Changes in RcppEigen version 0.3.4.0.1 (2024-08-14)

• Conditionally comment-out xerbla in blas.h as it is now providedd by R-devel albeit with FC_LEN_T (per a CRAN request)
• Minor package updates (continuous integration, badges)

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

New packages to explore Those tools are shiny new things available in unstable or perhaps Trixie (testing) already that I am not using yet, but I find interesting enough to list here.

• backdown: clever file deduplicator
• codesearch: search all of Debian's source code (tens of thousands of packages) from the commandline! (see also dcs-cli, not in Debian)
• dasel: JSON/YML/XML/CSV parser, similar to jq, but different syntax, not sure I'd grow into it, but often need to parse YML like JSON and failing
• fyi: notify-send replacement
• git-subrepo: git-submodule replacement I am considering
• gtklock: swaylock replacement with bells and whistles, particularly interested in showing time, battery and so on
• hyprland: possible Sway replacement, but there are rumors of a toxic community (rebuttal, I haven't reviewed either in detail), so approach carefully)
• kooha: simple screen recorder with audio support, currently using wf-recorder which is a more.. minimalist option
• linescroll: rate graphs on live logs, mostly useful on servers though
• ruff: faster Python formatter and linter, flake8/black/isort replacement, alas not mypy/LSP unfortunately, designed to be ran alongside such a tool, which is not possible in Emacs eglot right now, but is possible in lsp-mode
• sfwbar: pretty status bar, may replace waybar, which i am somewhat unhappy with (my UTC clock disappears randomly)
• spytrap-adb: cool spy gear

New packages I won't use Those are packages that I have tested because I found them interesting, but ended up not using, but I think people could find interesting anyways.

• kew: surprisingly fast music player, parsed my entire library (which is huge) instantaneously and just started playing (I still use Supersonic, for which I maintain a flatpak on my Navidrome server)
• mdformat: good markdown formatter, think black or gofmt but for markdown), but it didn't actually do what I needed, and it's not quite as opinionated as it should (or could) be)

Backports already in use Those are packages I already use regularly, which have backports or that can just be installed from unstable:

• asn: IP address forensics
• markdownlint: markdown linter, I use that a lot
• poweralertd: pops up "your battery is almost empty" messages
• sway-notification-center: used as part of my status bar, yet another status bar basically, a little noisy, stuck in a libc dep update
• tailspin: used to color logs

Out of date packages Those are packages that are in Debian stable (Bookworm) already, but that are somewhat lacking and could benefit from an upgrade.

• firmware-iwlwifi: out of date, can install from unstable
• fuzzel / foot: log level noises A, B, fuzzel fix not in debian yet, and if we get to 1.11, my scripts in ~/bin should be patched to use --cache
• nomacs: non-trivial backport, out of date version in sid
• pandoc: 3.0 is ridiculously huge, but particularly remove spaces after list marker
• podman: better systemd integration
• pubpaste: out of date, can install from unstable
• tremotesf: out of date backport
• undertime: out of date, can install from unstable
• yt-dlp: out of date, can install from unstable

Last words If you know of cool things I'm missing out of, then by all means let me know! That said, overall, this is a pretty short list! I have most of what I need in stable right now, and if I wasn't a Debian developer, I don't think I'd be doing the jump now. But considering how easier it is to develop Debian (and how important it is to test the next release!), I'll probably upgrade soon. Previously, I was running Debian testing (which why the slug on that article is why-trixie), but now I'm actually considering just running unstable on my laptop directly anyways. It's been a long time since we had any significant instability there, and I can typically deal with whatever happens, except maybe when I'm traveling, and then it's easy to prepare for that (just pin testing).

• See Debian for the qt6 Plasma / applications work.
• Many SRUs in verification stage, please help test these: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates#Verification
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tellico/+bug/2065915 needs testing on ARM and there are many packages in that bug.
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kubuntu-meta/+bug/2065465 Fix systray icons for third party apps like spotify
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plasma-workspace/+bug/1629543 Lightdm login manager crash when plasma selected.
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ark/+bug/2068491 Opening 7zip files in ark.
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/merkuro/+bug/2063936 Merkuro fails to start. Verification done, but more testers welcome.
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2066275 SDDM fails to boot after second boot. This SRU has been released!
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/neochat/+bug/2061116 Neochat fails to start.

• qtmpv in NEW
• arianna in NEW
• xwaylandvideobridge NEW
• futuresql NEW
• kpat WIP failing tests
• kdegraphics-thumbnailers (WIP)
• khelpcenter experimental
• kde-inotify-survey experimental
• ffmpegthumbs experimental
• kdialog experimental
• kwalletmanager experimental
• libkdegames pushed some fixes experimental
• Tokodon Done, but needs qtmpv to pass NEW
• Gwenview WIP needs kio-extras (blocked)

• Arianna stable https://snapcraft.io/arianna
• Kfind stable https://snapcraft.io/kfind
• Kclock edge https://snapcraft.io/kclock
• Kigo edge https://snapcraft.io/kigo
• Kimagemapeditor edge https://snapcraft.io/kimagemapeditor
• Kspacedual edge https://snapcraft.io/kspaceduel
• Picmi edge https://snapcraft.io/picmi
• lskat edge https://snapcraft.io/lskat
• Ksudoku edge https://snapcraft.io/ksudoku
• Ksquares edge https://snapcraft.io/ksquares
• Juk edge https://snapcraft.io/juk
• Kalgebra edge https://snapcraft.io/kalgebra
• Ktuberling edge https://snapcraft.io/ktuberling
• Ruqola edge https://snapcraft.io/ruqola

