There exist several different versions of BBC iPlayer. (Even if you don't care about the main iPlayer site, perhaps you might want to watch videos on BBC News one day, which uses the same code.) Here is some (reformatted) Javascript from the BBC's site:

a = glow.embed.Flash.version();
f = "";
f = a.major>=10 ? "10player.swf"
  : a.major<8   ? "7player.swf"
  : a.major==9 && (a.minor>0   a.release>=115) ? "9player.swf"
  : "player.swf";

It is clear that Flash 9.0.115 holds special significance; this was the version that introduced SWF Verification support. The 7player.swf file seems to have disappeared entirely - I get a "404 not found" error. That means there is still one version of the iPlayer which hopefully should not require implementing SWF Verification. Navigating around the site with Gnash declaring itself as version 8 (with a patch applied to fix Glow compatibility), only radio programmes attempt to play using this version, and even then not the live streams. (No, gnash still doesn't play anything, don't panic.) So it would seem to me that fixing Gnash's support for this SWF 8 iPlayer would be a good place to start.

So, with the GNASH_OPTIONS=writelauncher hint from last time, you have got a script which runs gnash. It is still running a remote SWF file, though - you want to modify that file to isolate a test case, and for that it will need to be on the local filesystem. First, look in the gnash-debug-1.sh script to find the URL for the SWF, and download it. It's the last option passed to gnash. In order to convince the file that it's still being served from the web server, you now need to swap the '-U' option in the gnash command line for a '-u'. This is enough for gnash 0.8.8 to play the file. Unfortunately, if you are running current git master, this does not work. You also need to feed the SWF from standard input to gnash - i.e. use '-' as the last option, and redirect the SWF file to the gnash command:

/path/to/gtk-gnash -u http://some/url [more options] '-' < downloaded.swf

If any of this is documented, I'm buggered if I can find it.

Gnash has moved from bzr to git, at least for the moment - Savannah's bzr setup is slow and unlikely to improve, so the choice is git or Launchpad, apparently. (Thinking selfishly, I'm a lot more familiar with git than with bzr, so I hope it stays this way.) My instructions from July have changed only slightly:

git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/git/gnash
cd gnash
./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-renderer=agg \
            --enable-media=GST \
            --enable-gui=gtk \
            --with-plugins-install=system
make
sudo make install
sudo make install-plugins

Buried near the end of the bug reports wiki page is a useful tip for debugging - export GNASH_OPTIONS=writelauncher before starting the browser, and gnash will write out the instructions for starting a local copy. In practise, these instructions seem to appear as a file called /tmp/gnash-debug-1.sh, and that will reference a file matching /tmp/gnash-cookies.* - so don't bother trying to dig through the debug log. With this tip, it's possible to get the browser out of the loop, and focus on debugging gnash (which should be enough for most problems). At least, that's what I hope - I've spent the last hour or so just figuring this stuff out. Hmpf.

Dato pointed out on my post yesterday that I had omitted to link to the Ikea catalogue. And then it hit me - I am completely failing to monetize this blog! (Sadly, Ikea aren't in a position to give me any kickbacks right now.) Since my money would be spent on innovative Swedish design in any case, I present a new microdonations system: Flattr-pack. I'll add a "Flattr-pack this!" button to everything I write, and then you can send me furniture with one easy click. Unlike other systems, this has the advantage that no one will be taking a 10% cut of your donations. Awesome! Or maybe not. For those who don't know what I'm on about, Flattr is a website that lets you donate small amounts of money to other websites. It has been proposed to use this site to support free and open source software (FOSS). Now a quick modern anthropology lesson: in a 1998 essay titled "Homesteading the Noosphere", Eric Raymond conjectured that FOSS society is a gift economy; your reputation is proportional to how much you give away. At first sight, microdonations drop neatly into this system; after all, the users are giving money away, right? And yet somehow, I don't think those users are gaining much in terms of reputation. Not in the same way as if they reported bugs, say; joined a localization team; or even just turned up to conferences and volunteered to sit on the front desk. Both types of activity could be described as "donations" - but in one case, the donation benefits the whole community around the project, and in the other it goes to just a few top developers. It's a plain old exchange economy in disguise. I do hope that those users are not dissuaded from making the more generous donations just because it's more convenient to whip out a credit card. That would not be in their long-term interests, or those of the community as a whole. I fear this scheme could also incentivize some oddly inefficient behaviour; writing blog entries purely for their donation potential, say, or even content-free search-engine optimization posts. Speaking entirely personally, I do not plan to join in.

