Search Results: "spa"

5 February 2012

Russell Coker: Reliability of RAID

ZDNet has an insightful article by Robin Harris predicting the demise of RAID-6 due to the probability of read errors [1]. Basically as drives get larger the probability of hitting a read error during reconstruction increases and therefore you need to have more redundancy to deal with this. He suggests that as of 2009 drives were too big for a reasonable person to rely on correct reads from all remaining drives after one drive failed (in the case of RAID-5) and that in 2019 there will be a similar issue with RAID-6. Of course most systems in the field aren t using even RAID-6. All the most economical hosting options involve just RAID-1 and RAID-5 is still fairly popular with small servers. With RAID-1 and RAID-5 you have a serious problem when (not if) a disk returns random or outdated data and says that it is correct, you have no way of knowing which of the disks in the set has good data and which has bad data. For RAID-5 it will be theoretically possible to reconstruct the data in some situations by determining which disk should have it s data discarded to give a result that passes higher level checks (EG fsck or application data consistency), but this is probably only viable in extreme cases (EG one disk returns only corrupt data for all reads). For the common case of a RAID-1 array if one disk returns a few bad sectors then probably most people will just hope that it doesn t hit something important. The case of Linux software RAID-1 is of interest to me because that is used by many of my servers. Robin has also written about some NetApp research into the incidence of read errors which indicates that 8.5% of consumer disks had such errors during the 32 month study period [2]. This is a concern as I run enough RAID-1 systems with consumer disks that it is very improbable that I m not getting such errors. So the question is, how can I discover such errors and fix them? In Debian the mdadm package does a monthly scan of all software RAID devices to try and find such inconsistencies, but it doesn t send an email to alert the sysadmin! I have filed Debian bug #658701 with a patch to make mdadm send email about this. But this really isn t going to help a lot as the email will be sent AFTER the kernel has synchronised the data with a 50% chance of overwriting the last copy of good data with the bad data! Also the kernel code doesn t seem to tell userspace which disk had the wrong data in a 3-disk mirror (and presumably a RAID-6 works in the same way) so even if the data can be corrected I won t know which disk is failing. Another problem with RAID checking is the fact that it will inherently take a long time and in practice can take a lot longer than necessary. For example I run some systems with LVM on RAID-1 on which only a fraction of the VG capacity is used, in one case the kernel will check 2.7TB of RAID even when there s only 470G in use! The BTRFS Filesystem The btrfs Wiki is currently at btrfs.ipv5.de as the kernel.org wikis are apparently still read-only since the compromise [3]. BTRFS is noteworthy for doing checksums on data and metadata and for having internal support for RAID. So if two disks in a BTRFS RAID-1 disagree then the one with valid checksums will be taken as correct! I ve just done a quick test of this. I created a filesystem with the command mkfs.btrfs -m raid1 -d raid1 /dev/vg0/raid? and copied /dev/urandom to it until it was full. I then used dd to copy /dev/urandom to some parts of /dev/vg0/raidb while reading files from the mounted filesystem that worked correctly although I was disappointed that it didn t report any errors, I had hoped that it would read half the data from each device and fix some errors on the fly. Then I ran the command btrfs scrub start . and it gave lots of verbose errors in the kernel message log telling me which device had errors and where the errors are. I was a little disappointed that the command btrfs scrub status . just gave me a count of the corrected errors and didn t mention which device had the errors. It seems to me that BTRFS is going to be a much better option than Linux software RAID once it is stable enough to use in production. I am considering upgrading one of my less important servers to Debian/Unstable to test out BTRFS in this configuration. BTRFS is rumored to have performance problems, I will test this but don t have time to do so right now. Anyway I m not always particularly concerned about performance, I have some systems where reliability is important enough to justify a performance loss. BTRFS and Xen The system with the 2.7TB RAID-1 is a Xen server and LVM volumes on that RAID are used for the block devices of the Xen DomUs. It seems obvious that I could create a single BTRFS filesystem for such a machine that uses both disks in a RAID-1 configuration and then use files on the BTRFS filesystem for Xen block devices. But that would give a lot of overhead of having a filesystem within a filesystem. So I am considering using two LVM volume groups, one for each disk. Then for each DomU which does anything disk intensive I can export two LVs, one from each physical disk and then run BTRFS inside the DomU. The down-side of this is that each DomU will need to scrub the devices and monitor the kernel log for checksum errors. Among other things I will have to back-port the BTRFS tools to CentOS 4. This will be more difficult to manage than just having an LVM VG running on a RAID-1 array and giving each DomU a couple of LVs for storage. BTRFS and DRBD The combination of BTRFS RAID-1 and DRBD is going to be a difficult one. The obvious way of doing it would be to run DRBD over loopback devices that use large files on a BTRFS filesystem. That gives the overhead of a filesystem in a filesystem as well as the DRBD overhead. It would be nice if BTRFS supported more than two copies of mirrored data. Then instead of DRBD over RAID-1 I could have two servers that each have two devices exported via NBD and BTRFS could store the data on all four devices. With that configuration I could lose an entire server and get a read error without losing any data! Comparing Risks I don t want to use BTRFS in production now because of the risk of bugs. While it s unlikely to have really serious bugs it s theoretically possible that as bug could deny access to data until kernel code is fixed and it s also possible (although less likely) that a bug could result in data being overwritten such that it can never be recovered. But for the current configuration (Ext4 on Linux software RAID-1) it s almost certain that I will lose small amounts of data and it s most probable that I have silently lost data on many occasions without realising. Related posts:
  1. Some RAID Issues I just read an interesting paper titled An Analysis of...
  2. ECC RAM is more useful than RAID A common myth in the computer industry seems to be...
  3. Software vs Hardware RAID Should you use software or hardware RAID? Many people claim...