• Kirigami-gallery ( building )
• Kiriki (building)
• Kiten (building)
• kjournald (Building)
• Kdevelop (WIP)
• Kdenlive (building)
• KHangman (WIP)
• Kubrick (WIP)
• Palapeli (Manual review in store dbus)
• Kanagram (WIP)
• Labplot (WIP)
• Kjumpingcube (MR)
• Klettres (MR)
• Kajongg edge (Broken, problem with pyqt)
• Dragon edge ( Broken, dbus fails)
• Ghostwriter edge ( Broken, need to workout Qt webengine obscure way of handling hunspell dictionaries.)
• Kasts edge ( Broken, portal failure, testing some plugs)
• Kbackup edge ( Needs auto-connect udisks2, added home plug)
• Kdebugsettings edge ( Added missing personal-files plug, will need approval)
• KDiamond edge ( sound issues )
• Angelfish edge https://snapcraft.io/angelfish ( Crashes on first run, but runs fine after that.. looking into it)
• Qrca edge ( needs snap connect qrca:camera camera until auto-connect approved, will remain in edge until official release)

• [1] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2023/10/21/more-about-pinetime/
• [2] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2024/07/01/volte-australia/

Planing A Self Organized Solo Trip You know the movie Queen? The actor Kangana Ranaut plays in that movie the role of Rani Mehra, a 24-year-old Punjabi woman, who was a simple, homely girl that was always reliant on her family. Similar to Rani I too rarely ventured out without my parents and often needed my younger sibling by my side. Inspired by her transformation, I decided it was time to take control of my own story and discover who I truly am.

Trip Requirements

My First Passport The journey began with a significant first step: Obtaining my first passport Never having had one before, I scheduled the nearest available interview date on June 29 2022. This meant traveling to Solapur, a city 309 km from my hometown, accompanied by my father. After successfully completing the interview, I received my passport on July 14 2022.

Select A Country, Booking Flights And Accommodation Excited and ready to embark on my adventure, I planed trip to Albania and booked the flight tickets. Why? I had heard from friends that it was a beautiful European country with beaches and other attractions, and importantly, it didn t require a visa for Indian citizens and was more affordable than other European destinations. Before heading to Albania, I planned a overnight stop in Abu Dhabi with a transit visa, thanks to friend who knew the process for obtaining it. Some of my friends did travel also to Europe at the same time and quite close to my plannings, but that I realized just later the trip.

Day 1, Starting The Experience On July 20, 2022, I started my journey by traveling from Pune, Maharashtra, to Delhi, where my brother lives. He came to see me off at the airport, adding a touch of warmth and support to the beginning of my solo adventure. Upon arriving in Delhi, with my next flight scheduled for July 21, I stayed at a backpacker hostel named Zostel, Paharganj, Delhi to rest. During my stay, I noticed that many travelers at the hostel carried rucksacks, which sparked a desire in me to get one for my own trip to Europe. Up until then, I had always shopped with my mom and had never bought anything on my own. Inspired by the travelers, I set out to find a suitable rucksack. I traveled alone by metro from Paharganj to Rohini to visit a Decathlon store, where I purchased a 50-liter rucksack. This was a significant step in preparing for my European adventure and marked a milestone in my journey of self reliance.

Day 2, Flying To Abu Dhabi The following day, July 21 2024, I had a flight to Abu Dhabi. I spent the night at the hostel to rest before my journey. On the day of the flight, I needed to reach the airport by 3 PM, and a friend kindly came to drop me off. With my rucksack packed and excitement building, I was ready for the next leg of my adventure. When we arrived at the airport, my friend saw me off, marking the start of my international journey. With mom made spices, chutneys, and chilly flakes packed for comfort, I completed my immigration process in about two and a half hours. I then settled at the gate for my flight, feeling a mix of excitement and anxiety as thoughts raced through my mind. To ease my nerves, I struck up a conversation with a man seated nearby who was also traveling to Abu Dhabi for work. He provided helpful information about safety and transportation in Abu Dhabi, which reassured me. With the boarding process complete and my anxiety somewhat eased. I found my window seat on the flight and settled in, excited for the journey ahead. Next to me was a young man from Ranchi(Zarkhand, India), heading to Abu Dhabi for work at a mining factory. We had an engaging conversation about work culture in Abu Dhabi and recruitment from India. Upon arriving in Abu Dhabi, I completed my transit, collected my luggage, and began finding my way to the hotel Premier Inn AbuDhabi, which was in the airport area. To my surprise, I ran into the same man from the flight, now in a cab. He kindly offered to drop me at my hotel, which I gladly accepted since navigating an unfamiliar city with a short acquaintance felt safer. At the hotel gate, he asked if I had local currency (Dirhams) for payment, as sometimes online transactions can fail. That hadn t crossed my mind, and I realized I might be left stranded if a transaction failed. Recognizing his help as a godsend, I asked if he could lend me some Dirhams, promising to transfer the amount later. He kindly assured me to pay him back once I reached the hotel room. With that relief, I checked into the hotel, feeling deeply grateful for the unexpected assistance and transferred the money to him after getting to my room.

Day 3, Flying And Arrive In Tirana Once in the hotel room, I found it hard to sleep, anxious about waking up on time for my flight. I set an alarm to wake up early, but my subconscious mind kept me alert, and I woke up before the alarm went off. I got freshened up and went down for breakfast, where I found some vegetarian options like Idli-Sambar and bread with butter, along with some morning tea. After breakfast, I headed back to the airport, ready to catch my flight to my final destination: Tirana, Albania. I reached Tirana, Albania after a six hours flight, feeling exhausted and I was suffering from a headache. The air pressure had blocked my ears, and jet lag added to my fatigue. After collecting my checked luggage, I headed to the first ATM machine at the airport. Struggling to insert my card, I asked a nearby gentleman for help. He tried his best, but my card got stuck inside the machine. Panic set in as I worried about how I would survive without money. Taking a deep breath, I found an airport employee and explained the situation. The gentleman stayed with me, offering support and repeatedly apologizing for his mistake. However, it wasn t his fault, the ATM was out of order, which I hadn t noticed. My focus was solely on retrieving my ATM card. The airport employee worked diligently, using a hairpin to carefully extract my card. Finally, the card was freed, and I felt an immense sense of relief, grateful for the help of these kind strangers. I used another ATM, successfully withdrew money, and then went to an airport mobile SIM shop to buy a new SIM card for local internet and connectivity.

