Search Results: "ana"

10 November 2007

Clint Adams: Will the light flicker, will the hills lift?

I spent 10 hours unraveling a horrible place: from Q to A to B to the valley. I watched countless mystic forces acting one way, then another, but the ones I could see were not the ones tugging on my heartstrings. I doubt Freddie knows, but will Emily call? Will Amy? At some point blood will rain down from those allied stars. At midnight, I turned into a pumpkin, but no one thought to inform me, least of all before I encountered the pink ribbon barriers. After that, all was lost, and Torres was forgotten, though his jowls were not.

Unwanted boots and unwanted bridges
Thinking of shells and penne with ridges

A picture was not there.

9 November 2007

Ben Armstrong: Debian-eeepc: the ideal mobile text editing device realized

The search for the ideal mobile text editing device is over. While the price was well over my original budget, we’ve since gone ahead and splurged on two new Eee PCs: one for me, one for my wife. In the end, I think it will be worth it because these systems are capable of far more than just editing text. Now comes the challenging part. Xandros is the default OS and we want Debian on it instead. I have started supplementing the system with packages from Etch and Etch-backports using apt pinning, but already I have noticed some cracks beginning to develop: with pure Xandros, an SD card was automounted when it was inserted. Now it fails. Also, the Network utility no longer launches. I can work around these glitches for now, but it is plain that in the long term this Xandros/Etch hybrid is going to be more grief than it is worth. To that end, enter Debian-eeepc. Building on the work started by timbobsteve and drawing from the collective experience of the Eeeuser.com community we will make a debian-live cd + debian-installer to install Debian (as pure as possible—obviously the kernel is going to be our most contentious issue) on the device. So stay tuned for more articles on that work-in-progress. And how does my new toy shape up for mobile text editing so far? I’m delighted! For starters, this article was drafted on the bus home from work. The keyboard, while small, is still quite usable for touch-typing, the display is crisp and bright, and the size is just perfect for the cramped quarters of a public transit bus seat. But beyond just editing text, I have loaded up the system with all of the tools that go around it: subversion, git, ruby, gcc, meld, etc. I’ll be able to manage a fair amount of development on the bus, with the exception being really large builds that will continue to be done on remote build systems.

Ondřej Čertík: Mercurial vs git for managing Debian packages

I was used to managing all my packages in a Subversion repository, but now when we moved from Subversion to Mercurial in SymPy, I somehow prefer Mercurial for all my work now. :) We chose Mercurial, because I found it a little more polished than git, also the commands are the same as in Subversion.

I like the git-buildpackage, that it manages everything in one repository and that's it, and also that it's written in Python. One would expect that when Mercurial is written in Python, that hg-buildpackage would be too, but it's written in Haskell, so I cannot easily fix it. I filed a wishlist against the hg-buildpackage, whether it is a good idea to provide the same interface as git-buildpackage.

So for now I am going to try git for packaging things in Debian.

8 November 2007

Ian Wienand: Shared memory on Linux

You may have noticed a range of things mounted on a tmpfs file system.

$ mount   grep tmpfs
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)

tmpfs is actually more pervasive than it might appear. It was created to build a filesystem interface ontop of shared pages of RAM. This is useful because there are a number of ways to access shared RAM; notably SysV IPC Shared Memory (shmget, shmat, etc) and mmap of anonymous memory (MAP_ANONYMOUS). In order to have a consistent infrastructure implementing all of this the kernel abstracts RAM as a filesystem and your mapping as a file. To this end the tmpfs filesystem was created to present this abstraction. It deals with issues such as caching, security and the ability to swap pages in a consistent manner (i.e. using the same infrastructure every other file system does). Linux shared memory overview

Overall, tmpfs is implemented in mm/shmem.c. In the initialisation function the file system is mounted internally by the kernel with vfs_kern_mount so it is always around. It gets fairly complicated because it has to keep track of swapped out pages and the general complexity that come with implementing a full filesystem. As described above, there are several distinct ways to get access to this file system.

