Search Results: "ron"

5 August 2008

Wouter Verhelst: Re: Government

One of the things of getting too much mail is that you will get swamped in it, sometimes to the level of not even managing to figure out there's been replies on your blog for the past several weeks. Oops. Apparently quite a number of people answered to my blog post about the belgian government issues, and I only found out right before leaving for Argentina. They're now all accepted from moderation, but that doesn't mean I can't follow up on them anymore. Most of them just agree with what I have to say, or posit another opinion (which is fine), but some clearly show a misunderstanding of what I was trying to say. So, since I don't want to appear as one posting gibberish, allow me to clarify:
"I could say that some other things about the past deb cle also puzzle me, such as the insistence of some people to get an unconditional split of BHV, thereby destroying all chances of even remotely reaching a compromise." You are saying that you would accept giving in to the demands of the Francophones that the Flemish give up territory. (Think about it, what century are they from? In what other country does one community demand the enlargement of its territory as an exchange for fixing a situation which the constitutional court has ruled to be illegal?)
Thanks for asking, but no, I'm not saying that. Let's be clear about this: there's a huge difference between a position that says "we need to split BHV, period" on the one hand, and "we need to give territory to the francophone community" on the other. It should be perfectly possible to, say, have the flemish community come up with some benefit to the francophone community in some respect somewhere that does not include "giving territory to the south of france"; but apparently the "negotiators" think not. To quote just one example: at some point Reinders (MR) suggested that a federal election circle be created to replace BHV, so that francophone politicians could still be elected in flanders, but also the other way around. This proposal was however killed by flemish politicians before the press as "not even negotiable" without even having discussed it. This, and other similar examples, I do not understand. After all, the fact that the constitutional court has ruled the current situation to be illegal does not change anything about the fact that this is still a request from the Flemish part of the country, and not from the Francophones; anyone telling you anything else is simply lying. There's nothing wrong with wanting something and being declared correct in court, of course; but there is something wrong with wanting that unconditionally. Unless you won a war, that is. And then still. Of course, not caring about much of the definitions of many political parties and not being a politician in any way, I ticked off someone who just happens to be a member of one of the parties I don't even like in the first place. Amedee, in case it matters: I didn't call CD&V a "Catholic" party to imply anything, but simply because I'm blissfully ignorant of the difference between Catholic and Christian. And happily so, too, given the CD&V's current behaviour. Oh, and the SP.A is not my favourite party; it's just that they seemed to be the more sensible of the lot during the last elections' campaigns. What's really my favourite party isn't something I'll tell you (or anyone), though.

Eddy Petrișor: git-core etch backport is useless

Update:

It seems that the lenny version (1:1.5.6.3-1) plus some small changes to allow building and running on etch does not have this problem.

The changes include:

* backported to etch
- compile against tcl8.4, instead of tcl8.5
- gtik and git-gui depend on tk8.4, instead of tk8.5
- drop the versioned dep on asciidoc and docbook-xsl

It s really nice that git-core is backported to etch, but is kind of hard to convince people to use it when gitk needs tk8.5, which is unavailable in etch.

This was the reason why previosely I made a local backport (1:1.5.6-1~bpo40+1~local) thinking the missing/extra[*] dep was a temporary glitch. According to bug 456423, this should be safe.


Does backports.org have a buildd network? IIRC, it uses the experimental buildd network, but that doesn't explain the desynchronisation of the packages in etch-backports.