Day 4, Arriving In Tirana, Facing Challenges In A Foreign Country I had booked a stay at a backpacker hostel near the city center of Tirana. After sorting out the ATM and SIM card issues, I searched for a bus or any transport to get there. It was quite late, around 8:30 PM, and being in a new city, I was in a hurry. I saw a bus nearly leaving the airport, stopped it, and asked if it went to the city center. They gave me the green flag, so I boarded the airport service bus and reached the city center. Feeling very tired, I discovered that the hostel was about an hour and a half away by walking. Deciding to take a cab, I faced a challenge as the driver couldn t understand my English or accent. Using a mobile translator to convert my address from English to Albanian, I finally communicated my destination to him. With that sorted out, I headed to the Blue Door Backpacker Hostel and arrived around 9 PM, relieved to have finally reached my destination and I checked in. I found my top bunk bed, only to realize I had booked a mixed-gender dormitory. This detail had completely escaped my notice during the booking process. I felt unsure about how to handle the situation. Coincidentally, my experience mirrored what Kangana faced in the movie Queen . Feeling acidic due to an empty stomach and the exhaustion of heavy traveling, I wasn t up to cooking in the hostel s kitchen. I asked the front desk about the nearest restaurant. It was nearly 9:30 PM, and the streets were deserted. To avoid any mishaps like in the movie Queen, I kept my passport securely locked in my bag, ensuring it wouldn t be a victim of theft. Venturing out for dinner, I felt uneasy on the quiet streets. I eventually found a restaurant recommended by the hostel, but the menu was almost entirely non-vegetarian. I struggled to ask about vegetarian options and was uncertain if any dishes contained eggs, as some people consider eggs to be vegetarian. Feeling frustrated and unsure, I left the restaurant without eating. I noticed a nearby grocery store that was about to close and managed to get a few extra minutes to shop. I bought some snacks, wafers, milk, and tea bags (though I couldn t find tea powder to make Indian-style tea). Returning to the hostel, I made do with wafers, cookies, and milk for dinner. That day was incredibly tough for me, I filled with exhaustion and struggle in a new country, I was on the verge of tears . I made a video call home before sleeping on the top bunk bed. It was a new experience for me, sharing a room with both unknown men and women. I kept my passport safe inside my purse and under my pillow while sleeping, staying very conscious about its security.

Day 5, Exploring Nearby Places I woke up the next day at noon. After having some coffee, the hostel management girl asked if I wanted breakfast. She offered curd with cornflakes, which I refused because I don t like curd. Instead, I ordered a pizza from a vegetarian pizza place with her help, and I started feeling better. I met some people in the hostel, some from Syria and others from Italy. I struggled to understand their accents but kept pushing myself to get involved in their discussions. Despite the challenges, I felt more at ease and was slowly adapting to my new environment. I went out from the hostel in the evening to buy some vegetables to cook something. I searched for shops and found some potatoes, tomatoes, and rice. I decided to cook Khichdi, an Indian dish made with rice, and added some chili flakes I brought from home. After preparing my dinner, I ate and then went to sleep again.

Day 6, Tiranas Recent History The next day, I planned to explore the city and visited Bunkart-1, a fascinating museum in a massive underground bunker from the communist era. Originally built as a shelter for Albania s political and military elite, it now offers a unique glimpse into the country s history under Enver Hoxha s oppressive regime. The museum s exhibits include historical artifacts, photographs, and multimedia displays that detail the lives of Albanians during that time. Walking through the dimly lit corridors, I felt the weight of history and gained a deeper understanding of Albania s past.

Day 7-8, Meeting Friends From India The next day, I accidentally met with Chirag, who was returning from the Debian Conference 2022 held in Prizren, Kosovo, and staying at the same hostel. When I encountered him, he was talking on the phone, and I recognized he was Indian by his accent. I introduced myself, and we discovered we had some mutual friends. Chirag told me that our common friend, Raju, was also coming to stay at the hostel the next day. This news made me feel relaxed and happy to have known people around. When Raju arrived, the three of us, Chirag, Raju, and I planned to have dinner at an Indian restaurant and explore Tirana city. I had a great time talking and enjoying their company.

Day 9-10, Meeting More Friends Raju had a ticket to leave soon, so Chirag and I made a plan to visit Shkod r and the nearby Komani Lake for kayaking. We started our journey early in the morning by bus and reached Shkod r. There, we met new friends from the conference, Pavit and Abraham, who were already there. We had dinner together and enjoyed an ice cream treat from Chirag.

Day 12, Kayaking And Say Good Bye To Friends The next day, Pavit and Abraham had a flight back to India, so Chirag and I went to Komani Lake. We had an adventurous time kayaking, even though neither of us knew how to swim. We took a ferry through the backwaters to the island on Komani Lake and enjoyed a fantastic adventure together. After our trip, Chirag returned to Tirana for his flight back to India, leaving me to continue my journey alone.

Day 13, Climbing Rozafa Castel By stopping at Shkod r, I visited Rozafa Castle. Despite the language barrier, as most locals only spoke Albanian, people around me guided me correctly on how to get there. At times, I used applications like Google Translate to communicate. To read signs or hotel menus, I used Google Photos' language converter. I even used the audio converter to understand and speak some basic Albanian phrases. I took a bus from Shkod r to the southern part of Albania, heading to Sarand . The journey lasted about five to six hours, and I had booked a stay at Mona s Hostel. Upon arrival, I met Eliza from America, and we went together to Ksamil Beach, spending a wonderful day there.

Day 14, Vlora Beach: Beach Side Cycling Next, I traveled to Vlor , where I stayed for one day. During my time there, I enjoyed beach side cycling with a cycle provided by the hostel owner and spent some time feeding fish. I also met a fellow traveler from Delhi who had brought along some preserved Indian curry. He kindly shared it with me, which was a welcome change after nearly 15 days without authentic Indian cuisine, except for what I had cooked myself in various hostels.

