Sponsoring a package means uploading a package for someone else (usually a new contributor starting out as package maintainer). This is an activity reserved to Debian Developer who are supposed to be knowledgeable about packaging. This article tries to document the process to ensure the sponsor is doing a reasonably good job according to Debian s standards. Sponsoring a package in the Debian archive is not a trivial matter. It means that you verified the packaging and that it is of the level of quality that Debian strives to have. Let s have a look to what you can and should do when you re sponsoring a package. Sponsoring the initial upload Sponsoring a brand new package into Debian requires a thorough review of the Debian packaging. Building the package and testing the software is definitely not enough! You should open every file in the debian directory and look out for potential problems. Here s a checklist that you can use to perform the audit:

• Verify that the upstream tarball provided is the same that has been distributed by the upstream author (when the sources are repackaged for Debian, generate the modified tarball yourself).
• Run lintian. It will catch many common problems. Be sure to verify that any lintian overrides setup by the maintainer is fully justified.
• Run licensecheck and verify that debian/copyright seems correct and complete. Look for license problems (like files with All rights reserved headers, or with a non-DFSG compliant license).
• Build the package with pbuilder (or any similar tool) to ensure that the build-dependencies are complete.
• Proofread debian/control: does it follow the best practices? are the dependencies complete?
• Proofread debian/rules: does it follow the best practices? do you see some possible improvements?
• Proofread the maintainer scripts (preinst, postinst, prerm, postrm, config): will the preinst/postrm work when the dependencies are not installed? are all the scripts idempotent (i.e. can you run them multiple times without consequences)?
• Review any change to upstream files (either in .diff.gz, or in debian/patches/ or directly embedded in the debian tarball for binary files). Are they justified? Are they properly documented (with DEP-3 for patches)?
• For every file, ask yourself why the file is there and whether it s the right way to achieve the desired result. Is the maintainer following the best packaging practices described by the Developers Reference?
• Build and install the packages, try the software. Ensure you can remove and purge the packages. Maybe test the packages with piuparts.

If the audit did not reveal any problem, you can upload the package. But remember that even if you re not the maintainer, the sponsor is still responsible of what he uploaded to Debian. That s why you re encouraged to keep up with the package through the Package Tracking System. Sponsoring an update of an existing package You will usually assume that the package has already gone through a full review. So instead of doing it again, you will carefully analyze the difference between the current version and the new version prepared by the maintainer. If you have not done the initial review yourself, you might still want to have a more deeper look just in case the initial reviewer was sloppy. To be able to analyze the difference you need both versions. Download the current version of the source package (with apt-get source) and rebuild it (or download the current binary packages with aptitude download). Download the source package to sponsor (usually with dget). Read the new changelog entry, it should tell you what to expect during the review. The main tool you will use is debdiff, you can run it with two source packages (.dsc files), or two binary packages, or two .changes files (it will then compare all the binary packages listed in the .changes). If you compare the source packages (excluding upstream files in the case of a new upstream version, for example by filtering the output of debdiff with filterdiff -i '*/debian/*'), you must understand all the changes you see and they should be properly documented in the Debian changelog. If everything is fine, build the package and compare the binary packages to verify that the changes on the source package have no unexpected consequences (like some files dropped by mistake, missing dependencies, etc.). You might want to check out the Package Tracking System to verify if the maintainer has not missed something important. Maybe there are translations updates sitting in the BTS that could have been integrated. Maybe the package has been NMUed and the maintainer forgot to integrate the changes from the NMU in his package. Maybe there s a release critical bug that he has left unhandled and that s blocking migration to testing. Whatever. If you find something that she could have done (better), it s time to tell her so that she can improve for next time. And so that she has a better understanding of her responsibilities. If you have found no problem, upload the new version. Otherwise ask the maintainer to provide you a fixed version.

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This article will be repurposed to enhance the Debian Developers Reference, hopefully leading to a fix for the wishlist bug #453313. Click here and help me fix more of those. You re also welcome to suggest improvements in the comments. Are there other checks that you re always doing? Do you have some handy tip to make it easier to review a package?

7 comments Liked this article? Click here. My blog is Flattr-enabled.

Mutt mail indexing on steroids! I've been using external mail indexing with Mutt for quite a while now. Before now I haven't given Notmuch a try, as it seemed too much experimental at the time of my initial review of mail indexing tools. As there is nothing better than a long oversea flight to perpetrate new hacks, I've now not only tested it, but also switched to Notmuch without looking back at maildir-utils for a split second. Getting started with Notmuch is trivial:

• Notmuch is notmuch in Debian (and maintained by upstream author, thanks!)
• notmuch setup asks a few questions about the user and then prepare a template ~/.notmuch-config, which is good enough to start
• notmuch new does a first run of indexing (which might take a while, depending on the size of your maildirs)

Some performance figures: (1) the size of the index is a bit larger than the size of the mails (on my laptop: 535 Mb of index vs 375 Mb of mails stored in 60 maildirs); (2) even if the underlying indexing engine is the same (Xapian) as maildir-utils, Notmuch is much faster. With my setup it is so fast that I've added it as a hook triggered by offlineimap at the end of each synchronization:

    zack@usha:~$ grep -B 1 hook .offlineimaprc
    [Account Upsilon]
    postsynchook = notmuch new

With the big round of new mail downloaded in the morning, it hardly takes more than a few seconds to update Notmuch index, while with other periodic downloads Notmuch almost invariably reports "... in almost no time" (i.e. less than 1 second). Integrating Notmuch with Mutt The basic integration I want between Mutt and a mail indexer is the ability of stating a search query interactively and then jump to a fresh Maildir containing search results only. Additionally, given that Notmuch has neat thread reconstruction abilities, I also want to be able to reconstruct on the fly the thread corresponding to the currently highlighted mail: it comes handy when a thread has been split across different maildirs, archived, or the like. To that end, I've cooked up a little helper, called mutt-notmuch, that enables to trigger mail searches via a Mutt macro (F8 being my choice) and reconstruct threads via another (F9). Check the manpage for the 2-liner configuration snippet for your ~/.muttrc. Arguably, some of the logics of mutt-notmuch could disappear by adding support for a --output=symlinks flag to Notmuch. A bug report requesting that is pending: too bad oversea flights are not as good for accessing the Internet as they are for perpetrating hacks! Download

• mutt-notmuch - Notmuch (of a) helper for Mutt
• mutt-notmuch.1 (html)- mutt-notmuch manpage

Before you start reading: this post is only intended to test a plugin that I've just written to give PyBlosxom a txt2tags formatting support. The original txt2tag sample used here is available at txt2tag website. Mine with few changes is here.IntroductionWelcome to the txt2tags sample file.Here you have examples and a brief explanation of allmarks.The first 3 lines of the this file are used as headers,on the following format:

  line1: document title  line2: author name, email  line3: date, version

Lines with balanced equal signs = around are titles.Fonts and BeautifiersWe have two sets of fonts:The NORMAL type that can be improved with beautifiers.The TYPEWRITER type that uses monospaced font forpre-formatted text.We will now enter on a subtitle...BeautifiersThe text marks for beautifiers are simple, just as youtype on a plain text email message.We use double *, /, - and _ to represent bold,italic, strike and underline.The bold italic style is also supported as acombination.Pre-Formatted TextWe can put a code sample or other pre-formatted text:

    here    is     pre-formatted  //marks// are  **not**   interpreted 

And also, it's easy to put a one line pre-formattedtext:

  prompt$ ls /etc

Or use pre-formatted inside sentences.More CosmeticsSpecial entities like email (duh@somewhere.com) and URL (http://www.duh.com)are detected automagically, as long as the horizontal line:

---

^ thin or large v

---

You can also specify an explicit link with label.And remember,

A TAB in front of the line does a quotation.

