# Install docker + nftables from Debian
apt install docker.io nftables
# Add the Kubernetes repo and signing key
curl -s https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg > /etc/apt/k8s.gpg
cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list <<EOF
deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/k8s.gpg] https://apt.kubernetes.io/ kubernetes-xenial main
EOF
apt update
apt install kubelet kubeadm kubectl

kubeadm init --apiserver-advertise-address 192.168.53.147 --apiserver-cert-extra-sans udon.mynetwork

mkdir ~noodles/.kube
cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf ~noodles/.kube/config
chown -R noodles ~noodles/.kube/

noodles@udon:~$ kubectl get nodes
NAME   STATUS     ROLES                  AGE     VERSION
udon   NotReady   control-plane,master   4m31s   v1.21.1

mkdir -p /var/lib/weave
head -c 16 /dev/urandom   shasum -a 256   cut -d " " -f1 > /var/lib/weave/weave-passwd
kubectl create secret -n kube-system generic weave-passwd --from-file=/var/lib/weave/weave-passwd
kubectl apply -f "https://cloud.weave.works/k8s/net?k8s-version=$(kubectl version   base64   tr -d '\n')&password-secret=weave-passwd&env.IPALLOC_RANGE=192.168.0.0/24"

kubectl taint nodes --all node-role.kubernetes.io/master-

noodles@udon:~$ kubectl get nodes
NAME   STATUS   ROLES                  AGE   VERSION
udon   Ready    control-plane,master   15m   v1.21.1

noodles@udon:~$ kubectl get pods --all-namespaces
NAMESPACE     NAME                           READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kube-system   coredns-558bd4d5db-4nvrg       1/1     Running   0          18m
kube-system   coredns-558bd4d5db-flrfq       1/1     Running   0          18m
kube-system   etcd-udon                      1/1     Running   0          18m
kube-system   kube-apiserver-udon            1/1     Running   0          18m
kube-system   kube-controller-manager-udon   1/1     Running   0          18m
kube-system   kube-proxy-6d8kg               1/1     Running   0          18m
kube-system   kube-scheduler-udon            1/1     Running   0          18m
kube-system   weave-net-mchmg                2/2     Running   1          3m26s

$ kubectl create deployment hello-node --image=k8s.gcr.io/echoserver:1.10
deployment.apps/hello-node created
$ kubectl get pod
NAME                          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
hello-node-59bffcc9fd-8hkgb   1/1     Running   0          36s
$ kubectl expose deployment hello-node --type=NodePort --port=8080
$ kubectl get services
NAME         TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
hello-node   NodePort    10.107.66.138   <none>        8080:31529/TCP   1m

Hostname: hello-node-59bffcc9fd-8hkgb
Pod Information:
	-no pod information available-
Server values:
	server_version=nginx: 1.13.3 - lua: 10008
Request Information:
	client_address=192.168.53.147
	method=GET
	real path=/
	query=
	request_version=1.1
	request_scheme=http
	request_uri=http://10.107.66.138:8080/
Request Headers:
	accept=*/*
	host=10.107.66.138:8080
	user-agent=curl/7.74.0
Request Body:
	-no body in request-

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v0.46.0/deploy/static/provider/cloud/deploy.yaml

cat > hello-ingress.yaml <<EOF
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: example-ingress
  annotations:
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /$1
spec:
  rules:
    - host: udon.mynetwork
      http:
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: hello-node
                port:
                  number: 8080
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f hello-ingress.yaml
ingress.networking.k8s.io/example-ingress created
$ kubectl get ingress
NAME              CLASS    HOSTS            ADDRESS   PORTS   AGE
example-ingress   <none>   udon.mynetwork             80      3m8s

noodles@udon:~$ kubectl get services -n ingress-nginx
NAME                                 TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                    AGE
ingress-nginx-controller             LoadBalancer   10.96.9.41      <pending>     80:32740/TCP,443:30894/TCP 13h
ingress-nginx-controller-admission   ClusterIP      10.111.16.129   <none>        443/TCP                    13h

kubectl patch svc ingress-nginx-controller -n ingress-nginx -p \
	' "spec":  "type": "LoadBalancer", "externalIPs":["192.168.53.147"] '

noodles@udon:~$ kubectl get services -n ingress-nginx
NAME                                 TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)                 AGE
ingress-nginx-controller             LoadBalancer   10.96.9.41      192.168.53.147   80:32740/TCP,443:30894/TCP   14h
ingress-nginx-controller-admission   ClusterIP      10.111.16.129   <none>           443/TCP                 14h
noodles@udon:~$ kubectl get ingress
NAME              CLASS    HOSTS           ADDRESS          PORTS   AGE
example-ingress   <none>   udon.mynetwork  192.168.53.147   80      14h

Hostname: hello-node-59bffcc9fd-8hkgb
Pod Information:
	-no pod information available-
Server values:
	server_version=nginx: 1.13.3 - lua: 10008
Request Information:
	client_address=192.168.0.5
	method=GET
	real path=/
	query=
	request_version=1.1
	request_scheme=http
	request_uri=http://udon.mynetwork:8080/
Request Headers:
	accept=*/*
	host=udon.mynetwork
	user-agent=curl/7.64.0
	x-forwarded-for=192.168.53.136
	x-forwarded-host=udon.mynetwork
	x-forwarded-port=80
	x-forwarded-proto=http
	x-real-ip=192.168.53.136
	x-request-id=6aaef8feaaa4c7d07c60b2d05c45f75c
	x-scheme=http
Request Body:
	-no body in request-

• What s going on with the networking?
• Where s the IPv6 (the host in question has native IPv6 routing)?
• How do I deploy my own application pod?
• I should look at a multiple host setup (i.e. a real cluster).
• How much of this goes away if I use a cloud provider like AWS to run the cluster?
• Can I do this with the Debian Kubernetes packages?

The Debian Janitor is an automated system that commits fixes for (minor) issues in Debian packages that can be fixed by software. It gradually started proposing merges in early December. The first set of changes sent out ran lintian-brush on sid packages maintained in Git. This post is part of a series about the progress of the Janitor. The FOSS world uses a wide variety of different build tools; given a git repository or tarball, it can be hard to figure out how to build and install a piece of software. Humans will generally know what build tool a project is using when they check out a project from git, or they can read the README. And even then, the answer may not always be straightforward to everybody. For automation, there is no obvious place to figure out how to build or install a project.

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% git clone https://github.com/dulwich/dulwich
% cd dulwich
% ogni --schroot=unstable-amd64-sbuild dist
 
Writing dulwich-0.20.21/setup.cfg
creating dist
Creating tar archive
removing 'dulwich-0.20.21' (and everything under it)
Found new tarball dulwich-0.20.21.tar.gz in /var/run/schroot/mount/unstable-amd64-sbuild-974d32d7-6f10-4e77-8622-b6a091857e85/build/tmpucazj7j7/package/dist.

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% wget https://download.samba.org/pub/ldb/ldb-2.3.0.tar.gz
% tar xvfz ldb-2.3.0.tar.gz
% cd ldb-2.3.0
% ogni install --prefix=/tmp/ldb
 
+ install /tmp/ldb/include/ldb.h (from include/ldb.h)
 
Waf: Leaving directory  /tmp/ldb-2.3.0/bin/default'
'install' finished successfully (11.395s)

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% wget  https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/T/TO/TORU/XML-LibXML-LazyBuilder-0.08.tar.gz _ <https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/T/TO/TORU/XML-LibXML-LazyBuilder-0.08.tar.gz> _
% tar xvfz XML-LibXML-LazyBuilder-0.08.tar.gz
Cd XML-LibXML-LazyBuilder-0.08
% ogni test
 

The Population Issue and its many facets Another couple of weeks passed. A Lot of things happening, lots of anger and depression in folks due to handling in pandemic, but instead of blaming they are willing to blame everybody else including the population. Many of them want forced sterilization like what Sanjay Gandhi did during the Emergency (1975). I had to share So Long, My son . A very moving tale of two families of what happened to them during the one-child policy in China. I was so moved by it and couldn t believe that the Chinese censors allowed it to be produced, shot, edited, and then shared worldwide. It also won a couple of awards at the 69th Berlin Film Festival, silver bear for the best actor and the actress in that category. But more than the award, the theme, and the concept as well as the length of the movie which was astonishing. Over a 3 hr. something it paints a moving picture of love, loss, shame, relief, anger, and asking for forgiveness. All of which can be identified by any rational person with feelings worldwide.

Girl child What was also interesting though was what it couldn t or wasn t able to talk about and that is the Chinese leftover men. In fact, a similar situation exists here in India, only it has been suppressed. This has been more pronounced more in Asia than in other places. One big thing in this is human trafficking and mostly women trafficking. For the Chinese male, that was happening on a large scale from all neighboring countries including India. This has been shared in media and everybody knows about it and yet people are silent. But this is not limited to just the Chinese, even Indians have been doing it. Even yesteryear actress Rupa Ganguly was caught red-handed but then later let off after formal questioning as she is from the ruling party. So much for justice. What is and has been surprising at least for me is Rwanda which is in the top 10 of some of the best places in equal gender. It, along with other African countries have also been in news for putting quite a significant amount of percentage of GDP into public healthcare (between 20-10%), but that is a story for a bit later. People forget or want to forget that it was in Satara, a city in my own state where 220 girls changed their name from nakusha or unwanted to something else and that had become a piece of global news. One would think that after so many years, things would have changed, the only change that has happened is that now we have two ministries, The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MoWCD) and The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MoHFW). Sadly, in both cases, the ministries have been found wanting, Whether it was the high-profile Hathras case or even the routine cries of help which given by women on the twitter helpline. Sadly, neither of these ministries talks about POSH guidelines which came up after the 2012 gangrape case. For both these ministries, it should have been a pinned tweet. There is also the 1994 PCPNDT Act which although made in 1994, actually functioned in 2006, although what happens underground even today nobody knows . On the global stage, about a decade ago, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt argued in their book Freakonomics how legalized abortion both made the coming population explosion as well as expected crime rates to be reduced. There was a huge pushback on the same from the conservatives and has become a matter of debate, perhaps something that the Conservatives wanted. Interestingly, it hasn t made them go back but go forward as can be seen from the Freakonomics site.

Climate Change Another topic that came up for discussion was repeatedly climate change, but when I share Shell s own 1998 Confidential report titled Greenhouse effect all become strangely silent. The silence here is of two parts, there probably is a large swathe of Indians who haven t read the report and there may be a minority who have read it and know what already has been shared with U.S. Congress. The Conservative s argument has been for it is jobs and a weak we need to research more . There was a partial debunk of it on the TBD podcast by Matt Farell and his brother Sean Farell as to how quickly the energy companies are taking to the coming change.

Health Budget Before going to Covid stories. I first wanted to talk about Health Budgets. From the last 7 years the Center s allocation for health has been between 0.34 to 0.8% per year. That amount barely covers the salaries to the staff, let alone any money for equipment or anything else. And here by allocation I mean, what is actually spent, not the one that is shared by GOI as part of budget proposal. In fact, an article on Wire gives a good breakdown of the numbers. Even those who are on the path of free markets describe India s health business model as a flawed one. See the Bloomberg Quint story on that. Now let me come to Rwanda. Why did I chose Rwanda, I could have chosen South Africa where I went for Debconf 2016, I chose because Rwanda s story is that much more inspiring. In many ways much more inspiring than that South Africa in many ways. Here is a country which for decades had one war or the other, culminating into the Rwanda Civil War which ended in 1994. And coincidentally, they gained independence on a similar timeline as South Africa ending Apartheid in 1994. What does the country do, when it gains its independence, it first puts most of its resources in the healthcare sector. The first few years at 20% of GDP, later than at 10% of GDP till everybody has universal medical coverage. Coming back to the Bloomberg article I shared, the story does not go into the depth of beyond-expiry date medicines, spurious medicines and whatnot. Sadly, most media in India does not cover the deaths happening in rural areas and this I am talking about normal times. Today what is happening in rural areas is just pure madness. For last couple of days have been talking with people who are and have been covering rural areas. In many of those communities, there is vaccine hesitancy and why, because there have been whatsapp forwards sharing that if you go to a hospital you will die and your kidney or some other part of the body will be taken by the doctor. This does two things, it scares people into not going and getting vaccinated, at the same time they are prejudiced against science. This is politics of the lowest kind. And they do it so that they will be forced to go to temples or babas and what not and ask for solutions. And whether they work or not is immaterial, they get fixed and property and money is seized. Sadly, there are not many Indian movies of North which have tried to show it except for oh my god but even here it doesn t go the distance. A much more honest approach was done in Trance . I have never understood how the South Indian movies are able to do a more honest job of story-telling than what is done in Bollywood even though they do in 1/10th the budget that is needed in Bollywood. Although, have to say with OTT, some baggage has been shed but with the whole film certification rearing its ugly head through MEITY orders, it seems two steps backward instead of forward. The idea being simply to infantilize the citizens even more. That is a whole different ball-game which probably will require its own space.

