Search Results: "ag"

1 October 2015

Petter Reinholdtsen: French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book

As I wrap up the Norwegian version of Free Culture book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great dblatex helper and developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Beno t Guillon, decided a to try to create a French version of the book. He started with the French translation available from the Wikilivres wiki pages, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition. We meet on the #dblatex IRC channel to discuss the work. If you want to help create a French edition, check out his git repository and join us on IRC. If the French edition look good, we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com. A French version of the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.

Mike Gabriel: My FLOSS activities in August/September 2015

Here comes my "monthly" FLOSS report for August and September 2015. As 50% of August 2015 had been dedicated to taking some time off (spending time in Sweden with the family), it happened that even more workload had to be processed in September 2015. Received Sponsorship My monthly 8h portion of working for the Debian LTS project I had to dispatch from August into September. Thus, I received 16h of paid work for working on Debian LTS in September 2015. For details, see below. Thanks to Raphael Hertzog for having me on the team [1]. Thanks to all the people and companies sponsoring the Debian LTS Team's work. The development of GOsa Plugin SchoolManager (for details, see below) was done on contract for a school in Nothern Germany. The code will be released under the same license as the GOsa software itself. Completion of MATE 1.10 in Debian testing/unstable and Ubuntu 15.10 In the first half of September all MATE 1.10 packages finally landed in Debian testing (aka stretch). Martin Wimpress handled most of the packaging changes, whereas my main job was being reviewer and uploader of his efforts. Thanks to John Paul Adrian Glaubitz for jumping in as reviewer and uploader during my vacation time. read more

Mike Gabriel: Nightly builds for Arctica Project (Debian / Ubuntu)

I am happy to announce that The Arctica Project can now provide automatic nightly builds of its developers' coding code work. Packages are built automatically via Jenkins, see [1] for an overview of the current build queues. The Jenkins system builds code as found on our CGit mirror site [2]. NOTE: The Arctica Project's nightly builds may especially be interesting to people that want to try out the latest development steps on nx-libs (3.6.x branch) as we provide nx-libs 3.6.x binary preview builds. Currently, we only build our code against Debian and Ubuntu (amd64, i386), more distros and platforms are likely to be added. If people can provide machine power (esp. non-Intel based architectures), please get in touch with us on Freenode IRC (channel: #arctica). This is how you can add our package repositories to your APT system. Debian APT (here: stretch) Please note that we only support recent Debian versions (currently version 7.x and above). 
$ echo 'deb http://packages.arctica-project.org/debian-nightly stretch main'   sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/arctica.list
$ sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver pgp.mit.edu 0x98DE3101
$ sudo apt-get update
Ubuntu APT (here: trusty) Please note that we support recent Ubuntu LTS versions only (Ubuntu 14.04 only at the moment). 
$ echo 'deb http://packages.arctica-project.org/ubuntu-nightly trusty main'   sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/arctica.list
$ sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver pgp.mit.edu 0x98DE3101
$ sudo apt-get update
read more

30 September 2015

Ben Armstrong: Halifax Mainland Common: Early Fall, 2015

A friend and I regularly meet to chat over coffee and then usually finish up by walking the maintained trail in the Halifax Mainland Common Park, but today we decided to take a brief excursion onto the unmaintained trails criss-crossing the park. The last gasp of a faint summer and early signs of fall are evident everywhere. Some mushrooms are dried and cracked in a mosaic pattern: image image Ferns and other brush are browning amongst the various greens of late summer: image A few late blueberries still cling to isolated bushes here and there: image The riot of fall colours in this small clearing, dotted with cotton-grass, burst into view as we round a corner, set behind by a backdrop of nearby buildings: image image The ferns here are vivid, like a slow burning fire that will take the rest of fall to burn out: image We appreciate one last splash of colour before we head back under the cover of woods to rejoin the maintained trail: image So many times we ve travelled our usual route on automatic . I m happy today we left the more travelled trail to share in these glimpses of the changing of seasons in a wilderness preserved for our enjoyment immediately at hand to a densely populated part of the city. facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Chris Lamb: Free software activities in September 2015

Inspired by Rapha l Hertzog, here is a monthly update covering a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world:
Debian The Reproducible Builds project was also covered in depth on LWN as well as in Lunar's weekly reports (#18, #19, #20, #21, #22).
Uploads
  • redis A new upstream release, as well as overhauling the systemd configuration, maintaining feature parity with sysvinit and adding various security hardening features.
  • python-redis Attempting to get its Debian Continuous Integration tests to pass successfully.
  • libfiu Ensuring we do not FTBFS under exotic locales.
  • gunicorn Dropping a dependency on python-tox now that tests are disabled.
RC bugs