More TABs, more depth (if allowed).

Nice.ListsA list of items is natural, just putting a dash ora plus at the beginning of the line.Plain ListThe dash is the default list identifier. For sublists,just add spaces at the beginning of the line. Morespaces, more sublists.

• Earth
  • America
    • South America
      • Brazil
        • How deep can I go?
  • Europe
    • Lots of countries
• Mars
  • Who knows?

The list ends with two consecutive blank lines.Numbered ListThe same rules as the plain list, just a differentidentifier (plus).

1. one
2. two
3. three
   • mixed lists!
   • what a mess
     1. counting again
     2. ...
4. four

Definition ListThe definition list identifier is a colon, followed bythe term. The term contents is placed on the next line.

orange

a yellow fruit

apple

a green or red fruit

other fruits

• wee!
• mixing lists
  1. again!
  2. and again!

TablesUse pipes to compose table rows and cells.Double pipe at the line beginning starts a heading row.Natural spaces specify each cell alignment.

heading 1	heading 2	heading 3
cell 1.1	cell 1.2	cell 1.3
cell 2.1	cell 2.2	cell 2.3

Without the last pipe, no border:

heading 1	heading 2	heading 3
cell 1.1	cell 1.2	cell 1.3
cell 2.1	cell 2.2	cell 2.3

Special EntitiesBecause things were too simple.ImagesThe image mark is as simple as it can be: [filename].

• The filename must end in PNG, JPG, GIF, or similar.
• No spaces inside the brackets!

OtherThe handy %%date macro expands to the current date.So today is 20110206 on the ISO YYYYMMDD format.You can also specify the date format with the %? flags,as %%date(%m-%d-%Y) which gives: 02-06-2011.That's all for now.

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Trinity project in an attempt to keep KDE3 desktop compatible with ongoing changes elsewhere, and to some extent to fix bugs and add features into KDE3. It is for those us long-time KDE users who is upset by the way that KDE has chosen for KDE4. Unfortunately Trinity project looks small and underpowered, so it s future is unclear. Did not try it yet. There are debs, although some people think that it is hard to deal with those, because of KDE3 package namespace now used by KDE4, and also because of binary compatibility issues within Trinity. Why I don t like KDE4? Because I have no interest in eye candy, but due to heavy use of thin clients with apps running on remote server I do care about desktop resource consumption. A medium-class server (2 dual-core 2 GHz cpus, 16G ram) perfectly hosts 50 KDE3 sessions, served over vnc. Anything near to that with KDE4? I m not aware of any good-working kde4-over-vnc-over-network configuration, even for a single user over unloaded network. Looks like within KDE4, even with all effects turned off, every tiny operation results into near-fullscreen update. Spice is promising but requires per-session VMs which is a serious drawback when number of users is high.