Today I bought two Ikea boxes. Possibly the best 8 I have ever spent - I still have a load of bits of paper to sort out, but now they're all hidden from sight in a sleek, black and chrome rivet-effect container. More than simply reclaiming my sofa from the piles of notes, they seem to point to a higher truth; they fit their purpose in a way that is hard to articulate, like some platonic Form. Taking complexity, and making it manageable; but more than that, elegant. At some point, I lost the ability to explain to my friends and family what it is I spend my spare time doing. I feel isolated; I cannot express what motivates me, or even what it is I do. In fact, sometimes I can't even describe it to myself. Perhaps I never could. I don't believe that you can buy happiness; but if I surround myself with metaphors, maybe I can buy clarity.

I've been ill this week. The only hacking I've been doing is of the cough variety. :) I think I'm recovering, though. This evening, I finally checked out LibreOffice, to get an idea what's going on - kicked off a build, joined the mailing lists. Some of the easy hacks look quite feasible, but there's always a bit of work to get started. The community looks very welcoming, though, so no problems there. The various Perl bits in the installer/build system seem an obvious place to get started. I've also got an eye on the mdbtools code - I theoretically maintain the Debian package, and have come close to forking it. But I aspire to be writing "real" patches, of course. I've been thinking about where I should put my development time over the next year or so, and LibreOffice is likely to be one of those places.

My humble RC bug squashing efforts for this week. I've saved them all up, because I don't want to spam Planet Debian too much... or alternatively, because I've been feeling ill Thursday/Friday and didn't do anything at all.

• #598619 in x11vnc NMU'd, after one false start, but at least I learnt something.
• #586849 and #586838 in mgltools- utpackages,geomutils confirmed fixed.
• Patch written for #592417 in mgltools-utpackages.
• Verified and NMU'd patch for #410130 in cryptonit.
• #590383 in rabbitmq-server confirmed fixed.
• Investigated why #589194 in openclipart hadn't been closed, although it was Anibal who eventually sponsored the patch.
• #599988 in lwjgl fixed and uploaded.
• Confirmed #599959 in sawfish closed from last week, after it got binNMUs.
• Patch finally written for #593856 in gnucash.

Note that quite a few of these were "cheating" by just closing bugs that someone else had written a patch/comment for, and the mgltools-* ones are in non-free software, so they won't have the same impact on the RC bug stats. Also, I've mentioned the gnucash and sawfish ones before, but they'll definitely be counted in the stats now..

I went shopping today, and inadvertently stole a very nice cardigan-like thing from a multinational clothing retailer. Enough anecdotes. Yesterday:

• NMU'd nut to fix bug #583371. I hear a co-maintainer is sought, so if you're into UPS devices...
• Downgraded bug #599909 in emacs23. Tempted to upgrade it again now it's reassigned to gtk-qt-engine, though.
• Asked for a binNMU to fix rep-gtk on kfreebsd-amd64.

Today:

• Filed a binNMU request for sawfish, which should eventually resolve bug #599959 on the back of the librep work I did earlier in the week.
• NMU'd python-sipe to fix bug #582998, where a non-DD had followed the NMU instructions rather literally; nice try. ;) If any non-DDs need a sponsor for RC bug fixes, do ask me by email.
• Downgraded bug #599463 in gstreamer0.10-alsa (formerly of mp3splt-gtk). It's now closed.
• Went ahead and NMU'd aptitude to fix bug #557580 and bug #594505. It'll be fine, honest; if you don't believe me, test the packages.

Looking at the weekly summary reports, we squashed a net total of 31 RC bugs last week. Of course, it's possible they'll get more difficult as we go along... but I'm hoping to see all the easy ones closed before the BSP two weeks from now.

Summary of yesterday:

• Investigated rep-gtk/librep-dev breakage, and NMUd librep. Got a libtool wishlist bug out of it as well.
• Cloned bug #584327 in python-rdflib to gcc-4.4 as a reminder to see if mips/mipsel is already fixed.
• Downgraded bug #580876 in ldc.
• Wrote a patch for gpib FTBFS, which occurs because of an interesting new cdbs/module-assistant problem.

I'm getting to the point where RC bugs actually keep me up at night. Very bad...

I took most of the weekend off, although took a look at an upgrade bug on e16. Turns out Tolimar's got it handled, right? :) Tonight I put together a tentative patch for bug #557580 on aptitude to make it respect configuration under /etc/apt/preferences.d/ - aptitude is written in C++, and I have had some recent exposure to that language at work. Unfortunately, it means aptitude takes most of an hour to build on my desktop. Since aptitude is an important package, I'm not yet entirely confident about my patch, and it's already half eleven, I think the NMU can wait a few evenings.