Day 15-16 Visiting Durress, Travelling Back To Tirana I then visited Durr s, exploring its beautiful beaches, before heading back to Tirana one day before my flight home. On the day of my flight, my alarm didn t go off, and I woke up late at the hostel. In a frantic rush, I packed everything in just five minutes and dashed toward the city center to catch the bus to the airport. If I had been just five minutes later, I would have missed the bus. Thankfully, I managed to stop it just in time and began my journey back home, reflecting on the incredible adventure I had experienced. Fortunately, I wasn t late; I arrived at the airport just in time. After clearing immigration, I boarded my flight, which had a layover in Warsaw, Poland. The journey from Tirana to Warsaw took about two and a half hours, followed by a seven to eight-hour flight from Poland back to India. Once I arrived in Delhi, I returned to Zostel and booked a train ticket to Aurangabad for the next three days.

Backview This trip was an incredible adventure for me. I never imagined I could accomplish something like this, but I did. Meeting diverse people, experiencing different cultures, and learning so much made this journey truly unforgettable. Looking back, I realize how much I ve grown from this experience. Although I may have more opportunities to travel abroad in the future, this trip will always hold a special place in my heart. The memories I made and the incredible people I met along the way are irreplaceable. This experience goes beyond what I can express through this blog or words; it was incredibly precious to me. Every moment of this journey is etched in my memory, and I am grateful for every part of it.

Recovering DPL It s a bit of a gear shift being DPL for 4 years, and DebConf Committee for nearly 5 years before that, and then being at DebConf while some issue arise (as it always does during a conference). At first I jump into high alert mode, but then I have to remind myself it s not your problem anymore and let others deal with it. It was nice spending a little in-person time with Andreas Tille, our new DPL, we did some more handover and discussed some current issues. I still have a few dozen emails in my DPL inbox that I need to collate and forward to Andreas, I hope to finish all that up by the end of August. During the Bits from the DPL talk, the usual question came up whether Andreas will consider running for DPL again, to which he just responded in a slide Maybe . I think it s a good idea for a DPL to do at least two terms if it all works out for everyone, since it takes a while to get up to speed on everything. Also, having been DPL for four years, I have a lot to say about it, and I think there s a lot we can fix in the role, or at least discuss it. If I had the bandwidth for it I would have scheduled a BoF for it, but I ll very likely do that for the next DebConf instead!

Video team I set up the standby loop for the video streaming setup. We call it loopy, it s a bunch of OBS scenes that provide announcements, shows sponsors, the schedule and some social content. I wrote about it back in 2020, but it s evolved quite a bit since then, so I m probably due to write another blog post with a bunch of updates on it. I hope to organise a video team sprint in Cape Town in the first half of next year, so I ll summarize everything before then.

It would ve been great if we could have some displays in social areas that could show talks, the loop and other content, but we were just too pressed for time for that. This year s DebConf had a very compressed timeline, and there was just too much that had to be done and that had to be figured out on the last minute. This put quite a lot of strain on the organisers, but I was glad to see how, for the most part, most attendees were very sympathetic to some rough edges (but I digress ). I added more of the OBS machine setup to the videoteam s ansible repository, so as of now it just needs an ansible setup and the OBS data and it s good to go. The loopy data is already in the videoteam git repository, so I could probably just add a git pull and create some symlinks in ansible and then that machine can be installed from 0% to 100% by just installing via debian-installer with our ansible hooks. This DebConf I volunteered quite a bit for actual video roles during the conference, something I didn t have much time for in recent DebConfs, and it s been fun, especially in a session or two where nearly none of the other volunteers showed up. Sometimes chaos is just fun :-)

Baekyongee is the university mascot, who s visible throughout the university. So of course we included this four legged whale creature on the loop too!

Packaging I was hoping to do more packaging during DebCamp, but at least it was a non-zero amount:

• Uploaded gdisk 1.0.10-2 to unstable (previously tested effects of adding dh-sequence-movetousr) (Closes: #1073679).
• Worked a bit on bcachefs-tools (updating git to 1.9.4), but has a build failure that I need to look into (we might need a newer bindgen) update: I m probably going to ROM this package soon, it doesn t seem suitable for packaging in Debian.
• Calamares: Tested a fix for encrypted installs, and uploaded it.
• Calamares: Uploaded (3.3.8-1) to backports (at the time of writing it s still in backports-NEW).
• Backport obs-gradient-source for bookworm.
• Did some initial packaging on Cambalache, I ll upload to unstable once wlroots (0.18) hits unstable.
• Pixelorama 1.0 I did some initial packaging for Pixelorama back when we did the MiniDebConf Gaming Edition, but it had a few stoppers back then. Version 1.0 seems to fix all of that, but it depends on Godot 4.2 and we re still on the 3 series in Debian, so I ll upload this once Godot 4.2 hits at least experimental. Godot software/games is otherwise quite easy to run, it s basically just source code / data that is installed and then run via godot-runner (godot3-runner package in Debian).