I also filed FTBFS bugs against actdiag, actdiag, bangarang, bmon, bppphyview, cervisia, choqok, cinnamon-control-center, clasp, composer, cpl-plugin-naco, dirspec, django-countries, dmapi, dolphin-plugins, dulwich, elki, eqonomize, eztrace, fontmatrix, freedink, galera-3, golang-git2go, golang-github-golang-leveldb, gopher, gst-plugins-bad0.10, jbofihe, k3b, kalgebra, kbibtex, kde-baseapps, kde-dev-utils, kdesdk-kioslaves, kdesvn, kdevelop-php-docs, kdewebdev, kftpgrabber, kile, kmess, kmix, kmldonkey, knights, konsole4, kpartsplugin, kplayer, kraft, krecipes, krusader, ktp-auth-handler, ktp-common-internals, ktp-text-ui, libdevice-cdio-perl, libdr-tarantool-perl, libevent-rpc-perl, libmime-util-java, libmoosex-app-cmd-perl, libmoosex-app-cmd-perl, librdkafka, libxml-easyobj-perl, maven-dependency-plugin, mmtk, murano-dashboard, node-expat, node-iconv, node-raw-body, node-srs, node-websocket, ocaml-estring, ocaml-estring, oce, odb, oslo-config, oslo.messaging, ovirt-guest-agent, packagesearch, php-svn, php5-midgard2, phpunit-story, pike8.0, plasma-widget-adjustableclock, plowshare4, procps, pygpgme, pylibmc, pyroma, python-admesh, python-bleach, python-dmidecode, python-libdiscid, python-mne, python-mne, python-nmap, python-nmap, python-oslo.middleware, python-riemann-client, python-traceback2, qdjango, qsapecng, ruby-em-synchrony, ruby-ffi-rzmq, ruby-nokogiri, ruby-opengraph-parser, ruby-thread-safe, shortuuid, skrooge, smb4k, snp-sites, soprano, stopmotion, subtitlecomposer, svgpart, thin-provisioning-tools, umbrello, validator.js, vdr-plugin-prefermenu, vdr-plugin-vnsiserver, vdr-plugin-weather, webkitkde, xbmc-pvr-addons, xfsdump & zanshin.

Norbert Preining: 6 years in Japan

Exactly 6 years ago, on October 1, 2009, I started my work at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), arriving the previous day in a place not completely unknown, but with a completely different outlook: I had a position as Associate Professor, and somehow was looking forward to an interesting and challenging time. japan-flag 6 years later I am still here at the JAIST, but things have changed considerably, and my future is even less clear than 6 years ago. So it is time to reflect a bit about the last years. The biggest achievement My biggest achievement in these 6 years is probably that I managed to learn Japanese to a degree that I can teach in Japanese (math, logic, etc), can read Japanese books to a certain degree, and have generally no problem communicating in daily life. Said that, there is still a long way to go. Reading, and much more writing, is still requiring concentration and power, far from the natural flow in my other languages. While talking feels rather natural, the complexity of the written language is a huge hurdle. But this is probably the good, the high point of the 6 years, a great challenge, that keeps my mind busy and working and challenged over long time, with still more to do. The happiest thing Many events here in Japan were of great fun and enjoyment for me. The rich culture, paired with a spectacular love for traditional handicraft I haven t seen anywhere else, is a guarantee for enjoyable and intellectually stimulating activities. But the biggest joy of my time here of course was that I found a lovely, beautiful, and caring wife. Not knowing the challenges of an international marriage, I was caught without preparation, and so we had (and still have) rough times due to the cultural differences, and different expectations. But this is what makes life interesting, and so I am always grateful for this chance. Whatever happens in the future, she will be part of my decisions and the center of my life. The biggest disappointment Of course, when you live in a country for some time, you learn to know the highs and lows. As someone interested in politics and social systems, Japan is a pain in the butt in many respects. But the biggest disappointment was in a different area: Working environment. While I love my work and had great surroundings, there is something that always is present in the background: Foreigners here are not considered assets, but embellishment. Meaning that they are the first ones to loose their jobs when times are difficult, meaning that they are not considered as full members. After many years at a university here, and with no outlook on a job after March, I can only say, Japan is a country of Japanese first , especially when it comes to jobs. Of course, other countries are not that different, but looking at the average mixture of nationalities at universities in Europe or the US, and comparing them to Japanese universities, a bleak image is arising. I enjoyed my time here, I worked hard and did a lot for my university, but the economically hard times make it necessary to change things, and that means getting rid of foreigners. That is the reason why the work environment is the biggest disappointment in these years. Future The future is unclear, as it always was. The dire fate of many researchers. Being in my 40ies without a permanent position and a family, I am forced to think hard what my next options are. The hide-and-seek games of Japanese (and other) universities seem to me less and less an option. Sad as it is, after having worked 20+ years in academics, having done some interesting (for me) research and having managed to secure a name in our community, I am not sure where my future is. Continuing on definite contracts does not sound like a great option for me. Several things for the future come to my mind: starting my own business, work as programmer (maybe Google still wants me after I rejected them 2 years ago), work as mountain guide (have done that for some years before going to Japan). All of that is possible, but my loosing the time to research will always be a pain, since I enjoy cracking my brain on some complicated and deep logical problems. Whatever comes, I will take it as a chance to learn new things. And in one way or another it will work out, I hope.