The SysV IPC shared memory layer (ipc/shm.c) is a wrapper layer which manages IPC keys and internally plugs itself into the tmpfs code. Essentially creating a key with shmget() ends up calling ipc/shmem.c:newseg() which calls mm/shmem.c:shmem_file_setup() which then creates a struct file for the shared memory. This new file reuses the file operations from the tmpfs filesystem, but is not actually put into the file system (i.e. linked to the superblock). When shat() is called to attach to this memory the SysV IPC layer will internally translate this into a mmap of this file. This is what is used by the Shared Global Area of Oracle and some Java implementations, amongst many other things (see /proc/sysvipc/shm for a comprehensive list).
The second common thing to do is an anonymous mmap. By default MAP_ANONYMOUS ignores the file-descriptor, but an analagous methodology is to explicitly map /dev/zero. If you look at the implementation of /dev/zero in drivers/char/mem.c you can see code such as
```
static int mmap_zero(struct file * file, struct vm_area_struct * vma)
 
        int err;
        if (vma->vm_flags & VM_SHARED)
                return shmem_zero_setup(vma);
```
which ends up backing shared areas with tmpfs.
The third way is actually mounting tmpfs and using it from userspace as a normal file system. glibc implements the POSIX shared memory call shm_open by creating and mmaping files on a tmpsfs mount (by default looking in /dev/shm). Other utilities also use the tmpfs semantics and mount it at other points; the obvious one of course being mounting /tmp on it!

tmpfs: more than meets the eye! Update: hopefully a little clearer, thanks to Helge Bahmann for comments.

7 November 2007

Benjamin Mako Hill: Revealing Errors

Groups that campaign for free technology, like the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tend to be supported primarily by technologists. Both groups have struggled to communicate their messages to non-geeks. I have written an article and helped create a new weblog, both called Revealing Errors, that attempt to address a root cause of this issue in what I hope is both an insightful and entertainingly manner. Geeks support groups like the FSF and EFF because, as people who understand technology, they understand just how powerful technology is. Geeks know that control of our communication technologies is control over what we can say, who we can say it to, and how and when we can say it. In an increasingly technologically mediated age, control over technology is not only the power to control our actions; it is the power to limit our possible actions. Our freedom to our technology is our freedom, full stop. This message fails to resonate with non-geeks but it does not fail because non-geeks are happy to hand over their freedom. It fails to resonate simply because the vast majority of people do not understand that technology, and control over it, is powerful enough to impact their freedom. Most people fail to see the power because, quite simply, most people fail to see technology. While we all see the effects of technologies, the technologies themselves are frequently hidden. We see emails but not mail transport agents. We see text messages but not the mobile phone network. Before one can argue that such systems must be free, one must reveal their existence. Technologists are keenly aware of the existence of these systems. To everyone else, they are completely invisible. Marc Weisner of Xerox PARC cited eyeglasses as an ideal technology because, with spectacles, "you look at the world, not the eyeglasses." When technology works smoothly, its nature and effects are invisible. But technologies do not always work smoothly. A tiny fracture or a smudge on a lens renders glasses quite visible to the wearer indeed. Similarly, people see their MTAs when messages bounce. They see Windows on their ATM or phone when the system crashes. Technological errors are moments when usually invisible technology becomes visible. They are, in this sense, also an educational opportunity.

I have recently published an article in Media/Culture Journal from the University of Melbourne within a special issue called Error. If you are interested in learning more about what I'm trying to do or looking at some examples, please read the article. With support and ontributions from Aaron Swartz, I have also created a new weblog, Revealing Errors, that reveals errors that reveal technology by posting descriptions of errors with commentary on what the error reveals. I've posted a few examples there already and I will be updating it regularly. The goal is to help explain the power and influence of technology in the service of broadening the base of people who can get excited about freedom to technology. Eventually, I hope to be able to communicate this message to a less technical audience. With that said, I hope that even seasoned technologists will learn things about their technological environment through the analysis and interaction. I hope readers of this blog will subscribe to it and, if possible, comment on and contribute to the project as it moves forward.