Steve Kemp: Some domains just don't learn

For the past few years the anti-spam system I run has been based on a simplified version of something I previously ran commercially. Although the code is similar in intent there were both explicit feature removals, and simplifications made. Last month I re-implimented domain-blacklisting - because a single company keeps ignoring requests to remove me. So LinkedIn.com if you're reading this: I've also implemented TLD-blacklisting which has been useful.
TLD-blacklisting in my world is not about blocking mail from foo@bar.ph (whether in the envelope sender, or the from: header), instead it is about matching the reverse DNS of the connecting client. If I recieve a connection from 1.2.3.4 and the reverse DNS of that IP address matches, say, /\.sa$/i then I default to denying it. My real list is longer, and handled via files: 
steve@steve:~$ ls /srv/_global_/blacklisted/tld/ -C
ar  br  cn  eg  hr  in  kr  lv  mn  np  ph  ro  sg  tg  ua  ve  zw
aw  cc  cy  gm  hu  is  kz  ma  my  nu  pk  rs  sk  th  ug  vn
be  ch  cz  gr  id  it  lk  md  mz  nz  pl  ru  su  tr  uy  ws
bg  cl  ec  hk  il  ke  lt  mk  no  om  pt  sa  sy  tw  uz  za
On average I'm rejecting about 2500 messagse a day at SMTP-time, and 30 messages, or so, hit my SPAM folder after being filtered with CRM114 after being accepted for delivery. (They are largely from @hotmail and @yahoo, along with random compromised machines. The amount of times I see a single mail from a host with RDNS mysql.example.org is staggering.). (Still looking forward to the development of Haraka, a node.js version of qpsmtpd.) ObQuote: "Mr. Mystery Guest? Are you still there? " - Die Hard

John Goerzen: Rain, A Funeral, and Excitement

Rain Friday was something of a rare day for February in Kansas. Starting at about 2AM, the wind picked up, blowing so hard that our windows rattled. That part isn t so rare. Then the cold rain started, dropping almost 2.5 throughout the day. As I worked, I had the blinds on the windows open, but they didn t let in very much light. Still, the wind had calmed down, so the intermittent rain outside was peaceful. Jacob went out to play for a little while, so every so often I saw a warmly-dressed and excited-looking 5-year-old run past my window. A little while after he came in, I told Jacob, I saw you playing outside. His response: Oh good! I got wet! Which, despite the fact that it was about 50 degrees, seemed to excite him. After the blustery start, the calm, slow, and peaceful rain was a pleasant thing to see throughout the day. Funeral My great aunt Alice Goerzen passed away last Sunday. So today, for the third time in a little over a year, I was at the funeral of a Goerzen relative and neighbor. Alice s husband, Milt, passed away in late 2010, and it was while I was at his funeral that Jacob got run over by a tractor. That memory certainly came back to me today. But I think I should set the stage and explain what funerals are like in this small, rural Kansas community. At the church, while people file in, family and close friends generally defined as loosely as desired meet in some other room before the funeral. Memories may be shared, or songs sung, or maybe just a brief meditation or prayer. Then the man from the funeral home there s only one in town will step in. Ivan Miller owned the business for decades, and although he s now retired, his replacement seems pretty similar. Kindly, respectful, and pretty much unchanging. This group then files into the church sanctuary to sit up front, while the rest of the congregation is standing and music is played. We typically sing some hymns, hear memories from the family, a message from a pastor, and then do downstairs for faspa: an light meal with coffee, zwieback, funeral cheese , and some relishes and dessert. You can, by the way, go to the local grocery store and find a product labeled funeral cheese . It s a sharp cheddar, sliced thick and cut into pie piece-shaped wedges. After everyone has picked up their food, microphones are passed around, and anybody that wants to can share memories and stories. These are often hilarious, or touching, and can be more random than anyone could expect. Today we heard a lot about how Aunt Alice loved her flowers and garden. We even saw a video of her giving a tour of her garden, with Milt s mower in the background occasionally accidentally causing a distraction (or maybe it wasn t so accidental; he d never miss an opportunity to cause some mischief ) I tend to think of attending funerals around here as a good time. Sadness is inevitable, but there are so many amazing stories that it is hard to leave feeling sad. Excitement This afternoon, Jacob found me in the office and as he often does, said, Dad, I want to do something with you. Usually I ask him what he d like to do, but his first instinct is usually to ask for watching train videos on Youtube. So sometimes I make other suggestions. Today we played hide and seek with radios, in which the person that is counting is supposed to radio to the other person when they are done. Today was the first time that Jacob came up with the trick of talking into the radio while I was hiding so he could hear where I was. I was sort of proud of him, and he failed to completely hide his smile when I told him I had to turn off my radio or else he d find me too fast. Then later, we played with Jacob s computer, a Linux-based command-line-only machine. I have set up a few shell scripts and aliases for him. Since it doesn t play videos, he doesn t use it as much as he does mine, but it is really fun to watch how his interaction with it changes as he gets older. He can now read amazingly well for a 5-year-old, and is starting to learn how to spell. He loves word games, writing, and typing. I thought I would install an ASCII art program for him. I told Jacob I had some ideas for a new game, and he was irresistibly intrigued. I offered him a choice between figlet and toilet. And, as is probably no surprise to anyone with a 5-year-old, he chose toilet based on its name, Jacob and Oliver both loved typing things and seeing them displayed bigger. I showed Jacob how I could make a freight train by typing ,<@-[]-(*)-@> (that s the comma-shaped snowplow, engine, boxcar [], tank car (*), and caboose @>). Then toilet drew them big, and though abstract, caused great excitement. I hooked up one of the speech synthesizers in Debian to a simple shell script named talk , which is a huge hit with the boys. They enjoy typing in nonsense and hearing the funny result, or in typing in real words and hearing how the computer says them right (or doesn t). All told, we had a good hour s worth of excitement up there.