Raphaël Hertzog: My Free Software Activities in September 2015

My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for my donators (thanks to them!) but also for the wider Debian community because it can give ideas to newcomers and it s one of the best ways to find volunteers to work with me on projects that matter to me. Debian LTS This month I have been paid to work 8 hours on Debian LTS. In that time, I mostly did CVE triaging (in the last 3 days since I m of LTS frontdesk duty this week). I pushed 14 commits to the security tracker. There were multiple CVE without any initial investigation so I checked the status of the CVE not only in squeeze but also in wheezy/jessie. On unpaid time, I wrote and sent the summary of the work session held during DebConf. And I tried to initiate a discussion about offering mysql-5.5 in squeeze-lts. We also have setup lts-security@debian.org so that we can better handle embargoed security updates. The Debian Administrator s Handbook Debian Handbook: cover of the jessie editionI spent a lot of time on my book, the content update has been done but now we re reviewing it before preparing the paperback. I also started updating its French translation. You can help review it too. While working on the book I noticed that snort got removed from jessie and the SE linux reference policy as well. I mailed their maintainers to recommend that they provide them in jessie-backports at least those packages are relatively important/popular and it s a pity that they are missing in jessie. I hope to finish the book update in the next two weeks! Distro Tracker I spent a lot of time to revamp the mail part of Distro Tracker. But as it s not finished yet, I don t have anything to show yet. That said I pushed an important fix concerning the mail subscriptions (see #798555), basically all subscriptions of packages containing a dash were broken. It just shows that the new tracker is not yet widely used for mail subscription I also merged a patch from Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (#797633) to improve the description of the WNPP action items. And I reviewed another patch submitted by Orestis Ioannou to allow browsing of old news (see #756766). And I filed #798011 against bugs.debian.org to request that a new X-Debian-PR-Severity header field be added to outgoing BTS mail so that Distro Tracker can filter mails by severity and offer people to subscribe to RC bugs only. Misc Debian work I filed many bugs this month and almost all of them are related to my Kali work: Thanks See you next month for a new summary of my activities.

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Dominique Dumont: Using custom cache object with AngularJS $http

Hello At work, I ve been bitten by the way AngularJS handles cache by default when using $https service. This post will show a simple way to improve cache handling with $http service. The service I m working on must perform the followings tasks: At first, I ve naively used $http.get cache parameter to enable or disable caching using a sequence like:
  1. $http.get(url, cache: true )
  2. $http.post(url)
  3. $http.get(url, cache: false )
  4. $http.get(url, cache: true )
Let s say the calls above use the following data:
  1. $http.get(url, cache: true ) returns foo
  2. $http.post(url) stores bar
  3. $http.get(url, cache: false ) returns bar
I expected the next call $http.get(url, cache: false ) to return bar . But no, I got foo , i.e. the obsolete data. Turns out that cache object is completely left alone when cache: false is passed to $http.get. ok. Fair enough. But this means that the value of the cache parameter should not change for a given URL. The default cache provided by $https cannot be cleared. (Well, actually, you can clear the cache under AngularJS s hood, but that will probably not improve the readability of your code). The naive approach does not work. Let s try another solution by using a custom cache object as suggested by AngularJS doc. This cache object should be created by $cacheFactory service. This cache object can then be passed to $http.get to be used as cache. When needed, the cache can be cleared. In the example above, the cache must be cleared after saving some data to the remote service. There s 2 possibilities to clear a cache: So, we have to use the first solution and create a cache object for each API entry point: 
angular.module('app').factory('myService', function ($http, $cacheFactory)  
  var myFooUrl = '/foo-rest-service';
  
  // create cache object. The cache id must be unique
  var fooCache = $cacheFactory('myService.foo'); 
  function getFooData ()  
    return $http.get( myFooUrl,   cache: fooCache  );
   ;
 
  function saveFooData(data)  
    return $http.post( myFooUrl,   cache: fooCache  ).then(function()  
      myCache.removeAll() ;
     );
   
