features promised by attic, it makes for a really serious contender to the already amazing bup.

Next steps The properly do this, we would need to:

• include other software (thinking of Zbackup, Burp, ddar, obnam, rdiff-backup and duplicity)
• bench attic with the noatime patch
• bench dev attic vs dev bup
• bench data removal
• bench encryption
• test data recovery
• run multiple backup runs, on different datasets, on a cleaner environment
• ideally, extend seivot to do all of that

Note that the Burp author already did an impressive comparative benchmark of a bunch of those tools for the burp2 design paper, but it unfortunately doesn't include attic or clear ways to reproduce the results.

• easy-rsa
• FreeIPA
• gnomint
• tinyCA
• xca

I'm hoping that we can all take a few minutes to gain empathy for those who disagree with us. Then I'm hoping we can use that understanding to reassure them that they are valued and respected and their concerns considered even when we end up strongly disagreeing with them or valuing different things.

1. While the script is running, the firewall is temporarily incomplete. Even if existing connections can be arranged to be left untouched, the new ones may not be allowed to be established (or unauthorized flows may be allowed). Also, essential NAT rules or mangling rules may be absent.
2. If an error occurs, you are left with an half-working firewall. Therefore, you should ensure that some rules authorizing remote access are set very early. Or implement some kind of automatic rollback system.
3. Building a large firewall can be slow. Each ip ,6 tables command will download the ruleset from the kernel, add the rule and upload the whole modified ruleset to the kernel.

Using iptables-restore A classic way to solve these problems is to build a rule file that will be read by iptables-restore and ip6tables-restore¹. Those tools send the ruleset to the kernel in one pass. The kernel applies it atomically. Usually, such a file is built with ip ,6 tables-save but a script can fit the task. The ruleset syntax understood by ip ,6 tables-restore is similar to the syntax of ip ,6 tables but each table has its own block and chain declaration is different. See the following example:

$ iptables -P FORWARD DROP
$ iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.0.0/24 -j MASQUERADE
$ iptables -N SSH
$ iptables -A SSH -p tcp --dport ssh -j ACCEPT
$ iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
$ iptables -A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT
$ iptables -A FORWARD -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
$ iptables -A FORWARD -j SSH
$ iptables-save
*nat
:PREROUTING ACCEPT [0:0]
:INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:POSTROUTING ACCEPT [0:0]
-A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.0.0/24 -j MASQUERADE
COMMIT
*filter
:INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:FORWARD DROP [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:SSH - [0:0]
-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A FORWARD -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
-A FORWARD -j SSH
-A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT
-A SSH -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
COMMIT

As you see, we have one block for the nat table and one block for the filter table. The user-defined chain SSH is declared at the top of the filter block with other builtin chains. Here is a script diverting ip ,6 tables commands to build such a file (heavily relying on some Zsh-fu²):

#!/bin/zsh
set -e
work=$(mktemp -d)
trap "rm -rf $work" EXIT
#   Redefine ip ,6 tables
iptables()  
    # Intercept -t
    local table="filter"
    [[ -n $ @[(r)-t]  ]] &&  
        # Which table?
        local index=$ (k)@[(r)-t] 
        table=$ @[(( index + 1 ))] 
        argv=( $argv[1,(( $index - 1 ))] $argv[(( $index + 2 )),$#] )
     
    [[ -n $ @[(r)-N]  ]] &&  
        # New user chain
        local index=$ (k)@[(r)-N] 
        local chain=$ @[(( index + 1 ))] 
        print ":$ chain  -" >> $ work /$ 0 -$ table -userchains
        return
     
    [[ -n $ @[(r)-P]  ]] &&  
        # Policy for a builtin chain
        local index=$ (k)@[(r)-P] 
        local chain=$ @[(( index + 1 ))] 
        local policy=$ @[(( index + 2 ))] 
        print ":$ chain  $ policy " >> $ work /$ 0 -$ table -policy
        return
     