4 February 2012

Christian Perrier: Debian Installer fully translated into Kannada

I imagine my readers (except those from India) : "Kannada, WTF"? No, this is not about D-I being translated into the variants of English and French spoken with a funny accent in a very big country located north of the United States of America, where they play ice hockey against mooses, wearing red policemen suits, with fur hats and drinking maple syrup. Kannada is the official language of the state of Karnataka, in southern India. The state that has Bangalore, the IT-leading city in India as capital. Kannada is spoken by about 45 million people, roughly the population of Spain. And, since yesterday, thanks to a local group lead by Vikram Vincent, Debian Installer is fully translated to Kannada. As of now, this is the 5th complete language of India along with Gujarati (46M speakers as first language), Hindi (180M, though some references mention 550M), Marathi (68M) and Tamil (62M). Other supported languages of India are Telugu (99% translated, 70M), Bengali (95%, 71M plus 110M in Bangladesh), Punjabi (91%, 28M) and Malayalam (86%, 36M). As you see, translators in India are really incredibly active and the free software community over there deserves some big light. We don't have many opportunities to meet up as traveling is not easy for contributors in India because, among other problems, of visa regulations for Indian citizens in many so-called western countries. So, really, I wanted to thank them again for this work.

Bartosz Fe&#324;ski: Quick howto for the most stable Linux kernel with Zenbook

Quick howto for everyone having Asus UX31e aka Zenbook and wants the most stable vanilla kernel with long-time battery life and working touchpad made by Sentelic.
This should work for every Debian based distro, but has been tested only on the latest Linux Mint 12 (aka Lisa).
Tutorial is aimed mainly at beginners and should work in a copy&paste manner. Of course you have to change every occurence of linux-3.2.4 to whichever version you re going to install.
Just make sure that all commands are entered in the correct directories, prompts should look similar to these from examples.
You will need about 10GB of free disk space. Let s install some dependencies first: 
fenio@zenbook ~ $ sudo apt-get install build-essential kernel-package fakeroot libncurses5-dev git iasl
Now let s download and unpack the latest kernel (3.2.4 at the time it was written): 
fenio@fenio ~ $ mkdir kernel
fenio@fenio ~ $ cd kernel
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.2.4.tar.bz2
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ tar jxvf linux-3.2.4.tar.bz2
Now we take current kernel configuration and put in the kernel tree: 
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ cp /boot/config- uname -r  linux-3.2.4/.config
Now we have to download the latest driver for Sentelic touchpad (this is why we needed git as a dependency): 
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ git clone git://github.com/saaros/sentelic.git
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ cp sentelic/src/sentelic.* linux-3.2.4/drivers/input/mouse/
It s time to fix broken DSDT table (part of ACPI). This is why we had iasl in dependencies. 
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ wget http://files.benesovi.eu/ux31e/ux31e_dsdt.dsl
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ iasl -tc ux31e_dsdt.dsl
And include it in our kernel configuration: 
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ sed -ie 's/# CONFIG_ACPI_CUSTOM_DSDT is not set/CONFIG_ACPI_CUSTOM_DSDT=y/g' linux-3.2.4/.config 
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ sed -ie "s@CONFIG_ACPI_CUSTOM_DSDT_FILE.*@CONFIG_ACPI_CUSTOM_DSDT_FILE=\" pwd /ux31e_dsdt.hex\"@g" linux-3.2.4/.config
Now ensure that all our options are set up correctly (you can change some other options if you want).
If you don t want to change anything then simply exit saving configuration. 
fenio@fenio ~/kernel $ cd linux-3.2.4/
fenio@fenio ~/kernel/linux-3.2.4 $ make menuconfig
We re ready to start compilation now! 
fenio@fenio ~/kernel/linux-3.2.4 $ fakeroot make-kpkg clean
fenio@fenio ~/kernel/linux-3.2.4 $ fakeroot make-kpkg --jobs=4 --initrd --append-to-version=-fenio --revision=20120204 kernel_image kernel_headers modules_image
Of course you can change append-to-version option for something own. In the meantime (kernel compilations takes about one hour) you can modify Grub options to enable powersaving features RC6: 
fenio@zenbook ~ $ sudo sed -ie 's/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=.*/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i915.powersave=1 i915.semaphores=1 i915.i915_enable_rc6=1"/g' /etc/default/grub
Be sure to do that before installation of kernel, otherwise you will have to run update-grub. After compilation you can finally install your new kernel: 
fenio@zenbook ~/kernel/linux-3.2.4 $ sudo dpkg -i ../*.deb
Reboot and you re done! Feel free to comment this tutorial if something went wrong.