Friday, I wrote about the train trip Jacob and I were planning to take. Here s the story about it. Friday night, Jacob was super excited. He was running around the house, talking about trains. I had him pack his own backpack with toys this time, which were you guessed it trains. Plus train track. His usual bedtime is around 7. He was still awake in his room at about 11, too excited to sleep. The train was an hour late into Newton, so got up, got ready, and then went into Jacob s room at 3:15AM. I put my arm around him and said his name softly. No response. I said, just a little louder, Jacob, it s time to wake up to go to the train station. There was about a 2-second pause and then he sat bolt upright rubbing his eyes. A couple seconds later, in a very tired but clear voice, OK dad, let s go! That is, I believe, a record for waking up speed for Jacob. We went downstairs, got coats, mittens, hats, etc. on, made sure we had the stuffed butterfly he always sleeps with, and went out the door. As usual, Jacob chattered happily during the entire 15-minute drive to the Amtrak station. One of these days I need to remember to record it because it s unique. He described things to me ranging from the difference between freight and passenger trains, to what the dining car is all about, to tractors and how to ride them safely. Newton has some winter lights , and a few places still had Christmas lights, which were of course big hits. We had to wait a few minutes at the Amtrak station, and Jacob hadn t shown any signs of slowing down yet. He wanted to look at every Amtrak poster, picture, logo, or sign in the building. This generally meant me holding him up high while he leaned over to touch it and make out a few words. Then, of course, he would pick out minute details about the trains, such as how many coach cars he thought they had, and we d visit about that for awhile. We got on at about 4:20. We found our seats, and Jacob showed no signs of calming down, despite having had only 4 hours of sleep (instead of his usual 11) so far. We checked out the buttons for lights. And, of course, he excitedly yelled out, Dad, the train is moving! He spent the next while mostly watching out his window, but also still exploring his space. Finally at about 5, I said, Jacob, I am really tired. I am going to sleep now. Will you sleep too? His response: Oh sure dad, I will sleep with my eyes open! As a result, no sleep was had for Jacob, and only a little for me. The dining car opens for breakfast at 6:30, which is normally a rather foreign time for breakfast on the train for us. But we were both awake so I figured might as well go. So Jacob and I went to the dining car. We sat with a woman going from New Mexico to Lawrence for her grandpa s funeral, though it was expected and she was having a good time on the train. Jacob turned completely shy, and refused to say a word, except maybe a few whispered into my ear. He got his favorite railroad French toast, and had me drizzle some syrup on it. I used the word drizzle for syrup the first time he had French toast on the train, and if I fail to use that word in the dining car, I will hear about it in no uncertain terms from Jacob. He loved his dining car breakfast, but we spent about an hour and a half there. He was really slow at eating because his face was pressed up against the window so much. But that was just fine; we had nowhere else to be, the person eating breakfast with us enjoyed visiting (and, apparently, scaring the dining car staff with tales of bears in the New Mexico mountains). This was what the train trip was all about, after all. We played in the lounge car for awhile. The almost floor-to-ceiling wrap-around windows provided a great view for him, and more opportunities to press his face against a window. We talked about freight trains that he saw, noticed the snow on some of them. Then we found the back of the train and he got to look out the back window. Back at our seat, he played with his toys for about 10 minutes, which was all he used them on the entire trip. There was just too much else to enjoy. When we used the restroom on the train, he d comment on how much he liked the Amtrak soap. It smells SO very very good! He wanted to wash his hands on the train. By late morning, he had decided: Dad, I LOVE this Amtrak soap. It smells like peaches! Shall your hands smell like peaches too? And, when we d get back up to our seats, he d put his hands in my face, saying, Dad, smell that! My hands smell like peaches! It was from the AMTRAK SOAP! At some point, he discovered the airline-style safety brochures in the seat back pockets. These were filled with diagrams of the train car, a few photos, and lots of icons with descriptions. I don t know how many times I read the thing to him, or really how many times he then recited it to me from memory. It was a lot. He spent hours with those brochures. Jacob had already told me that he wanted pizza for lunch, so I got him the kid-sized pizza. It wasn t all that big, and he could have devoured at least half of it when hungry. But he was getting really tired and ate only a few bites of pizza and a few chips. Pretty soon he was leaning up against me, the window, and eventually had his head on the table in some tomato sauce. But he didn t quite fall asleep by the time we went back to our seats, and of course was wide awake by that point. Jacob loves spotting the word Amtrak on things. It was very exciting when he noticed his orange juice at breakfast, and milk at lunch, were Amtrak juice and Amtrak milk due to the logo on the cups. At dinner he noticed we had Amtrak plates, and when I pointed out that his metal fork had the Amtrak logo on it, he got very excited and had to check every piece of silverware within reach. Dad, I have an Amtrak fork too! . And dad, YOU also have an Amtrak fork! We ALL have Amtrak forks! *cackling laughter* I finally insisted that Jacob lay down for some quiet time. I closed the curtains, and he finally did fall asleep less than an hour before our arrival into Galesburg. So by 2:15 he was up to 4.75 hours of sleep, I guess. We stopped in the train station briefly, then started our walk to the Discovery Depot Children s Museum, which was right nearby. Although I made no comment about it, Jacob said, Dad, there is a train museum RIGHT HERE! Yes, you re right Jacob. I can see a steam engine and some cars here. Let s go in! I don t think it s open today. It IS open shall we go check? It wasn t, and that was mighty sad though when he spotted another old caboose sitting outside the children s museum, the day suddenly seemed brighter. He complained of how cold he was, although my suggestion that he stop walking through the big piles of snowdrifts was met with a whiny, But dad, I WANT to do that! We went inside the museum (having to walk right buy the locked caboose thankfully the people at the desk promised to unlock it for us when we were ready) and Jacob started to explore. There was some wooden play trains big enough for children to climb in which he enjoyed, but in general he went from one thing to the next every minute or two as he does when he s really tired or overstimulated. Until, that is, he discovered the giant toy train table. It had a multi-level wooden track setup, and many toy trains with magnetic hitches. It was like what we have at home, only much bigger and fancier. He spent a LONG time with that. We then briefly explored the rest of the museum and went out into the caboose. It wasn t the hit it might have been, possibly because there are several at the Great Plains Transportation Museum that he gets to go in on a somewhat regular basis. After that, he was ready to go back into the museum, but I was feeling rather over-stimulated. On a day when the highs were still well below freezing, it seemed just about every family in Galesburg was crowded into the children s museum, making it loud and crowded which I don t enjoy at all. So I suggested maybe it was snack time instead. A moment s thought, then he started to pull me out of the caboose before I could get my gloves back on Yes dad, I think it IS snack time. Let s go. Let s go NOW! We walked over to Uncle Billy s Bakery (Google link or minimal website). Jacob spotted some sugar cookies shaped like mittens. Despite my reluctance to get him more sugar, he was so excited plus I had barely prevented a meltdown at lunch by promising him that he would get dessert later in the day so he picked two red mitten cookies. I got myself a wonderful peach muffin and a croissant and we sat down at one of the tables by the window. I taught Jacob how to hang his coat on his chair and he lit into those cookies. I spotted a guy at the next table over wearing a BNSF jacket, and asked him if he worked for the railroad. He had retired as an engineer a couple of years ago, and had worked various jobs before that. He grew up in Manhattan, KS and so was interested in our trip and very friendly. While we visited, Jacob devoured his cookies and increasing portions of my snack as well. He told us about a new shop The Stray Cat just two stores down that was having a grand opening event today. They make decorations and art out of basically discarded items, and had some really nifty things that I may have bought had I not been wanting for space in our backpack. Then I spotted Sweets Old-Fashioned Ice Cream, Candy, and Soda Shop across the road. I figured he d love it and I was already in for the sugar so might as well. He picked out some birthday cake flavor ice cream for himself. I got huckleberry ice cream, which he insisted on calling purpleberry and managed to get some tastes of as well. After that, we went to the train station. It was about an hour until our train would be there. I wasn t sure if we d find enough to do, but I shouldn t have worried. Earlier, we had made the happy discovery that the station s restroom featured the Amtrak soap, so there was that. Then there was the model Amtrak train in the ticket window, which Jacob kept wanting to look at while I d hold him. And also, the California Zephyr came in. We watched it arrive from the station window, saw people get off and on, and saw it leave maybe the first time Jacob has witnessed all that in person. And, of course, we looked at the pictures in that train station. The ticketmaster gave Jacob a paper conductor s hat with puzzles and mazes on the back side. And then it was time to get onto our train back home. We ate dinner Jacob again ate little and almost fell asleep and got back to our seats. I let Jacob stay awake until about 8, when he was starting to get a bit fragile. It took him awhile to fall asleep, but he finally did at about 8:30. Today he s still been all excited. He will randomly tell us about bits of the trip, that the man at supper called his grilled cheese sandwich piece little when it was really big, what we did at the ice cream store, etc. And I do think that he is now a train safety expert. All in all, I think that is probably the most excitement he s ever had in 24 hours and it was a lot of fun to be with him for it!

I ve just been playing with icmptx, a system for tunneling IP over ICMP Echo which could be handy if I ever find myself blocked by firewalls. Unfortunately the documentation is lacking. Below is a sample configuration that works for me, all you have to do is to put the correct IP address in for SERVERIP in both scripts and it should work. I m not sure what the ideal value for the MTU is, 65535 is the largest possible. For transmission it usually won t make any difference as the occasions when I need such things will usually be download-only sessions and the ACK packets will be quite small. For receiving data the server has an MTU of 1500 on the Ethernet port so nothing bigger than that will come in. Presumably when downloading data the packets will be transmitted in two ICMP fragments.One interesting feature of the program is that it doesn t match requests and replies. I presume this is because any firewall that only allows one reply per echo request will probably ensure that the reply contents match the request contents, so they just assume that a firewall will let all ICMP echo/reply traffic through. The upside of this is that it should give lower round trip times than any tunneling system that polls for return data.I ve filed some Debian bug reports about it, bug #609413 is a request for it to set icmp_echo_ignore_all when it s running and also emulate the regular PING functionality. Bug #609412 is a request for it to assign the IP address to the tun0 interface. Bug #609414 is a request for the server side of it to call daemon(0,0).I won t leave this running. Having to run a virtual server with the regular ICMP functionality disabled is too much effort for the small benefit that using ICMP tunneling may offer over DNS tunneling.My configuration scripts (with the IP address removed) are below.ConfigurationServer#!/bin/sh
set -e
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all
icmptx -s SERVERIP &
sleep 0.5
ifconfig tun0 mtu 65535 10.10.10.1 netmask 255.255.255.0Client#!/bin/sh
set -e
killall icmptx true
icmptx -c SERVERIP &
sleep 0.5
ifconfig tun0 mtu 65535 10.10.10.2 netmask 255.255.255.0
wait

Older versions of Psi jabber client required manual changing status to online to leave auto-offline state. It was very handy for me: I connect to my jabber account from two locations (from home and from office), so after I left one of these locations, auto-offline soon happened, and Psi at that location did not return online until I returned and manually instructed it to re-login. Unfortunately newer versions of Psi (I guess, starting from commit 4a54500c on git://git.psi-im.org/psi.git, which was between 0.11 and 0.12 releases), and also Psi+, behave differently: if user activity is detected on the desktop, auto-offline state is left, and status becomes online again similar to leaving auto-away and auto-xa states. This change is not good for me, at least in two situations:

• vnc connection to home from office or to office from home I use this fairy often,
• occasional use of my home session by my wife for quick web browsing or similar.