Oddly enough, the build now fails on my etch machine during the tests in t9400-git-cvsserver-server.sh (looks like it is not related to the tk8.5 change):

* FAIL 23: cvs update (create new file)
echo testfile1 >testfile1 &&
git add testfile1 &&
git commit -q -m "Add testfile1" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
test "$(echo $(grep testfile1 CVS/Entries cut -d/ -f2,3,5))" = "testfile1/1.1/" &&
diff -q testfile1 ../testfile1

* expecting success: echo line 2 >>testfile1 &&
git add testfile1 &&
git commit -q -m "Append to testfile1" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
test "$(echo $(grep testfile1 CVS/Entries cut -d/ -f2,3,5))" = "testfile1/1.2/" &&
diff -q testfile1 ../testfile1
Counting objects: 5, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 282 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To gitcvs.git
0879984..e6bd37b master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
* FAIL 24: cvs update (update existing file)
echo line 2 >>testfile1 &&
git add testfile1 &&
git commit -q -m "Append to testfile1" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
test "$(echo $(grep testfile1 CVS/Entries cut -d/ -f2,3,5))" = "testfile1/1.2/" &&
diff -q testfile1 ../testfile1

* checking known breakage:
mkdir test &&
echo >test/empty &&
git add test &&
git commit -q -m "Single Subdirectory" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
test ! -d test

Counting objects: 4, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 388 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To gitcvs.git
e6bd37b..4a13ee9 master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
* FIXED 25: cvs update w/o -d doesn't create subdir (TODO)

* expecting success: (for dir in A A/B A/B/C A/D E; do
mkdir $dir &&
echo "test file in $dir" >"$dir/file_in_$(echo $dir sed -e "s#/# #g")" &&
git add $dir;
done) &&
git commit -q -m "deep sub directory structure" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update -d &&
(for dir in A A/B A/B/C A/D E; do
filename="file_in_$(echo $dir sed -e "s#/# #g")" &&
if test "$(echo $(grep -v ^D $dir/CVS/Entries cut -d/ -f2,3,5))" = "$filename/1.1/" &&
diff -q "$dir/$filename" "../$dir/$filename"; then
:
else
echo >failure
fi
done) &&
test ! -f failure
Counting objects: 13, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Writing objects: 100% (12/12), 754 bytes, done.
Total 12 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (12/12), done.
To gitcvs.git
4a13ee9..f573218 master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
grep: A/CVS/Entries: No such file or directory
grep: A/B/CVS/Entries: No such file or directory
grep: A/B/C/CVS/Entries: No such file or directory
grep: A/D/CVS/Entries: No such file or directory
grep: E/CVS/Entries: No such file or directory
* FAIL 26: cvs update (subdirectories)
(for dir in A A/B A/B/C A/D E; do
mkdir $dir &&
echo "test file in $dir" >"$dir/file_in_$(echo $dir sed -e "s#/# #g")" &&
git add $dir;
done) &&
git commit -q -m "deep sub directory structure" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update -d &&
(for dir in A A/B A/B/C A/D E; do
filename="file_in_$(echo $dir sed -e "s#/# #g")" &&
if test "$(echo $(grep -v ^D $dir/CVS/Entries cut -d/ -f2,3,5))" = "$filename/1.1/" &&
diff -q "$dir/$filename" "../$dir/$filename"; then
:
else
echo >failure
fi
done) &&
test ! -f failure

* expecting success: git rm testfile1 &&
git commit -q -m "Remove testfile1" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
test -z "$(grep testfile1 CVS/Entries)" &&
test ! -f testfile1
rm 'testfile1'
Counting objects: 3, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (2/2), 233 bytes, done.
Total 2 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (2/2), done.
To gitcvs.git
f573218..2ed3834 master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
* ok 27: cvs update (delete file)

* expecting success: echo readded testfile >testfile1 &&
git add testfile1 &&
git commit -q -m "Re-Add testfile1" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
test "$(echo $(grep testfile1 CVS/Entries cut -d/ -f2,3,5))" = "testfile1/1.4/" &&
diff -q testfile1 ../testfile1
Counting objects: 4, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 300 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To gitcvs.git
2ed3834..3f3e927 master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
* FAIL 28: cvs update (re-add deleted file)
echo readded testfile >testfile1 &&
git add testfile1 &&
git commit -q -m "Re-Add testfile1" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
test "$(echo $(grep testfile1 CVS/Entries cut -d/ -f2,3,5))" = "testfile1/1.4/" &&
diff -q testfile1 ../testfile1