This evening's RC bug fixes were in magyarispell:

• Bug #591365 - the myspell-hu dictionary was completely broken.
• Bug #585132 - turns out everyone was just very confused, and blaming it on the myspell-hu dictionary being completely broken.

I'm tempted to go to Paris for the mini-debconf at the end of the month. I've never visited France, despite my French roots - and it turns out it's quite easy for me to get there.

I've been mostly working on GnuCash the past few evenings. I added more info and a test case to Bug #593856, so that should fall into place soon. I turned my attention to ettercap this evening, and Bug #521857 - another easy one, just applying the updated patch. Except when I ran "lintian -F", I got:

lintian -F /var/cache/pbuilder/result/ettercap_0.7.3-2.1_amd64.changes 
E: ettercap: binary-or-shlib-defines-rpath ./usr/sbin/ettercap /usr/lib
E: ettercap-gtk: binary-or-shlib-defines-rpath ./usr/sbin/ettercap /usr/lib

This led me to a Jan 2008 email from Raphael Geissert about packages defining RPATH on amd64. For now, I've rebuilt in an i386 chroot - I'd need some help making a full lintian run on amd64 if I were going to propose a mass bug-filing.

My gnucash fix from last night poses an interesting problem - there will be no new gnucash 2.2.x release. So we can fix this potential data loss bug in Debian (probably even in lenny), but what about other distributions? I'm not aware of a formal way to co-ordinate non-security patches like this across distros. (Sure, we can leave it for the vultures on the patch tracker...) Someone should whip up a whizzy web-app, or whatever.

I have developed an affection for crime drama - on Sunday nights, the TV channel Five USA shows something like four hours of CSI, back to back. There's obviously something fascinating about the problem-solving process... and there's always the too-good-to-be-true computer interfaces to laugh at. (I also watch The Mentalist, NCIS and Law & Order, for variety.) And also, on CSI:NY and Law & Order, I get to spot the places in New York I visited at DebConf. So yes, problem solving. Sometimes the real thing can be even more compelling. And who wants to slump in front of the TV for four hours, anyway? Much better to sit up in front of the computer for... erm... a lot longer.

• Bug #525549 - gnucash sometimes removes the account data file

This was a more challenging bug - I had to break out gdb and everything. Turns out string manipulation with C is still error-prone. First reported upstream in October 2008 - quite a mystery. NMU to follow later in the week, since there are two other serious bugs open for gnucash.

It's been raining this weekend in Southampton. This afternoon's not been too bad - I went for a walk around the city walls. Just a few hundred years ago, the River Test would have come right up to them, and my flat would have been in a defensive moat full of sea water, I think. I re-read zack's rcbw page, and noticed the section on 'blog posts' - there is also a propaganda element to the idea, in improving Debian's internal culture w.r.t. NMUs. So with my grey Sunday afternoon, I have uploaded a couple of NMUs for RC bugs:

• Bug #585614 - a small missing dependency from mp3splt-gtk.
• Bug #591547 - pkg-config compatibility with autoconf >= 2.66

I am surprised that there are still such easy pickings from the RC bug list at this point in the release cycle. This Debian Developer lark is a piece of cake, innit?

Today I went to HantsLUG at IBM Hursley. I delivered a talk on the Debian Perl team aimed at end users, which was well received - I got a head start by getting people in #debian-perl to review the slides beforehand, which was very helpful. I'm told there will be a video uploaded in a month or so. I also plugged SmoothWall Express on Debian to some new people, and there was interest. My most recent discovery is that I probably need to extend netcfg in the debian installer to allow configuring more than one network interface.