Vaccine issues One good news though is that Vaccination has started. But it has been a long story full of greed by none other than GOI (Government of India) or the ruling party BJP. Where should I start with. I probably should start with this excellent article done by Priyanka Pulla. It is interesting and fascinating to know how vaccines are made, at least one way which she shared. She also shared about the Cutter Incident which happened in the late 50 s. The response was on expected lines, character assassination of her and the newspaper they published but could not critique any of the points made by her. Not a single point that she didn t think about x or y. Interestingly enough, in January 2021 Bharati Biotech was supposed to be share phase 3 trial data but hasn t been put up in public domain till May 2021. In fact, there have been a few threads raised by both well-meaning Indians as well as others globally especially on twitter to which GOI/ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) is silent. Another interesting point to note is that Russia did say in its press release that it is possible that their vaccine may not be standard (read inactivation on their vaccines and another way is possible but would take time, again Brazil has objected, but India hasn t till date.) What also has been interesting is the homegrown B.1.617 lineage or known as double mutant . This was first discovered from my own state, Maharashtra and then transported around the world. There is also B.1.618 which was found in West Bengal and is same or supposed to be similar to the one found in South Africa. This one is known as Triple mutant . About B.1.618 we don t know much other than knowing that it is much more easily transferable, much more infectious. Most countries have banned flights from India and I cannot fault them anyway. Hell, when even our diplomats do not care for procedures to be followed during the pandemic then how a common man is supposed to do. Of course, now for next month, Mr. Modi was supposed to go and now will not attend the G7 meeting. Whether, it is because he would have to face the press (the only Prime Minister and the only Indian Prime Minister who never has faced free press.) or because the Indian delegation has been disinvited, we would never know.

A good article which shares lots of lows with how things have been done in India has been an article by Arundhati Roy. And while the article in itself is excellent and shares a bit of the bitter truth but is still incomplete as so much has been happening. The problem is that the issue manifests in so many ways, it is difficult to hold on. As Arundhati shared, should we just look at figures and numbers and hold on, or should we look at individual ones, for e.g. the one shared in Outlook India. Or the one shared by Dr. Dipshika Ghosh who works in Covid ICU in some hospital

Dr. Dipika Ghosh sharing an incident in Covid Ward

Interestingly as well, while in the vaccine issue, Brazil Anvisa doesn t know what they are doing or the regulator just isn t knowledgeable etc. (statements by various people in GOI, when it comes to testing kits, the same is an approver.)

ICMR/DGCI approving internationally validated kits, Press release.

Twitter In the midst of all this, one thing that many people have forgotten and seem to have forgotten that Twitter and other tools are used by only the elite. The reason why the whole thing has become serious now than in the first phase is because the elite of India have also fallen sick and dying which was not the case so much in the first phase. The population on Twitter is estimated to be around 30-34 million and people who are everyday around 20 odd million or so, which is what 2% of the Indian population which is estimated to be around 1.34 billion. The other 98% don t even know that there is something like twitter on which you can ask help. Twitter itself is exclusionary in many ways, with both the emoticons, the language and all sorts of things. There is a small subset who does use Twitter in regional languages, but they are too small to write anything about. The main language is English which does become a hindrance to lot of people.

Censorship Censorship of Indians critical of Govt. mishandling has been non-stop. Even U.S. which usually doesn t interfere into India s internal politics was forced to make an exception. But of course, this has been on deaf ears. There is and was a good thread on Twitter by Gaurav Sabnis, a friend, fellow Puneite now settled in U.S. as a professor.

Gaurav on Trump-Biden on vaccination of their own citizens

Now just to surmise what has been happened in India and what has been happening in most of the countries around the world. Most of the countries have done centralization purchasing of the vaccine and then is distributed by the States, this is what we understand as co-operative federalism. While last year, GOI took a lot of money under the shady PM Cares fund for vaccine purchase, donations from well-meaning Indians as well as Industries and trade bodies. Then later, GOI said it would leave the states hanging and it is they who would have to buy vaccines from the manufacturers. This is again cheap politics. The idea behind it is simple, GOI knows that almost all the states are strapped for cash. This is not new news, this I have shared a couple of months back. The problem has been that for the last 6-8 months no GST meeting has taken place as shared by Punjab s Finance Minister Amarinder Singh. What will happen is that all the states will fight in-between themselves for the vaccine and most of them are now non-BJP Governments. The idea is let the states fight and somehow be on top. So, the pandemic, instead of being a public health issue has become something of on which politics has to played. The news on whatsapp by RW media is it s ok even if a million or two also die, as it is India is heavily populated. Although that argument vanishes for those who lose their dear and near ones. But that just isn t the issue, the issue goes much more deeper than that Oxygen:12%
Remedisivir:12%
Sanitiser:12%
Ventilator:12%
PPE:18%
Ambulances 28% Now all the products above are essential medical equipment and should be declared as essential medical equipment and should have price controls on which GST is levied. In times of pandemic, should the center be profiting on those. States want to let go and even want the center to let go so that some relief is there to the public, while at the same time make them as essential medical equipment with price controls. But GOI doesn t want to. Leaders of opposition parties wrote open letters but no effect. What is sad to me is how Ambulances are being taxed at 28%. Are they luxury items or sin goods ? This also reminds of the recent discovery shared by Mr. Pappu Yadav in Bihar. You can see the color of ambulances as shared by Mr. Yadav, and the same news being shared by India TV news showing other ambulances. Also, the weak argument being made of not having enough drivers. Ideally, you should have 2-3 people, both 9-1-1 and Chicago Fire show 2 people in ambulance but a few times they have also shown to be flipped over. European seems to have three people in ambulance, also they are also much more disciplined as drivers, at least an opinion shared by an American expat.

Pappu Yadav, President Jan Adhikar Party, Bihar May 11, 2021

What is also interesting to note is GOI plays this game of Health is State subject and health is Central subject depending on its convenience. Last year, when it invoked the Epidemic and DMA Act it was a Central subject, now when bodies are flowing down the Ganges and pyres being lit everywhere, it becomes a State subject. But when and where money is involved, it again becomes a Central subject. The States are also understanding it, but they are fighting on too many fronts.

Snippets from Karnataka High Court hearing today, 13th March 2021

One of the good things is most of the High Courts have woken up. Many of the people on the RW think that the Courts are doing Judicial activism . And while there may be an iota of truth in it, the bitter truth is that many judges or relatives or their helpers have diagnosed and some have even died due to Covid. In face of the inevitable, what can they do. They are hauling up local Governments to make sure they are accountable while at the same time making sure that they get access to medical facilities. And I as a citizen don t see any wrong in that even if they are doing it for selfish reasons. Because, even if justice is being done for selfish reasons, if it does improve medical delivery systems for the masses, it is cool. If it means that the poor and everybody else are able to get vaccinations, oxygen and whatever they need, it is cool. Of course, we are still seeing reports of patients spending in the region of INR 50k and more for each day spent in hospital. But as there are no price controls, judges cannot do anything unless they want to make an enemy of the medical lobby in the country. A good story on medicines and what happens in rural areas, see no further than Laakhon mein ek.

Allahabad High Court hauling Uttar Pradesh Govt. for lack of Oxygen is equal to genocide, May 11, 2021

The censorship is not just related to takedown requests on twitter but nowadays also any articles which are critical of the GOI s handling. I have been seeing many articles which have shared facts and have been critical of GOI being taken down. Previously, we used to see 404 errors happen 7-10 years down the line and that was reasonable. Now we see that happen, days weeks or months. India seems to be turning more into China and North Korea and become more anti-science day-by-day

Fake websites Before going into fake websites, let me start with a fake newspaper which was started by none other than the Gujarat CM Mr. Modi in 2005 .

Gujarat Satya Samachar 2005 launched by Mr. Modi.

And if this wasn t enough than on Feb 8, 2005, he had invoked Official Secrets Act

Mr. Modi invoking Official Secrets Act, Feb 8 2005 Gujarat Samachar

The headlines were In Modi s regime press freedom is in peril-Down with Modi s dictatorship. So this was a tried and tested technique. The above information was shared by Mr. Urvish Kothari, who incidentally also has his own youtube channel. Now cut to 2021, and we have a slew of fake websites being done by the same party. In fact, it seems they started this right from 2011. A good article on BBC itself tells the story. Hell, Disinfo.eu which basically combats disinformation in EU has a whole pdf chronicling how BJP has been doing it. Some of the sites it shared are

Times of New York
Manchester Times
Times of Los Angeles
Manhattan Post
Washington Herald
and many more. The idea being take any site name which sounds similar to a brand name recognized by Indians and make fool of them. Of course, those of who use whois and other such tools can easily know what is happening. Two more were added to the list yesterday, Daily Guardian and Australia Today. There are of course, many features which tell them apart from genuine websites. Most of these are on shared hosting rather than dedicated hosting, most of these are bought either from Godaddy and Bluehost. While Bluehost used to be a class act once upon a time, both the above will do anything as long as they get money. Don t care whether it s a fake website or true. Capitalism at its finest or worst depending upon how you look at it. But most of these details are lost on people who do not know web servers, at all and instead think see it is from an exotic site, a foreign site and it chooses to have same ideas as me. Those who are corrupt or see politics as a tool to win at any cost will not see it as evil. And as a gentleman Raghav shared with me, it is so easy to fool us. An example he shared which I had forgotten. Peter England which used to be an Irish brand was bought by Aditya Birla group way back in 2000. But even today, when you go for Peter England, the way the packaging is done, the way the prices are, more often than not, people believe they are buying the Irish brand. While sharing this, there is so much of Naom Chomsky which comes to my mind again and again

Caste Issues I had written about caste issues a few times on this blog. This again came to the fore as news came that a Hindu sect used forced labor from Dalit community to make a temple. This was also shared by the hill. In both, Mr. Joshi doesn t tell that if they were volunteers then why their passports have been taken forcibly, also I looked at both minimum wage prevailing in New Jersey as a state as well as wage given to those who are in the construction Industry. Even in minimum wage, they were giving $1 when the prevailing minimum wage for unskilled work is $12.00 and as Mr. Joshi shared that they are specialized artisans, then they should be paid between $23 $30 per hour. If this isn t exploitation, then I don t know what is. And this is not the first instance, the first instance was perhaps the case against Cisco which was done by John Doe. While I had been busy with other things, it seems Cisco had put up both a demurrer petition and a petition to strike which the Court stayed. This seemed to all over again a type of apartheid practice, only this time applied to caste. The good thing is that the court stayed the petition. Dr. Ambedkar s statement if Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world problem given at Columbia University in 1916, seems to be proven right in today s time and sadly has aged well. But this is not just something which is there only in U.S. this is there in India even today, just couple of days back, a popular actress Munmun Dutta used a casteist slur and then later apologized giving the excuse that she didn t know Hindi. And this is patently false as she has been in the Bollywood industry for almost now 16-17 years. This again, was not an isolated incident. Seema Singh, a lecturer in IIT-Kharagpur abused students from SC, ST backgrounds and was later suspended. There is an SC/ST Atrocities Act but that has been diluted by this Govt. A bit on the background of Dr. Ambedkar can be found at a blog on Columbia website. As I have shared and asked before, how do we think, for what reason the Age of Englightenment or the Age of Reason happened. If I were a fat monk or a priest who was privileges, would I have let Age of Enlightenment happen. It broke religion or rather Church which was most powerful to not so powerful and that power was more distributed among all sort of thinkers, philosophers, tinkers, inventors and so on and so forth.