    # iptables-restore only handle double quotes
    echo $ $ (q-)@ //\'/\"  >> $ work /$ 0 -$ table -rules #'
 
functions[ip6tables]=$ functions[iptables] 
#   Build the final ruleset that can be parsed by ip ,6 tables-restore
save()  
    for table ($ work /$ 1 -*-rules(:t:s/-rules//))  
        print "*$ $ table #$ 1 - "
        [ ! -f $ work /$ table -policy ]   cat $ work /$ table -policy
        [ ! -f $ work /$ table -userchains   cat $ work /$ table -userchains
        cat $ work /$ table -rules
        print "COMMIT"
     
 
#   Execute rule files
for rule in $(run-parts --list --regex '^[.a-zA-Z0-9_-]+$' $ 0%/* /rules); do
    . $rule
done
#   Execute rule files
ret=0
save iptables    iptables-restore    ret=$?
save ip6tables   ip6tables-restore   ret=$?
exit $ret

In , a new iptables() function is defined and will shadow the iptables command. It will try to locate the -t parameter to know which table should be used. If such a parameter exists, the table is remembered in the $table variable and removed from the list of arguments. Defining a new chain (with -N) is also handled as well as setting the policy (with -P). In , the save() function will output a ruleset that should be parseable by ip ,6 tables-restore. In , user rules are executed. Each ip ,6 tables command will call the previously defined function. When no error has occurred, in , ip ,6 tables-restore is invoked. The command will either succeed or fail. This method works just fine³. However, the second method is more elegant.

Using a network namespace An hybrid approach is to build the firewall rules with ip ,6 tables in a newly created network namespace, save it with ip ,6 tables-save and apply it in the main namespace with ip ,6 tables-restore. Here is the gist (still using Zsh syntax):

#!/bin/zsh
set -e
alias main='/bin/true  '
[ -n $iptables ]    
    #   Execute ourself in a dedicated network namespace
    iptables=1 unshare --net -- \
        $0 4> >(iptables-restore) 6> >(ip6tables-restore)
    #   In main namespace, disable iptables/ip6tables commands
    alias iptables=/bin/true
    alias ip6tables=/bin/true
    alias main='/bin/false  '
 
#   In both namespaces, execute rule files
for rule in $(run-parts --list --regex '^[.a-zA-Z0-9_-]+$' $ 0%/* /rules); do
    . $rule
done
#   In test namespace, save the rules
[ -z $iptables ]    
    iptables-save >&4
    ip6tables-save >&6
 

In , the current script is executed in a new network namespace. Such a namespace has its own ruleset that can be modified without altering the one in the main namespace. The $iptables environment variable tell in which namespace we are. In the new namespace, we execute all the rule files ( ). They contain classic ip ,6 tables commands. If an error occurs, we stop here and nothing happens, thanks to the use of set -e. Otherwise, in , the ruleset of the new namespace are saved using ip ,6 tables-save and sent to dedicated file descriptors. Now, the execution in the main namespace resumes in . The results of ip ,6 tables-save are feeded to ip ,6 tables-restore. At this point, the firewall is mostly operational. However, we will play again the rule files ( ) but the ip ,6 tables commands will be disabled ( ). Additional commands in the rule files, like enabling IP forwarding, will be executed. The new namespace does not provide the same environment as the main namespace. For example, there is no network interface in it, so we cannot get or set IP addresses. A command that must not be executed in the new namespace should be prefixed by main:

main ip addr add 192.168.15.1/24 dev lan-guest

You can look at a complete example on GitHub.

---

1. Another nifty tool is iptables-apply which will apply a rule file and rollback after a given timeout unless the change is confirmed by the user.
2. As you can see in the snippet, Zsh comes with some powerful features to handle arrays. Another big advantage of Zsh is it does not require quoting every variable to avoid field splitting. Hence, the script can handle values with spaces without a problem, making it far more robust.
3. If I were nitpicking, there are three small flaws with it. First, when an error occurs, it can be difficult to match the appropriate location in your script since you get the position in the ruleset instead. Second, a table can be used before it is defined. So, it may be difficult to spot some copy/paste errors. Third, the IPv4 firewall may fail while the IPv6 firewall is applied, and vice-versa. Those flaws are not present in the next method.