* expecting success: echo Line 0 >expected &&
for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
do
echo Line $i >>merge
echo Line $i >>expected
done &&
echo Line 8 >>expected &&
git add merge &&
git commit -q -m "Merge test (pre-merge)" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
test "$(echo $(grep merge CVS/Entries cut -d/ -f2,3,5))" = "merge/1.1/" &&
diff -q merge ../merge &&
( echo Line 0; cat merge ) >merge.tmp &&
mv merge.tmp merge &&
cd "$WORKDIR" &&
echo Line 8 >>merge &&
git add merge &&
git commit -q -m "Merge test (merge)" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
sleep 1 && touch merge &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
diff -q merge ../expected
Counting objects: 4, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 302 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To gitcvs.git
3f3e927..28c1b4a master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
* FAIL 29: cvs update (merge)
echo Line 0 >expected &&
for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
do
echo Line $i >>merge
echo Line $i >>expected
done &&
echo Line 8 >>expected &&
git add merge &&
git commit -q -m "Merge test (pre-merge)" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
test "$(echo $(grep merge CVS/Entries cut -d/ -f2,3,5))" = "merge/1.1/" &&
diff -q merge ../merge &&
( echo Line 0; cat merge ) >merge.tmp &&
mv merge.tmp merge &&
cd "$WORKDIR" &&
echo Line 8 >>merge &&
git add merge &&
git commit -q -m "Merge test (merge)" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
sleep 1 && touch merge &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
diff -q merge ../expected

* expecting success: ( echo LINE 0; cat merge ) >merge.tmp &&
mv merge.tmp merge &&
git add merge &&
git commit -q -m "Merge test (conflict)" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
diff -q merge ../expected.C
Counting objects: 5, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 303 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To gitcvs.git
28c1b4a..1f0f9c8 master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
diff: merge: No such file or directory
* FAIL 30: cvs update (conflict merge)
( echo LINE 0; cat merge ) >merge.tmp &&
mv merge.tmp merge &&
git add merge &&
git commit -q -m "Merge test (conflict)" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
diff -q merge ../expected.C

* expecting success: cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update -C &&
diff -q merge ../merge
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
diff: merge: No such file or directory
* FAIL 31: cvs update (-C)
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update -C &&
diff -q merge ../merge

* expecting success: echo Line 9 >>merge &&
cp merge cvswork/merge &&
git add merge &&
git commit -q -m "Merge test (no-op)" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
sleep 1 && touch merge &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs -Q update &&
diff -q merge ../merge
Counting objects: 5, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 303 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To gitcvs.git
1f0f9c8..e6c5fc1 master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
* ok 32: cvs update (merge no-op)

* expecting success:
touch really-empty &&
echo Line 1 > no-lf &&
echo -n Line 2 >> no-lf &&
git add really-empty no-lf &&
git commit -q -m "Update -p test" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs update &&
rm -f failures &&
for i in merge no-lf empty really-empty; do
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs update -p "$i" >$i.out
diff $i.out ../$i >>failures 2>&1
done &&
test -z "$(cat failures)"

Counting objects: 4, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 305 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To gitcvs.git
e6c5fc1..4d0f85b master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
* FAIL 33: cvs update (-p)

touch really-empty &&
echo Line 1 > no-lf &&
echo -n Line 2 >> no-lf &&
git add really-empty no-lf &&
git commit -q -m "Update -p test" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs update &&
rm -f failures &&
for i in merge no-lf empty really-empty; do
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs update -p "$i" >$i.out
diff $i.out ../$i >>failures 2>&1
done &&
test -z "$(cat failures)"