Situation going forward I believe things are going to be far more complex and deadly before they get better. I had to share another term called Comorbidities which fortunately or unfortunately has also become part of twitter lexicon. While I have shared what it means, it simply means when you have an existing ailment or condition and then Coronavirus attacks you. The Virus will weaken you. The Vaccine in the best case just stops the damage, but the damage already done can t be reversed. There are people who advise and people who are taking steroids but that again has its own side-effects. And this is now, when we are in summer. I am afraid for those who have recovered, what will happen to them during the Monsoons. We know that the Virus attacks most the lungs and their quality of life will be affected. Even the immune system may have issues. We also know about the inflammation. And the grant that has been given to University of Dundee also has signs of worry, both for people like me (obese) as well as those who have heart issues already. In other news, my city which has been under partial lockdown since a month, has been extended for another couple of weeks. There are rumors that the same may continue till the year-end even if it means economics goes out of the window.There is possibility that in the next few months something like 2 million odd Indians could die

The above is a conversation between Karan Thapar and an Oxford Mathematician Dr. Murad Banaji who has shared that the under-counting of cases in India is huge. Even BBC shared an article on the scope of under-counting. Of course, those on the RW call of the evidence including the deaths and obituaries in newspapers as a narrative . And when asked that when deaths used to be in the 20 s or 30 s which has jumped to 200-300 deaths and this is just the middle class and above. The poor don t have the money to get wood and that is the reason you are seeing the bodies in Ganges whether in Buxar Bihar or Gajipur, Uttar Pradesh. The sights and visuals makes for sorry reading

Pandit Ranjan Mishra son on his father s death due to unavailability of oxygen, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, 11th May 2021.

For those who don t know Pandit Ranjan Mishra was a renowned classical singer. More importantly, he was the first person to suggest Mr. Modi s name as a Prime Ministerial Candidate. If they couldn t fulfil his oxygen needs, then what can be expected for the normal public.

Conclusion Sadly, this time I have no humorous piece to share, I can however share a documentary which was shared on Feluda . I have shared about Feluda or Prodosh Chandra Mitter a few times on this blog. He has been the answer of James Bond from India. I have shared previously about The Golden Fortress . An amazing piece of art by Satyajit Ray. I watched that documentary two-three times. I thought, mistakenly that I am the only fool or fan of Feluda in Pune to find out that there are people who are even more than me. There were so many facets both about Feluda and master craftsman Satyajit Ray that I was unaware about. I was just simply amazed. I even shared few of the tidbits with mum as well, although now she has been truly hooked to Korean dramas. The only solace from all the surrounding madness. So, if you have nothing to do, you can look up his books, read them and then see the movies. And my first recommendation would be the Golden Fortress. The only thing I would say, do not have high hopes. The movie is beautiful. It starts slow and then picks up speed, just like a train. So, till later. Update The Mass surveillance part I could not do justice do hence removed it at the last moment. It actually needs its whole space, article. There is so much that the Govt. is doing under the guise of the pandemic that it is difficult to share it all in one article. As it is, the article is big

• Principles in Machine Learning
• Principles in Machine Learning /2
• Occam s Razor Principle of Parsimony
• Simple Models
• Computational Learning Theory
• Probably Approximately Correct Learning (PAC Learning) /1
• Probably Approximately Correct Learning (PAC Learning) /2
• PAC Learnable Examples
• VC Dimension (Vapnik-Chervonenkis-Dimension )
• VC Dimension Example
• Error Bounds and the VC Dimension
• No Free Lunch
• No Free Lunch Theorem
• No Free Lunch Theorem Explanation
• Bias-Variance Tradeoff
• Bias-Variance Tradeoff
• Bias vs. Variance
• Bias-Variance Decomposition
• Bias-Variance Illustration
• Different Kinds of Bias
• Data Often Has Bias
• AI Can Be Sexist and Racist
• Relationships

• Correlation does not Imply Causation
• Correlation does not Imply Causation /2
• Correlation does not Imply Causation /3
• Correlation with Statistics Classes
• Multiple Testing Problem
• Bonferroni s Principle Multiple Testing Problem
• Multiple Testing Problem

• Overfitting
• Underfitting and Overfitting
• Overfitting Decision Tree
• Overfitting Due to Noise
• Overfitting Due to Insufficient Examples

• Curse of Dimensionality
• Combinatorial Explosion
• Concentration of Distances
• Data is in the Margins
• Illustration: Shrinking Hyperspheres
• Illustration: Shrinking Hyperspheres /2
• Effect on Search in High Dimensionality
• Summary

• Intrinsic Dimensionality
• Estimating Intrinsic Dimensionality
• Angle-Based Intrinsic Dimensionality Intuition
• Angle-Based Intrinsic Dimensionality (ABID) /2
• Consequences & Solutions

• Distance Functions
• Distances, Metrics and Similarities
• Distances, Metrics and Similarities /2
• Distance Functions
• Distance Functions /2
• Similarity Functions
• Distances for Binary Data
• Jaccard Coefficient for Sets
• Example Distances for Categorical Data
• Mahalanobis Distance
• Scaling & Normalization
• To Scale, or not to Scale?
• To Scale, or not to Scale? /2

• Classification
• Prediction Problems
• Classification: A Multi-Stage Process
• Classification Problem
• Example
• Process of Constructing a Model
• Process of Applying the Model

• Evaluation and Selection of Classifiers
• Quick Recap: Classification
• Classifier Evaluation: Confusion Matrix
• Classifier Evaluation: Accuracy and Error-Rate
• Precision, Recall, and F-measure
• Classifier Evaluation: Multi-Class Confusion Matrix
• Training Accuracy vs. Accuarcy on New Data
• The Need for Validation
• Holdout Validation
• Cross-Validation
• Bootstrap Validation
• Considerations for Selecting a Model

• Bayesian Classification
• Bayes Classification: Motivation
• Bayes Theorem: Review
• Optimal Bayes Classifier
• Na ve Bayes Classifier
• Probability Models for a Single Attribute
• Multivariate Gaussian Bayes Classification
• Na ve Bayes Classifier: Example
• Na ve Bayes Classifier: Computational Aspects
• Na ve Bayes Classifier: Comments & Discussion

• Nearest-Neighbor Classification
• Nearest Neighbor Classifier Motivation
• Nearest Neighbor Classifier: Foundations
• Nearest Neighbor Classifier: Example
• Nearest Neighbor Classification: Example
• Nearest Neighbor Decision Rules

• Nearest-Neighbor as Density estimation
• Nearest Neighbor Classification and Density Estimation
• Predicting with Kernel Density Estimation with k=1,3,5,15
• Error Probability of Nearest Neighbors
• Nearest Neighbor Regression
• Nearest-Neighbor Classification: Comments & Discussion

• Decision Tree Learning
• Example (Variant of a Dataset in )
• Decision Tree Example
• Decision Trees as Rule-based Systems
• Basic Notions
• Constructing a Decision Tree /1
• Visual Interpretation of Decision Trees on R
• Constructing a Decision Tree /2
• Decision Tree Classification: Example

• Decision Tree Splitting
• Split for Categorical Attributes
• Split for Numeric Attributes
• Best Split Example
• Quality Measures for Splits
• Measure of Impurity: Gini Index
• Gini-Index: Example
• Information Gain
• Information Gain: Example
• Information Gain: Gain-Ratio
• Gain-Ratio: Beispiel
• Classification Error
• Gini, Entropy and Classification Error
• Comparing Split Selection Measures
• Splits for Numerical Attributes

• Ensembles and Meta-Learning
• Ensembles and Meta-Learning
• Error-Rate of Ensembles
• Random Forests
• Boosting
• Random Forest Classification: Example
• Gradient Boosting Classification: Example

• Support Vector Machine Motivation
• Support Vector Machines
• Support Vector Machines /2
• Finding the Best Separating Hyperplane
• Maximum Margin Hyperplane

• Affine Hyperplanes and Scalar Products
• Affine Hyperplanes
• Scalar Products
• Affine Hyperplanes /2

• Maximum Margin Hyperplane
• A Na ve Attempt
• Support Vectors Separable Data
• Computing the Maximum Margin Hyperplane (MMH)
• Computing the Maximum Margin Hyperplane (MMH) /2
• Boundary of the Maximum Margin Hyperplane (MMH)
• Deriving the Primal SVM Optimization Problem

• Training Support Vector Machines
• Optimization Problem
• Karush-Kuhn-Tucker KKT Conditions
• Switching to the Dual Problem
• Classification with the Dual SVM
• Optimizing the i
• Optimizing SVMs
• Sequential Minimal Optimization
• Further Improvements

• Non-linear SVM and the Kernel Trick
• Nonlinear SVM
• Nonlinear SVM /2
• Kernel Functions
• Soft Margin SVM Classifier
• Soft Margin SVM Classifier /2
• Soft Margin SVM Classifier /3
• Soft Margin SVM Classifier /4

• SVM Extensions and Conclusions
• Separation of more than 2 Classes
• Support Vector Regression
• Support Vector Regression Optimization Problem
• Support Vector Regression Dual
• Support Vector Data Description (SVDD)
• SVDD Dual Problem
• Support Vector Clustering
• SVMs: Comments & Discussion

• Neural Networks
• Biological Background (Simplified)
• Biological Background (Simplified) /2

• Threshold Logic Units
• Threshold Logic Units (TLUs)
• Threshold Logic Units Example
• Geometric Interpretation of TLUs
• Exclusive-Or (XOR) Problem
• Exclusive-Or (XOR) Problem /2
• Exclusive-Or (XOR) Problem /3
• Universality of TLUs
• Mark I Perceptron

• General Artificial Neural Networks
• Simplifying Threshold Logic Units
• Weight Matrices
• From TLUs to Multilayer Perceptrons
• Some Activation Functions
• Some Activation Functions /2
• Some Activation Functions /3
• Some Activation Functions /4

• Learning Neural Networks with Backpropagation
• Basic Gradient Descent
• Stochastic Gradient Descent
• Learning Single-Layer Perceptrons
• Backpropagation
• Training with Backpropagation

• Deep Neural Networks
• Universal Approximation Theorem
• Deep vs. Wide Neural Networks
• High vs. Low Dimensionality
• (Early) Problems of Deep Learning
• Autoencoders
• Layer-wise Pre-Training of Deep Neural Networks
• Dropout Regularization
• Batch Normalization
• Choosing Activation Functions

• Convolutional Neural Networks
• Depth vs. Convolutional Kernel Size
• Increasing the Training Data

• Recurrent Neural Networks
• Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) on Sequences
• Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN)
• Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM)
• Further Developments

• Conclusion
• Other Classifiers
• Problems of Classification

• Cluster Analysis Introduction
• What is Clustering?
• What is Clustering? /2
• Applications of Clustering
• Basic Steps for Clustering

• Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering
• Distance of Clusters
• AGNES Agglomerative Nesting
• AGNES Agglomerative Nesting /2
• Extracting Clusters from a Dendrogram
• Benefits and Limitations of HAC

• Accelerating Hierarchical Clustering
• Complexity of Hierarchical Clustering
• Anderberg s Caching
• AGNES vs. Anderberg , NNChain , SLINK
• Example: Hierarchical Clustering with Anderberg

• K-means Clustering
• The Sum of Squares Objective
• The Standard Algorithm (Lloyd s Algorithm)
• Non-determinism & Non-optimality
• Initialization
• Initialization /2
• Complexity of k-Means Clustering