BoFs Python Team BoF Link to the etherpad / pad archive link and video can be found on the talk page: https://debconf24.debconf.org/talks/31-python-bof/ The session ended up being extended to a second part, since all the issues didn t fit into the first session. I was distracted by too many thing during the Python 3.12 transition (to the point where I thought that 3.11 was still new in Debian), so it was very useful listening to the retrospective of that transition. There was a discussion whether Python 3.13 could still make it to testing in time for freeze, and it seems that there is consensus that it can, although, likely with new experimental features like disabling the global interpreter lock and the just in time compiler disabled. I learned for the first time about the dead batteries project, PEP-0594, which removes ancient modules that have mostly been superseded, from the Python standard library. There was some talk about the process for changing team policy, and a policy discussion on whether we should require autopkgtests as a SHOULD or a MUST for migration to testing. As with many things, the devil is in the details and in my opinion you could go either way and achieve a similar result (the original MUST proposal allowed exceptions which imho made it the same as the SHOULD proposal). There s an idea to do some ongoing remote sprints, like having co-ordinated days for bug squashing / working on stuff together. This is a nice idea and probably a good way to energise the team and also to gain some interest from potential newcomers. Louis-Philipe V ronneau was added as a new team admin and there was some discussion on various Sphinx issues and which Lintian tags might be needed for Python 3.13. If you want to know more, you probably have to watch the videos / read the notes :)

Debian.net BoF Link to the etherpad / pad archive link can be found on the talk page: https://debconf24.debconf.org/talks/37-debiannet-team-bof Debian Developers can set up services on subdomains on debian.net, but a big problem we ve had before was that developers were on their own for hosting those services. This meant that they either hosted it on their DSL/fiber connection at home, paid for the hosting themselves, or hosted it at different services which became an accounting nightmare to claim back the used funds. So, a few of us started the debian.net hosting project (sometimes we just call it debian.net, this is probably a bit of a bug) so that Debian has accounts with cloud providers, and as admins we can create instances there that gets billed directly to Debian. We had an initial rush of services, but requests have slowed down since (not really a bad thing, we don t want lots of spurious requests). Last year we did a census, to check which of the instances were still used, whether they received system updates and to ask whether they are performing backups. It went well and some issues were found along the way, so we ll be doing that again. We also gained two potential volunteers to help run things, which is great. Debian Social BoF Link to the etherpad / pad archive link can be found on the talk page: https://debconf24.debconf.org/talks/34-debiansocial-bof We discussed the services we run, you can view the current state of things at: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianSocial Pleroma has shown some cracks over the last year or so, and there are some forks that seem promising. At the same time, it might be worth while considering Mastodon too. So we ll do some comparison of features and maintenance and find a way forward. At the time when Pleroma was installed, it was way ahead in terms of moderation features. Pixelfed is doing well and chugging along nicely, we should probably promote it more. Peertube is working well, although we learned that we still don t have all the recent DebConf videos on there. A bunch of other issues should be fixed once we move it to a new machine that we plan to set up. We re removing writefreely and plume. Nice concepts, but it didn t get much traction yet, and no one who signed up for these actually used it, which is fine, some experimentation with services is good and sometimes they prove to be very popular and other times not. The WordPress multisite instance has some mild use, otherwise haven t had any issues. Matrix ended up to be much, much bigger than we thought, both in usage and in its requirements. It s very stateful and remembers discussions for as long as you let it, so it s Postgres database is continuously expanding, this will also be a lot easier to manage once we have this on the new host. Jitsi is also quite popular, but it could probably be on jitsi.debian.net instead (we created this on debian.social during the initial height of COVID-19 where we didn t have the debian.net hosting yet), although in practice it doesn t really matter where it lives. Most of our current challenges will be solved by moving everything to a new big machine that has a few public IPs available for some VMs, so we ll be doing that shortly. Debian Foundation Discussion BoF This was some brainstorming about the future structure of Debian, and what steps might be needed to get there. It s way too big a problem to take on in a BoF, but we made some progress in figuring out some smaller pieces of the larger puzzle. The DPL is going to get in touch with some legal advisors and our trusted organisations so that we can aim to formalise our relationships a bit more by the time it s DebConf again. I also introduced my intention to join the Debian Partners delegation. When I was DPL, I enjoyed talking with external organisations who wanted to help Debian, but helping external organisations help Debian turned out to be too much additional load on the usual DPL roles, so I m pursuing this with the Debian Partners team, more on that some other time. This session wasn t recorded, but if you feel like you missed something, don t worry, all intentions will be communicated and discussed with project members before anything moves forward. There was a strong agreement in the room though that we should push forward on this, and not reach another DebConf where we didn t make progress on formalising Debian s structure more.

Social Conference Dinner

Conference Dinner Photo from Santiago

The conference dinner took place in the university gymnasium. I hope not many people do sports there in the summer, because it got HOT. There was also some interesting observations on the thermodynamics of the attempted cooling solutions, which was amusing. On the plus side, the food was great, the company was good, and the speeches were kept to a minimum, so it was a great conference dinner, even though it was probably cut a bit short due to the heat. Cheese and Wine Cheese and Wine happened on 1 August, which happens to be the date I became a DD at DebConf17 in Montr al seven years before, so this was a nice accidental celebration of my Debiversary :) Since I m running out of time, I ll add some more photos to this post some time after publishing it :P Group Photo As per DebConf tradition, Aigars took the group photo. You can find the high resolution version on Debian s GitLab instance.

Debian annual conference Debconf 24, Busan, South Korea
Photography: Aigars Mahinovs aigarius@debian.org
License: CC-BYv3+ or GPLv2+

Talking Ah yes, talking to people is a big part of DebConf, but I didn t keep track of it very well.

• I mostly listened to Alper a bit about his ideas for his talk about debian installer.
• I talked to Rhonda a bit about ActivityPub and MQTT and whether they could be useful for publicising Debian activity.
• Listened to Gunnar and Julian have a discussion about GPG and APT which was interesting.
• I learned that you can learn Hangul, the Korean alphabet, in about an hour or so (I wish I knew that in all my years of playing StarCraft II).
• We had the usual continuous keysigning party. Besides it s intended function, this is always a good ice breaker and a way to for shy people to meet other shy people.
• and many other fly-by discussions.