In both these situations, Psi client not at my current location becomes online, which can cause routing incoming messages to wrong location. I don t state that new behaviour is somehow worse than old behaviour. But for my use cases, I want to get old behaviour back. I ve done some code reading. I think that point to fix is near the bottom of PsiAccount::secondsIdle() method, where any auto status is disabled if no timeout condition currently exists. This should be changed so that auto-offline state won t be left if some config key is set. I will try to implement this change soon (or at least I hope I will try ) P.S.
To make things even better, a check of some external condition could be performed to decide if client should return online from auto-offline or not. Then fancy things could be set up, e.g. return to online at office only if my mobile phone is currently registered in the office wifi network not really required but cool.

Hardly anything ruins a glorious day of coding like fat-fingering the commit message late at night as you doze off, and then pushing it out for the world to see. To prevent that, I have equipped my Emacs configuration with a few little tools now.

First, I found the git-commit-mode, a special mode for Git commit messages. This helps you format the commit messages according to convention, and will use ugly colors if, for example, you write lines that are too long or you do not keep the second line blank. It also allows the use of things like M-q without shredding the whole file template.

Second, I integrated on-the-fly spell checking into the git-commit-mode. It won't stop you from writing nonsense, but it will catch the silly mistakes.

Here's a simple configuration snippet:

(require 'git-commit)
(add-hook 'git-commit-mode-hook 'turn-on-flyspell)
(add-hook 'git-commit-mode-hook (lambda () (toggle-save-place 0)))

The last line is handy if you have save-place on by default. When you make a new commit, it would then normally place the cursor where a previously edited commit message was finished, because to the save-place functionality, it looks as though it's the same file.

New feature for Debian CDs We've had a wishlist bug (#551951) open against debian-cd for some time, asking for the creation of "isohybrid" CD images for i386 and amd64. These are special in that as well as the normal CD-based ISO9660 filesystem they also contain a valid-looking DOS-style partition table. Thus, if you simply copy one of these images raw to a USB stick a normal PC BIOS will boot the image directly. This would be a neat feature, making it much easier for people to use standard Debian installer images on their USB sticks without having to follow a lot more instructions. Support for this feature was added in syslinux/isolinux quite a while back (thanks to H Peter Anvin and the other syslinux contributors), but this depended on post-processing images with the isohybrid program. Due to the special way that we make our CD and DVD images to produce jigdo images as well, that wouldn't work for us: the jigdo files would no longer match the ISO files. Bugger...! Recently, along came more help in the form of Thomas Schmitt (author of xorriso) and George Danchev, its Debian maintainer. Recent versions of xorriso support creating isohybrid images directly, which is very handy. We've worked together in the last few months on porting my old JTE code (which creates our jigdo images) from cdrkit to xorriso, and after a lot of testing and debugging we now have things working fully. I've added a small amount of code in debian-cd to use the new xorriso features, and for the last couple of weeks all of the i386, amd64 and i386-amd64 multi-arch CDs and DVDs have been built as hybrids. It's been a delight working with Thomas and George - they're enthusiastic, helpful and friendly. Thanks, guys! What does this mean for end users? Instead of having to specially prepare USB sticks for the installer, you can now simply use dd to write the image straight to the raw stick, e.g.:

# dd if=debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso of=/dev/sdX

The USB stick should now boot directly, showing exactly the same bootup screen as if you'd written the image directly to a CD. Yay! I'm expecting to be using this code from now on for new releases, i.e. d-i beta and RC releases and for Squeeze itself when we get there. I'm not planning on backporting this code into the Lenny branch of debian-cd as it's a lot of work and I don't want to destabilise things there. What's next? We need to clear up some of the maintenance around the code as it stands; I'm planning on moving libjte inside my existing jigit package, as that's a sensible place to put it. That will come after the Squeeze release, though. We need to finalise boot support for other architectures in xorriso; I added support for them into mkisofs/genisoimage a long time ago and we've already moved some of that into xorriso. Thomas and George have also been working hard to give me faster/better size estimation code, useful for making debian-cd run faster. Finally: I'd like to add support into xorriso for creating the nasty HFS hybrid images that are needed for booting Macs. The code that does this in cdrkit is probably some of the worst that I've ever worked with, and I'd like to get away from it. If only Apple hadn't stupidly built their proprietary platform around this shit and had used open standards instead. :-( Once we have these bits in xorriso, I'll be able to move production of all of the CDs across from genisoimage to xorriso. Very nearly there for being able to drop the last remnants of Schily-ware from the Debian archive...

(This is part of a series of posts on Why Linux?) I've run a number of distros in my time. I ended up on Debian near the end of 1999, and part of the drive for that was the number of packages available in one centralised location. Decent package management is a definite strength of Linux (or FreeBSD) over proprietary operating systems. It derives from the freedom aspect, but means you can end up with one source for all (or most) of your software, that's compiled against the same set of libraries, with one way to track what owns what. This may not seem like a big thing, especially if you're a hobbyist or are coming from a Windows background. Reinstalling is often seen as a necessary regular requirement. Personally I've got better things to do with my time. If I want to try out a piece of software I want to be able to install it safe in the knowledge I know exactly what files it owns and where there are. And I want it to be able to tell me what other common components it needs that I might not already have. Then if I decide it's not for me I can cleanly remove it and anything else it pulled in that I no longer need. Don't underestimate this. This is useful on all of my machines. I can query the version number of everything installed. I can check for updates with one command (no need for every piece of installed software to have its own updater implementation). Software can share libraries correctly rather than stashing their own private copies, meaning I get bug fixes and security updates. (Yes, sometimes authors bundle even in the Linux world. Stop it.) I'm a developer. I tend to interact with a lot of different systems, of different types. It's really handy to have access to a wide range of tools to help me with that, know that there's legally no problem with me installing them, be able to do so with a single command and, should they turn out to be unsuitable, know I can cleanly remove them with another single command. This is a definite win in the work context. Equally I've been a sysadmin for multiple machines at once. Being able to login to each of them and check that everything is up to date is damn handy. Being able to easily install software for customers tends to make you popular too. And being able to rebuild boxes (or build additional boxes to share load) with the same setup is a lot easier with a decent package manager too. And, to pre-empt any responses about how a lot of this is possible under, say, Windows, yes, it is. I've spent some time in the past building packages for commercial deployment using Novadigm's Radia tool. I'm aware that Windows integral package management has also got better over time. I still think dpkg/apt (or rpm/yum) is far more powerful. And, for the end user, mostly easier as well - distros are building pre-prepared packages for you, rather than you having to do it yourself like with Radia.