Christian Perrier: 2012 update 8 for Debian Installer localization

Status for D-I level 1 (core D-I files): Status for D-I level 2 (packages that have localized material that may appear during default installs, such as iso-codes, tasksel, etc.): Status for D-I level 3 (packages that have localized material that may appear during non-default installs, such as win32-loader) Full 100% completeness (hall of fame) for 17 languages: Bulgarian, Czech, German, Esperanto, Spanish, Persian, French, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Dutch, <Polish, Portuguese,="" Russian,="" Slovak,="" Turkish="" Simplified="" Chinese="">

3 February 2012

Russell Coker: A Computer Conference on a Cruise Ship

After LCA [1] there was a discussion about possible locations for future conferences, most of the messages in the discussion were jokes or suggestions that don t seriously apply to LCA. So I ll add my suggestion for conferences other than LCA. I ve previously written generally about the issue of conferences at sea [2]. I don t think that LCA would be suitable for running at sea because delegates have specific expectations for LCA which are quite different to what a cruise ship can offer, so I don t think it makes sense to change LCA which is working well as it is. However there are lots of other possible computer conferences which could suite a cruise ship. Price Price is a major factor in running a conference, so obviously getting a cheap cruise price is very important. Here is a link for Vacations To Go which shows cruises from the Australia/NZ region which are of at least 5 nights and cost no more than $800 [3]. The cheapest entry at this moment is $609 for 5 nights and the cheapest on a per-night basis is an 8 night cruise for $779. The cheapest cruise currently on offer which allows a conference similar to LCA is 7 nights for $699. The prices should be regarded as rough approximations as some cruises have some mandatory extra fees and the prices are quoted in US dollars and subject to currency fluctuations. Note that those prices are for dual-occupancy cabins, this can be a double or a twin configuration. Some cruise ships have cabins for 3 or 4 people that are cheaper, but if you have a cabin for a single person then the rate is almost the same as for having two people. The price for LCA accommodation including breakfast was $78 per night for a single room or $92 for a double room. Then lunch cost a minimum of $10 and for dinner there was $80 for the penguin dinner and probably about $20 for dinner every other night. That gave an overall cost for a 6 night stay (which is probably the minimum for someone who lives further away than Melbourne) in Ballarat of 6*78+6*10+5*20+80==$708. For a double room that would be 6*92+6*10+5*20+2*80==$872. Even if we don t count the fact that the Australian dollar is worth more than the US dollar it is obvious that on the basis of accommodation and food two people sharing a twin cabin on a cruise ship could pay LESS than two people in single rooms at the Ballarat University dorms! Now sharing a cabin isn t so great, but the upside is that cruise ships have excellent food and lots of other entertainment options. I previously reviewed the food on the Dawn Princess and determined that it s better than the food I would expect to get if I spent the cost of the cruise on dinner at land based restaurants [4]. I have been led to believe that the use of ship conference facilities is typically free for any organisation that books a sufficient number of cabins. So there s no reason why the conference admission fees should be any greater than for a land based conference. Advantages A common problem with conferences is finding suitable dining options. Most people want to eat with other delegates but finding restaurants that have sufficient space and which are conveniently located is difficult at best and often impossible. On a cruise ship everything is within a short walk and the restaurants are big, usually be at least one restaurant will hold 500 people. The fact that you have to reserve times for the Main Dining Room makes it more difficult to miss one s colleagues. Everything on a cruise ship is luxurious. There are lots of good locations for BoFs, pools, cafes, restaurants, and bars. Basically the ship is filled with comfortable places for groups of people to sit down. A cruise ship typically has a main theater with more than 700 seats more than large enough for most conferences I ve attended. It s common for the size of a conference to be limited to the size of the main theater that is used, for a cruise ship this will probably be less of a problem than for most other conference venues. Disadvantages The first disadvantage of running a computer conference on a cruise ship is the almost total lack of net access. The costs for net access are more expensive than most delegates will pay. Probably many delegates would check their email but it wouldn t be practical for people to download source code, browse Wikipedia, and use the Internet in other ways related to the conference. It would be practical to have mirrors of Wikipedia, the source of several distributions of Linux, and other big things of common interest. Another possible problem is the fact that you need to book it well in advance to avoid the risk of selling out (there is no option to stay at a different hotel). An established conference with financial backing could just pay to reserve the cabins. But when starting a new conference this could be a problem. Alcohol is rather expensive on cruise ships. But getting really drunk isn t compatible with learning about computer science anyway. Finally the requirement to have at least two people in a cabin for good rates is a serious issue. The upside of this is that people travelling with their SO would find that it works really well (regardless of whether the SO is a delegate or not). But anyone who s not travelling with their SO and doesn t want to share with a friend will have to either pay a lot more or skip the conference. Conclusion I think that there is a good potential for running a computer conference around the Australia/NZ region on a cruise ship. It won t be overly expensive for delegates and the facilities that are provided are good. The trade-off for solitary travelers of having to share a cabin (or pay more) for getting much better food and leisure facilities will be appreciated by many people (and admittedly hated by some). Some people won t appreciate the option of swimming, but even if you consider the cruise ship to be just a floating collection of restaurants and cabins it s still fairly luxurious and beats the heck out of most conferences I ve attended. If you are considering the possibility of running a conference then I think that a cruise ship should be considered. VacationsToGo.com is the best site I ve found for cheap cruise prices, their large group department has experience handling groups of more than 500 people so I think that anyone who wants to run a new conference in/around Australia should give them a call. Also cruise ships travel around the world, so the same thing can be done in other countries but at a different time of year. The economic factors will differ by country though. Cruise ships probably aren t a cheap option for a conference in some other countries. Related posts:
  1. My First Cruise A few weeks ago I went on my first cruise,...
  2. Cruises It seems that in theory cruises can make for quite...
  3. Creating a Micro Conference The TEDxVolcano The TED conference franchise has been extended to...