* expecting success:
mkdir status.dir &&
echo Line > status.dir/status.file &&
echo Line > status.file &&
git add status.dir status.file &&
git commit -q -m "Status test" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs update &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs status grep "^File: status.file" >../out &&
test $(wc -l ../out) = 2 Counting objects: 5, done. Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done. Writing objects: 100% (4/4), 366 bytes, done. Total 4 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0) Unpacking objects: 100% (4/4), done. To gitcvs.git 4d0f85b..a146cf3 master -> master
cvs update: Updating .
cvs update: New directory master'
Invalid module '' at /home/eddy/usr/src/tools/git-backports/1.5.6.3-1~bpo40+3~local/git-core-1.5.6.3/t/../git-cvsserver line 2895, line 18.
cvs [status aborted]: end of file from server (consult above messages if any)
* FAIL 34: cvs status

mkdir status.dir &&
echo Line > status.dir/status.file &&
echo Line > status.file &&
git add status.dir status.file &&
git commit -q -m "Status test" &&
git push gitcvs.git >/dev/null &&
cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs update &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs status grep "^File: status.file" >../out &&
test $(wc -l ../out) = 2 * expecting success: cd cvswork && GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs status -l grep "^File: status.file" >../out &&
test $(wc -l ../out) = 1 Invalid module '' at /home/eddy/usr/src/tools/git-backports/1.5.6.3-1~bpo40+3~local/git-core-1.5.6.3/t/../git-cvsserver line 2895, line 19.
cvs [status aborted]: end of file from server (consult above messages if any)
* FAIL 35: cvs status (nonrecursive)

cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs status -l grep "^File: status.file" >../out &&
test $(wc -l ../out) = 1 * expecting success: cd cvswork && GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs status grep ^File: >../out &&
! grep / ../out Invalid module '' at /home/eddy/usr/src/tools/git-backports/1.5.6.3-1~bpo40+3~local/git-core-1.5.6.3/t/../git-cvsserver line 2895, line 18.
cvs [status aborted]: end of file from server (consult above messages if any)
* FAIL 36: cvs status (no subdirs in header)

cd cvswork &&
GIT_CONFIG="$git_config" cvs status grep ^File: >../out &&
! grep / ../out * fixed 1 known breakage(s) * failed 11 among 36 test(s) make[2]: *** [t9400-git-cvsserver-server.sh] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory /home/eddy/usr/src/tools/git-backports/1.5.6.3-1~bpo40+3~local/git-core-1.5.6.3/t' make[1]: *** [test] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory /home/eddy/usr/src/tools/git-backports/1.5.6.3-1~bpo40+3~local/git-core-1.5.6.3' make: *** [build-arch-stamp] Error 2


[*] depends on how you look at it

Martin F. Krafft: The dhclient nightmare

Thank you, Ted Lemon and Paul Vixie for the ISC DHCP server and client! My days would be so boring without them. I revel in your wisdom, experience, and sheer genius when I get behind some of the design decisions you made when writing those pieces of software. My current favourite is the hook integration into dhclient-script(8). Read what the manpage has to say about it:
[ ] the client script checks for the presence of an executable /etc/dhcp3/dhclient-enter-hooks script, and if present, it invokes the script inline, using the Bourne shell . command. The entire environment documented under OPERATION is available to this script, which may modify the environment if needed to change the behaviour of the script.
Hooks which can modify the environment and thus influence all other hooks that follow, as well as the script which applies the network configuration dhclient obtained to the local machine! Yay! Genius! You are my heroes. NP: Pluto: Pipeline under the Ocean