• Accelerating k-Means Clustering
• k-Means++: Weighted Random Initialization
• Making k-means Faster
• Bounding the Distances Elkan and Hamerly
• Hamerly s k-means
• Example: k-Means Clustering with Hamerly s Algorithm
• Speedup with Hamerly, Elkan, and Exponion

• Limitations of k-Means Clustering
• Benefits and Drawbacks of k-Means
• Choosing the Optimum k for k-Means
• Limitations of k-Means

• Extensions of k-Means Clustering
• k-Means and Distances
• k-Means Minimizes Sum of Squares, not Euclidean Distance!
• k-Means Variations for Other Distances
• Spherical k-Means for Text Clustering
• Pre-processing and Post-processing

• Partitioning Around Medoids (k-Medoids)
• k-medoids Clustering
• Partitioning Around Medoids
• Algorithm: Partitioning Around Medoids
• Algorithm: Partitioning Around Medoids /2
• Change in TD
• Finding the Best Swap Faster
• k-Medoids, k-Means style
• Example for the Inferiority of k-Means Style k-Medoids

• Gaussian Mixture Modeling Introduction
• Expectation-Maximization in Clustering
• Fitting Multiple Gaussian Distributions
• Gaussian Mixture Modeling as E-M-Optimization
• Algorithm: EM Clustering
• Numerical Issues in GMM

• Gaussian Mixture Modeling Demo

• BIRCH and BETULA
• BIRCH Clustering
• BIRCH Clustering Features
• BIRCH Distances
• BIRCH CF-Tree
• BETULA Cluster Features
• BETULA Distance Computations
• Accelerating k-Means with BIRCH and BETULA
• Accelerating GMM with BETULA

• Motivation Density-Based Clustering
• Density-based Clustering: Core Idea

• Density-Based Clustering Fundamentals
• Density-based Clustering: Foundations
• Density-based Clustering: Foundations /2
• Density-based Clustering: Foundations /3
• Density-reachability and Density-connectivity
• Density-reachability

• DBSCAN
• Clustering Approach
• Abstract DBSCAN Algorithm
• DBSCAN Algorithm
• DBSCAN Algorithm /2
• DBSCAN Algorithm /3
• DBSCAN in Context

• DBSCAN Parameterization
• Choosing DBSCAN parameters
• Choosing DBSCAN parameters /2
• Choosing DBSCAN parameters /3

• DBSCAN Extensions
• Generalized Density-based Clustering
• Grid-based Accelerated DBSCAN
• Anytime Density-Based Clustering (AnyDBC)
• Hierarchical DBSCAN* (HDBSCAN*)
• Improved DBSCAN Variations

• OPTICS Clustering
• Density-based Hierarchical Clustering
• Density-based Hierarchical Clustering /2
• OPTICS Clustering
• Cluster Order
• OPTICS Algorithm

• Cluster Extraction from OPTICS Plots
• OPTICS Reachability Plots
• Extracting Clusters from OPTICS Reachability Plots
• Role of the Parameters and minPts

• Understanding the OPTICS Cluster Order
• Properties of the OPTICS Cluster Order
• Cluster Order as Serialized Spanning Tree
• OPTICS as Density Spanning Trees
• Cluster Order to Dendrograms

• Spectral Clustering
• Minimum Cuts
• Graph Laplacian
• From Clustering Graphs to Clustering Data
• Spectral Clustering
• Spectral Clustering is Related to DBSCAN

• Biclustering and Subspace Clustering
• Biclustering & Subspace Clustering
• Bicluster Patterns
• Density-based Subspace Clustering
• Subspace Clustering with Apriori-Style Search
• Correlation Clustering
• 4C: Computing Correlation Connected Clusters
• Hough Transform
• CASH: Robust Clustering in Arbitrarily Oriented Subspaces

• Further Clustering Approaches
• CURE Clustering
• ROCK Clustering
• CHAMELEON
• Affinity Propagation Clustering
• Other Density-based Clustering Algorithms
• Further Clustering Approaches

There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.

"Oh Aslan," said she, "it was kind of you to come." "I have been here all the time," said he, "but you have just made me visible." "Aslan!" said Lucy almost a little reproachfully. "Don't make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible!" "It did," said Aslan. "Did you think I wouldn't obey my own rules?"

"My son," said Ramandu, "it is not for you, a son of Adam, to know what faults a star can commit."

"My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan's country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise and Peepiceek shall be the head of the talking mice in Narnia."

screenshot showing power consumption of server

• Friendica (MariaDB): 31 GB for 700 users
• Mastodon (PostgreSQL): 15 GB for 1000 users
• Matrix-Synapse (PostgreSQL): 5 GB for 1 user
• XMPP (PostgreSQL): 0.4 GB for 200 users

• Webserver VM (Matrix, Friendica & Mastodon): 13410130 s / 130%
• XMPP VM: 944275 s / 5.4%

• Friendica: 11575 lines
• Matrix: 8174 lines
• Mastodon: 3212 lines

This is the least important chapter in this book. At least, that's what we've been told by the React team. They didn't specifically say, "this is the least important chapter, don't write it." They've only issued a series of tweets warning educators and evangelists that much of their work in this area will very soon be outdated. All of this will change.

New age communication So first, we had email and usenet. As I mentioned above, email was designed with fine intentions. Intentions that make it stand even today, independently. But not everything, back then, was that great either. For example, instant messaging was very closed and centralised then too. Things like: ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger; all were centralized. I wonder if people still have access to their ICQ logs. Not much has chagned in the current day either. We now have domination by: Facebook Messenger, Google Whatever the new marketing term they introdcue, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal etc. To my knowledge, they are all centralized. Over all this time, I m yet to see a product come up with good (business) intentions, to really empower the end user. In this information age, the most invaluable data is user activity. That s one data everyone is after. If you decline to share that bit of free data in exchange for the free services, mind you, that that free service like Facebook, Google, Instagram, WhatsApp, Truecaller, Twitter; none of it would come to you at all. Try it out. So the reality is that while you may not be valuating the data you offer in exchange correctly, there s a lot that is reaped from it. But still, I think each user has (and should have) the freedom to opt in for these tech giants and give them their personal bit, for free services in return. That is a decent barter deal. And it is a choice that one if free to choose

Retaining my data I m fond of keeping an archive folder in my mailbox. A folder that holds significant events in the form of an email usually, if documented. Over the years, I chose to resort to the email format because I felt it was more reliable in the longer term than any other formats. The next best would be plain text. In my lifetime, I have learnt a lot from the internet; so it is natural that my preference has been with it. Mailing Lists, IRCs, HOWTOs, Guides, Blog posts; all have helped. And over the years, I ve come across hundreds of such content that I d always like to preserve. Now there are multiple ways to preserving data. Like, for example, big tech giants. In most usual cases, your data for your lifetime, should be fine with a tech giant. In some odd scenarios, you may be unlucky if you relied on a service provider that went bankrupt. But seriously, I think users should be fine if they host their data with Microsoft, Google etc; as long as they abide by their policies. There s also the catch of alignment. As the user, you should ensure to align (and transition) with the product offerings of your service provider. Otherwise, what may look constant and always reliable, will vanish in the blink of an eye. I guess Google Plus would be a good example. There was some Google Feed service too. Maybe Google Photos in the near decade future, just like Google Picasa in the previous (or current) decade.

History what is On the topic of retaining information, lets take a small drift. I still admire our ancestors. I don t know what went in their mind when they were documenting events in the form of scriptures, carvings, temples, churches, mosques etc; but one things for sure, they were able to leave a fine means of communication. They are all gone but a large number of those events are evident through the creations that they left. Some of those events have been strong enough that further rulers/invaders have had tough times trying to wipe it out from history. Remember, history is usually not the truth, but the statement to be believed by the teller. And the teller is usually the survivor, or the winner you may call. But still, the information retention techniques were better. I haven t visited, but admire whosoever built the Kailasa Temple, Ellora, without which, we d be made to believe what not by all invaders and rulers of the region. But the majestic standing of the temple, is a fine example of the history and the events that have occured in the past.

Ellora Temple - The majectic carving believed to be carved out of a single stone

Dominance has the power to rewrite history and unfortunately that s true and it has done its part. It is just that in a mere human s defined lifetime, it is not possible to witness the transtion from current to history, and say that I was there then and I m here now, and this is not the reality. And if not dominance, there s always the other bit, hearsay. With it, you can always put anything up for dispute. Because there s no way one can go back in time and produce a fine evidence. There s also a part about religion. Religion can be highly sentimental. And religion can be a solid way to get an agenda going. For example, in India - a country which today consitutionally is a secular country, there have been multiple attempts to discard the belief, that never ever did the thing called Ramayana exist. That the Rama Setu, nicely reworded as Adam s Bridge by who so ever, is a mere result of science. Now Rama, or Hanumana, or Ravana, or Valmiki, aren t going to come over and prove that that is true or false. So such subjects serve as a solid base to get an agenda going. And probably we ve even succeeded in proving and believing that there was never an event like Ramayana or the Mahabharata. Nor was there ever any empire other than the Moghul or the British Empire. But yes, whosoever made the Ellora Temple or the many many more of such creations, did a fine job of making a dent for the future, to know of what the history possibly could also be.

Enough of the drift So, in my opinion, having events documented is important. It d be nice to have skills documented too so that it can be passed over generations but that s a debatable topic. But events, I believe should be documented. And documented in the best possible ways so that its existence is not diminished. A documentation in the form of certain carvings on a rock is far more better than links and posts shared on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc. For one, these are all corporate entities with vested interests and can pretext excuse in the name of compliance and conformance. So, for the helpless state and generation I am in, I felt email was the best possible independent form of data retention in today s age. If I really had the resources, I d not rely on digital age. This age has no guarantee of retaining and recording information in any reliable manner. Instead, it is just mostly junk, which is manipulative and changeable, conditionally.

Email and RSS So for my communication, I like to prefer emails over any other means. That doesn t mean I don t use the current trends. I do. But this blog is mostly about penning my desires. And desire be to have communication over email format. Such is the case that for information useful over the internet, I crave to have it formatted in email for archival. RSS feeds is my most common mode of keeping track of information I care about. Not all that I care for is available in RSS feeds but hey such is life. And adaptability is okay. But my preference is still RSS. So I use RSS feeds through a fine software called feed2imap. A software that fits my bill fairly well. feed2imap is:

• An rss feed news aggregator
• Pulls and extracts news feeds in the form of an email
• Can push the converted email over pop/imap
• Can convert all image content to email mime attachment

In a gist, it makes the online content available to me offline in the most admired email format In my mail box, in today s day, my preferred email client is Evolution. It does a good job of dealing with such emails (rss feed items). An image example of accessing the rrs feed item through it is below

RSS News Item through Evolution

The good part is that my actual data is always independent of such MUAs. Tomorrow, as technology - trends - economics evolve, something new would come as a replacement but my data would still be mine.

Mobile trends Trends have shown. Data mobility is a commodity expectation now. As such, I wanted to have something fill in that gap for me. So that I could access my information - which I ve preferred in a format - easily in today s trendy options. I tried multiple options on my current preferred platform of choice for mobiles, i.e. Android. Finally I came across Aqua Mail, which fits in most of my requirements. Aqua Mail does

• Connect to my laptop over imap
• Can sync the requested folders
• Can sync requested data for offlince accessibility
• Can present the synchronized data in a quite flexible and customizable manner, to match my taste
• Has a very extensible User Interface, allowing me to customize it to my taste

Pictures can do a better job of describing my english words.

Aqua Mail Message List Interface

Aqua Mail Message View Normal

Aqua Mail Message View Zoomed - Fit to Screen

All of this done with no dependence on network connectivity, post the sync. And all information is stored is best possible simple format.

• Supporting a new game, that Otter doesn t know about yet, would usually not involve writing or modifying any computer programs.
• If Otter already has the necessary game elements (cards, say) all you need to do is write a spec file saying what should be on the table at the start of the game. For example, most Whist variants that start with a standard pack of 52 cards are already playable.
• You can play games where the rules change as the game goes along, or are made up by the players, or are too complicated to write as a computer program.
• House rules are no problem, since the computer isn t enforcing the rules - you and your friends are.
• Everyone can interact with different items on the game table, at any time. (Otter doesn t know about your game s turn-taking, so doesn t know whose turn it might be.)