Bartosz Fe&#324;ski: First thing to do after fresh installation

It s only me that is being annoyed by downloading all recommended packages?
How many of you have such file? 
someserver:~# cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/02recommends 
APT::Install-Recommends "0";
someserver:~#

Paul Wise: Debian/Ubuntu games screenshot party!

Have you ever wondered how to start getting involved in Debian/Ubuntu? Do you enjoy discovering new games and playing them? You might want to come to the games screenshot party! We hope that the party will be a fun, easy, low-commitment way to get involved. The Debian/Ubuntu games team is organising a half-day screenshots party on the weekend of 25th-26th February for creating screenshots for all the games that are available in Debian/Ubuntu. If you are interested in attending, please add your availability to the poll linked from the announcement so that we can get some idea of attendance and when is a good time for the people who are interested. Look forward to lots of game playing, screenshots and a merry time, hope to see you all there!

2 February 2012

Jamie McClelland: Servers4All... unless someone complains

On Wednesday, February 1, a new virtual server May First/People Link recently rented went offline. We contracted the virtual server through Server4All because we need their un-metered 100Mbit connection to help us handle the bandwidth for Sahara Reporters, one of the most important independent news sources for Saharan Africa. With the server offline, the web site was down as well. We scrambled to setup alternative caching servers to handle the bandwidth. When I logged into our control panel, I saw the message: This virtual server has been suspended by the administrator. Please contact support. I immediately contacted support and then received the message: 
Hello
We have received the following complaint associated with your server/service.
IP: 76.73.121.164
To prevent any further abuse we have suspended this service. In order to
resume, we request you to cooperate with our investigation as promptly as
possible. Please respond to us with the following details:
(1) What has caused the complaint
(2) What is the server used for. Purpose?
(3) How can you resolve the complaint and make sure it will not be repeated.
Depending on the nature of the complaint and your response, we will put back
the server online.  Please note, this has violated our Terms Of Service. We
expect your response within 24 hours, otherwise your account will be
terminated permanently.  Thank you
What?? What complaint?? I followed up but had to wait til the next day to get the response. 
Here is the full log,
An email advertizing the Domain Name: saharareporters.com
has been sent to the blacklist.woody.ch spamtrap.
This Domain does resolve to IP addresses one of which your are responsible:
76.73.121.164
Please investigate why this Domain has been advertized.
Attached you find the headers and reports in ARF for automatic processing.
Feedback is appreciated.
Actual listing periods:
Bounce: 1 Hour in DNS.
Whitelisted IP: Not lised in DNS.
Spam: 24 hours in DNS.
Every Hit: 14 days in evidence DB.
For any questions or Feedback, contact abuse@woody.ch
From: is intentionally set to a bit-bucket.
Kind regards
-Benoit Panizzon-
There is no attachment. I went to woody.ch and it was in German. Then tried blacklist.woody.ch, but no luck. Finally I found the Woody's World Blacklist Page. I plugged in our IP address into their checker and I got: 
Output from the Check, if empty the IP is not listed.
164.121.73.76.[name of the blacklist] being tested.
Host 164.121.73.76.blacklist.woody.ch not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.blacklist.woody.ch not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.rbl.maps.vix.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.rbl.maps.vix.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.relays.mail-abuse.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.relays.mail-abuse.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
Host 164.121.73.76.relays.ordb.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.relays.ordb.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.dev.null.dk not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.dev.null.dk not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.blackholes.five-ten-sg.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.blackholes.five-ten-sg.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.bl.spamcop.net not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.bl.spamcop.net not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.relays.visi.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Host 164.121.73.76.relays.visi.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
164.121.73.76.blacklist.spambag.org has address 208.91.197.182
164.121.73.76.blacklist.spambag.org descriptive text "v=spf1 -all"
So, Woody's World thinks we are listed in spambag.org. I went to spambag.org and learned that the domain is for sale. I then tried blacklist.spambag.org and got the same page. This page has many links all pointing to advertisements. The "RBL List" link takes me to a page advertising "5 foods you must not eat." Next, out of curiousity, I tried Mxtoolbox. I got one hit from Barricuda. Barricuda says the reputation of the IP address is "poor". Why? According to Barricuda, the reasons could be: Keep in mind, this IP address is not used for sending email. It's just the web site. I then took a step back and re-read the complaint and noticed that it says that the domain name saharareporters.com was listed in a spam email. Hm. More concerted searching for the terms "woody spamtrap blacklist" and I found a pattern in URLs that suggested I plug in the following: http://news.scoutnet.org/rblhostlist.php?id=saharareporters.com.uri And sure enough, there was a result. In short, it was a classic Nigerian Oil scam in which the person claims to be "JAMES IBORI ex-governor of DELTA STATE oil city." The scammer acknowledges that he has been arrested, but promises lots of cash to the person who can help him. In an effort to boost their credibility, the scammer included a link to a Sahara Reporters article about the real James Ibori. And that, my friends, is enough to have one of the most prominent independent African news organization taken offline. But, Sahara Reporters shouldn't necessarily feel singled out. Sahara Reporters should feel singled out. They exist to illuminate news from Africa. They were taken offline because a series of individuals don't know the difference between a prominent independent African news service and a criminal scammer. To most of the Internet, Nigeria and email scams are synonymous. That has to change. Although Sahara Reporters is particularly vulnerable, any site hosted with Server4All can potentially be taken down. All you have to do is write a fake spam/scam email, including a link to the web site you want to be taken offline, and then send that email to: listme@blacklist.woody.ch. I'm currently following up with both Woody's World and Server4All. However, once this particular issue is resolved, we're left with a much bigger and ominous problem. If your hosting provider (or their upstream provider) takes your site offline when it receives a complaint first and then asks questions second, you have a big problem. All of our legal fights over our rights to keep content online are moot if our providers, without any legal pressure to do so, still take down our services based on spurious complaints.