Russell Coker: A New Strategy for Xen MAC Allocation

When installing Xen servers one issue that arises is how to assign MAC addresses. The Wikipedia page about MAC addresses [1] shows that all addresses that have the second least significant bit of the most significant byte set to 1 are “locally administered”. In practice people just use addresses starting with 02: for this purpose although any number congruent to two mod four used in the first octet would give the same result. I prefer to use 02: because it’s best known and therefore casual observers will be more likely to realise what is happening. Now if you have a Xen bridge that is private to one Dom0 (for communication between Xen DomU’s on the same host) or on a private network (a switch that connects servers owned by one organisation and not connected to machines owned by others) then it’s easy to just pick MAC addresses starting with 02: or 00:16:3e: (the range assigned to the Xen project). But if Xen servers run by other people are likely to be on the same network then there is a problem. Currently I’m setting up some Xen servers that have public and private networks. The private network will either be a local bridge (that doesn’t permit sending data out any Ethernet ports) or a bridge to an Ethernet port that is connected to a private switch, for that I am using MAC addresses starting with 02:. As far as I am aware there is no issue with machine A having a particular MAC address on one VLAN while machine B has the same MAC address on another VLAN. My strategy for dealing with the MAC addresses for the public network at the moment is to copy MAC addresses from machines that will never be in the same network. For example if I use the MAC addresses from Ethernet cards in a P3 desktop system running as a router in a small company in Australia then I can safely use them in a Xen server in a co-location center in the US (there’s no chance of someone taking the PCI ethernet cards from the machine in Australia and sending them to the US - and no-one sells servers that can use such cards anyway). Note that I only do this when I have root on the machine in question and where there is no doubt about who runs the machine, so there should not be any risk. Of course if someone from the ISP analyses the MAC addresses on their network it will look like they have some very old machines in their server room. ;) I wonder if there are any protocols that do anything nasty with MAC addresses. I know that IPv6 addresses can be based on the MAC address, but as long as the separate networks have separate IPv6 ranges that shouldn’t be a problem. I’m certainly not going to try bridging networks between Australia and the US! Another possible way of solving this issue would be to have the people who run a server room assign and manage MAC addresses. One way of doing this would be to specify a mapping of IP addresses to MAC addresses, EG you could have the first two bytes be 02:00: and the next four be the same as the IPv4 address assigned to the DomU in question. In the vast majority of server rooms I’ve encountered the number of public IP addresses has been greater than or equal to the number of MAC addresses with the only exception being corporate server rooms where everything runs on private IP address space (but there’s nothing wrong with 02:00:0a: as the prefix for a MAC address). I also wonder if anyone else is thinking about the potential for MAC collisions. I’ve got Xen servers in a couple of server rooms, I told the relevant people in writing of my precise plans (and was assigned extra IP addresses for all the DomUs) but never had anyone mention any scheme for assigning MAC addresses.

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4 August 2008

Russell Coker: Lenny SE Linux on the Desktop

I have been asked about the current status of Lenny SE Linux on the Desktop. The first thing to consider is the combinations of policies and configurations. I will number them if only for the purpose of this post, if the numbering is considered generally helpful it could be more widely adopted to describe configurations.

  1. Default configuration. This has the default policy and is configured with all users having the domain unconfined_t and daemons such as POP servers are allowed to access home directories of type unconfined_home_dir_t. This allows such daemons to attack privileged user accounts.

  2. Some restricted users. This is the same as above but with some users restricted. Daemons such as POP servers are only allowed to access the home directories of restricted users. This means that if a user is to have an unconfined account and receive email they must have two Unix accounts or receive their mail under /var/spool/mail. This is one setsebool command and one (or maybe a few) “semanage login -m” commands from the default configuration.

  3. All users restricted. The system administrator has the domain sysadm_t and users have domains such as user_t. This requires a few more semanage commands. It is equivalent to the old strict policy.