The Debian Janitor is an automated system that commits fixes for (minor) issues in Debian packages that can be fixed by software. It gradually started proposing merges in early December. The first set of changes sent out ran lintian-brush on sid packages maintained in Git. This post is part of a series about the progress of the Janitor. The upstream ontologist is a project that extracts metadata about upstream projects in a consistent format. It does this with a combination of heuristics and reading ecosystem-specific metadata files, such as Python s setup.py, rust s Cargo.toml as well as e.g. scanning README files.

 % guess-upstream-metadata
 <string>:2: (INFO/1) Duplicate implicit target name: "contributing".
 Name: dulwich
 Repository: https://www.dulwich.io/code/
 X-Security-MD: https://github.com/dulwich/dulwich/tree/HEAD/SECURITY.md
 X-Version: 0.20.21
 Bug-Database: https://github.com/dulwich/dulwich/issues
 X-Summary: Python Git Library
 X-Description:  
   This is the Dulwich project.
   It aims to provide an interface to git repos (both local and remote) that
   doesn't call out to git directly but instead uses pure Python.
 X-License: Apache License, version 2 or GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.
 Bug-Submit: https://github.com/dulwich/dulwich/issues/new

Brief History

• 17th century: The Kingdom of Sikkim is founded by the Namgyal dynasty and ruled by Buddhist priest-kings known as the Chogyal.
• 1890: Sikkim becomes a princely state of British India.
• 1947: Sikkim continues its protectorate status with the Union of India, post-Indian-independence.
• 1973: Anti-royalist riots take place in front of the Chogyal's palace, by Nepalis seeking greater representation.
• 1975: Referendum leads to the deposition of the monarchy and Sikkim joins India as its 22nd state.

Languages

• Official: English, Nepali, Sikkimese/Bhotia and Lepcha
• Though Hindi and Nepali share the same script (Devanagari), they are not mutually intelligible. Yet, most people in Sikkim can understand and speak Hindi.

Ethnicity

• Nepalis: Migrated in large numbers (from Nepal) and soon became the dominant community
• Bhutias: People of Tibetan origin. Major inhabitants in Northern Sikkim.
• Lepchas: Original inhabitants of Sikkim

Food

• Tibetan/Nepali dishes (mostly consumed during winter)
  • Thukpa: Noodle soup, rich in spices and vegetables. Usually contains some form of meat. Common variations: Thenthuk and Gyathuk
  • Momos: Steamed or fried dumplings, usually with a meat filling.
  • Saadheko: Spicy marinated chicken salad.
  • Gundruk Soup: A soup made from Gundruk, a fermented leafy green vegetable.
  • Sinki : A fermented radish tap-root product, traditionally consumed as a base for soup and as a pickle. Eerily similar to Kimchi.
• While pork and beef are pretty common, finding vegetarian dishes is equally easy.
• Staple: Dal-Bhat with Subzi. Rice is a lot more common than wheat (rice) possibly due to greater carb content and proximity to West Bengal, India s largest producer of Rice.
• Good places to eat in Gangtok
  • Hamro Bhansa Ghar, Nimtho (Nepali)
  • Taste of Tibet
  • Dragon Wok (Chinese & Japanese)

Buddhism in Sikkim

• Bayul Demojong (Sikkim), is the most sacred Land in the Himalayas as per the belief of the Northern Buddhists and various religious texts.
• Sikkim was blessed by Guru Padmasambhava, the great Buddhist saint who visited Sikkim in the 8th century and consecrated the land.
• However, Buddhism is said to have reached Sikkim only in the 17th century with the arrival of three Tibetan monks viz. Rigdzin Goedki Demthruchen, Mon Kathok Sonam Gyaltshen & Rigdzin Legden Je at Yuksom. Together, they established a Buddhist monastery.
• In 1642 they crowned Phuntsog Namgyal as the first monarch of Sikkim and gave him the title of Chogyal, or Dharma Raja.
• The faith became popular through its royal patronage and soon many villages had their own monastery.
• Today Sikkim has over 200 monasteries.

Major monasteries

• Rumtek Monastery, 20Km from Gangtok
• Lingdum/Ranka Monastery, 17Km from Gangtok
• Phodong Monastery, 28Km from Gangtok
• Ralang Monastery, 10Km from Ravangla
• Tsuklakhang Monastery, Royal Palace, Gangtok
• Enchey Monastery, Gangtok
• Tashiding Monastery, 35Km from Ravangla

Reaching Sikkim

• Gangtok, being the capital, is easiest to reach amongst other regions, by public transport and shared cabs.
• By Air:
  • Pakyong (PYG) :
    • Nearest airport from Gangtok (about 1 hour away)
    • Tabletop airport
    • Reserved cabs cost around INR 1200.
    • As of Apr 2021, the only flights to PYG are from IGI (Delhi) and CCU (Kolkata).
  • Bagdogra (IXB) :
    • About 20 minutes from Siliguri and 4 hours from Gangtok.
    • Larger airport with flights to most major Indian cities.
    • Reserved cabs cost about INR 3000. Shared cabs cost about INR 350.
• By Train:
  • New Jalpaiguri (NJP) :
    • About 20 minutes from Siliguri and 4 hours from Gangtok.
    • Reserved cabs cost about INR 3000. Shared cabs from INR 350.
• By Road:
  • NH10 connects Siliguri to Gangtok
  • If you can t find buses plying to Gangtok directly, reach Siliguri and then take a cab to Gangtok.
• Sikkim Nationalised Transport Div. also runs hourly buses between Siliguri and Gangtok and daily buses on other common routes. They re cheaper than shared cabs.
• Wizzride also operates shared cabs between Siliguri/Bagdogra/NJP, Gangtok and Darjeeling. They cost about the same as shared cabs but pack in half as many people in luxury cars (Innova, Xylo, etc.) and are hence more comfortable.

---

Gangtok

• Time needed: 1D/1N
• Places to visit:
  • Hanuman Tok
  • Ganesh Tok
  • Tashi View Point [6,800ft]
  • MG Marg
  • Sikkim Zoo
  • Gangtok Ropeway
  • Enchey Monastery
  • Tsuklakhang Palace & Monastery
• Hostels: Tagalong Backpackers (would strongly recommend), Zostel Gangtok
• Places to chill: Travel Cafe, Caf Live & Loud and Gangtok Groove
• Places to shop: Lal Market and MG Marg

Getting Around

• Taxis operate on a reserved or shared basis. In case of the latter, you can pool with other commuters your taxis will pick up and drop en-route.
• Naturally shared taxis only operate on popular routes. The easiest way to get around Gangtok is to catch a shared cab from MG Marg.
• Reserved taxis for Gangtok sightseeing cost around INR 1000-1500, depending upon the spots you d like to see
• Key taxi/bus stands :
  • Deorali stand: For Darjeeling, Siliguri, Kalimpong
  • Vajra stand: For North & East Sikkim (Tsomgo Lake & Nathula)
  • Rumtek taxi: For Ravangla, Pelling, Namchi, Geyzing, Jorethang and Singtam.

Exploring Gangtok on an MTB

• If you'd like to explore Gangtok at your own pace, you could rent a cycle from Hub Outdoor or HillBike. I paid INR 600 for a day at HillBike.
• These are well-maintained geared mountain bikes, so adapting to inclines and declines should be a breeze, even for beginners.
• Cycling down from Ganesh Tok to Tashi View Point is an absolute delight and in my opinion, the best thing you can do in Gangtok.
• While it is a little unconventional and exhausting (uphill stretches), but a 100% recommended unless you ve been skipping leg day
• Pro tip : Make sure you use the right/back brake while decelerating downhill and not the left/front brake.
• Recommended route [3-5hrs, 20.3Km, 1770-2081ft] : Chandmari (HillBike) -> Sera Jhe Dro-Phen-Ling Monastery > Ganesh Tok > Tashi View Point > Bakthung Falls > Vajra Stand > Tsuklakhang Palace & Monastery > Enchey Monastery > Chandmari

---

North Sikkim

• The easiest & most economical way to explore North Sikkim is the 3D/2N package offered by shared-cab drivers.
• This includes food, permits, cab rides and accommodation (1N in Lachen and 1N in Lachung)
• The accommodation on both nights are at homestays with bare necessities, so keep your hopes low.
• In the spirit of sustainable tourism, you ll be asked to discard single-use plastic bottles, so please carry a bottle that you can refill along the way.
• Zero Point and Gurdongmer Lake are snow-capped throughout the year

3D/2N Shared-cab Package Itinerary

• Day 1
  • Gangtok (10am) - Chungthang - Lachung (stay)
• Day 2
  • Pre-lunch : Lachung (6am) - Yumthang Valley [12,139ft] - Zero Point - Lachung [15,300ft]
  • Post-lunch : Lachung - Chungthang - Lachen (stay)
• Day 3
  • Pre-lunch : Lachen (5am) - Kala Patthar - Gurdongmer Lake [16,910ft] - Lachen
  • Post-lunch : Lachen - Chungthang - Gangtok (7pm)
• This itinerary is idealistic and depends on the level of snowfall.
• Some drivers might switch up Day 2 and 3 itineraries by visiting Lachen and then Lachung, depending upon the weather.
• Areas beyond Lachen & Lachung are heavily militarized since the Indo-China border is only a few miles away.

---

East Sikkim

Zuluk and Silk Route

• Time needed: 2D/1N
• Zuluk [9,400ft] is a small hamlet with an excellent view of the eastern Himalayan range including the Kanchenjunga.
• Was once a transit point to the historic Silk Route from Tibet (Lhasa) to India (West Bengal).
• The drive from Gangtok to Zuluk takes at least four hours. Hence, it makes sense to spend the night at a homestay and space out your trip to Zuluk

Tsomgo Lake and Nathula

• Time Needed : 1D
• A Protected Area Permit is required to visit these places, due to their proximity to the Chinese border
• Tsomgo/Chhangu Lake [12,313ft]
  • Glacial lake, 40 km from Gangtok.
  • Remains frozen during the winter season.
  • You can also ride on the back of a Yak for INR 300
• Baba Mandir
  • An old temple dedicated to Baba Harbhajan Singh, a Sepoy in the 23rd Regiment, who died in 1962 near the Nathu La during Indo China war.
• Nathula Pass [14,450ft]
  • Located on the Indo-Tibetan border crossing of the Old Silk Route, it is one of the three open trading posts between India and China.
  • Plays a key role in the Sino-Indian Trade and also serves as an official Border Personnel Meeting(BPM) Point.
  • May get cordoned off by the Indian Army in event of heavy snowfall or for other security reasons.

---

West Sikkim

• Time needed: 3N/1N
• Hostels at Pelling : Mochilerro Ostillo

Itinerary

Day 1: Gangtok - Ravangla - Pelling

• Leave Gangtok early, for Ravangla through the Temi Tea Estate route.
• Spend some time at the tea garden and then visit Buddha Park at Ravangla
• Head to Pelling from Ravangla

Day 2: Pelling sightseeing

• Hire a cab and visit Skywalk, Pemayangtse Monastery, Rabdentse Ruins, Kecheopalri Lake, Kanchenjunga Falls.

Day 3: Pelling - Gangtok/Siliguri

• Wake up early to catch a glimpse of Kanchenjunga at the Pelling Helipad around sunrise
• Head back to Gangtok on a shared-cab
• You could take a bus/taxi back to Siliguri if Pelling is your last stop.

---

Darjeeling

• In my opinion, Darjeeling is lovely for a two-day detour on your way back to Bagdogra/Siliguri and not any longer (unless you re a Bengali couple on a honeymoon)
• Once a part of Sikkim, Darjeeling was ceded to the East India Company after a series of wars, with Sikkim briefly receiving a grant from EIC for gifting Darjeeling to the latter
• Post-independence, Darjeeling was merged with the state of West Bengal.