I ve been thinking a lot recently about information security and passwords. It s widely agreed that two-factor authentication, which combines something-you-know (a password) with something you have (eg. a smart card or some one-time-password) is superior to using a password by itself. Most solutions I ve seen, short of client-side certificates, both require a trusted third party and provide little auditability. I m working on a project which attempts to address those problems. Basically, the idea is that you attempt to perform an action on a website, like logging in, moving some money between accounts, or restarting a cluster. Then, your mobile device¹ (Android, iPhone, or some custom hardware) starts buzzing, displaying the text of the action. When you approve or deny the action, your device uses a locally stored private key to sign the text of the approval and send it back to the server. The server checks that you approved the same transaction number and text, then allows the action. The server can store the approval notice to allow auditors later to determine that somebody in possession of the private key signed the action request. So far, I ve written a small Django server application, and a Python CLI device and client. They re not yet ready for a public release; I need to write up installation instructions and test it a bit more, but I ll publish them soon on Launchpad. On the usability side of things, I plan to conduct some trials in January comparing it to things like Google Authenticator. This should be less susceptible to MITM attacks than one-time-passwords, since you can authenticate specific transactions, rather than entire sessions. On the other hand, I m no security researcher. Dear lazyweb, are there any problems with the above approach? Also, if I m going to release this (as I plan to once I get something working), I need a name. Ideas?

1. iPhone used in the graphic to the right because a SVG was handy. Image adapted from work by Virgile Pypaert [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

For my birthday back in October, my wonderful wife gave me a Kindle 3 from Amazon. I d been considering other e-book readers for quite some time, but I had mostly ignored the Kindle due to the lack of EPUB support and a general dislike of Amazon s DRM enforcement. In the end, the superior hardware and ecosystem of the Kindle overpowered those concerns and overall I m very pleased with the purchase. The screen is amazing, literally just like reading off a piece of paper and the selection of books is OK. I ve been buying almost all my books from Amazon to date since it s so easy (the Whispernet is amazingly quick!) but it s not terribly difficult to get EPUBs from elsewhere onto the device after a quick run through Calibre to turn them into a MOBI file, so I keep telling myself I ve still got some flexibility. Almost as much fun as reading on the device has been learning about how it works. The Mobile Read forums have lots of step by step posts on how to do specific tasks like replacing the screensaver image, but they don t give much background detail on how the Kindle is actually operating which is what really interests me. Luckily among all the step by step posts I also found a usbnetwork package which also adds an SSH server to the Kindle, so after installing that and then SSHing in to my Kindle I ve been poking around. Under the cover the Kindle reveals a fairly standard Linux installation. While the hardware and IO devices are obviously unique, compared to something like an Android phone, the Kindle is refreshingly normal . Hardware

• Freescale MX35 ARMv6 based CPU with Java specific instruction support.
• 256MB RAM
• 4GB of internal flash presented as an SDHC device with four partitions. A ~700MB root partition, a ~30MB /var/local partition, another roughly 30MB kernel partition and then the rest (~3.1G) as the writeable user partition where your books and other content are stored. The root and /var/local partitions are ext3! (not jffs or some other more traditional flash based file system) while the user partition is vfat for easy use with Windows, etc.
• The board is code-named luigi and there are lots of references to mario and fiona scattered around the device, and even in some URLs on Amazon s website. Someone was obviously a Super Mario fan.
• The wireless chipset is Atheros based using the ar6000 drivers.
• The WAN (3G) modem presents itself as a USB serial device and is controlled via a custom daemon named wand which uses the standard Linux pppd package to establish IP connections over a private APN Amazon (provided by Vodafone here in Ireland).
• The EInk display shows up as some special files under /proc rather than as a device. With a bit of digging I found some simple constants that when written to the proc files cause the screen to display the standard boot/progress/upgrading images. I haven t deciphered how to make more complex updates to the display yet.

Software

• The kernel is based on Linux 2.6.26, with a bunch of hardware specific patches and drivers from lab126.com, an Amazon subsidiary who appear to be responsible for much of the low-level driver and device development.
• Lots of familiar open source projects are present, e.g. syslog-ng, DBus, busybox, pppd, wpa_supplicant, gstreamer, pango, openssl and the list goes on. You can download all the sources from Amazon s website. I haven t spent any time to see what if anything has been modified.
• There were a few unexpected finds as well such as GDB and powertop! No doubt useful for the developers, but highly unlikely to actually be used on a shipping Kindle.
• Boot-up is controlled by a set of sysv style init scripts which setup the filesystems and then start a handful of daemons to look after the low-level subsystems (network, power, sound) as well as the standard syslog and cron daemons you d expect to see on any Linux box.
• Once the basic system is up and running the init scripts kick off the framework which lives under /opt/amazon/ebook and consists of lots of Java classes. The system uses the cvm Java environment from Sun/Oracle which is specialised for embedded low-memory devices like this. The framework appears to take over most of the co-ordination, management and interaction tasks once it has started up.

The application/framework code is heavily obfuscated apparently using the Allatori Java Obfuscator. The jrename and jd-gui utilities have proven very handy in helping to untangle the puzzle, although they still only leave you with a pile of Java source code with mostly single letter alphabetic variable and class names! I ve been using IntelliJ s support for refactoring/renaming Java code to slowly work through it (thanks in large part to error/log messages and string constants found through the code which can t be obfuscated easily and help to explain what is going on), and I m slowly beginning to piece together how the book reading functionality works. I ll maybe write more on this in a future post. In one of my initial tweets about the Kindle I mentioned that it seemed to be regularly uploading syslog data to Amazon based on some sendlogs scripts I d noticed and a few syslog lines containing GPS co-ordinates that had been pasted on the Mobile Read forums. I can t find any trace of GPS co-ordinates in any syslog messages I ve seen on my device, but there is definitely information about the cell sites that my Kindle can see, the books that I m opening and where I m up to in them:

101206:235431 wand[2515]: I dtp:diag: t=4cfd77b7,MCC MNC=272 01,Channel=10762,Band=WCDMA I IMT 2000,Cell ID=1362209,LAC=3021,RAC=1
,Network Time=0000/00/00 00.00.00,Local Time Offset=Not provided,Selection Mode=Automatic,Test Mode=0,Bars=4,Roaming=1,RSSI=-88,Tx
Power=6,System Mode=WCDMA,Data Service Mode=HSDPA,Service Status=Service,Reg Status=Success,Call Status=Conversation,MM Attach St
ate=Attach accept,MM LU State=LU update,GMM Attach State=Attach accept,GMM State=Registered,GMM RAU State=Not available,PDP State=
Active,Network Mode=CS PS separate attach mode,PMM Mode=Connected,SIM Status=Valid; PIN okay; R3,MM Attach Error=No error,MM LU Er
ror=No error,GMM Attach Error=No error,GMM RAU Error=Not available,PDP Rej Reason=No error,Active/Monitored Sets=0;39;-11 1;180;-1
5,RSCP=-111,DRX=64,HSDPA Status=Active,HSDPA Indication=HSDPA HSUPA unsupp,Neighbor Cells=,Best 6 Cells=,Pathloss=,MFRM=,EGPRS Ind
ication=,HPLMN=,RPLMN=272;01 ,FPLMN=234;33 234;30 234;20 272;05 ,n=1: 101206:235758 cvm[3426]: I Reader:BOOK INFO:book asin=B003IWZZ3Y,file size=233168,file last mod date=2010-11-27 19.18.22 +0000,con
tent type=ebook,length=MobiPosition_ 465747,access=2010-12-06 09.44.32 +0000,last read position=MobiPosition_ 464387,isEncrypted=f
alse,isSample=false,isNew=false,isTTSMetdataPresent=false,isTTSMetadataAllowed=true,fileExtn=azw: 101206:233416 udhcpc[5639]: Offer from server xxx.xxx.2.254 received
101206:233416 udhcpc[5639]: Sending select for xxx.xxx.2.10...
Interestingly you can see from the last two lines, that Amazon has taken some care to preserve privacy by not including the full IP address given to the device by my local Wifi network, so in light of that I find it interesting that they decided not to obfuscate the Cell and Book IDs in those respective log messages too. Seems rather inconsistent. As to how and when these logs are sent to Amazon, the picture is a little bit murky. Every 15 minutes tinyrot runs out of cron and rotates /var/log/messages if it is greater than 256k in size. Rotated logs are stored into /var/local/log under filenames like messages_00000044_20101207000006.gz and alongside the log files are a set of state files named nexttosendfile, messages_oldest, messages_youngest. Something regularly sweeps through this directory to update the state and remove the old logs (after sending them up to Amazon I assume). I suspect that something is buried in the Java application code mentioned above. On the whole the Kindle is a fascinating piece of technology. It delivers a wonderful reading experience on top of a familiar Linux system and is going to provide me with many more hours of entertainment as I unpack all the tricks and techniques that have gone into this device. I would recommended it as a present for geeks everywhere.