  4. MLS. This is anything that is based around the MLS policy.

Currently I have two Desktop machines running Lenny (a test machine and my EeePC) and one server. I have only just switched my test machine to enforcing mode so have no good data on it (apart from the fact that I can boot it up and login - which is always a good start). The server is running in permissive mode because I have not yet written the policy to allow the POP server to read from unconfined_home_dir_t. I could get it working by switching from level 1 to level 2 or 3, but I want to get level 1 server policy working for the benefit of others else first. My EeePC however is fully functional, I have been doing some work on it - that mostly means running a ssh client under GNOME but that’s OK (desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE are quite complex and demanding, getting a machine to boot and run such a desktop environment tests out many parts of the system). It’s only at level 1 for the moment because I want to get level 1 working everywhere before moving to the higher levels. I want to get things ready for real users ASAP. With the way the policy is managed now it will be possible to move from level 1 to 2 or 3 without rebooting or interrupting running services. So once users have systems running well at level 1 they can easily increase the security at a later date. The problems that I have had are due to text relocations in libraries (see my previous post about execmod permission [1]). I’ve filed bug report #493678 against libtheora0 [2] in regard to this issue and included a patch from Fedora (which disables the non-relocatable assembly code in question). It seems that upstream have some new assembler code to try and fix this issue, so hopefully we’ll have something that can make it into Lenny! I’ve filed bug report #493705 against libswscale0 for the same issue [3]. I included a patch to turn off the assembler code in question but that was not well received. If anyone has some i386 assembler skill and some spare time I would appreciate it if you could try and find a way to make the code position independent while losing little or no performance. One thing to note is that I am now using an Opteron 1212 (2.0GHz dual-core) system for compiling, I run the i386 DomU with a 64bit kernel (I expect that 32bit user-space runs faster with a 64bit kernel than a 32bit kernel), and the disks are reasonably fast. Even so it takes about 15 minutes to build libswscale0 and the other packages from the same source tree. Previously I was using a 1.0GHz Pentium-3 for my Lenny i386 development until I had the libswscale0 build process go for more than 90 minutes before running out of disk space! If your build machine is old enough to only be 32bit then you should probably plan on watching a movie or going to bed while the build is in progress. I have built packages that work around the above bugs and included them in my Lenny repository [4]. If you take the packages from that repository plus the Lenny packages then you should have a functional desktop system at level 1. I would appreciate it if people would start testing that and providing feedback. One important issue is the discovery of libraries that want shared stacks, text relocations, and executable memory. The deadline for fixing them properly is even more of a problem due to the number of people who have to be involved in a solution (as compared to the policy where I can do it on my own). One finally problem is a bug in xdm which causes it to give the wrong context for login sessions due to having an old version of the SE Linux related code [5]. Due to a combination of this and some policy bugs you can not login with xdm. This is not a hugely important issue as most people will use gdm (which has the newer patch) or kdm (which has no SE Linux patch but can use pam_selinux.so). Also another option is wdm which works with pam_selinux.so. I’ve had a response to my bug report suggesting that there’s a bug in the patch (which was taken from gdm so maybe there’s a bug in gdm code too). I haven’t responded to that yet as I’ve been concentrating on the things that will make the most impact for Lenny. At this stage I’m still unsure of when the release team will cut me off and prevent further SE Linux related fixes from going in Lenny. I need at least one more update to the policy packages before Lenny is released. I could release one right now with some useful improvements over what is currently in unstable, but am waiting until I get some other things fixed. If I get everything fully working at level 1 (both client and server) before Lenny then I will provide a similar status report for users and testers of levels 2 and 3. I don’t expect that I will even get a chance to test level 4 (MLS) properly before Lenny releases.

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Marcela Tiznado: When did we start attacking each other?

So, I should be at DebCamp, but I'm back home after driving 800km in one day.  
Why?   I still don't know.

The main reason for this post is the irrational and unilateral response I got 
from the DebConf Orga Team, with no right to replica of any kind, and with 
the violence and humiliation we were treated with. I've helped to make 
3 DebConf's possible, and have been involved in many ways for the past years 
in Debian, so this shocked me deeply.

The short story is that there was an extra bed in the room I was staying in, the 
person who was suppose to be in that bed is a close friend of mine, so I asked 
if someone else could use it while they weren't, since that meant I could take 
the necessary equipment that I managed to get for DebConf, and also introduce 
to Debian someone who is very active and well known in our local community 
(and also part of the umbrella foundation used for local finance issues). 
I was excited about getting there, like every year. Just to make this extra 
clear, this person had already booked the full week of DebConf, just not 
DebCamp, as he previously thought he couldn't attend. When he found out he 
could, he was thrilled to be able to go and help setup. So, I made the mistake 
of not notifying the Orga team about the switch. I did this because it truly 
was harmless action, where a bed which would otherwise be wasted would get 
used, and, I did not notify the Orga team because they've been very 
aggressive, inflexible and unhelpful throughout the planning of the 
conference. This doesn't justify it, just explains why someone who generally 
is helpful decides to take the wrong path to solve something.