1 February 2012

Eddy Petri&#537;or: HOWTO: Windows, nmake, cygwin and path type detection

If you are using Windows, have cygwin installed and need to test if a path is absolute or relative in nmake (I know, how often does that happen?), here is the magic bit of code that manages to do just that:


cygwin_path = c:\cygwin\bin

echo = $(cygwin_path)\echo.exe
grep = $(cygwin_path)\grep.exe

#testpath = ..\..\rel\test\path
#testpath = rel\test\path
#testpath = \abs\test\path
testpath = c:\abs\test\path

!if  ([ $(echo) '$(testpath)'   $(grep) -q -E '^^(\w:)?\\\\' ] == 0)
type = abs
!else
type = rel
!endif

test:
   @$(echo) "testpath = $(testpath)"
   @$(echo) "type     = $(type)"

Probably there are other solutions, but this is the first I came up with. Another solution would be to use gnu make :-) .

Rapha&#235;l Hertzog: My Debian Activities in January 2012

This is my monthly summary of my Debian related activities. If you re among the people who made a donation to support my work (213.68 , thanks everybody!), then you can learn how I spent your money. Otherwise it s just an interesting status update on my various projects. Dpkg The biggest change I made is a small patch that brings to an end years and years of recurring discussions about the build-arch and build-indep targets of debian/rules (see #229357). Last year the technical committee took this issue in its hands (see #629385) but it failed to take any resolution. Fortunately thanks to this we got some concrete numbers on the colateral damages inflicted on the archive for each possible approach. In the end, Guillem and I managed to agree on the way forward. The remaining of what I did as dpkg maintainer has not much to do with coding. I reviewed the work of Gianluca Ciccarelli on dpkg-maintscript-helper who is trying to provide helper functions to handle migration between directories and symlinks. I also reviewed a 2000-lines patch from Patrick Schoenfeld who s trying to provide a perl API to parse dpkg log files and extract meaningful data out of them. I updated the dpkg-architecture manual page to document the Makefile snippet /usr/share/dpkg/architecture.mk and to drop information that s no longer releveant nowadays. I reviewed a huge patch prepared by Russ Alberry to update the Debian policy and document the usage of symbols files for libraries. As the author of dpkg-gensymbols, I was keen to see it properly documented at the policy level. I brought up for discussion a detail that was annoying me for quite some time: some copyright notices were embedded in translatable strings and updating them resulted in useless work for translators. In the end we decided to drop those notices and to keep them only at the source level. I updated my multiarch branch on top of Guillem s branch several times, all the fixes that were in my branch have been integrated (often in a modified form). Unfortunately even if the code works quite well, Guillem doesn t want to release anything to Debian until he has finished to review everything and many people are annoyed by the unreasonable delay that it imposes. Cyril Brulebois tried to release a snapshot of the current multiarch branch to experimental but Guillem has been prompt to revert this upload. I m somewhat at a loss in this situation. I offered my help to Guillem multiple times but he keeps doing his work in private, he doesn t share many details of his review except some comments in commit logs or when it affects the public interface. I complained once more of this sad situation. Debian Package Maintenance Hub That s the codename I use for a new infrastructure that I would like to develop to replace the Package Tracking System and the DDPO and several other services. I started to draft a Debian Enhancement Proposal (DEP), see DEP-2, and requested some comments within the QA team. For now, it looks like that nobody had major objections on the driving idea behind this project. Those who commented were rather enthusiastic. I will continue to improve this DEP within the QA team and at some point I will bring the discussion to a larger audience like debian-devel@lists.debian.org. Package Tracking System Even if I started to design its replacement, the PTS will still be used for quite some time so I implemented two new features that I deemed important: displaying a TODO notice when there is (at least) one open bug related to a release goal, displaying a notice when the package is involved in an ongoing or upcoming transition. Misc packaging tasks I created and uploaded the dh-linktree package which is a debhelper addon to create symlink trees (useful to replace embedded copies of PHP/JavaScript libraries by symlinks to packaged copies of those files). I packaged quilt 0.50. I helped the upstream authors to merge a Debian patch that had been forwarded by Martin Quinson (a quilt s co-maintainer). I packaged a security release of WordPress (3.3.1) and a new upstream release of feed2omb and gnome-shell-timer. I prepared a new Debian release of python-django with a patch cherry-picked from the upstream SVN repository to fix the RC bug #655666. Book update We re again making decent progress in the translation of the Debian Administrator s Handbook, about 12 chapters are already translated. The liberation campaign is also (slowly) going forward. We re at 72% now (thanks to 63 new supporters!) while we were only at 67% at the start of January. Thanks See you next month for a new summary of my activities.

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Richard Hartmann: hello-planet

Hello Planet :) You may have seen my ancient blog posts pop up on the planet when XTaran was nice enough to add me to the planet's aggregation. Not quite sure why ikiwiki/planet decided to do this, but I will try to find out. If you have an idea, which does not involve re-spamming the feed, do let me know. In any case, expect mostly shell-related posts from me. And, as every year, I will be going to FOSDEM.

Bartosz Fe&#324;ski: This is why I don t want any crappy PayPass/payWave.