 );
The code above ensures that: This simple approach has the following limitations: If you need more a more advance cache mechanism, you may want to check jmdobry s angular cache project All the best

29 September 2015

Norbert Preining: Multi-boot stick update: TAILS 1.6, SysresCD 4.6.0, GParted 0.23, Debian 8.2

Updates for my multi-boot/multi-purpose USB stick: All components have been updated to the latest versions and I have confirmed that all of them still boot properly although changes in the grub.cfg file are necessary. So going through these explanations one will end up with a usable USB stick that can boot you into TAILS, System Rescue CD, GNU Parted Live CD, GRML, and also can boot into an installation of Debian 8.2 Jessie installation. All this while still being able to use the USB stick as normal media. multi-usb-disk Since there have been a lot of updates, and also changes in the setup and grub config file, I include the full procedure here, that is, merging and updating these previous posts: USB stick with Tails and SystemRescueCD, Tails 1.2.1, Debian jessie installer, System Rescue CD on USB, USB stick update: TAILS 1.4, GParted 0.22, SysResCD 4.5.2, Debian Jessie, and USB stick update: Debian is back, plus GRML. Let us repeat some things from the original post concerning the wishlist and the main players: I have a long wishlist of items a boot stick should fulfill Requirements A USB stick, the iso images of TAILS 1.6, SystemRescueCD 4.6.0, GParted Lice CD 0.23.0, GRML 2014.11, and some tool to access iso images, for example ISOmaster (often available from your friendly Linux distribution). I assume that you have already an USB stick prepared as described previously. If this is not the case, please go there and follow the section on preparing your usb stick. Three types of boot options We will employ three different approaches to boot special systems: the one is directly from an iso image (easiest, simple to update), the other via extraction of the necessary kernels and images (bit painful, needs some handwork), and the last one is a mixture necessary to get Debian booting (most painful, needs additional downloads and handwork). At the moment we have the following status with respect to boot methods: Booting from ISO image Grub has gained quite some time ago the ability to boot directly from an ISO image. In this case the iso image is mounted via loopback, and the kernel and initrd are specified relatively to the iso image root. This system makes it extremely easy to update the respective boot option: just drop the new iso image onto the USB stick, and update the isofile setting. One could even use some -latest method, but I prefer to keep the exact name. For both SystemRescueCD, GNOME Partition Live CD, and GRML, just drop the iso files into /boot/iso/, in my case /boot/iso/systemrescuecd-x86-4.6.0.iso and /boot/iso/gparted-live-0.23.0-1-i586.iso. After that, entries like the following have to be added to grub.cfg. For the full list see grub.cfg: 
submenu "System Rescue CD 4.6.0 (via ISO) ---> "  
  set isofile="/boot/iso/systemrescuecd-x86-4.6.0.iso"
  menuentry "SystemRescueCd (64bit, default boot options)"  
        set gfxpayload=keep
        loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
        linux   (loop)/isolinux/rescue64 isoloop=$isofile
        initrd  (loop)/isolinux/initram.igz
   
  ...
 
 
submenu "GNU/Gnome Parted Live CD 0.23.0 (via ISO) ---> "  
  set isofile="/boot/iso/gparted-live-0.23.0-1-i586.iso"
  menuentry "GParted Live (Default settings)" 
    loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
    linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live union=overlay username=user config components quiet noswap noeject  ip= net.ifnames=0 nosplash findiso=$isofile
    initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img
   
  ...
 
 
submenu "GRML 2014.11 ---> "  
  menuentry "Grml Rescue System 64bit"  
        iso_path="/boot/iso/grml64-full_2014.11.iso"
        export iso_path
        loopback loop (hd0,1)$iso_path
        set root=(loop)
        kernelopts=" ssh=foobarbaz toram  "
        export kernelopts
        configfile /boot/grub/loopback.cfg
Note the added isoloop=$isofile and findiso=$isofile that helps the installer find the iso images. Booting via extraction of kernels and images This is a bit more tedious, but still not too bad. Installation of TAILS files Assuming you have access to the files on the TAILS CD via the directory ~/tails, execute the following commands: 
mkdir -p /usbstick/boot/tails
cp -a ~/tails/live/* /usbstick/boot/tails/
The grub.cfg entries look now similar to the following: 
submenu "TAILS Environment 1.6 ---> "  
  menuentry "Tails64 Live System"  
        linux   /boot/tails/vmlinuz2 boot=live live-media-path=/boot/tails config live-media=removable nopersistent noprompt timezone=Etc/UTC block.events_dfl_poll_msecs=1000 splash noautologin module=Tails
        initrd  /boot/tails/initrd2.img
 