Itinerary

Day 1 :

• Take a cab from Gangtok to Darjeeling (shared-cabs cost INR 300 per seat)
• Reach Darjeeling by noon and check in to your Hostel. I stayed at Hideout.
• Spend the evening visiting either a monastery (or the Batasia Loop), Nehru Road and Mall Road.
• Grab dinner at Glenary whilst listening to live music.

Day 2:

• Wake up early to catch the sunrise and a glimpse of Kanchenjunga at Tiger Hill. Since Tiger Hill is 10km from Darjeeling and requires a permit, book your taxi in advance.
• Alternatively, if you don t want to get up at 4am or shell out INR1500 on the cab to Tiger Hill, walk to the Kanchenjunga View Point down Mall Road
• Next, queue up outside Keventers for breakfast with a view in a century-old cafe
• Get a cab at Gandhi Road and visit a tea garden (Happy Valley is the closest) and the Ropeway. I was lucky to meet 6 other backpackers at my hostel and we ended up pooling the cab at INR 200 per person, with INR 1400 being on the expensive side, but you could bargain.
• Get lunch, buy some tea at Golden Tips, pack your bags and hop on a shared-cab back to Siliguri. It took us about 4hrs to reach Siliguri, with an hour to spare before my train.
• If you ve still got time on your hands, then check out the Peace Pagoda and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (Toy Train). At INR 1500, I found the latter to be too expensive and skipped it.

---

Tips and hacks

• Download offline maps, especially when you re exploring Northern Sikkim.
• Food and booze are the cheapest in Gangtok. Stash up before heading to other regions.
• Keep your Aadhar/Passport handy since you need permits to travel to North & East Sikkim.
• In rural areas and some cafes, you may get to try Rhododendron Wine, made from Rhododendron arboreum a.k.a Gurans. Its production is a little hush-hush since the flower is considered holy and is also the National Flower of Nepal.
• If you don t want to invest in a new jacket, boots or a pair of gloves, you can always rent them at nominal rates from your hotel or little stores around tourist sites.
• Check the weather of a region before heading there. Low visibility and precipitation can quite literally dampen your experience.
• Keep your itinerary flexible to accommodate for rest and impromptu plans.
• Shops and restaurants close by 8pm in Sikkim and Darjeeling. Plan for the same.

Carry

• a couple of extra pairs of socks (woollen, if possible)
• a pair of slippers to wear indoors
• a reusable water bottle
• an umbrella
• a power bank
• a couple of tablets of Diamox. Helps deal with altitude sickness
• extra clothes and wet bags since you may not get a chance to wash/dry your clothes
• a few passport size photographs

Shared-cab hacks

• Intercity rides can be exhausting. If you can afford it, pay for an additional seat.
• Call shotgun on the drives beyond Lachen and Lachung. The views are breathtaking.
• Return cabs tend to be cheaper (WB cabs travelling from SK and vice-versa)

Cost

• My median daily expenditure (back when I went to Sikkim in early March 2021) was INR 1350.
• This includes stay (bunk bed), food, wine and transit (shared cabs)
• In my defence, I splurged on food, wine and extra seats in shared cabs, but if you re on a budget, you could easily get by on INR 1 - 1.2k per day.
• For a 9-day trip, I ended up shelling out nearly INR 15k, including 2AC trains to & from Kolkata
• Note : Summer (March to May) and Autumn (October to December) are peak seasons, and thereby more expensive to travel around.

---

Souvenirs and things you should buy

Buddhist souvenirs :

• Colourful Prayer Flags (great for tying on bikes or behind car windshields)
• Miniature Prayer/Mani Wheels
• Lucky Charms, Pendants and Key Chains
• Cham Dance masks and robes
• Singing Bowls
• Common symbols: Om mani padme hum, Ashtamangala, Zodiac signs

Handicrafts & Handlooms

• Tibetan Yak Wool shawls, scarfs and carpets
• Sikkimese Ceramic cups
• Thangka Paintings

Edibles

• Darjeeling Tea (usually brewed and not boiled)
• Wine (Arucha Peach & Rhododendron)
• Dalle Khursani (Chilli) Paste and Pickle

Header Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com is licensed by CC 3.0 BY

The Debian Janitor is an automated system that commits fixes for (minor) issues in Debian packages that can be fixed by software. It gradually started proposing merges in early December. The first set of changes sent out ran lintian-brush on sid packages maintained in Git. This post is part of a series about the progress of the Janitor. In my last blogpost, I introduced the buildlog consultant - a tool that can identify many reasons why a Debian build failed. For example, here s a fragment of a build log where the Build-Depends lack python3-setuptools:

849 850 851 852 853 854 855 856 857 858

dpkg-buildpackage: info: host architecture amd64 fakeroot debian/rules clean dh clean --with python3,sphinxdoc --buildsystem=pybuild dh_auto_clean -O--buildsystem=pybuild I: pybuild base:232: python3.9 setup.py clean Traceback (most recent call last): File "/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/setup.py", line 2, in <module> from setuptools import setup ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'setuptools' E: pybuild pybuild:353: clean: plugin distutils failed with: exit code=1: python3.9 setup.py clean

The buildlog consultant can identify the line in bold as being key, and interprets it:

 % analyse-sbuild-log --json ~/build.log
  
    "stage": "build",
    "section": "Build",
    "lineno": 857,
    "kind": "missing-python-module",
    "details":  "module": "setuptools", "python_version": 3, "minimum_version": null 
  

 % apt-file search /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/setuptools/__init__.py
 python3-setuptools: /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/setuptools/__init__.py

 % deb-fix-build
 Using output directory /tmp/tmpyz0nkgqq
 Using sbuild chroot unstable-amd64-sbuild
 Using fixers:  
 Building debian packages, running 'sbuild --no-clean-source -A -s -v'.
 Attempting to use fixer upstream requirement fixer(apt) to address MissingPythonDistribution('setuptools_scm', python_version=3, minimum_version='4')
 Using apt-file to search apt contents
 Adding build dependency: python3-setuptools-scm (>= 4)
 Building debian packages, running 'sbuild --no-clean-source -A -s -v'.
 Attempting to use fixer upstream requirement fixer(apt) to address MissingPythonDistribution('toml', python_version=3, minimum_version=None)
 Adding build dependency: python3-toml
 Building debian packages, running 'sbuild --no-clean-source -A -s -v'.
 Built 0.5.2-1- changes files at [ saneyaml_0.5.2-1_amd64.changes ].

% git log -p
 commit 5a1715f4c7273b042818fc75702f2284034c7277 (HEAD -> master)
 Author: Jelmer Vernoo  <jelmer@jelmer.uk>
 Date:   Sun Apr 4 02:35:56 2021 +0100
     Add missing build dependency on python3-toml.
 diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
 index 5b854dc..3b27b73 100644
 --- a/debian/control
 +++ b/debian/control
 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
  Rules-Requires-Root: no
  Standards-Version: 4.5.1
 -Build-Depends: debhelper-compat (= 12), dh-sequence-python3, python3-all, python3-setuptools (>= 50), python3-wheel, python3-setuptools-scm (>= 4)
 +Build-Depends: debhelper-compat (= 12), dh-sequence-python3, python3-all, python3-setuptools (>= 50), python3-wheel, python3-setuptools-scm (>= 4), python3-toml
  Testsuite: autopkgtest-pkg-python
  Source: python-saneyaml
  Priority: optional
 commit f03047da80fcd8468ee231fbc4cf8488d7a0acd1
 Author: Jelmer Vernoo  <jelmer@jelmer.uk>
 Date:   Sun Apr 4 02:35:34 2021 +0100
     Add missing build dependency on python3-setuptools-scm (>= 4).
 diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
 index a476cc2..5b854dc 100644
 --- a/debian/control
 +++ b/debian/control
 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
  Rules-Requires-Root: no
  Standards-Version: 4.5.1
 -Build-Depends: debhelper-compat (= 12), dh-sequence-python3, python3-all, python3-setuptools (>= 50), python3-wheel
 +Build-Depends: debhelper-compat (= 12), dh-sequence-python3, python3-all, python3-setuptools (>= 50), python3-wheel, python3-setuptools-scm (>= 4)
  Testsuite: autopkgtest-pkg-python
  Source: python-saneyaml
  Priority: optional

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

• my own hankering to get back into free software after too many years faced with daily struggles against proprietary software
• the upcoming GR in Debian.

in order to regain the confidence of the broader free software community, the FSF should make fundamental and lasting changes to its governance.

[There is] no reason to believe that the most recent FSF board statement signals any meaningful commitment to positive change.

The goal of the software freedom movement is to empower all people to control technology and thereby create a better society for everyone. Free Software is meant to serve everyone regardless of their age, ability or disability, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, religion or sexual orientation. This requires an inclusive and diverse environment that welcomes all contributors equally.

The crash So I somehow lost half my mail:

anarcat@angela:~(main)$ du -sh Maildir/
7,9G    Maildir/
anarcat@curie:~(main)$ du -sh Maildir
14G     Maildir
anarcat@marcos:~$ du -sh Maildir
8,0G    Maildir

Those are three different machines:

• angela: my laptop, not always on
• curie: my workstation, mostly always on
• marcos: my mail server, always on

Those mails are synchronized using a rather exotic system based on SSH, syncmaildir and rsendmail. The anomaly started on curie:

-- Reboot --
mar 22 16:13:00 curie systemd[3199]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:13:00 curie smd-pull[4801]: rm: impossible de supprimer '/home/anarcat/.smd/workarea/Maildir': Le dossier n'est pas vide
mar 22 16:13:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 16:13:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 16:13:00 curie systemd[3199]: Failed to start pull emails with syncmaildir.
mar 22 16:14:00 curie systemd[3199]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:14:00 curie smd-pull[7025]:  4091 ?        00:00:00 smd-push
mar 22 16:14:00 curie smd-pull[7025]: Already running.
mar 22 16:14:00 curie smd-pull[7025]: If this is not the case, remove /home/anarcat/.smd/lock by hand.
mar 22 16:14:00 curie smd-pull[7025]: any: smd-pushpull@localhost: TAGS: error::context(locking) probable-cause(another-instance-is-running) human-intervention(necessary) suggested-actions(run(kill 4091) run(rm /home/anarcat/.smd/lock))
mar 22 16:14:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 16:14:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 16:14:00 curie systemd[3199]: Failed to start pull emails with syncmaildir.

Then it seems like smd-push (from curie) started destroying the universe for some reason:

mar 22 16:20:00 curie systemd[3199]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:20:00 curie smd-pull[9319]:  4091 ?        00:00:00 smd-push
mar 22 16:20:00 curie smd-pull[9319]: Already running.
mar 22 16:20:00 curie smd-pull[9319]: If this is not the case, remove /home/anarcat/.smd/lock by hand.
mar 22 16:20:00 curie smd-pull[9319]: any: smd-pushpull@localhost: TAGS: error::context(locking) probable-cause(another-instance-is-running) human-intervention(necessary) suggested-actions(ru
mar 22 16:20:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 16:20:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 16:20:00 curie systemd[3199]: Failed to start pull emails with syncmaildir.
mar 22 16:21:34 curie smd-push[4091]: default: smd-client@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: stats::new-mails(0), del-mails(293920), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(26995)
mar 22 16:21:35 curie smd-push[9374]: register: smd-client@smd-server-register: TAGS: stats::new-mails(0), del-mails(0), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(215)
mar 22 16:21:35 curie systemd[3199]: smd-push.service: Succeeded.