Up to here, nothing very exciting. What made this special, is that when one 
of the organizers, Margarita Manterola, found out about the switch, instead 
of coming to talk to me, even though she's known me for *years*, she went 
and informed the hotel that somebody had committed a crime, and checked in 
under a different name, as if me or the person that came with me where 
some random stranger. All I can say is, WTF?

Let me stress this, the email that was sent out[1] twisted the facts, to the 
extent that some of them are a lie, like the problem arrived at check-in, 
when it actually happened while we where napping a few hours after we had 
arrived, and any effort made by the Orga team with the hotel where wasted, 
as it was one of them who had originally created the problem.

Instead of solving this among us as a group, and, again, "solve" is a 
bureaucratic thing, because no one was being harmed, Marga decided to 
actually *harm* me personally, the person who I had brought, and DebConf 
as a group. What got solved?  Nothing. I left, along with someone who 
would of otherwise been helping out build DebConf, while the Orga team 
demanded a ridiculous fee for me to stay in the hotel.
Rules are rules, I understand, but I also understand everybody listens to 
downloaded music, people in Germany install[2] nmap, and a very long list 
of rules that we tend not to follow because they're unreasonable or 
unnecessarily complicated.
Is this really what DebConf is turning into?

All I can say is I'm very sad and shocked that the people I've worked with 
for so many years decided to condemn me over such a meaningless issue, and 
especially that the local team, Martin Ferrari, Damian Viano, Maximiliano 
Curia and Margarita Manterola would do such thing to "one of there own", 
and that the international Orga team would mindlessly follow through with it.

I apologized to the hotel, I do want to apologize to the innocent people who 
had to deal with this, and, even though my intentions where good and unselfish, 
I regret what happened.

Despite all of this, I'm still deeply committed to Debian, have worked during 
the year and deserve to relax and enjoy it, so I will be there for DebConf 
as a regular attendee.

See you there!

[1] http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20080802.231856.66c7d3fd.en.html
[2] http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/31/1629259&from=rss

Ingo Juergensmann: PostgreSQL on SMP machines

Dear lazyweb,

it's well known that PostgreSQL is not multi-threaded, but runs multiple instances that can run on different CPUs/cores.
We have lately bought a dual quad core system as our new database server and everything is neat and fine as long I'm testing the database locally via socket or TCP on either IP and the database scales about all 8 cores:

postgres@dhcp-140:~$ /usr/lib/postgresql/8.3/bin/pgbench -h 192.168.1.140 -c 8 -t 30000 testdb



Cpu0 : 24.1%us, 3.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 70.9%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.9%si, 0.0%st
Cpu1 : 24.5%us, 4.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 69.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.8%si, 0.0%st
Cpu2 : 17.7%us, 3.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 77.3%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.9%si, 0.0%st
Cpu3 : 13.5%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 83.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.3%si, 0.0%st
Cpu4 : 22.0%us, 5.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 70.9%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.9%si, 0.0%st
Cpu5 : 23.5%us, 4.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 70.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 2.3%si, 0.0%st
Cpu6 : 28.3%us, 4.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 63.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 3.7%si, 0.0%st
Cpu7 : 23.9%us, 4.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 69.1%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 2.8%si, 0.0%st



PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU P %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3551 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m R 11 1 0.2 0:05.30 postgres
3553 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m R 11 3 0.2 0:05.38 postgres
3546 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 7 7 0.2 0:05.52 postgres
3547 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 7 0 0.2 0:04.22 postgres
3548 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 7 2 0.2 0:04.62 postgres
3549 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 7 4 0.2 0:04.92 postgres
3550 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 7 0 0.2 0:05.84 postgres
3552 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 5 6 0.2 0:04.96 postgres