Stuff that didn t happen this DebConf

• loo.py A simple Python script that could eventually replace the obs-advanced-scene-switcher sequencer in OBS. It would also be extremely useful if we d ever replace OBS for loopy. I was hoping to have some time to hack on this, and try to recreate the current loopy in loo.py, but didn t have the time.
• toetally This year videoteam had to scramble to get a bunch of resistors to assemble some tally light. Even when assembled, they were a bit troublesome. It would ve been nice to hack on toetally and get something ready for testing, but it mostly relies on having something like a rasbperry pi zero with an attached screen in order to work on further. I ll try to have something ready for the next mini conf though.
• extrepo on debian live I think we should have extrepo installed by default on desktop systems, I meant to start a discussion on this, but perhaps it s just time I go ahead and do it and announce it.
• Live stream to peertube server It would ve been nice to live stream DebConf to PeerTube, but the dependency tree to get this going got a bit too huge. Following our plans discussed in the Debian Social BoF, we should have this safely ready before the next MiniDebConf and should be able to test it there.
• Desktop Egg there was this idea to get a stand-in theme for Debian testing/unstable until the artwork for the next release is finalized (Debian bug: #1038660), I have an idea that I meant to implement months ago, but too many things got in the way. It s based on Juliette Taka s Homeworld theme, and basically transforms the homeworld into an egg. Get it? Something that hasn t hatched yet? I also only recently noticed that we never used the actual homeworld graphics (featuring the world image) in the final bullseye release. lol.

So, another DebConf and another new plush animal. Last but not least, thanks to PKNU for being such a generous and fantastic host to us! See you again at DebConf25 in Brest, France next year!

Debian Download Web Page It's just a very tiny difference, but hopefully a big step forward for our users. Our main download web page (which still uses the URL https://www.debian.org/distrib/) now has the title "Download Debian". Hopefully this will improve the results in the search engines.

A brief history of this web page in time

• 1998: The title "Distribution" was added
• 2002: Title changed to "Getting Debian"
• 2024: Finally changed to "Download Debian"

Here are the screenshots of these three versions. I like that we had a selection menu on the top right corner to select a mirror for downloading in the past. A few days ago I've also removed the info "Internal ISDN cards are unfortunately not supported." from the netinst subpage. Things are moving forward, but slowly.

• Merkuro and Neochat SRUs have made progress.
• See Debian for the qt6 Plasma / applications work.

• qtmpv in NEW
• arianna in NEW
• kamera experimental
• libkdegames experimental
• kdenetwork-filesharing experimental
• xwaylandvideobridge NEW
• futuresql NEW
• kpat WIP
• Tokodon Done, but needs qtmpv to pass NEW
• Gwenview WIP needs kamera, kio-extras
• kio-extras Blocked on kdsoap in which the maintainer is not responding to bug reports or emails. Will likely fork in Kubuntu as our freeze quickly approaches.

for PLUG in $(snap connections   grep gtk-common-themes:icon-themes   awk ' print $2 '); do sudo snap connect $ PLUG  icon-theme-breeze:icon-themes; done
for PLUG in $(snap connections   grep gtk-common-themes:gtk-3-themes   awk ' print $2 '); do sudo snap connect $ PLUG  gtk-theme-breeze:gtk-3-themes; done
for PLUG in $(snap connections   grep gtk-common-themes:gtk-2-themes   awk ' print $2 '); do sudo snap connect $ PLUG  gtk-theme-breeze:gtk-2-themes; done

• Elisa stable https://snapcraft.io/elisa
• Okular stable https://snapcraft.io/okular
• Konsole ( please note this is a confined terminal for the project and not very useful except to ssh to the host system ) stable
• Kwrite stable https://snapcraft.io/kwrite
• Gwenview stable https://snapcraft.io/gwenview
• Kate ( classic edge ) https://snapcraft.io/kate
• Gcompris edge https://snapcraft.io/gcompris
• Alligator stable https://snapcraft.io/alligator
• Angelfish edge https://snapcraft.io/angelfish ( Crashes on first run, but runs fine after that.. looking into it)
• Arianna edge ( Just pushed fix for required browser-support plug)
• Ark stable https://snapcraft.io/ark
• Blinken stable https://snapcraft.io/blinken
• Bomber stable https://snapcraft.io/bomber
• Bovo stable https://snapcraft.io/bovo
• Calindori stable https://snapcraft.io/calindori
• Digikam stable https://snapcraft.io/digikam
• Dragon edge ( just pushed dbus fix )
• Falkon stable https://snapcraft.io/falkon
• Filelight stable https://snapcraft.io/filelight
• GCompris edge https://snapcraft.io/gcompris ( Will remain in edge until official release )
• Ghostwriter edge ( Broken, need to workout Qt webengine obscure way of handling hunspell dictionaries.)
• Granatier stable https://snapcraft.io/granatier
• Kalzium stable https://snapcraft.io/kalzium
• Kapman stable https://snapcraft.io/kapman
• Kasts edge ( Broken, portal failure, testing some plugs)
• Kate stable classic https://snapcraft.io/kate
• Killbots stable https://snapcraft.io/killbots
• Katomic stable https://snapcraft.io/katomic
• Kbackup edge ( Needs auto-connect udisks2, added home plug)
• Kblackbox stable https://snapcraft.io/kblackbox
• Kblocks stable https://snapcraft.io/kblocks
• Kbreakout stable https://snapcraft.io/kbreakout
• Kbruch stable https://snapcraft.io/kbruch
• Kcharselect stable https://snapcraft.io/kcharselect
• Kcolorchooser stable https://snapcraft.io/kcolorchooser
• Kdebugsettings edge ( Added missing personal-files plug, will need approval)
• Kdf stable https://snapcraft.io/kdf
• KDiamond edge ( sound issues )
• Kfind edge ( request in for udisks2)
• Kfourinline stable https://snapcraft.io/kfourinline
• Kgeography stable https://snapcraft.io/kgeography
• Kgoldrunner stable https://snapcraft.io/kgoldrunner
• Qrca edge ( needs snap connect qrca:camera camera until auto-connect approved, will remain in edge until official release)
• Kclock edge https://snapcraft.io/kclock
• Kigo edge https://snapcraft.io/kigo
• Kimagemapeditor edge https://snapcraft.io/kimagemapeditor
• Kspacedual edge https://snapcraft.io/kspaceduel