Notice the del-mails(293920) there: it is actively trying to destroy basically every email in my mail spool. Then somehow push and pull started both at once:

mar 22 16:21:35 curie systemd[3199]: Started push emails with syncmaildir.
mar 22 16:21:35 curie systemd[3199]: Starting push emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:22:00 curie systemd[3199]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-pull[10333]:  9455 ?        00:00:00 smd-push
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-pull[10333]: Already running.
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-pull[10333]: If this is not the case, remove /home/anarcat/.smd/lock by hand.
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-pull[10333]: any: smd-pushpull@localhost: TAGS: error::context(locking) probable-cause(another-instance-is-running) human-intervention(necessary) suggested-actions(r
mar 22 16:22:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 16:22:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 16:22:00 curie systemd[3199]: Failed to start pull emails with syncmaildir.
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-push[9455]: smd-client: ERROR: Data transmission failed.
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-push[9455]: smd-client: ERROR: This problem is transient, please retry.
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-push[9455]: smd-client: ERROR: server sent ABORT or connection died
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-push[9455]: smd-server: ERROR: Unable to open Maildir/.kobo/cur/1498563708.M122624P22121.marcos,S=32234,W=32792:2,S: Maildir/.kobo/cur/1498563708.M122624P22121.marco
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-push[9455]: smd-server: ERROR: The problem should be transient, please retry.
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-push[9455]: smd-server: ERROR: Unable to open requested file.
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-push[9455]: default: smd-client@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: stats::new-mails(0), del-mails(293920), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(26995)
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-push[9455]: default: smd-client@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: error::context(receive) probable-cause(network) human-intervention(avoidable) suggested-actions(retry)
mar 22 16:22:00 curie smd-push[9455]: default: smd-server@localhost: TAGS: error::context(transmit) probable-cause(simultaneous-mailbox-edit) human-intervention(avoidable) suggested-actions(r
mar 22 16:22:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-push.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 16:22:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-push.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 16:22:00 curie systemd[3199]: Failed to start push emails with syncmaildir.

There it seems push tried to destroy the universe again: del-mails(293920). Interestingly, the push started again in parallel with the pull, right that minute:

mar 22 16:22:00 curie systemd[3199]: Starting push emails with syncmaildir...

... but didn't complete for a while, here's pull trying to start again:

mar 22 16:24:00 curie systemd[3199]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-pull[12051]: 10466 ?        00:00:00 smd-push
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-pull[12051]: Already running.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-pull[12051]: If this is not the case, remove /home/anarcat/.smd/lock by hand.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-pull[12051]: any: smd-pushpull@localhost: TAGS: error::context(locking) probable-cause(another-instance-is-running) human-intervention(necessary) suggested-actions(run(kill 10466) run(rm /home/anarcat/.smd/lock))
mar 22 16:24:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 16:24:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie systemd[3199]: Failed to start pull emails with syncmaildir.

... and the long push finally resolving:

mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: smd-client: ERROR: Data transmission failed.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: smd-client: ERROR: This problem is transient, please retry.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: smd-client: ERROR: server sent ABORT or connection died
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: smd-client: ERROR: Data transmission failed.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: smd-client: ERROR: This problem is transient, please retry.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: smd-client: ERROR: server sent ABORT or connection died
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: smd-server: ERROR: Unable to open Maildir/.kobo/cur/1498563708.M122624P22121.marcos,S=32234,W=32792:2,S: Maildir/.kobo/cur/1498563708.M122624P22121.marcos,S=32234,W=32792:2,S: No such file or directory
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: smd-server: ERROR: The problem should be transient, please retry.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: smd-server: ERROR: Unable to open requested file.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: default: smd-client@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: stats::new-mails(0), del-mails(293920), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(26995)
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: default: smd-client@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: error::context(receive) probable-cause(network) human-intervention(avoidable) suggested-actions(retry)
mar 22 16:24:00 curie smd-push[10466]: default: smd-server@localhost: TAGS: error::context(transmit) probable-cause(simultaneous-mailbox-edit) human-intervention(avoidable) suggested-actions(retry)
mar 22 16:24:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-push.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 16:24:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-push.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie systemd[3199]: Failed to start push emails with syncmaildir.
mar 22 16:24:00 curie systemd[3199]: Starting push emails with syncmaildir...

This pattern repeats until 16:35, when that locking issue silently recovered somehow:

mar 22 16:35:03 curie systemd[3199]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:35:41 curie smd-pull[20788]: default: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: stats::new-mails(5), del-mails(1), bytes-received(21885), xdelta-received(6863398)
mar 22 16:35:42 curie smd-pull[21373]: register: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: stats::new-mails(0), del-mails(0), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(215)
mar 22 16:35:42 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Succeeded.
mar 22 16:35:42 curie systemd[3199]: Started pull emails with syncmaildir.
mar 22 16:36:35 curie systemd[3199]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:36:36 curie smd-pull[21738]: default: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: stats::new-mails(0), del-mails(0), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(214)
mar 22 16:36:37 curie smd-pull[21816]: register: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: stats::new-mails(0), del-mails(0), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(215)
mar 22 16:36:37 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Succeeded.
mar 22 16:36:37 curie systemd[3199]: Started pull emails with syncmaildir.

... notice that huge xdelta-received there, that's 7GB right there. Mysteriously, the curie mail spool survived this, possibly because smd-pull started failing again:

mar 22 16:38:00 curie systemd[3199]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:38:00 curie smd-pull[23556]: 21887 ?        00:00:00 smd-push
mar 22 16:38:00 curie smd-pull[23556]: Already running.
mar 22 16:38:00 curie smd-pull[23556]: If this is not the case, remove /home/anarcat/.smd/lock by hand.
mar 22 16:38:00 curie smd-pull[23556]: any: smd-pushpull@localhost: TAGS: error::context(locking) probable-cause(another-instance-is-running) human-intervention(necessary) suggested-actions(run(kill 21887) run(rm /home/anarcat/.smd/lock))
mar 22 16:38:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 16:38:00 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 16:38:00 curie systemd[3199]: Failed to start pull emails with syncmaildir.

That could have been when i got on angela to check my mail, and it was busy doing the nasty removal stuff... although the times don't match. Here is when angela came back online:

anarcat@angela:~(main)$ last
anarcat  :0           :0               Mon Mar 22 19:57   still logged in
reboot   system boot  5.10.0-0.bpo.3-a Mon Mar 22 19:57   still running
anarcat  :0           :0               Mon Mar 22 17:43 - 18:47  (01:03)
reboot   system boot  5.10.0-0.bpo.3-a Mon Mar 22 17:39   still running

Then finally the sync on curie started failing with:

mar 22 16:46:35 curie systemd[3199]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: smd-server: ERROR: Client aborted, removing /home/anarcat/.smd/curie-anarcat__Maildir.db.txt.new and /home/anarcat/.smd/curie-anarcat__Maildir.db.txt.mtime.new
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: smd-client: ERROR: Failed to copy Maildir/.debian/cur/1613401668.M901837P27073.marcos,S=3740,W=3815:2,S to Maildir/.koumbit/cur/1613401640.M415457P27063.marcos,S=3790,W=3865:2,S
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: smd-client: ERROR: The destination already exists but its content differs.
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: smd-client: ERROR: To fix this problem you have two options:
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: smd-client: ERROR: - rename Maildir/.koumbit/cur/1613401640.M415457P27063.marcos,S=3790,W=3865:2,S by hand so that Maildir/.debian/cur/1613401668.M901837P27073.marcos,S=3740,W=3815:2,S
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: smd-client: ERROR:   can be copied without replacing it.
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: smd-client: ERROR:   Executing  cd; mv -n "Maildir/.koumbit/cur/1613401640.M415457P27063.marcos,S=3790,W=3865:2,S" "Maildir/.koumbit/cur/1616446002.1.localhost"  should work.
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: smd-client: ERROR: - run smd-push so that your changes to Maildir/.koumbit/cur/1613401640.M415457P27063.marcos,S=3790,W=3865:2,S
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: smd-client: ERROR:   are propagated to the other mailbox
mar 22 16:46:42 curie smd-pull[27455]: default: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: error::context(copy-message) probable-cause(concurrent-mailbox-edit) human-intervention(necessary) suggested-actions(run(mv -n "/home/anarcat/.smd/workarea/Maildir/.koumbit/cur/1613401640.M415457P27063.marcos,S=3790,W=3865:2,S" "/home/anarcat/.smd/workarea/Maildir/.koumbit/tmp/1613401640.M415457P27063.marcos,S=3790,W=3865:2,S") run(smd-push default))
mar 22 16:46:42 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 16:46:42 curie systemd[3199]: smd-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 16:46:42 curie systemd[3199]: Failed to start pull emails with syncmaildir.

It went on like this until I found the problem. This is, presumably, a good thing because those emails were not being destroyed. On angela, things looked like this:

-- Reboot --
mar 22 17:39:29 angela systemd[1677]: Started run notmuch new at least once a day.
mar 22 17:39:29 angela systemd[1677]: Started run smd-pull regularly.
mar 22 17:40:46 angela systemd[1677]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 17:43:18 angela smd-pull[3916]: smd-server: ERROR: Unable to open Maildir/.tor/new/1616446842.M285912P26118.marcos,S=8860,W=8996: Maildir/.tor/new/1616446842.M285912P26118.marcos,S=886
0,W=8996: No such file or directory
mar 22 17:43:18 angela smd-pull[3916]: smd-server: ERROR: The problem should be transient, please retry.
mar 22 17:43:18 angela smd-pull[3916]: smd-server: ERROR: Unable to open requested file.
mar 22 17:43:18 angela smd-pull[3916]: smd-client: ERROR: Data transmission failed.
mar 22 17:43:18 angela smd-pull[3916]: smd-client: ERROR: This problem is transient, please retry.
mar 22 17:43:18 angela smd-pull[3916]: smd-client: ERROR: server sent ABORT or connection died
mar 22 17:43:18 angela smd-pull[3916]: default: smd-server@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: error::context(transmit) probable-cause(simultaneous-mailbox-edit) human-intervention(avoidable) suggested
-actions(retry)
mar 22 17:43:18 angela smd-pull[3916]: default: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: error::context(receive) probable-cause(network) human-intervention(avoidable) suggested-actions(retry)
mar 22 17:43:18 angela systemd[1677]: smd-pull.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
mar 22 17:43:18 angela systemd[1677]: smd-pull.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
mar 22 17:43:18 angela systemd[1677]: Failed to start pull emails with syncmaildir.
mar 22 17:43:18 angela systemd[1677]: Starting pull emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 17:43:29 angela smd-pull[4847]: default: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: stats::new-mails(29), del-mails(0), bytes-received(401519), xdelta-received(38914)
mar 22 17:43:29 angela smd-pull[5600]: register: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: stats::new-mails(2), del-mails(0), bytes-received(92150), xdelta-received(471)
mar 22 17:43:29 angela systemd[1677]: smd-pull.service: Succeeded.
mar 22 17:43:29 angela systemd[1677]: Started pull emails with syncmaildir.
mar 22 17:43:29 angela systemd[1677]: Starting push emails with syncmaildir...
mar 22 17:43:32 angela smd-push[5693]: default: smd-client@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: stats::new-mails(0), del-mails(0), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(217)
mar 22 17:43:33 angela smd-push[6575]: register: smd-client@smd-server-register: TAGS: stats::new-mails(0), del-mails(0), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(219)
mar 22 17:43:33 angela systemd[1677]: smd-push.service: Succeeded.
mar 22 17:43:33 angela systemd[1677]: Started push emails with syncmaildir.

Notice how long it took to get the first error, in that first failure: it failed after 3 minutes! Presumably that's when it started deleting all that mail. And this is during pull, not push, so the error didn't come from angela.

Affected data It seems 2GB of mail from my main INBOX was destroyed. Another 2.4GB of spam (kept for training purposes) was also destroyed, along with 700MB of Sent mail. The rest is hard to figure out, because the folders are actually still there, just smaller. So I relied on ncdu to figure out the size changes. (Note that I don't really archive (or delete much of) my mail since I use notmuch, which is why the INBOX is so large...) Concretely, according to the notmuch-new.service which still runs periodically on marcos, here are the changes that happened on the server:

mar 22 16:17:12 marcos notmuch[10729]: Added 7 new messages to the database. Removed 57985 messages. Detected 1372 file renames.
mar 22 16:22:43 marcos notmuch[12826]: No new mail. Removed 143842 messages. Detected 6072 file renames.
mar 22 16:27:02 marcos notmuch[13969]: No new mail. Removed 82071 messages. Detected 1783 file renames.
mar 22 16:29:45 marcos notmuch[15079]: Added 22743 new messages to the database. Detected 1 file rename.
mar 22 16:31:48 marcos notmuch[16196]: Added 22779 new messages to the database. Removed 5 messages.
mar 22 16:33:11 marcos notmuch[17192]: Added 3711 new messages to the database.
mar 22 16:40:41 marcos notmuch[19122]: Added 74558 new messages to the database. Detected 1 file rename.
mar 22 16:43:21 marcos notmuch[20325]: Added 9061 new messages to the database. Detected 4 file renames.
mar 22 17:43:08 marcos notmuch[7420]: Added 1793 new messages to the database. Detected 6 file renames.