Bernd Zeimetz: python-application

python-application … is what I'm in love with since a few days. Although I had no real use for it when I packaged it, I'm more than happy to have it now. It comes with the following features:

UNIX process management (forking, signal handling, pid file creation)
A very simple to use interface to handle configuration files.
An extensible system logger for console and/or syslog.
Miscellaneous utilities and helpers.
Memory troubleshooting and execution timing.

Have a look at the examples in /usr/share/doc/python-application/examples to see how simple common things become if you use python-application for them, or just read trough the code, it's well commented and easy to understand.

Roland Mas: Planet scores

Top posters in a few Debian-related Planets:

$ planet-scores.sh 
Planet Debian-FR :
     19 Rapha l Hertzog
      4 Roland Mas
      3 Jean-Christophe Dubacq
      2 Gr gory Colpart
      2 Alexis Sukrieh

Sometimes I think this should be renamed Planet Buxy.

Planet Debian-FR (utilisateurs) :
     10 Julien Candelier
      8 Emilien Macchi
      4 Guilhem Bonnefille
      3 Shams Fantar
      1 Rapha l Hertzog
      1 Olivier Berger (perso)
      1 Jean-Christophe Dubacq
      1 Jean-Baptiste H tier (djib)
      1 Eric Veiras Galisson

Newly added contributors to that planet have all their recent articles aggregated, not only the ones they wrote since they were added.

Planet Debian :
     40 Christian Perrier
      2 Russell Coker
      2 Raphael Geissert
      1 Wouter Verhelst
      1 Steve Kemp
      1 Romain Francoise
      1 NOKUBI Takatsugu
      1 Michal  iha 
      1 John Goerzen
      1 Joey Schulze
      1 Gerfried Fuchs
      1 Fathi Boudra
      1 Enrico Zini
      1 Emanuele Rocca
      1 Dirk Eddelbuettel
      1 David Welton
      1 Christine Spang
      1 Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho
      1 Adam Rosi-Kessel

Planet "Christian loves rugby".

debian-community.org :
      4 Holger Levsen
      3 Andrew Donnellan
      2 Evgeni Golov
      1 Wolfgang Lonien
      1 Rapha l Hertzog
      1 Martin Albisetti
      1 Marcos Marado
      1 Jean-Christophe Dubacq
      1 Cord Beermann
      1 Benjamin A'Lee
      1 Andreas Putzo
$

I know I have an encoding problem on some planets, but that script is a very basic curl+shell+sed+grep+recode+sort+uniq pipeline, and I only use it for the amusement value. Maybe I'll recode it with a proper RSS parser some day if I feel utterly bored.

Dirk Eddelbuettel: New York Marathon 2007

I was in New York last weekend to run the 37th New York Marathon which reportedly currently stands as the largest marathon ever run in terms of starters and finishers. And it couldn't have happened on a nicer day: sunny at the start with temperatures in the 50s, no wind, and some clouds in the second half prevented it from getting too hot. Large crowds at most parts of the course, a decent number of bands, and a generally very excited atmosphere. And of course a nice course across the five buroughs finishing in Central Park. For once, I managed to run the race steadily and yet fairly fast, ending up with a time of 3:18:47 (and thus a 7:35 pace). This is about a minute slower than my PR from Sunburst 2006, and just two seconds faster than my best Chicago Marathon result from 2006, yet much better than this year's times from Boston 2007 where it was too cold, and Chicago 2007 where it was way too hot. Given that the NY course is somewhat hillier, and that was definitely busier and more crowded than the other races, I'm quite happy with the time, and the way I ran, getting through without any walking breaks. Not quite negative splits at around 1:38 and 1:40 for the two halfes. With enough energy left at the end, I finished the remaining 2+ km after the 40 km with a sub-7:00 min/mile pace which felt great. And it is a nice feeling to have completed the Boston, Chicago and now New York marathons in the same year. Last but not least, the weekend was a general blast as I was staying with a friend I hadn't seen in a decade which made for lots of stories, and even more beers...