   
  ...
The important part here is the live-media-path=/boot/tails, otherwise TAILS will not find the correct files for booting. The rest of the information was extracted from the boot setup of TAILS itself. Mixture of iso image and extraction Debian jessie As mentioned in the previous post, booting Debian/Jessie installation images via any method laid out above didn t work, since the iso images is never found. It turned out that the current installer iso images do not contain the iso-scan package, which is responsible for searching and loading of iso images. But with a small trick one can overcome this: One needs to replace the initrd that is on the ISO image with one that contains the iso-scan package. And we do not need to create these initrd by ourselves, but simply use the ones from hd-media type installer. I downloaded the following four gzipped initrds from one of the Debian mirrors: i386/initrd text mode, i386/initrd gui mode, amd64/initrd text mode, amd64/initrd gui mode, and put them into the USB stick s boot/debian/install.386, boot/debian/install.386/gtk, boot/debian/install.amd, boot/debian/install.amd/gtk, respectively. Finally, I added entries similar to this one (rest see the grub.cfg file): 
submenu "Debian 8.2 Jessie NetInstall ---> "  
    set isofile="/boot/iso/firmware-8.2.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso"
    menuentry '64 bit Install'  
        set background_color=black
        loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
        linux    (loop)/install.amd/vmlinuz iso-scan/ask_second_pass=true iso-scan/filename=$isofile vga=788 -- quiet 
        initrd   /boot/debian/install.amd/initrd.gz
     
    ...
Again an important point, don t forget the two kernel command line options: iso-scan/ask_second_pass=true iso-scan/filename=$isofile, otherwise you probably will have to make the installer scan all disks and drives completely, which might take ages. Current status of USB stick Just to make sure, the usb stick should contain at the current stage the following files: 
/boot/
    iso/
        firmware-8.2.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso
        gparted-live-0.23.0-1-i586.iso
        grml64-full_2014.11.iso
        systemrescuecd-x86-4.6.0.iso
    tails/
        vmlinuz Tails.module initrd.img ....
    grub/
        fonts/
            lots of files
        locale/
            lots of files
        x86_64-efi/
            lots of files
        font.pf2
        grubenv
        grub.cfg            *this file we create in the next step!!*
/EFI
    BOOT/
        BOOTX64.EFI
The Grub config file grub.cfg The final step is to provide a grub config file in /usbstick/boot/grub/grub.cfg. I created one by looking at the isoboot.cfg files both in the SystemRescueCD, TAILS iso images, GParted iso image, and the Debian/Jessie image, and converting them to grub syntax. Excerpts have been shown above in the various sections. I spare you all the details, grab a copy here: grub.cfg Conclusion That s it. Now you can anonymously provide data about your evil government, rescue your friends computer, fix a forgotten Windows password, and above all, install a proper free operating system. If you have any comments, improvements or suggestions, please drop me a comment. I hope this helps a few people getting a decent USB boot stick running. Enjoy.

Erich Schubert: Ubuntu broke Java because of Unity

Unity, that is the Ubuntu user interface, that nobody else uses. Since it is a Ubuntu-only thing, few applications have native support for its OSX-style hipster "global" menus. For Java, someone once wrote a hack called java-swing-ayatana, or "jayatana", that is preloaded into the JVM via the environment variable JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS. The hacks seems to be unmaintained now. Unfortunately, this hack seems to be broken now (Google has thousands of problem reports), and causes a NullPointerException or similar crashes in many applications; likely due to a change in OpenJDK 8. Now all Java Swing applications appear to be broken for Ubuntu users, if they have the jayatana package installed. Congratulations! And of couse, you see bug reports everywhere. Matlab seems to no longer work for some, NetBeans appears to have issues, and I got a number of bug reports on ELKI because of Ubuntu. Thank you, not.