That is basically the entire mail spool destroyed at first (283 898 messages), and then bits and pieces of it progressively re-added (134 645 messages), somehow, so 149 253 mails were lost, presumably.

Recovery I disabled the services all over the place:

systemctl --user --now disable smd-pull.service smd-pull.timer smd-push.service smd-push.timer notmuch-new.service notmuch-new.timer

(Well, technically, I did that only on angela, as I thought the problem was there. Luckily, curie kept going but it seems like it was harmless.) I made a backup of the mail spool on curie:

tar cf - Maildir/   pv -s 14G   gzip -c > Maildir.tgz

Then I crossed my fingers and ran smd-push -v -s, as that was suggested by smd error codes themselves. That thankfully started restoring mail. It failed a few times on weird cases of files being duplicates, but I resolved this by following the instructions. Or mostly: I actually deleted the files instead of moving them, which made smd even unhappier (if there ever was such a thing). I had to recreate some of those files, so, lesson learned: do follow the advice smd gives you, even if it seems useless or strange. But then smd-push was humming along, uploading tens of thousands of messages, saturating the upload in the office, refilling the mail spool on the server... yaay!... ? Except... well, of course that didn't quite work: the mail spool in the office eventually started to grow beyond the size of the mail spool on the workstation. That is what smd-push eventually settled on:

default: smd-client@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: error::context(receive) probable-cause(network) human-intervention(avoidable) suggested-actions(retry)
default: smd-client@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: error::context(receive) probable-cause(network) human-intervention(avoidable) suggested-actions(retry)
default: smd-client@smd-server-anarcat: TAGS: stats::new-mails(151697), del-mails(0), bytes-received(7539147811), xdelta-received(10881198)

It recreated 151 697 emails, adding about 2000 emails to the pool, kind of from nowhere at all. On marcos, before:

ncdu 1.13 ~ Use the arrow keys to navigate, press ? for help
--- /home/anarcat/Maildir ------------------------------------
    4,0 GiB [##########] /.notmuch
  717,3 MiB [#         ] /.Archives.2014
  498,2 MiB [#         ] /.feeds.debian-planet
  453,1 MiB [#         ] /.Archives.2012
  414,5 MiB [#         ] /.debian
  408,2 MiB [#         ] /.quoifaire
  389,8 MiB [          ] /.rapports
  356,6 MiB [          ] /.tor
  182,6 MiB [          ] /.koumbit
  179,8 MiB [          ] /tmp
   56,8 MiB [          ] /.nn
   43,0 MiB [          ] /.act-mtl
   32,6 MiB [          ] /.feeds.sysadvent
   31,7 MiB [          ] /.feeds.releases
   31,4 MiB [          ] /.Sent.2005
   26,3 MiB [          ] /.sage
   25,5 MiB [          ] /.freedombox
   24,0 MiB [          ] /.feeds.git-annex
   21,1 MiB [          ] /.Archives.2011
   19,1 MiB [          ] /.Sent.2003
   16,7 MiB [          ] /.bugtraq
   16,2 MiB [          ] /.mlug
 Total disk usage:   8,0 GiB  Apparent size:   7,6 GiB  Items: 184426

After:

ncdu 1.13 ~ Use the arrow keys to navigate, press ? for help
--- /home/anarcat/Maildir ------------------------------------
    4,7 GiB [##########] /.notmuch
    2,7 GiB [#####     ] /.junk
    1,9 GiB [###       ] /cur
  717,3 MiB [#         ] /.Archives.2014
  659,3 MiB [#         ] /.Sent
  513,9 MiB [#         ] /.Archives.2012
  498,2 MiB [#         ] /.feeds.debian-planet
  449,6 MiB [          ] /.Archives.2015
  414,5 MiB [          ] /.debian
  408,2 MiB [          ] /.quoifaire
  389,8 MiB [          ] /.rapports
  380,8 MiB [          ] /.Archives.2013
  356,6 MiB [          ] /.tor
  261,1 MiB [          ] /.Archives.2011
  240,9 MiB [          ] /.koumbit
  183,6 MiB [          ] /.Archives.2010
  179,8 MiB [          ] /tmp
  128,4 MiB [          ] /.lists
  106,1 MiB [          ] /.inso-interne
  103,0 MiB [          ] /.github
   75,0 MiB [          ] /.nanog
   69,8 MiB [          ] /.full-disclosure
 Total disk usage:  16,2 GiB  Apparent size:  15,5 GiB  Items: 341143

That is 156 717 files more. On curie:

ncdu 1.13 ~ Use the arrow keys to navigate, press ? for help
--- /home/anarcat/Maildir ------------------------------------------------------------------
    2,7 GiB [##########] /.junk
    2,3 GiB [########  ] /.notmuch
    1,9 GiB [######    ] /cur
  661,2 MiB [##        ] /.Archives.2014
  655,3 MiB [##        ] /.Sent
  512,0 MiB [#         ] /.Archives.2012
  447,3 MiB [#         ] /.Archives.2015
  438,5 MiB [#         ] /.feeds.debian-planet
  406,5 MiB [#         ] /.quoifaire
  383,6 MiB [#         ] /.debian
  378,6 MiB [#         ] /.Archives.2013
  303,3 MiB [#         ] /.tor
  296,0 MiB [#         ] /.rapports
  237,6 MiB [          ] /.koumbit
  233,2 MiB [          ] /.Archives.2011
  182,1 MiB [          ] /.Archives.2010
  127,0 MiB [          ] /.lists
  104,8 MiB [          ] /.inso-interne
  102,7 MiB [          ] /.register
   89,6 MiB [          ] /.github
   67,1 MiB [          ] /.full-disclosure
   66,5 MiB [          ] /.nanog
 Total disk usage:  13,3 GiB  Apparent size:  12,6 GiB  Items: 342465

Interestingly, there are more files, but less disk usage. It's possible the notmuch database there is more efficient. So maybe there's nothing to worry about. Last night's marcos backup has:

root@marcos:/home/anarcat# find /mnt/home/anarcat/Maildir   pv -l   wc -l
 341k 0:00:16 [20,4k/s] [                             <=>                                                                                                                                     ]
341040

... 341040 files, which seems about right, considering some mail was delivered during the day. An audit can be performed with hashdeep:

borg mount /media/sdb2/borg/::marcos-auto-2021-03-22 /mnt
hashdeep -c sha256 -r /mnt/home/anarcat/Maildir   pv -l -s 341k > Maildir-backup-manifest.txt

And then compared with:

hashdeep -c sha256 -k Maildir-backup-manifest.txt Maildir/

Some extra files should show up in the Maildir, and very few should actually be missing, because I shouldn't have deleted mail from the previous day the next day, or at least very few. The actual summary hashdeep gave me was:

hashdeep: Audit failed
   Input files examined: 0
  Known files expecting: 0
          Files matched: 339080
Files partially matched: 0
            Files moved: 782
        New files found: 107
  Known files not found: 106

So 106 files added, 107 deleted. Seems good enough for me... Postfix was stopped at Mar 22 21:12:59 to try and stop external events from confusing things even further. I reviewed the delivery log to see if mail that came in during the problem window disappeared:

grep 'dovecot:.*stored mail into mailbox' /var/log/mail.log  
  tail -20  
  sed 's/.*msgid=<//;s/>.*//'   
  while read msgid; do 
    notmuch count --exclude=false id:$msgid  
      grep 0 && echo $msgid missing;
  done

And things looked okay. Now of course if we go further back, we find mail I actually deleted (because I do do that sometimes), so it's hard to use this log as an audit trail. We can only hope that the curie spool is sufficiently coherent to be relied on. Worst case, we'll have to restore from last night's backup, but that's getting far away now: I get hundreds of mails a day in that mail spool, and reseting back to last night does not seem like a good idea. A dry run of smd-pull on angela seems to agree that it's missing some files:

default: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: stats::new-mails(154914), del-mails(0), bytes-received(0), xdelta-received(0)

... a number of mails somewhere in between the other two, go figure. A "wet" run of this was started, without deletion (-n), which gave us:

default: smd-client@localhost: TAGS: stats::new-mails(154911), del-mails(0), bytes-received(7658160107), xdelta-received(10837609)

Strange that it sync'd three less emails, but that's still better than nothing, and we have a mail spool on angela again:

anarcat@angela:~(main)$ notmuch new
purging with prefix '.': spam moved (0), ham moved (0), deleted (0), done
Note: Ignoring non-mail file: /home/anarcat/Maildir//.uidvalidity
Processed 1779 total files in 26s (66 files/sec.).
Added 1190 new messages to the database. Removed 3 messages. Detected 593 file renames.
tagging with prefix '.': spam, sent, feeds, koumbit, tor, lists, rapports, folders, done.

Notice how only 1190 messages were re-added, that is because I killed notmuch before it had time to remove all those mails from its database.

Possible causes I am totally at a loss as to why smd started destroying everything like it did. But a few things come to mind:

1. I rewired my office on that day.
2. This meant unplugging curie, the workstation.
3. It has a bad CMOS battery (known problem), so it jumped around the time continuum a few times, sometimes by years.
4. The smd services are ran from a systemd unit with OnCalendar=*:0/2. I have heard that it's possible that major time jumps "pile up" execution of jobs, and it seems this happened in this case.
5. It's possible that locking in smd is not as great as it could be, and that it corrupted its internal data structures on curie, which led it to command a destruction of the remote mail spool.

It's also possible that there was a disk failure on the server, marcos. But since it's running on a (software) RAID-1 array, and no errors have been found (according to dmesg), I don't think that's a plausible hypothesis.

Lessons learned

1. follow what smd says, even if it seems useless or strange.
2. trust but verify: just backup everything before you do anything, especially the largest data set.
3. daily backups are not great for email, unless you're ready to lose a day of email (which I'm not).
4. hashdeep is great. I keep finding new use cases for it. Last time it was to audit my camera SD card to make sure I didn't forget anything, and now this. it's fast and powerful.
5. borg is great too. the FUSE mount was especially useful, and it was pretty fast to explore the backup, even through that overhead: checksumming 15GB of mail took about 35 minutes, which gives a respectable 8MB/s, probably bottlenecked by the crap external USB drive I use for backups (!).
6. I really need to finish my backup system so that I have automated offsite backups, although in this case that would actually have been much slower (certainly not 8MB/s!).

Workarounds and solutions I setup fake-hwclock on curie, so that the next power failure will not upset my clock that badly. I am thinking of switching to ZFS or BTRFS for most of my filesystems, so that I can use filesystem snapshots (including remotely!) as a backup strategy. This seems so much more powerful than crawling the filesystem for changes, and allows for truly offsite backups protected from an attacker (hopefully). But it's a long way there. I'm also thinking of rebuilding my mail setup without smd. It's not the first time something like this happens with smd. It's the first time I am more confident it's the root cause of the problem, however, and it makes me really nervous for the future. I have used offlineimap in the past and it seems it was finally ported to Python 3 so that could be an option again. isync/mbsync is another option, which I tried before but do not remember why I didn't switch. A complete redesign with something like getmail and/or nncp could also be an option. But alas, I lack the time to go crazy with those experiments. Somehow, doing like everyone else and just going with Google still doesn't seem to be an option for me. Screw big tech. But I am afraid they will win, eventually. In any case, I'm just happy I got mail again, strangely.