6 November 2007

Steve Kemp: There's trouble blowing like a hurricane

xen-tools has just got a new command:

xen-resize-guest --hostname=foo.my.flat --increase=5Gb

That will take the existing guest foo.my.flat and magically resize the main disk image to be 5Gb larger. This works for LVM & loopback images, but not yet for users of EVMS. Whilst doing this job manually isn't terribly difficult it can be troublesome to perform all the steps in order without screwing up. Hence the new command. In other news I've managed to fix my broken greylisting implementation - so all the mails which were previously being queued upon klecker.debian.org should now be delivered/bounced. I believe the blame here was 50/50 me and exim's back-off behaviour, but I'll know better in the future. Remember me when you come to choose your next anti-spam service. It copes beautifully with a sustained delivery rate of 300-700 messages a minute when queues suddenly restart delivery ;) TODO: Catchup on mail. Implement message tagging for mutt to better keep track of items which are pending/claimed by me. Until we get RT.

Russell Coker: Xen for Training

I’m setting up a training environment based on Xen. The configuration will probably be of use to some people so I’m including it below the fold. Please let me know if you have any ideas for improvements. The interface for the user has the following documentation:

sudo -u root xen-manage create centos debian [permissive]

Create an image, the parameter debian or centos specifies which
distribution you want to use and the optional parameter permissive
specifies that you want to use Permissive mode (no SE Linux access controls
enforced).

Note that creating an image will leave you at it’s console. Press ^]
to escape from the console.

sudo -u root xen-manage list

Display the Xen formation on your DomU. Note that it doesn’t tell you whether
you are using Debian or CentOS, you have to access the console to do that.

sudo -u root xen-manage console

Access the console.

sudo -u root xen-manage destroy

Destroy your Xen image - if it’s crashed and you want to restart it.

(more…)

Christian Perrier: RWC: Stunning Georgia

We watched either parts or the entire three matches yesterday. So, long report..:-) The day began with the most unbalanced game of this world cup, featuring New Zealand, world's top rugby team, against Portugal, ranked 22nd. Rugby in Portugal is played by about 4200 people only, in less than 50 clubs. All players are amateur but one (Gon alvo Uva, playing in Montpellier, France), being dentists, students, etc...and coming to RWC during their holidays. The result (108-13 and 16 tries) was expected but the feeling when Portugal scored a try was great, with the 40,000 attendees in Lyon supporting Portugal. Personnally, I had great time chatting on IRC with Miguel Figueiredo, one of the leaders of the portuguese l10n team in Debian, during the match. We watched Wales-Australia (20-32) during the evening. That game was obviously the key match of this pool, with the winner very probably finishing 1st in the pool. Wales playing in Millenium Stadium in Cardiff is always astonishing and show how much the Welsh people love this sport. During 1st half, Australia strongly dominated and logically lead 25-3 with 3 tries. Berrick Barnes, their new fly half (Stephen Larkham injured), is a very promising player and, imho, the match's MVP (even after being severely bashed by Gareth Thomas on Australia's first try). After half time, the Welsh team courageously fought and came back to 13-25, menacing Australia which was more hesitating. Unfortunately, Australia scored a try after a big mistake by Stephen Jones. So, even with good play by Wales and another try by the incredible wing player Shane Williams, Australia logically won this game. Again, a southern hemisphere team dominated a northern hemisphere one. This is probably what will happen during this entire WC and I bet that New Zealand, Australia and South Africa will end up in semi-finals, quite probably along with Argentina, unless France does a miracle and ends up 1st in their pool. I think that Australia is slightly weaker than NZ and RSA, though. So, my current bet is NZ-RSA for the final (this can happen, given their respective track to the final and given that they certainly will end up first of their respective pools). Finally, we watched the second half of Ireland-Georgia (14-10). *That* was quite a surprise. Ireland was very close to lose this game with Georgian forwards crushing them repeatedly at the end of the match and nearly scoring a try that would have made them win. Everybody was waiting for Georgia to swell after their strong 1st half (3-7) but they managed to fight until the last second, supported by Bordeaux 40,000 attendees (minus a few thousands of Irish supporters, of course). So, while the initial question was whether Ireland would score a bonus point, the final question became about them to *win* the match. This gives even more credit to Argentina's victory last Tuesday. Full standing ovation for Georgia at the end of the match. Today is again a busy day. I'll probably skip Fidji-Canada (which happens at the same time than France-Namibia) but certainly won't miss Samoa-Tonga and, of course, France-Namibia. Samoa have to win to keep their chances of qualifying (they can beat England, really) and, well, France has of course to win *and* score a bonus point. In this world cup where to so-called "small" teams are not that small, everything can happen and France is anything but safe, ehre.