• Juk (WIP)
• Kajongg (WIP problem with pyqt)
• Kalgebra (in store review)
• Kdevelop (WIP)
• Kdenlive (MR)
• KHangman (WIP)
• Ruqola (WIP)
• Picmi (building)
• Kubrick (WIP)
• lskat (building)
• Palapeli (MR)
• Kanagram (WIP)
• Labplot (WIP)
• Ktuberling (building)
• Ksudoku (building)
• Ksquares (MR)

Changes in RQuantLib version 0.4.24 (2024-07-31)

• Updated detection of QuantLib libraries in configure
• The minimum version has been increased to QuantLib 1.25, and DESCRIPTION has been updated to state it too
• The dividend case for vanilla options still accommodates deprecated older QuantLib versions if needed (up to QuantLib 1.25)
• The configure script now uses PKG_CXXFLAGS and PKG_LIBS internally, and shows the values it sets

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

The Combatants In the red corner, weighing in at nah, I m not going to do that schtick. The plaintiff in the case is Alegeus Technologies, LLC, a Delaware Corporation that, according to their filings, is a leading provider of a business-tobusiness, white-label funding and payment platform for healthcare carriers and third-party administrators to administer consumer-directed employee benefit programs . Not being subject to the US bonkers health care system, I have only a passing familiarity with the sorts of things they do, but presumably it involves moving a lot of money around, which is sometimes important. The defendant is DigiCert, a CA which, based on analysis I ve done previously, is the second-largest issuer of WebPKI certificates by volume.

The History According to a recently opened Mozilla CA bug, DigiCert found an issue in their domain control validation workflow, that meant it may have been possible for a miscreant to have certificates issued to them that they weren t legitimately entitled to. Given that validating domain names is basically the YOU HAD ONE JOB! of a CA, this is a big deal. The CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements (BRs) (which all CAs are required to adhere to, by virtue of their being included in various browser and OS trust stores), say that revocation is required within 24 hours when [t]he CA obtains evidence that the validation of domain authorization or control for any Fully Qualified Domain Name or IP address in the Certificate should not be relied upon (section 4.9.1.1, point 5). DigiCert appears to have at least tried to do the right thing, by opening the above Mozilla bug giving some details of the problem, and notifying their customers that their certificates were going to be revoked. One may quibble about how fast they re doing it, but they re giving it a decent shot, at least. A complicating factor in all this is that, only a touch over a month ago, Google Chrome announced the removal of another CA, Entrust, from its own trust store program, citing a pattern of compliance failures, unmet improvement commitments, and the absence of tangible, measurable progress in response to publicly disclosed incident reports . Many of these compliance failures were failures to revoke certificates in a timely manner. One imagines that DigiCert would not like to gain a reputation for tardy revocation, particularly at the moment.

The Legal Action Now we come to Alegeus Technologies. They ve opened a civil case whose first action is to request the issuance of a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that prevents DigiCert from revoking certificates issued to Alegeus (which the court has issued). This is a big deal, because TROs are legal instruments that, if not obeyed, constitute contempt of court (or something similar) and courts do not like people who disregard their instructions. That means that, in the short term, those certificates aren t getting revoked, despite the requirement imposed by root stores on DigiCert that the certificates must be revoked. DigiCert is in a real rock / hard place situation here: revoke and get punished by the courts, or don t revoke and potentially (though almost certainly not, in the circumstances) face removal from trust stores (which would kill, or at least massively hurt, their business). The reasons that Alegeus gives for requesting the restraining order is that [t]o Reissue and Reinstall the Security Certificates, Alegeus must work with and coordinate with its Clients, who are required to take steps to rectify the certificates. Alegeus has hundreds of such Clients. Alegeus is generally required by contract to give its clients much longer than 24 hours notice before executing such a change regarding certification. In the filing, Alegeus does acknowledge that DigiCert is a voluntary member of the Certification Authority Browser Forum (CABF), which has bylaws stating that certificates with an issue in their domain validation must be revoked within 24 hours. This is a misstatement of the facts, though. It is the BRs, not the CABF bylaws, that require revocation, and the BRs apply to all CAs that wish to be included in browser and OS trust stores, not just those that are members of the CABF. In any event, given that Alegeus was aware that DigiCert is required to revoke certificates within 24 hours, one wonders why Alegeus went ahead and signed agreements with their customers that required a lengthy notice period before changing certificates. What complicates the situation is that there is apparently a Master Services Agreement (MSA) that states that it constitutes the entire agreement between the parties and that MSA doesn t mention certificate revocation anywhere relevant. That means that it s not quite so cut-and-dried that DigiCert does, in fact, have the right to revoke those certificates. I d expect a lot of update to your Master Services Agreement emails to be going out from DigiCert (and other CAs) in the near future to clarify this point. Not being a lawyer, I can t imagine which way this case might go, but there s one thing we can be sure of: some lawyers are going to able to afford that trip to a tropical paradise this year.

The Security Issues The requirement for revocation within 24 hours is an important security control in the WebPKI ecosystem. If a certificate is misissued to a malicious party, or is otherwise compromised, it needs to be marked as untrustworthy as soon as possible. While revocation is far from perfect, it is the best tool we have. In this court filing, Alegeus has claimed that they are unable to switch certificates with less than 24 hours notice (due to contractual SLAs ). This is a pretty big problem, because there are lots of reasons why a certificate might need to be switched out Very Quickly. As a practical example, someone with access to the private key for your SSL certificate might decide to use it in a blog post. Letting that sort of problem linger for an extended period of time might end up being a Pretty Big Problem of its own. An organisation that cannot respond within hours to a compromised certificate is playing chicken with their security.