This is the second post about distcheck. I want to give a quick overview of the differences between edos-distcheck and the new version. First despite using the same sat solver and encoding of the problem, Distcheck has been re-written from scratch. Dose2 has several architectural problems and not very well documented. Adding new features had become too difficult and error-prone, so this was a natural choice (at least for me). Hopefully Dose3 will survive the Mancoosi project and provide a base for dependency reasoning. The framework is well documented and the architecture pretty modular. It's is written in ocaml, so sadly, I don't expect many people to join the development team, but we'll be very open to it. These are the main differences with edos-debcheck .

Performances distcheck is about two times faster than edos-debcheck (from dose2), but it is a "bit" slower then debcheck (say the original debcheck), that is the tool wrote by Jerome Vouillon and that was then superseded in debian by edos-debcheck. The original debcheck was a all-in-one tool that did the parsing, encoding and solving without converting the problem to any intermediate format. distcheck trades a bit of speed for generality. Since it is based on Cudf, it can handle different formats and can be easily adapted in a range of situation just by changing the encoding of the original problem to cudf. Below there are a couple of test I've performed on my machine (debian unstable). The numbers speak alone.

$time cat tmp/squeeze.packages edos-debcheck -failures > /dev/null
Completing conflicts... * 100.0%
Conflicts and dependencies... * 100.0%
Solving * 100.0%

real 0m19.515s
user 0m19.193s
sys 0m0.276s

$time ./distcheck.native -f deb://tmp/squeeze.packages > /dev/null

real 0m10.859s
user 0m10.669s
sys 0m0.172s

Input The second big difference is about different input format. In fact, at the moment, we have two different tools in debian, one edos-debcheck and the other edos-rpmcheck. Despite using the same underlying library these two tools have different code bases. distcheck basically is a multiplexer that convert different inputs to a common format and then uses it (agnostically) to solve the installation problem. It can be called in different ways (via symlinks) to behave similarly to its predecessors. At the moment we are able to handle 5 different formats

1. deb:// Packages 822 format for debian based distributions
2. hdlist:// a binary format used by rpm based distribution
3. synth:// a simplified format to describe rpm based package repositories
4. eclipse:// a 822 based format that encoded OSGi plugings metadata
5. cudf:// the native cudf format

distcheck handles gz and bz2 compressed file transparently . However if you care about performances, you should decompress your input file first and the parse it with distcheck and it often takes more time to decompress the file on the fly that run the installability test itself. There is also an experimental database backend that is not compiled by default at them moment.

Output Regarding the output, I've already explained the main differences in an old post. As a quick reminder, the old edos-debcheck had two output options. The first is a human readable - unstructured output - that was a handy source of information when running the tool interactively. The second was a xml based format (without a dtd or a schema, I believe) that was used for batch processing. distcheck has only one output type in the YAML format that aims to be human and machine readable. Hopefully this will cater for both needs. Moreover, just recently I've added the output of distcheck a summary of who is breaking what. The output of edos-debcheck was basically a map of packages to the reasons of the breakage. In addition to this information distcheck gives also a maps between reason (a missing dependency or a conflict) to the list of packages that are broken by this problem.This additional info is off by default, but I think it can be nice to know what is the missing dependency that is responsible for the majority of problems in a distribution... For example, calling distcheck with --summary :

$./distcheck.native --summary deb://tests/sid.packages
backgroud-packages: 29589
foreground-packages: 29589
broken-packages: 143
missing-packages: 138
conflict-packages: 5
unique-missing-packages: 52
unique-conflict-packages: 5
summary:
-
missing:
missingdep: libevas-svn-05-engines-x (>= 0.9.9.063)
packages:
-
package: enna-dbg
version: 0.4.0-4
architecture: amd64
source: enna (= 0.4.0-4)
-
package: enna
version: 0.4.0-4
architecture: amd64
source: enna (= 0.4.0-4)
-
missing:
missingdep: libopenscenegraph56 (>= 2.8.1)
packages:
-
package: libosgal1
version: 0.6.1-2+b3
architecture: amd64
source: osgal (= 0.6.1-2)
-
package: libosgal-dev
version: 0.6.1-2+b3
architecture: amd64
source: osgal (= 0.6.1-2)

Below I give a small example of the edos-debcheck output compared to the new yaml based output.

$cat tests/sid.packages edos-debcheck -failures -explain
Completing conflicts... * 100.0%
Conflicts and dependencies... * 100.0%
Solving * 100.0%
zope-zms (= 1:2.11.1-03-1): FAILED
zope-zms (= 1:2.11.1-03-1) depends on missing:
- zope2.10
- zope2.9
zope-tinytableplus (= 0.9-19): FAILED
zope-tinytableplus (= 0.9-19) depends on missing:
- zope2.11
- zope2.10
- zope2.9
...

And an extract from the distcheck output (the order is different. I cut and pasted parts of the output here...)

$./distcheck.native -f -e deb://tests/sid.packages
report:
-
package: zope-zms
version: 1:2.11.1-03-1
architecture: all
source: zope-zms (= 1:2.11.1-03-1)
status: broken
reasons:
-
missing:
pkg:
package: zope-zms
version: 1:2.11.1-03-1
architecture: all
missingdep: zope2.9 zope2.10
-
package: zope-tinytableplus
version: 0.9-19
architecture: all
source: zope-tinytableplus (= 0.9-19)
status: broken
reasons:
-
missing:
pkg:
package: zope-tinytableplus
version: 0.9-19
architecture: all
missingdep: zope2.9 zope2.10 zope2.11
...

Future The roadmap to release version 1.0 of distcheck is as follows:

1. add background and foreground package selection. This feature will allow the use to specify a larger universe (background packages), but check only a subset of this universe (foreground packages). This should allow users to select packages using grep-dctrl and then pipe them to discheck . At the moment we can select individual packages on the command line or we can use expression like bash (<= 2.7) to check all version of bash in the universe with version greater than 2.7.
2. code cleanup and a bit of refactoring between distcheck and buildcheck (that is a frontend for distcheck that allow us to report broken build dependencies)
3. consider essential packages while performing the installation test. Here there are few things we have to understand, but the idea would be to detect possible problems related the implicit presence of essential packages in the distribution. At the moment, distcheck performs the installation test in the empty universe, while ideally, the universe should contain all essential packages.
4. finish the documentation. The effort in underway and we hope to finalize shortly to release the debian package in experimental.