$ lspci -k -nn -d 8086:08b1
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 [8086:08b1] (rev 73)
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 [8086:4070]
        Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi

Limitations First, the card is said dual-band but you can only uses one band at a time because there is only one radio. Almost all wireless cards have this limitation. If you want to use both the 2.4 GHz band and the less crowded 5 GHz band, two cards are usually needed.

5 GHz band There is no support to set an access point on the 5 GHz band. The firmware doesn t allow it. This can be checked with iw:

$ iw reg get
country CH: DFS-ETSI
        (2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20), (N/A)
        (5170 - 5250 @ 80), (N/A, 20), (N/A)
        (5250 - 5330 @ 80), (N/A, 20), (0 ms), DFS
        (5490 - 5710 @ 80), (N/A, 27), (0 ms), DFS
        (57240 - 65880 @ 2160), (N/A, 40), (N/A), NO-OUTDOOR
$ iw list
Wiphy phy0
[...]
        Band 2:
                Capabilities: 0x11e2
                        HT20/HT40
                        Static SM Power Save
                        RX HT20 SGI
                        RX HT40 SGI
                        TX STBC
                        RX STBC 1-stream
                        Max AMSDU length: 3839 bytes
                        DSSS/CCK HT40
                Frequencies:
                        * 5180 MHz [36] (20.0 dBm) (no IR)
                        * 5200 MHz [40] (20.0 dBm) (no IR)
                        * 5220 MHz [44] (20.0 dBm) (no IR)
                        * 5240 MHz [48] (20.0 dBm) (no IR)
                        * 5260 MHz [52] (20.0 dBm) (no IR, radar detection)
                          DFS state: usable (for 192 sec)
                          DFS CAC time: 60000 ms
                        * 5280 MHz [56] (20.0 dBm) (no IR, radar detection)
                          DFS state: usable (for 192 sec)
                          DFS CAC time: 60000 ms
[...]

While the 5 GHz band is allowed by the CRDA, all frequencies are marked with no IR. Here is the explanation for this flag:

The no-ir flag exists to allow regulatory domain definitions to disallow a device from initiating radiation of any kind and that includes using beacons, so for example AP/IBSS/Mesh/GO interfaces would not be able to initiate communication on these channels unless the channel does not have this flag.

Multiple SSID This card can only advertise one SSID. Managing several of them is useful to setup distinct wireless networks, like a public access (routed to Tor), a guest access and a private access. iw can confirm this:

$ iw list
        valid interface combinations:
                 * #  managed   <= 1, #  AP, P2P-client, P2P-GO   <= 1, #  P2P-device   <= 1,
                   total <= 3, #channels <= 1

Here is the output of an Atheros card able to manage 8 SSID:

$ iw list
        valid interface combinations:
                 * #  managed, WDS, P2P-client   <= 2048, #  IBSS, AP, mesg point, P2P-GO   <= 8,
                   total <= 2048, #channels <= 1

Configuration as an access point Except for those two limitations, the card works fine as an access point. Here is the configuration that I use for hostapd:

interface=wlan-guest
driver=nl80211
# Radio
ssid=XXXXXXXXX
hw_mode=g
channel=11
# 802.11n
wmm_enabled=1
ieee80211n=1
ht_capab=[HT40-][SHORT-GI-20][SHORT-GI-40][DSSS_CCK-40][DSSS_CCK-40][DSSS_CCK-40]
# WPA
auth_algs=1
wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP

Because of the use of channel 11, only 802.11n HT40- rate can be enabled. Look at the Wikipedia page for 802.11n to check if you can use either HT40-, HT40+ or both.