The Takeaways Contractual obligations that require you to notify anyone else of a certificate (or private key) changing are bonkers, and completely antithetical to the needs of the WebPKI. If you have to have them, you re going to want to start transitioning to a private PKI, wherein you can do whatever you darn well please with revocation (or not). As these sorts of problems keep happening, trust stores (and hence CAs) are going to crack down on this sort of thing, so you may as well move sooner rather than later. If you are an organisation that uses WebPKI certificates, you ve got to be able to deal with any kind of certificate revocation event within hours, not days. This basically boils down to automated issuance and lifecycle management, because having someone manually request and install certificates is terrible on many levels. There isn t currently a completed standard for notifying subscribers if their certificates need premature renewal (say, due to needing to be revoked), but the ACME Renewal Information Extension is currently being developed to fill that need. Ask your CA if they re tracking this standards development, and when they intend to have the extension available for use. (Pro-tip: if they say we ll start doing development when the RFC is published , run for the hills; that s not how responsible organisations work on the Internet).

The Givings If you ve found this helpful, consider shouting me a refreshing beverage. Reading through legal filings is thirsty work!

BGP routing loop using a confederation

router bgp 64502
 bgp confederation peers
  64500
  64501
  64503
 !
 bgp confederation identifier 64496
 bgp router-id 1.0.0.2
 address-family ipv6 unicast
 !
 neighbor 2001:db8::2:0
  remote-as 64501
  description R1
  address-family ipv6 unicast
  !
 !
 neighbor 2001:db8::3:1
  remote-as 64503
  advertisement-interval 0
  description R3
  address-family ipv6 unicast
   next-hop-self
   as-override
  !
 !
!

1. R0 sends the prefix to R1 with AS path (64500).³
2. R1 selects it as the best path, forwarding it to R2 with AS path (64501 64500).
3. R2 selects it as the best path, forwarding it to R3 with AS path (64500 64501 64502).
4. R3 selects it as the best path. It would forward it to R1 with AS path (64503 64502 64501 64500), but due to AS override, it substitutes R1 s ASN with its own, forwarding it with AS path (64503 64502 64503 64500).
5. R1 accepts the prefix, as its own ASN is not in the AS path. It compares this new prefix with the one from R0. Both (64500) and (64503 64502 64503 64500) have the same length because confederation sub-ASes don t contribute to AS path length. The first tie-breaker is the router ID. R0 s router ID (1.0.0.4) is higher than R3 s (1.0.0.3). The new prefix becomes the best path and is forwarded to R2 with AS path (64501 64503 64501 64503 64500).
6. R2 receives the new prefix, replacing the old one. It selects it as the best path and forwards it to R3 with AS path (64502 64501 64502 64501 64502 64500).
7. R3 receives the new prefix, replacing the old one. It selects it as the best path and forwards it to R0 with AS path (64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64500).
8. R1 receives the new prefix, replacing the old one. Again, it competes with the prefix from R0, and again the new prefix wins due to the lower router ID. The prefix is forwarded to R2 with AS path (64501 64503 64501 64503 64501 64503 64501 64500).

RP/0/RP0/CPU0:R1#show bgp ipv6 u 2001:db8::1/128 bestpath-compare
BGP routing table entry for 2001:db8::1/128
Last Modified: Jul 28 10:23:05.560 for 00:00:00
Paths: (2 available, best #2)
  Path #1: Received by speaker 0
  Not advertised to any peer
  (64500)
    2001:db8::1:0 from 2001:db8::1:0 (1.0.0.4), if-handle 0x00000000
      Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 100, valid, confed-external
      Received Path ID 0, Local Path ID 0, version 0
      Higher router ID than best path (path #2)
  Path #2: Received by speaker 0
  Advertised IPv6 Unicast paths to peers (in unique update groups):
    2001:db8::2:1
  (64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64503 64502 64500)
    2001:db8::4:0 from 2001:db8::4:0 (1.0.0.3), if-handle 0x00000000
      Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 100, valid, confed-external, best, group-best
      Received Path ID 0, Local Path ID 1, version 37
      best of AS 64503, Overall best

• never use BGP confederations under any circumstances, and
• be cautious of features that weaken BGP routing loop detection.

• Many SRUs awaiting verification stage including the massive apparmor policy bug.
• sddm fix for the black screen on second boot has passed verification and should make .1 release.
• See Debian for the qt6 Plasma / applications work.

• qtmpv in NEW
• arianna in NEW
• kamera uploading today
• kcharselect Experimental
• Tokodon Done, but needs qtmpv to pass NEW
• Gwenview WIP needs kamera, kio-extras
• kio-extras WIP

• Elisa
• Okular
• Konsole ( please note this is a confined terminal for the project and not very useful except to ssh to the host system )
• Kwrite
• Gwenview
• Kate ( classic )
• Gcompris
• Alligator
• Ark
• Blinken
• Bomber
• Bovo
• Calindori
• Digikam
• Dragon
• Falkon
• Filelight

• KSpacedual
• Ksquares
• KSudoku
• KTuberling
• Kubrick
• lskat
• Palapeli
• Kajongg
• Kalzium
• Kanagram
• Kapman
• Katomic
• KBlackBox
• KBlocks
• KBounce
• KBreakOut
• KBruch

Changes in RQuantLib version 0.4.23 (2024-07-23)

• Adjustments for QuantLib 1.35 and removal of deprecated code (in utility functions and dividend case of vanilla options)
• Adjustments for new changes in QuantLib 1.35
• Refactoring most C++ files making more use of both auto and make_shared to simplify and shorten expressions

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

Changes in version 0.0.12 (2024-07-22)

• Synchronized with QuantLib 1.35 released today
• Calendar updates for Chile, India, United States, Brazil

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

# get display mode
ddcutil getvcp DC
# set standard mode
ddcutil setvcp DC 0
# set movie mode
ddcutil setvcp DC 03

• [1] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2024/05/18/kogan-5120 2160-40-monitor/
• [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format
• [3] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/07/19/ddc-switch/

• [1] https://www.russellcoker.com/
• [2] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2014/07/01/blog-comments

Changes in version 0.1.3 (2024-07-18)

• Windows builds use localtime_s with LLVM (Tomas Kalibera in #16)
• Tests code has been adjusted for an upstream change in data.table tests for all.equal (Michael Chirico in #18 addressing #17)

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