A new month means new free software projects to support with Flattr FOSS. I m happy to see that it s gaining traction outside of the Debian world as well. I saw quite a few new entries for free software projects so that I don t have to fear running out of suggestions in the next few months.
Let s go over the 5 projects that I recommend you for December:

1. Getting Things GNOME (flattr link) is a GNOME task manager. Its name is a play on David Allen s Getting Things Done (GTD) but the software doesn t enforce the GTD methodology. You can implement GTD however since the software is very flexible and lets you organize the tasks with arbitrary tags. It s a promising software and it can be extended with many plugins.
2. The W3C validator (flattr link) is used by thousands of web developers to verify that their HTML pages are well formed. But did you know that it was free software? Yes you can contribute code, or you can help them with a flattr.
3. Bitlbee (flattr link) is a gateway between IRC and many other instant messaging protocols. Geeks are known to be IRC addicted (at least I am using it for Debian development) and with bitlbee it s one reason less to watch something else than the IRC client.
4. Arch Hurd (flattr link) is a port of the ArchLinux distribution to the GNU Hurd kernel.
5. Paste.debian.net (flattr link) is a simple website where you can share some textual content for a limited amount of time (you usually paste the content from some other applications, hence its name). Very handy when you want to quickly show something to others on IRC. This service is run by Debian developer Alexander Wirt.

That s it for this month. A quick question to finish this issue: I count at least 15 Debian contributors using Flattr currently, would you be interested by a small directory listing them?

One comment Liked this article? Click here. My blog is Flattr-enabled.

I finally took some time to finish my color contrast corrector. It's now able to compare two colors and to tell if they are readable when used as foreground and background color for text rendering. If they are too close, the code corrects both colors so to they'll become distant enough to be readable. To do that, it uses color coordinates in the CIE L*a*b* colorspace. This allows to determine the luminance difference between 2 colors very easily by comparing the L component of the coordinates. The default threshold used to determine readability based on luminance difference is 40 (on 100), which seems to give pretty good results so far. Then it uses the CIE Delta E 2000 formula to obtain the distance between colors. A distance of 6 is considered to be enough for the colors to be distinctive in our case, but that can be adjusted anyway. That depends on reader's eyes. If both the color and luminance distances are big enough, the color pair is considered readable when used upon each other. If these criteria are not satisfied, the code simply tries to correct the color by adjusting the L (luminance) component of the colors so their difference is 40. Optionally, the background color can be fixed so only the foreground color would be adjusted; this is especially handy when the color background is not provided by any external style, but it the screen one (like the Emacs frame background in my case). Here is an example result generated over 10 pairs of random colors. Left colors are randomly generated, and right colors are the corrected one. <style type="text/css"> </style>

bg: DarkSeaGreen4 fg: gray67 ->                             fg: #4a6b4b bg: #cccccc
bg: SlateGray4 fg: forest green ->                          fg: #9faec0 bg: #005700
bg: grey13 fg: grey36 ->                                    fg: #131313 bg: #6c6c6c
bg: MediumPurple2 fg: honeydew ->                           fg: #9e78ed bg: #f0fff0
bg: grey43 fg: chartreuse3 ->                               fg: #5e5e5e bg: #79de25
bg: linen fg: DeepPink2 ->                                  fg: linen bg: DeepPink2
bg: CadetBlue4 fg: blue1 ->                                 fg: #6c9fa4 bg: #0000e1
bg: gray33 fg: NavajoWhite3 ->                              fg: #525252 bg: #cfb58c
bg: chartreuse1 fg: RosyBrown3 ->                           fg: #9cff38 bg: #b28282
bg: medium violet red fg: DeepPink1 ->                      fg: #9c0060 bg: #ff55b9

All this has been written in Emacs Lisp. The code is now available in Gnus (and therefore in Emacs 24) in the packages color-lab and shr-color. A future work would be to add support for colour blindness. As a side note, several people pointed me at the WCAG formulas to determine luminance and contrast ratio. These are probably good criteria to choose your color when designing a user interface. However, they are not enough to determine if displayed color will be readable. This means you can use them if you are a designer, but IMHO they are pretty weak for detecting and correcting colors you did not choose.

I'm still running upgrade testing of the Lenny Gnome and KDE Desktop, but have not had time to spend on reporting the status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118. I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else can see if anything should be changed. This is for Gnome: Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude

apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0 libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2 libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7 libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8 libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr zip

Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude

arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0 libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim

Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get

gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs

Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get

[nothing]

This is for KDE: Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude

autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++ libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex ttf-sazanami-gothic

Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude

amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts

Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get

dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod

Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get

kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror

Now that we have KMS, it happens things go bad enough that when X goes down, one can no longer access any console to see what happened. Mainly, one can distinguish between two cases.

• The good one: the machine is still accessible over the network. Unfortunately, that requires having a spare machine to ssh into the first machine, but that means one can run dmesg, look into X logs, possibly run X inside gdb and see where it breaks (because glibc s backtrace isn t exactly an excellent tool to get the idea of what s going on and that s the tool used in X to print a backtrace in the log through a signal handler).
• The bad one: the machine is no longer accessible over the network. Likely, the kernel is in such a bad shape that one is never going to know what happened. Usually, writing logs to disc didn t happen, so logs won t magically show up at next reboot.

I m going to discuss the second case. There s a nice tool in the kernel which makes it possible to send kernel logs over the network. It s called netconsole. As far as limitations are concerned, one shall note that it s UDP only, and over Ethernet (in other words: no wireless). The good news is that it can usually make the last crucial lines available. Let s call the crashy machine a patient and the logging machine a doctor. One should keep in mind that if something goes wrong while configuring the netconsole module, it can be unloaded at anytime through:

sudo modprobe -r netconsole

Easy case: on a local network Here s an example: Patient s IP is 192.168.0.1, doctor's IP is 192.168.0.2. Doctor setup What one needs on the receiving side: only netcat. A tiny warning, there are several implementations. Here s the appropriate syntax:

# netcat-traditional:
nc -l -u -p 6666   tee ~/netconsole.log
# netcat-openbsd:
nc -l -u 6666   tee ~/netconsole.log

The nc command is handled through the alternatives system, one can use update-alternative --config nc to pick the appropriate one if several netcat-* packages are installed. To list the current one, an easy way is readlink -f $(which nc). Using tee means that incoming messages are going to be printed, both to the standard output and to the specified file. Running as non-privileged user is sufficient. Patient setup Now, to have the patient send stuff to the doctor, a simple modprobe is needed:

sudo modprobe netconsole netconsole=@/,6666@192.168.0.2/

What happens here? One requests the netconsole module to be loaded, and one specifies the parameters. Details can be read in the Linux kernel documentation (Documentation/networking/netconsole.txt), but concentrating on the points of interest here:

• 192.168.0.2: The doctor s IP.
• 6666: The UDP port to which packets are sent. 6666 is the default and can be omitted.