Hacker s demo shows how easily credit cards can be read through clothes and wallets.

Cyril Brulebois: dpkg with multiarch

(This page was edited a few times, details are available.) Grab it while it s hot! Thanks to the hard work of dpkg developers and many (generations of) developers, multiarch is becoming a reality. If you want to give it a try, install dpkg from experimental, add a foreign architecture, and start trying to install packages. Example on amd64: 
# dpkg --add-architecture i386
# dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
i386
# apt-get update
[ lots of amd64 and i386 Packages files get downloaded ]
# apt-get install mksh:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
  ed:i386
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  mksh:i386
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
Need to get 414 kB of archives.
After this operation, 707 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ sid/main mksh i386 40.4-2 [414 kB]
Fetched 414 kB in 0s (664 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package mksh.
(Reading database ... 171933 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking mksh (from .../archives/mksh_40.4-2_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for menu ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up mksh (40.4-2) ...
update-alternatives: using /bin/mksh to provide /bin/ksh (ksh) in auto mode.
Processing triggers for menu ...
# mksh
$ ldd $(which mksh)
linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xf779c000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xf75d6000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xf75b9000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf779d000)
Of course, installing an i386 mksh package isn t exactly what multiarch is about. Dozens of packages have been patched already to add Multi-Arch fields, but until their (recursive) dependencies have been multiarch-ified, foreign packages can be uninstallable, as can be seen below, with the usual why is it uninstallable? hunt (shortened output): 
# apt-get install psutils:i386
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 psutils:i386 : Depends: libpaper1:i386 but it is not going to be installed
# apt-get install libpaper1:i386
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libpaper1:i386 : Depends: ucf:i386 (>= 0.28) but it is not installable
                  Recommends: libpaper-utils:i386 but it is not going to be installed
# apt-get install ucf:i386
E: Package 'ucf:i386' has no installation candidate
Another example, successful handling of the installation of a foreign package, while it s already installed with the host architecture: 
# apt-get install xz-utils:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  liblzma5:i386
Suggested packages:
  xz-lzma:i386
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  xz-utils
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  liblzma5:i386 xz-utils:i386
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 1 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
Need to get 440 kB of archives.
After this operation, 410 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Get:1 http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ sid/main liblzma5 i386 5.1.1alpha+20110809-3 [205 kB]
Get:2 http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ sid/main xz-utils i386 5.1.1alpha+20110809-3 [235 kB]
Fetched 440 kB in 0s (478 kB/s)
dpkg: xz-utils: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested:
 dpkg depends on xz-utils.
 xz-lzma depends on xz-utils.
 dpkg-dev depends on xz-utils.
(Reading database ... 171952 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing xz-utils ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Selecting previously unselected package liblzma5:i386.
(Reading database ... 171908 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking liblzma5:i386 (from .../liblzma5_5.1.1alpha+20110809-3_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package xz-utils.
Unpacking xz-utils (from .../xz-utils_5.1.1alpha+20110809-3_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up liblzma5:i386 (5.1.1alpha+20110809-3) ...
Setting up xz-utils (5.1.1alpha+20110809-3) ...
# dpkg -l xz-utils xz-utils:i386 'liblzma*:*'
[   ]
un  xz-utils            <none>
ii  xz-utils            5.1.1alpha+20110809-3
ii  liblzma5:amd64      5.1.1alpha+20110809-3
ii  liblzma5:i386       5.1.1alpha+20110809-3
# ldd $(which xz)
    linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xf776b000)
    liblzma.so.5 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 (0xf7724000)
    librt.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/librt.so.1 (0xf771b000)
    libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xf7701000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xf75a4000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf776c000)
# zgrep -a '_("Activities")' gnome-shell-3.2.2.1.tar.xz
        this._label = new St.Label(  text: _("Activities")  );
zgrep is a shell script, but it calls xz, which is from the i386 package, and everything runs just fine. Running it through strace -f -e '', I discovered those messages, which I had never seen before: 
[ Process PID=8900 runs in 32 bit mode. ]
[ Process PID=8899 runs in 64 bit mode. ]
[ Process PID=8900 runs in 32 bit mode. ]
[ Process PID=8899 runs in 64 bit mode. ]
What s next? We re late! It s time to check what happens with that dpkg package, report bugs, and convert more libraries! Please think of the kittens, and coordinate with the release team to make sure you don t delay a transition when uploading a shiny, multiarch-ified package. In a nutshell, if you received a patch from Steve Langasek or Riku Voipio, it s a good indication your package will be helpful quickly when it s multiarchified. Since zlib is directly depended on by 2000+ packages, #569697 was pinged right after the dpkg upload; but many other packages will need patches and heavy testing. Hurry up, the freeze is coming, we need to shake it up as soon as possible!

31 January 2012

Pau Garcia i Quiles: LibreTab not?

In a perfectly orchestrated marketing campaign for a 100% free-libre tablet called Spark that will run KDE Plasma Active, Aaron Seigo writes today about the problems they are facing with GPL-violations. Apparently, every Chinese manufacturer is breaking the GPLv2 by not releasing the sources for their modified Linux kernel. Conversations and conversations with Zenithink (designers of the Spark), Synrgic (designers of the Dreambook W7), etc have arrived nowhere. To the point that CordiaTab, another similar effort using Gnome instead of KDE, has been cancelled. I have to say I am very surprised at the lack of the kernel sources. What is the Free Software Foundation doing? Why don t we seek ban of all imports of tablets whose manufacturers don t release the full GPL source? Apple got the Samsung GalaxyTab imports blocked in Germany and Australia for something as ethereal as patents covering the external frame design. We are talking about license infringement, which is easier to demonstrate in court. China may ignore intellectual property but they cannot ignore business, and no imports means no business. Let s get all GPL-infringing tablet imports banned and we will get more source in two weeks than we can digest in two years. Heck, I m surprised Apple is not trying this in court to block Android!

