Andreas Barth: RFH: buildd and multiple builds in parallel
On some machines, we have enough cpus to run more than one build in parallel.
However, as of now, this isn't supported by buildd.
What needs to be done is to change the following code to have up to n builds
happening in parallel (including of getting the next package if there is a free
slot).
while( 1 )
$self->check_restart();
$self->read_config();
my ( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) = get_next_REDO($self);
$self->do_build( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) if $pkg_ver;
next if $pkg_ver;
( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) = get_next_WANNABUILD($self);
$self->do_build( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) if $pkg_ver;
next if $pkg_ver;
# sleep a little bit if there was nothing to do this time
$self->log("Nothing to do -- sleeping " .
$self->get_conf('IDLE_SLEEP_TIME') . " seconds\n");
my $idle_start_time = time;
sleep( $self->get_conf('IDLE_SLEEP_TIME') );
my $idle_end_time = time;
$self->write_stats("idle-time", $idle_end_time - $idle_start_time);
Any takers? The full code is available from git://git.debian.org/buildd-tools/sbuild.git
in the file lib/Buildd/Daemon.pm (and I'm happy to try out appropriate patches).
Update The code above lives in the git branch buildd, and not master. Also,
I already have one proposal in my mail.
At 
From time to time I see people arguing that the wide deployment of IPv6 will force DNSBLs to significantly change their operations and semantics. Usually they have little or no actual experience with IPv6 and the main argument used to justify this view appears to be more or less "OMG so many bits!1!!!".
I have no reason to believe that this will really happen. People are already sending mail over IPv6 and I expect that the same reputation mechanisms used for IPv4 will be deployed as soon as they will be needed, with small policy changes to cope with the fact that end users typically get a whole network instead of a single IP address.
So I expect that DNSBLs will continue to operate as usual like they currently do for IPv4 addresses, optionally by promoting "single IP" listings to "whole /64" listings when appropriate.
Yes, there is something like an 'RFH', or 'Request For Help', in the
WNPP in Debian, but I thought I'd go through this blog, first, since I
believe many more people who will feel inclined to help here will read
this blog.
I've been maintaining the beid packages in Debian since, eh, quite a
while now; and while it's not always been the package that I have spent
the most time on, it's not a package that I want to give up.
However, in recent times, I've had issues with the code. I've not
really been able to get the 3.5.2 release to compile properly as a
package, which means that for the moment, squeeze is still stuck with a
2.x release. This is a problem, since that old release isn't supported
anymore upstream, and what's worse, it does not support newer-issued eID
cards. So if your card is less than about two or three years old, you
can't even use it anymore. For this reason, the beid packages really,
really should be updated before squeeze releases.
I've been trying to spend some time doing so, but real life kept
intervening. And I haven't even been able to start looking for the 3.5.3
code that I'd heard rumours would exist.
So, this is a request for help. If you want a more recent beid
package to appear in Debian (and, by extension, Ubuntu) any time soon,
and you can spare some extra time on maintaining a somewhat convoluted
package, you'd be an ideal candidate for comaintainer of this package.
You don't need to have any experience working on Debian, but you do
need experience with build systems and Makefiles. If you don't have any
experience in working on Debian, but would like to learn, this might be
an interesting opportunity. If you do have experience working
on Debian and are as interested as me in getting this to be up-to-date
in the next Debian release, your help would be very much
appreciated. Even if you only have time for a little while and would
like me to take over once everything is going fine again, that's
helpful.
At any rate, if you want to help, contact me at wouter@debian.org.
We'll work out the specifics then.
Thanks in advance,
Thought I might post this here as well.
Two weeks ago I filed #
I was driving home from a late night at work recently, and I was
almost home, when the car behind me lit up like a Christmas tree.
My immediate reaction was, "Oh crap, I'm tired and I wasn't paying attention
to my speed". So I pulled over.
To my relief, it wasn't my speed that was the problem, my left-hand tail
light was out. The officer was very nice about the whole thing, but he gave
me a 
Ok, so following the trend, I created some time ago a new GPG
key, which I'm now transitioning too. I've set up a transition
document, available at