That s all! On the doctor side, one should see something along those lines:

[2920549.188090] console [netcon0] enabled
[2920549.188102] netconsole: network logging started

Slightly harder case: over internet Because one might not have a second machine handy, it s also possible to go through a router and send stuff across the internet. Here s an example: Patient s IP is 192.168.0.1, connecting to internet through a router, which IP is 192.168.0.254. The doctor, available over the internet, is 192.0.32.10. Doctor setup Exactly the same as in the previous case. The main issue one can run into is firewalls at this point. That s why one may want to switch from the default 6666 port to another one which wouldn t be filtered. One can think of 53 (DNS), but that means running nc as root since it s a privileged port (below 1024). Patient setup Routing is also possible, but that requires an extra parameter: the MAC address of the router. To obtain it, one can use the arp command:

/usr/sbin/arp 192.168.0.254

Supposing it returned the 01:02:03:04:05:06 address, loading the module becomes:

sudo modprobe netconsole netconsole=@/,6666@192.0.32.10/01:02:03:04:05:06

Now, if you re running into firewall-related issues, you can change the source for the UDP packets. The default is 6665, but assuming you want to send from an unfiltered 1234 port, that becomes:

sudo modprobe netconsole netconsole=1234@/,6666@192.0.32.10/01:02:03:04:05:06

Last week I was on my first Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS-N), I wanted to attended this summit for couple of reasons: 1. Developer, I m part of Debian Java, working on Eclipse IDE, and as you re developing Debian, you re automatically developing Ubuntu, no? 2. DebConf11 main organizer, I really wanted to see how it s all done on corporate level, for instance we re going with hotels instead of student dorms and so on. 3. Migration to Linux infrastructure, make contacts and have some talks on this topic, because after DebConf11 in Bosnia a lot of institution will most probably open doors to open solutions such as Linux. I went to this summit without any expectations or plans, just said I ll play it by ear. This years UDS was held in Orlando, Florida before Orlando I was planning to stay in NYC for couple of days, therefor my whole plan was to get to NYC, then Orlando then head back home I NYC I spent couple of days here with my cousins and friends, as always NYC never fails to surprise me, and I ll always stop by even if it s only for couple of days I wanted to meet up with couple of Debian people as well, but unfortunately my schedule was too tight so Caribe Royale, Orlando Please note that this whole trip was crazy (in a good way) starting from Sarajevo; on my flight from NYC to Orlando I see a guy that s sitting in front of me is wearing Canonical Landscape tshirt, I approach him and it turns he was Jamu Kakar working on Landscape. Since my luggage was late we had conversations from Debian over Ubuntu to Java to everything pretty much. While we were still at the airport, we bump into two more people going to UDS. As we got to hotel, same moment we walked out of cab there he was Jorge Castro, was he there just to smoke a cigarette or whatever doesn t even matter, what matters is that even before walking into hotel building I knew where reception, my tower and bar was, everything I needed to know at that moment Hotel where everything was held was Caribe Royale and even though I looked at their website I thought there was no way it s all going to be that nice, to my delight it was exact replica. Place is All-Suite Hotel and Convention Center , which meant that both accomodation, venue and everything else was in one place which is 15 minutes later after I checked in, I was at a bar talking to Jim Baker about Java, Jython and Python, exact things I wanted to talk about at that given moment. What I said in these last couple of paragraphs sounds pretty cool eh? Well to me this whole UDS was just like this, everybody was so accessible and open for discussion, from Jono Bacon walking around offering candy to UDS reception staff Michelle, Marianna and others who were always there whether you had a complaint, problem or a praise. I really should stop mentioning names, because I ll forget somebody, and since it s just not fair because I had a feeling everybody was just there for you, whatever it was you needed. Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS-N) Ubuntu, Debian, DebConf, differences? Even though I said I ll play it by ear, from very beginning I thought I d be complete outsider, being part of Debian and all. Quite contrary, I was everything but outsider, and even more there was plenty of Debian people there, including current DPL Stefano Zacchiroli, Colin Watson, Riku Voipio just to name few. There was also a Debian Healt Check plenary. But overall, there are differences between DebConf and UDS. One of the things is that you can attend UDS remotely I m not sure how much is this doable on DebConf, but then again vast differences are that UDS is filled with BOF s (as we would call it in Debian) meetings of different teams, I attended a lot of these, and most of them end with some kind of conclusion. While each day there was (only?) an hour of lectures on various topics, which on DebConf we would characterize maybe even as speed talks . However, everything was high paced, and it all ended up on You think that s a problem? How do you think we could solve it? . I had a feeling even if I didn t say something out loud that someone would hear me and approach me to discuss it. Everything was straight forward, all in goal to resolve certain issue or a problem, which I absolutely loved. Fun It wasn t all work, even though Orlando doesn t seem to be my kind of city from what I saw, it s way too magical for my taste There was a lot of places where you could go to enjoy yourself. Good people at Canonical even offered me free ticket to Disney World, there was a lot of destinations to visit and transpiration was also organized by Canonical. Unfortunately I missed the notorious UDS party on Friday because I had to head home early, but possibly I ll make it next year Even though, hotel was that great and to be honest you didn t have to leave to look for party. My favorite was Universal City Walk, one night I decided to go to see Blue Man Group, best part of it was that I got pulled up on stage by one of the members and was part of one of the acts! This is definitely something everyone should see during his life, one moment you re laughing like a lunatic, while other moment you re just having goose bumps from the performance itself. Amazing stuff. After all I wrote here along with the pictures, is there even anything else I need to say? I believe that even if I didn t play it by ear, this whole trip would exceed all my expectations in every possible sense. Because that s really what happened, those three reasons I was going to UDS for? Far more happened than that. All I can say in the end is that I ll move closer to having a part in Ubuntu development, and yea, I ll try to be regular on UDS from now on See you in Budapest? If all these photos weren t enough, you can find official group photo as well as personal set of photos can be found on: UDS-N photos by 2010 Sean Sosik-Hamor

Thanks to a colleague, we hereby present the multi-strace:

Today, Zoe is six months old. The last three months certainly feel like they've taken their time, but a lot has happened. Developmentally, she's doing great. She's now in the 70th percentile for height (up from around the 25th percentile), and 31st percentile for weight (up from the 25th percentile). She cut her bottom front teeth a few days ago. Crawling is imminent, I'd say. She can already scoot around in reverse, and by a combination of shuffling and rolling, doesn't seem to be having problems moving around the floor. We started her on solids at five months, and she's taken like a duck to water to pureed pumpkin, sweet potato, beans, zucchini, apple, pear, banana and avocado. Speaking of water, she's also decided she likes to drink water from our glasses whenever she sees us doing it. Hilarity usually ensues, closely followed by a change of outfit. She's sleeping well, only waking up once a night under normal circumstances, and that wake-up is getting later and later. She loves her baths. She usually lets out a series of loud sighs as soon as we put her in the bath. She got her first cold a couple of weeks ago. It coincided with her first day in ad hoc daycare, but Sarah and I were both sick as well, so I think it's more likely that she caught the cold from us than from daycare. She's still battling it, but it hasn't really bothered her all that much. She's just a bit snotty. The NoseFrida has been very handy for dealing with this. She had her six month shots today, and seems to be tolerating them fairly well. Sarah says she hardly even cried when she got them. She continues to be a remarkably happy baby. She always wakes up with a smile, she really only fusses if we keep here away for more than a couple of hours, or haven't fed her on time. Even with this current cold she has, she's still stayed very happy. We feel incredibly lucky to have such a wonderful baby. The next big adventure is to try a babysitter.