28 September 2015

Antoine Beaupr : Fun experiments with laptop battery

After reading up on a eye-opening blog from Petter Reinholdtsen about laptop batteries, or more specifically Lithium-Ion laptop batteries, I figured I needed to try out the "TLP Linux Advanced Power Management" that I had been keeping an eye on for a while. tlp is yet another tool to control power usage on laptops (mostly Thinkpad, mine is a X120e). The novelty of tlp is the "hands off" approach: everything should be automatically configured for you... Obviously, that means I then went on working for a few hours on breaking and fixing my laptop in random operations. I opened a bunch of pull requests on the interesting battery status package that Petter produced to make it work with my setup and make it display graphs directly (instead of into a file). I also rewrote the graphing tool in Python with SciPy in order to have cleaner labels and be able to deduce the date at which a battery would be completely unusuable because it can't recharge high enough. (At the time of writing, the battery estimated death time is december 7th, but that data is skewed because of a quick change in the battery charge after the BIOS upgrade, below.) I then went on to try to limit my laptop charging to 80%, since this seems to make the battery last longer (sources from Petter: 1, 2, 3). Unfortunately, even after building a local (and trivial) backport of the tlp package to Debian stable (8.2/Jessie), I still couldn't access those controls, as TLP is really just a set of shell scripts that glue a bunch of stuff together.
The backport was simply: 
apt-get source tlp
cd tlp*/
debuild
sudo dpkg -i ../tlp*.deb
I read here and there (and in Petter's post) that I needed the tp-smapi-dkms package, so I went ahead an installed it: 
sudo apt install tp-smapi-dkms
(Yes, Jessie has a neat apt command now, it's great, upgrade now.) Unfortunately, this still didn't work. I think the error back then was something like: 
thinkpad_ec: thinkpad_ec_request_row: arg0 rejected: (0x01:0x00)->0x00
thinkpad_ec: thinkpad_ec_read_row: failed requesting row: (0x01:0x00)->0xfffffffb
thinkpad_ec: initial ec test failed
I have seen suggestions here and there to try the acpi-call-dkms package, but that was useless as it doesn't support my model (but may work with others!). The error there was: 
acpi_call: Cannot get handle: Error: AE_NOT_FOUND
Note: I still have it installed - it's unclear what impact it has, and I do not want to break my current setup.
So I then started to look at upgrading my BIOS, for some reason. I was running version 1.13 (8FET29WW) from 05/06/2011. I was able to update to 1.17 (8FET33WW) from 11/07/2012, using the memdisk binary from the syslinux-common package, with some help from the quite useful grub-imageboot package: 
sudo apt install syslinux-common grub-imageboot
wget https://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/8fuj10uc.iso
sudo mkdir /boot/images
sudo mv 8fuj10uc.iso /boot/images
sudo reboot
I found the image on the Thinkpad x120e support page from Lenovo (which happily bounces around, so don't rely on the above URLs too much). When I rebooted, I was offered to boot from the image by grub, which went on fine, considering it was running some version of DOS, which is always a bit scary considering it is software that is somewhat almost as old as me.
I wish I could have installed some free software in the BIOS instead of the outdated crap that Lenovo provides, but unfortunately, it seems this will never be possible with Libreboot or Coreboot, mostly because Intel is evil and installs backdoors in all their computers. Fun times.
Fortunately and surprisingly, the update worked and went on pretty smoothly. After that, I was able to set the charge limit with: 
echo 80   sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh
Amazing! I had almost forgotten why I almost bricked my system on a thursday, good thing that worked! Now the fun part was that, after some reboots or something I did, I am not sure what, the above stopped working: I couldn't load the drivers at all anymore, dmesg treating me with a nasty: 
thinkpad_ec: thinkpad_ec_read_row: failed requesting row: (0x01:0x00)->0xfffffff0
thinkpad_ec: initial ec test failed
Now that is some obscure error message material! Fun stuff. I tried uninstalling tlp, the smapi modules, the acpi-call modules, rebooting, turning the machine off, removing the battery, nothing worked. Even more hilarious, the charge controler was now stuck at 80%: I had artificially destroyed 20% of the battery capacity in software. Ouch. I think this may have been related to uninstalling the tp-smapi-dkms package without unloading it at first. I found some weird entries in my kern.log like this: 
tp_smapi unloaded.
thinkpad_ec: thinkpad_ec_read_row: failed requesting row: (0x14:0x00)->0xfffffff0
hdaps: cannot power off
hdaps: driver unloaded.
thinkpad_ec: unloaded.
I think that after that point, I couldn't load either module, not even thinkpad_ec... After tearing out a few more hairs and hammering my head on the keyboard randomly, I thought I could just try another BIOS upgrade, just for the fun of it. Turns out you actually can't rerun the upgrade, but you can change the model number through the same software, and this seems to reset some stuff. So I went back in the ISO image I had loaded earlier, and went on to change the model number (actually setting it to the same value, but whatever, it still ran the update). It turns out this seems to have reset a bunch of stuff and now everything works. I can use tlp setcharge and all the neat tools go well. The two key commands are: 
# limit charging to 80% of the battery, but not lower than 40%
sudo tlp setcharge 40 80
# clear the above setting and just charge the battery to 100%
sudo tlp fullcharge
It seems that the 40% bit isn't supported by my laptop, but whatever: the battery stays charged when on AC power anyways, so I don't really understand what the setting is for in the first place. The error there is: 
smapi smapi: smapi_request: SMAPI error: Function is not supported by SMAPI BIOS (func=2116)
smapi smapi: __get_real_thresh: cannot get start_thresh of bat=0: Function is not supported by SMAPI BIOS
The second command is what I will need to remember to run before I unplug the laptop for a trip. I suspect this will be really annoying and I may end up disabling all this stuff and just yank the power cable out when the battery reaches 80%, by hand, when I need to. But it was a fun geeking out, and hopefully this will be useful for others. And of course, the graphs from Petter will be interesting in a few months... Before the BIOS upgrade, the battery capacity was reported as 100% (actually, at 100.03%, which was strange). Now, the capacity is at 98.09%, which is probably just a more accurate reading that was fixed in the BIOS upgrade. Finally, also see the useful thinkwiki troubleshooting page and especially their interesting BIOS upgrade documentation which inspired me to write my own version. I would have gladly contributed to theirs, but I seem to have lost my password on this site, with no recovery possible... The arch linux wiki has obviously excellent documentation as well, as usual.