Christian Perrier: RWC: Wales quietly to the 1/4th, France still alive

Thursday featured Wales-Japan which we briefly watched. Easy win for the Welsh who begin to secure down their qualification for the 1/4th finals. They'll just need a victory over Fidji on Sept 29th to do so (but Fidji would qualify by winning so that match will be one of those to watch during last round). Nothing really interesting to say about WAL-JPN (72-10). The difference in the front lines was too obvious for Japan to get any chance to win. However, at least during the first half of the first half-time, the were even leading after scoring one of the best tries as of now in the tournament. Yesterday was a key day for the French team. Victory against Ireland was mandatory. They made it (25-3, two tries) which is by far the most important. That wasn't definitely an easy match but noone was hoping it to be one. The french game is still far from being perfect (sometimes strange kick play and weird decisions by the rear players, sometimes slow assistance to players in rucks and sometimes stupid fouls giving their opponents opportunities to kick penalties (or expelled players as Traille was at the end of the game). On the other hand, some parts of the game were good quality: scrums (two balls won), line-outs (4 or 5 balls won on opponents' throw: great Julien Bonnaire there) and the magic inspiration of Elissalde and Michalak on the two tries as well as Clerc scoring these tries. There is still room for progress for the French, definitely (the same play against New Zealand, Australia or South Africa would be a loss). They're however on a good way. Next step is winning over Georgia, hopefully scoring a bonus point (that may be harder than expected as Georgia showed good defense) and hope that the Irish team will win over Argentina. Again, this week-end will be busy:

Saturday:
- South-Africa-Tonga: both teams won their first two matches. Tonga is hoping to qualify, still, so while they probably can't beat RSA, they can hope scoring the defensive bonus point.
- England-Samoa: England has to win to keep their chances to qualify. This is Johnny Wilkinson's come back and they should do it. We can expect good support by the French audience for the Samoans and very interesting match to watch
- Argentina-Namibia: I already explained why I think that Argentina is really able to reach the semi-finals. This should be a quite easy match for them with one goal: score the offensive bonus point to secure down their 1st rank
Sunday:
- Australia-Fidji: Fidji didn't show a very strong play as of now against Japan and Canada, so I think that Australia will have a quite easy win
- Scotland-New Zealand: I really fear for the Scots that they are crushed by the All Blacks and they will probably more think about the upcoming match against Italy and probably don't hope that much for this one.

Christian Perrier: RWC: South Africa's power (15-6)

Great final. South Africa *and* England showed that a match without tries can still be one of the best of the tournament. The first half was one of the most intense (I'd say *the* most intense) I've seen, with England playing well with their strengths (forward lanes, mauls) but felt against a tremendously defending South African team...and a perfect Percy Montgomery transforming all penalty kicks, therefore converting RSA domination. I also noticed the incredible energy of Bryan Habana who "destroyed" Sackey three times even if he weights many pounds less. I think that all rugby fans enjoyed that final even without tries (again, South Africa wins a world cup without scoring a try in final). So, that's the end of 1.5 month of rugby crazyness. Dear readers who survived until now, thank you for sharing my passion for that sport...et rendez-vous pour le tournoi des 6 nations..:-)