Michal &#268;iha&#345;: phpMyAdmin translations status

As phpMyAdmin is approaching to 3.5 release, it has come time to share about translations status. Here comes second round of translation status update. Since last update we have two more translations at 100%: There are few which are really close to 100% and I hope they will get there soon: Just on next level is Czech, where I'm progressing quite slowly and would welcome help :-). There was also great improvement in Romanian in past week so I hope we will see it soon on top of the list as well. Was your language not mentioned? It's now perfect time to contribute to it.

Filed under: English Phpmyadmin 0 comments Flattr this!

29 January 2012

Sylvain Beucler: Cross-compile FreeType for Android ARM

If you want to use FreeType in your native C/C++ Android app, you'll need to cross-compile it. The Android system uses FreeType internally but it doesn't expose it to native apps. First, prepare the cross-compiler from the NDK: 
/usr/src/android-ndk-r7/build/tools/make-standalone-toolchain.sh \
  --platform=android-9 \
  --install-dir=/usr/src/ndk-standalone-9
PATH=/usr/src/ndk-standalone-9/bin:$PATH
Then use it to cross-compile freetype: 
tar xf freetype-2.4.8.tar.bz2
cd freetype-2.4.8/
CFLAGS="-std=gnu99" ./configure --host=arm-linux-androideabi --prefix=/freetype \
  --without-zlib
make
make install DESTDIR=$(pwd)
See this discussion for the --std option. --without-zlib uses the internal copy of zlib inside freetype rather than one independently recompiled for Android. Otherwise you'd get errors such as: 
./obj/local/armeabi/libfreetype.a(ftgzip.o): In function  ft_gzip_file_init':
ftgzip.c:(.text+0x3c4): undefined reference to  inflateInit2_'
./obj/local/armeabi/libfreetype.a(ftgzip.o): In function  ft_gzip_file_done':
ftgzip.c:(.text+0x43c): undefined reference to  inflateEnd'
./obj/local/armeabi/libfreetype.a(ftgzip.o): In function  ft_gzip_file_reset':
ftgzip.c:(.text+0x514): undefined reference to  inflateReset'
./obj/local/armeabi/libfreetype.a(ftgzip.o): In function  ft_gzip_file_fill_output':
ftgzip.c:(.text+0x780): undefined reference to  inflate'
Then write an Android.mk file in the new freetype/ directory: 
#####
LOCAL_PATH:= $(call my-dir)
include $(CLEAR_VARS)
LOCAL_MODULE := freetype
LOCAL_SRC_FILES := lib/libfreetype.a
LOCAL_EXPORT_C_INCLUDES := $(LOCAL_PATH)/include $(LOCAL_PATH)/include/freetype2
include $(PREBUILT_STATIC_LIBRARY)
#####
See docs/STANDALONE-TOOLCHAIN.html and docs/PREBUILTS.html in the NDK for details. The CLEAR_VARS bit is not documented, but is necessary to avoid mixed-up paths; it is used in the native_app_glue NDK module. To use FreeType in your project, edit your Android.mk: 
...
LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES := ... freetype
...
$(call import-module,freetype)
You will need to specify the freetype directory location as well, using the NDK_MODULE_PATH variable. For instance, you can copy freetype in your project directory and build using: 
    ndk-build NDK_MODULE_PATH=. ...
[Latest version of these instructions can be found at the OpenGL Wikibook]

28 January 2012

Antonio Terceiro: A visual cheat sheet for ANSI color codes

Now and then I want to output some ANSI color escape codes from software I write, and I always end up doing some trial-and-error to figure out the exact codes I want. Sometimes it s overkill to add a dependency on an existing library that already deals with it, or the language I am using does not have one. There are a lot of listings of the ANSI color codes out there, but I couldn t find one that matches the actual codes with the resulting effect in a visual way. Even the Wikipedia article has a colored table with the actual colors, but I have to lookup manually which code combination produces which color. So I spent a few minutes to write a shell script that prints all useful combinations, formatted with themselves. This way I can quickly figure out which exact code I want to achieve the desired effect. The code for now is very simple: 

#!/bin/sh -e
for attr in $(seq 0 1); do
  for fg in $(seq 30 37); do
    for bg in $(seq 40 47); do
      printf "\033[$attr;$ bg ;$ fg m$attr;$fg;$bg\033[m " 
    done
    echo
  done
done
Is there a package in Debian that already does that? Would people find it useful to have this packaged? update: it turns out you can find some similar stuff on google images. It was a quick and fun hack, though. update 2: Replacing echo -n with printf makes the script work independently if /bin/sh is bash or dash. Thanks to cocci for pointing that out.

Christian Perrier: 2012 update 7 for Debian Installer localization

Status for D-I level 1 (core D-I files): Status for D-I level 2 (packages that have localized material that may appear during default installs, such as iso-codes, tasksel, etc.): Status for D-I level 3 (packages that have localized material that may appear during non-default installs, such as win32-loader) Full 100% completeness (hall of fame) for 17 languages: Bulgarian, Czech, German, Esperanto, Spanish, Persian, French, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Dutch, <polish>, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Turkish Simplified Chinese

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