27 September 2015

Sven Hoexter: 1blu hack and the usual TLS certificate key madness

Some weeks ago the german low cost hoster 1blu got hacked and there was a bit of fuss later about the TLS certificates issued by 1blu. I think they reissued all of them. Since I knew that some hoster offer to generate the complete cert + key package for the customer I naively assumed that only the lazy and novice customers were the victims of that issue. Today, while helping someone, I learned that 1blu forces you to use the key generated by them for certificates included in a virtual server bundle and probably other bundles. That makes those bundles a lot less attractive since the included certificate is not useful at all. One could of course argue that a virtual server is not trustworthy anyway, but I'd like to believe for now that it's more complicated to extract stuff from all running virtual servers compared to dumping the central database / key repository. Maybe it's time to create a wrapper around openssl that is less opaque to novice users so we can get rid of key generation by a third party one day. In the end it's a disasterous trend that only got started because of usability issues.

Dominique Dumont: How to automount optical media on Debian Linux for Kodi

Hello This problem has been bugging me for a while: how to setup my Kodi based home cinema to automatically mount an optical media ? Turns out the solution is quite simple, now that Debian has switched for systemd. Just add the following line to /etc/fstab: 
/dev/sr0 /media/bluray auto defaults,nofail,x-systemd.automount 0 2
Where: Do not specify noauto: this would prevent systemd to automatically mount a disc, which defeats the purpose. To test you setup: Then, journalctl should show something like: 
Sept. 27 16:07:01 frodo systemd[1]: Mounted /media/bluray.
And that s it. No need to have obsolete packages like udisk-glue or autofs. Last but not least: this blog is moderated, please do not waste your time (and mine) posting rants. All the best.
Tagged: automount, debian, kodi, optical, systemd

Ben Armstrong: Annual Bluff Hike, 2015

Here is a photo journal of our hike on the Bluff Wilderness Trail with my friend, Ryan Neily, as is our tradition at this time of year. Rather than hike all four loops, as we achieved last year, we chose to cover only the Pot Lake and Indian Hill loops. Like our meandering pace, our conversations were enjoyable and far ranging, with Nature doing her part, stimulating our minds and bodies and refreshing our spirits.
A break at the summit of Pot Lake loop. Click to start slideshow.A break at the summit of Pot Lake loop. Click to start slideshow.
Northern bayberry A few showers quickly dissipated into light mist on the first leg of the hike Ryan, enjoying one of the many beautiful views Cormorant or shag. Hard to say from this poor, zoomed cellphone shot. Darkened pool amongst the rugged trees Late summer colours A riot of life shoots up in every crevice Large boulders and trees, forming a non-concrete alley along the trail margin Huckleberries still plentiful on the Indian Hill loop Sustenance to keep us going Not at all picked over, like the Pot Lake loop We break here for lunch Just about ready to embark on the last half We are surprised by the productivity of these short, scrubby huckleberries Barely rising from the reindeer moss, each huckleberry twig provides sweet, juicy handfuls A small pond on the trip back A break on the home stretch Common juniper, which nevertheless is not so common out here Immature green common juniper berries (actually cones)
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Lunar: Reproducible builds: week 22 in Stretch cycle