Here in the UK we've had a bank holiday weekend. Usually I would have gone to Cambridge for the Debian BBQ, but this year I joined forces with Thomas Adam for some SmoothWall Express on Debian hacking. There are several challenges involved in moving the SWE3 code from its native distribution to Debian; this weekend we worked around some of the permissions problems. On SWE3, the web server and most of the service daemons run as the user 'nobody'. This means that the web server can write out configuration files as the same user as everything else; it can also read the system log files. When the web interface needs to run a privileged action (like setting firewall rules), it sends a command to 'smoothd', which is a daemon running as root. (Admin ssh access is always directly as the root user.) However, web servers in Debian tend to run as user 'www-data', which does not have permission to read log files. Similarly, writing out configuration files as that user would mean that any cgi script (not just ones in the swe3 package) could modify them. I would prefer to run the swe3 cgi scripts as a separate user, and grant this user permission to view logs etc. This debian-webapps thread makes it sound very easy, but if you want to do that with cgi scripts rather than fastcgi, I think you have to run a separate web server for each user. On Sunday afternoon, in a dramatic display of corner-cutting, I gave up on that approach and added www-data to the 'adm' and 'proxy' groups in the postinst. Thomas heroically patched all the cgis to call the "config writers" via smoothd, although I'm wondering whether some careful use of the chgrp command in the postinst might be better than running that code as root. Another hack: in order to actually start a firewall, we needed to know which network card is the "RED" interface, in SWE3 terms; i.e. which one is meant to be the public-facing network device. It's also nice to know which one is "GREEN". So two debconf questions and some hardcoded magic numbers later, we have a basic firewall init script. Lovely. Oh, and at some point I removed the htaccess file, so any user on your network can mess with your firewall. Should probably fix that. Today I started some awful scripts which use Simple-CDD to build an iso containing all the packages we want. We are going to need to extend the networking configuration in the installer to set up multiple network cards. Then we need to figure out a nicer way of assigning IP addresses to devices; unlike on the proprietary version of the product, there seems to be no web configuration of network settings in Express. I've not figured all of this out yet. So, in summary: we are deliberately trading some technical debt in order to quickly produce an initial release that might interest people. (But please note the disclaimer of warranty in the README file in that directory.) And in other news, I've been working at Smoothwall Ltd. for just over one year. Hmm. So this is what they call 'experience'.

SmoothWall Express is a GNU/Linux distribution geared towards firewalling, with an installer, a web interface, and some common software like squid that can be useful when running a small business router. It is theoretically the basis for the corporate products of SmoothWall Ltd., who happen to employ me; but all opinions here are my own, and I'm not speaking for them. Unfortunately, the SmoothWall Express kernel is somewhat "stable", which leads to problems installing the distro on modern hardware. There is a new version of Express in the works, but I'm afraid SmoothWall Ltd. currently has a bit of a "code dump" mentality with respect to delivering updates to their community, because they don't recall seeing any significant contributions from outsiders. At DebConf I created proof-of-concept Debian packages of two components of Express 3.0: the swe3 web interface, and the smoothd daemon which executes privileged commands. Currently these can show a basic web interface; some of the less complicated bits will even run, and I can shut down my laptop using the "shutdown" button via smoothd. (Note that I still need to add boring stuff like debian/copyright files, but I plan to release these as soon as I can.) In the near future, hopefully I can implement some of the more important features (like, er, firewalling), and add some other components like the traffic shaping and IM filtering daemon. I'm working towards a demonstration Debian Pure Blend that can show off some of the advantages of working with a third-party distribution as a base. If anyone would like to help me... send me patches. :) I expect I'll be blogging my progress occasionally.

On my last night in New York, I didn't sleep much. At 6am, I said farewell to Central Park by running round the reservoir, which I hadn't yet done. There was a very nice red sunrise to be seen from the west side. Unfortunately I didn't sleep much on the flight home either. The British accents sounded quite unusual when we landed in Heathrow, and it was quite confusing not being able to find a Starbucks. Once I was back home, I crashed, and woke up at 10pm. I spent last night clearing the pkg-perl review queue - gregoa is taking a short break after DebConf. Then I went running at sunrise again. This is quite a different experience to Central Park - first, you have to run 2.5km just to get to Southampton Common, and secondly it is raining quite heavily. I dug out some winter gear that had turned out to be completely inappropriate for New York.

I have a relatively new laptop, and have spent some time today fixing some of the rough edges in my setup. (One day I'll throw all the config files into git, or something, but not yet.)

• I use zsh, but only in a fairly conservative manner, to emulate/mimic bash. All searches on the subject of zsh prompts seem to produce ugly behemoths from people who have just discovered that the feature exists. Here's my effort to copy Debian's normal bash prompt:

  PS1='%n@%m:%~$ '
  

  I also "setopt nohup", and copy some useful stuff like ls colour aliases from .bashrc.
• Most tutorials on configuring SMTP auth with Postfix are insane. If your mail provider's CA is in the ca-certificates package, you can postpone learning openssl yet again.
• I'm trying out an xmonad/gnome combination, having evaluated awesome (tricky to get all the details of the gnome integration working) and bluetile (tricky to get the single-pixel window decoration feel). So far it works well.