Christian Perrier: RWC: South Africa-England

After Argentina-France on the first day, that one was planned to be one of the few big matches of first round. Of course, after the game won by South Africa (36-0), that seems pretty silly to say... The Springboks were definitely better than England, in all parts of the game. What stunned me, particularly after watching South Africa live , is their complete control on the game, which is a great improvement over their match against Samoa. South Africa scored three tries all of them great examples or organized attacks by the rear lines. Two tries for JP Pietersen, after 3 by Habana on first game: the South-African wing players rock. Despite this, the player of the game was definitely Jason Du Preez, the scrum half (hope this is the correct term in English) who organised all attacks from RSA. England was missing too many key players (several injured) to be able to be a menace for South Africa. They never were really dangerous, except maybe when the magic Jason Robinson has the ball in his hands (what a player!). I was particularly disappointed by their center back players, and even more particularly by Farrel. Ditto for Andy Gomarsall as scrum half. So, South Africa is now probably qualified with two quite easy games against USA and Tonga. England will have to fight to qualify and noone can tell if Samoa or Tonga can surprise them. Watching Samoa-Tonga on Sunday will be interesting and Samoa-England or Tonga-England are already key matches. A great rugby week-end is about to begin, again. Today, Wales-Australia is the match of the day, for sure, with wales playing home (some matches are not in France, but in Cardiff and Edinburgh). New Zealand-Portugal will be...interesting, though the only incertainty is the number of scored tries. And finally, Ireland-Georgia is of some interest for the French. Tomorrow, France could have hard times against Namibia. Of course, the challenge here is winning *and* scoring the bonus point. That match is 5 days before a key France-Ireland, so the challenge is also not wasting too much energy. Of course, tomorrow's top match for me is Samoa-Tonga while I whileprobably skip Fidji-Canada (too bad, I haven't seen those playing yet). BTW, if someone has a recording of the most intense match as of now (Japan-Fidji), I'd be delighted. Rugbystiquement v tre,

Christian Perrier: RWC: That will be South Africa-England

...and, really, we nearly never thought that Argentina could win tonight. South Africa was really too strong for them. The only domain where Argentinians dominated were scrums but this was much compensated by their great weakness on line-outs, losing something like 5 or 6 of them. South Africa thus logical won very easily...and Bryan Habana is now the best try scorer all along RWCs, along with Jonah Lomu. He is a really great player, indeed. Much much impressive South Africa: they'll be by far the favourites of the final against England, which they beated already during that World Cup. I said several times that I'm not a deep fan of RSA's play, but I could become one. Their game improved all along the World Cup and today, they probably played their best match. Two remakes next week-end: France-Argentina for the 3rd place and South Africa-England as final. That will be good matches, no doubt...and I hope that Bernard Laporte will change the French team to play against Argentina.

Christian Perrier: RWC: Deceptive Samoa-Tonga, France logically back

Sunday's matches featured three interesting games. We didn't watch much of Fidji-Canada because it was scheduled at 14:00 but announced at 21:00 on the schedule I had..:-(.. That's too bad because these two teams are the only two I haven't seen during an entire game yet. Fidji won after being menaced by Canada up to the last minute. So Fidji keep their chances of qualifying, which they'll have to win by beating Wales. Samoa-Tonga (15-19) was very promizing and turned out to be a deception for me. We watched only the first half of it (Eurosport wasn't broadcasting it live... suckers!). The suspense was there, particularly at the end of the game, when Tonga were playing only with 13 players for five minutes, while leading by 4 points only. However, Samoa obviously played quite badly and never really succeeded during that match to push their very physical way to play rugby. Tonga keep their chances to qualify, which they'll have to defend against England. France-Namibia was the last match and was obviously eagerly awaited by most of my fellow French supporters. Seen as "the match of revival" (as if losing to Argentina was a shame....), this was indeed a mor ethan easy match, as one would expected. Anyway, France played it well and played it the way it had to be played, so even if 87-10 doesn't really mean anything (particularly when playing against 14 players most of the time), they used all the strength of the team to build that victory and I believe there are still many strength in the French team. Critical rendez-vous against Ireland on Friday. Today (Monday): no match. Tomorrow, only one (Scotland-Romania in Murrayfield: critical match for the Scots). Everybody, us included, is resting.:)