What happened in the reproducible builds effort this week: Toolchain fixes Packages fixed The following 22 packages became reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: breathe, cdi-api, geronimo-jpa-2.0-spec, geronimo-validation-1.0-spec, gradle-propdeps-plugin, jansi, javaparser, libjsr311-api-java, mac-widgets, mockito, mojarra, pastescript, plexus-utils2, powerline, python-psutil, python-sfml, python-tldap, pythondialog, tox, trident, truffle, zookeeper. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed: Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues but not all of them: Patches submitted which have not made their way to the archive yet: diffoscope development The changes to make diffoscope run under Python 3, along with many small fixes, entered the archive with version 35 on September 21th. Another release was made the very next day fixed two encoding-related issues discovered when running diffoscope on more Debian packages. strip-nondeterminism development Version 0.12.0 now preserves file permissions on modified zip files and dh_strip_nondeterminism has been made compatible with older debhelper. disorderfs development Version 0.3.0 implemented a multi-user mode that was required to build Debian packages using disorderfs. It also added command line options to control the ordering of files in directory (either shuffled or reversed) and another to do arbitrary changes to the reported space used by files on disk. A couple days later, version 0.4.0 was released to support locks, flush, fsync, fsyncdir, read_buf, and write_buf. Almost all known issues have now been fixed. reproducible.debian.net disorderfs is now used during the second build. This makes file ordering issue very easy to identify as such. (h01ger) Work has been done on making the distributed build setup more reliable. (h01ger) Documentation update Matt Kraii fixed the example on how to fix issues related to dates in Sphinx. Recent Sphinx versions should also be compatible with SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. Package reviews 53 reviews have been removed, 85 added and 13 updated this week. 46 packages failing to build from source has been identified by Chris Lamb, Chris West, and Niko Tyni. Chris Lamb was the lucky reporter of bug #800000 on vdr-plugin-prefermenu. Issues related to disorderfs are being tracked with a new issue.

Ritesh Raj Sarraf: Laptop Mode Tools 1.68.1

I am please to announce the release of Laptop Mode Tools 1.68.1. The last release (1.68) was mostly about systemd integration, and so is this release. There were a couple of bugs reported, and most of them fixed, with this release. All downstreams are requested to upgrade. For RPM packages for Fedora and OpenSUSE (Tumbleweed), please see the homepage. 
1.68.1 - Sun Sep 27 14:00:13 IST 2015
    * Update details about runtime-pm in manpage
    * Revert "Drop out reload"
    * Log error more descriptively
    * Write to common stderr. Do not hardcode a specific one
    * Call lmt-udev in lmt-poll. Don't call the laptop_mode binary directly.
      Helps in a lot of housekeeping
    * Direct stderr/stdout to journal
    * Fix stdout descriptor
    * Install the new .timer and poll service
    * Use _sbindir for RPM

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26 September 2015

Norbert Preining: Kobo firmware 3.18.0 mega update (KSM, nickel patch, ssh, fonts)

In short succession a new firmware from Kobo, this time 3.18.0. And here is my mega-update. On request from a reader I have now prepared updates for all three hardwares, Mark4 (Glo), Mark5 (Aura), and Mark6 (GloHD). Kobo Logo Changes since last release: Included patches from the Metazoa firmware patches: Other things that are included are as usual: koreader, pbchess, coolreader, the ssh part of kobohack, and some side-loaded fonts. For details on the respective parts please see the previous post Download Mark6 Kobo GloHD firmware: Kobo 3.18.0 for GloHD Mega update: Kobo-3.18.0-combined/Mark6/KoboRoot.tgz Mark5 Aura firmware: Kobo 3.18.0 for Aura Mega update: Kobo-3.18.0-combined/Mark5/KoboRoot.tgz Mark4 Kobo Glo, Aura HD firmware: Kobo 3.18.0 for Glo and AuraHD Mega update: Kobo-3.18.0-combined/Mark4/KoboRoot.tgz Enjoy.

25 September 2015

Clint Adams: This can or cannot be copyrighted

Honey Mojito Combine 12 oz. of honey with 8 oz. of warm water. Stir mixture together until the honey has completely dissolved. Juice limes in a juicer and pour into the honey and water. Squeeze the bunch of mint sprigs and add to a pitcher of crushed ice. Pour the honey /lime mixture over the ice. Stir and top with sparkling water. Add more honey , water, limes, or rum to your taste. Enjoy! Serves 2

Jonathan Dowland: WadC 2.0 released

WadC
This week I released version 2.0 of Wad Compiler, a lazy functional programming language and IDE for the construction of Doom maps. Version 2.0 is the first version in about four years and adds a fair number of features, most notably the ability to compose textures in your code and a basic command-line interface. For more information see the release notes and the reference.

Sven Hoexter: Ubuntu 14.04 php-apcu 4.0.7 backport

Looks like the php-apcu release shipped with Ubuntu 14.04 is really buggy. Since nobody at Ubuntu seems to care about packages in universe I've added a backport of php-apcu 4.0.7 to my ppa. It's just a rebuild, so no magic involved. Update: I've used the requestbackport thingy now to request a backport the Ubuntu way.

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