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: Also sprach Spam

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

Edit: Turns out that’s a Desmond Tutu quote. Still, it’s interesting to see it as a spam subject line.

Russell Coker: Squid and SE Linux

Is Squid not returning some data you need on a SE Linux system? The default configuration of the SE Linux policy for Squid only allows it to connect to a small number of ports which are used for web servers. For example ports http (80) and https (443) are labelled as http_port_t which permits serves such as Apache to bind to them and Squid to connect to them. But sometimes services run on non-standard ports and periodically new services are devised which use the HTTP protocol and thus you have Squid and Apache using new ports. semanage port -a -t http_port_t -p tcp 11371 One example of such a port is hkp (11371) - the latest protocol for sending and receiving GPG/OpenPGP keys. Running the above command relabelled the TCP port 11371 in question as http_port_t and thus allowed everything to work. setsebool -P squid_connect_any 1
An alternate option would be to run the above command to allow Squid to connect to any port. I will suggest that the upstream policy be changed to make the default labelling of TCP port 11371 be http_port_t, but the same operations can be used for other ports. Some people may claim that this makes things difficult for sys-admins. But the fact is that a well known port is a significant resource that you don’t want to permit any random user to access. Not only do the SE Linux port access controls prevent malice, but they also prevent system programs from accidentally using the wrong ports. A common example of accidental mis-use is the port 631 used for the IPP (Internet Printing Protocol - CUPS). When system programs need to use TCP source ports below 1024 they start at 1023 and work their way down, having such programs get down to 631 is not uncommon (there are some error conditions which result in ports being reserved for some minutes after use). In terms of malicious operations, it seems that the ports used by database servers such as MySQL and PostgreSQL would ideally be inaccessible to a Squid proxy, and services such as network backup should be inaccessible to everything other than the backup software.

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: You have a blog? Call the plumber!

David N. Welton writes about the word “blog”:

[…] to me it sounds more like something you have to call a plumber to deal with after having drained a couple of bottles of some caustic agent down the toilet, in an unsuccessful attempt to eliminate the “blog”

Christian Perrier: Broken KDE

It's quite some time since I daily live with a partly broken KDE. I know that some transitions are on their way, so this might be related in some way. As of now:

Cookie Manager not working in Konqueror (going to "Cookies" in the Konqueror configuration dialogs just says "Unable to start cookie manager" which is what I call informative)
kwallet seems to have lost track of the few (low importance) passwords I registered in it. Launching kwalletmanager just shows an empty window and trying File/New wallet just....does nothing.
klaptop no longer showing the status of my battery in the tray (of course, this is supposed to be set in the KDE configuration center). Manually launching 'klaptop_check' gives nothing (dunno if that one is the systray application)
kmix status of the sound settings disappears from time to time from the tray
....and probably a few others I don't even notice anymore

This is quite frustrating as I see no obvious place to look at and I dealt with daily aptitude upgrades quite painlessly. It is not frustrating enough to make me look deeper into this but, anyway, I have no damn clue about where to look, indeed. I guess that a KDE wizard could probably have more clue about this but, really, putting myself in Joe User's skin, I really feel as clueless as the average Windows user when something is broken on his computer. THat's maybe the 'just like Windows' stance of KDE, after all...:-) (GNOME zealots, go away: I ran out of GNOME a while ago when I had about the very same feeling during some transitions and my only option was to either try understanding every funky file in ~/.gconf to fix my problems)

Next.

Previous.