Column P marks the last used processor that process was running on. As you can see, postgres runs basically on all cores. But when I try to access the database from a remote host something strange happens:

Cpu0 : 22.5%us, 3.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 72.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.9%si, 0.0%st
Cpu1 : 17.8%us, 2.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 79.1%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Cpu2 : 5.6%us, 1.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 92.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Cpu3 : 18.7%us, 3.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 76.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.6%si, 0.0%st
Cpu4 : 1.0%us, 0.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 98.3%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Cpu5 : 27.0%us, 2.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 69.8%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.6%si, 0.0%st
Cpu6 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Cpu7 : 34.1%us, 3.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 57.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.6%hi, 4.6%si, 0.0%st


PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU P %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3580 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 13 7 0.2 0:03.56 postgres
3582 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 12 1 0.2 0:03.54 postgres
3586 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 11 7 0.2 0:03.34 postgres
3587 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 11 5 0.2 0:03.36 postgres
3581 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 11 5 0.2 0:03.46 postgres
3583 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 11 7 0.2 0:03.40 postgres
3584 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m R 11 3 0.2 0:03.36 postgres
3585 postgres 20 0 98.2m 18m 16m S 11 1 0.2 0:03.34 postgres


Postgres runs only on all core with an odd cpuid, that is core 1, 3, 5 and 7. This is reproducible and doesn't change when I connect more then one remote client or by raising the -c parameter. I'm running Lenny:

dhcp-140:~# dpkg -l grep postgres
ii postgresql-8.3 8.3.3-1 object-relational SQL database, version 8.3
ii postgresql-client-8.3 8.3.3-1 front-end programs for PostgreSQL 8.3
ii postgresql-client-common 88 manager for multiple PostgreSQL client versi
ii postgresql-common 88 PostgreSQL database-cluster manager
ii postgresql-contrib-8.3 8.3.3-1 additional facilities for PostgreSQL


So, dear lazyweb, when you have some tips to debug or solve the issue, please comment! I don't know yet if this is a bug and when, if it's in Postgres or maybe in the kernel (2.6.25-2-amd64)?

3 August 2008

Russell Coker: Used Car Prices

There is an interesting article in The Age about the effect of petrol prices on the poorer people in Melbourne [1]. The article claims that people are unable to sell large old cars and buy smaller cars. To investigate that claim I did a price search on Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores on the web site www.drive.com.au . The Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore were for a long time the two leading marques of cars sold in Australia - both of them large cars. It seems that if I wanted to buy a Falcon that is less than 20 years old with an engine of 4.0L (or bigger) then I would have many choices available with list prices under $2500, including some cars in that price range which are as little as 10 years old (the average age of a car that’s registered for use in Australia). For Commodores there seems to be less choice, there are a few of them with 4L engines that are just over 10 years old being advertised for just under $5000 and a significant number being advertised in the $5,000 to $7,500 range. I don’t know whether the increased asking price for Commodores is due to greater optimism by the owners or a greater demand. One thing that we have to keep in mind is that due to the low price of advertising on the web site and the duration of the advert (which permits changing the price at any time) the sensible strategy is to start the advert with an optimistic price, and then gradually drop the price if there is little interest by the buyers. There are also some Falcons on auction on Ebay that are going fairly cheaply, one example is less than $6000 for a 2000 Falcon with only a few minutes to go. The HSV (Holden Special Vehicles) cars are listed on Drive as a different make on Drive (it’s just Holden’s range of faster vehicles), and surprisingly their prices are quite strong. There is only one vehicle on offer for less than $5000, and only a few for less than $10,000. Now when it comes to buying a small car, on ebay there are a number of Toyota Corollas on sale, two 1997 models are on sale for just under $9,000 and just under $10,000. It seems that you could sell a 2000 model Ford Falcon on ebay and not receive enough money to buy a 1997 Toyota Corolla! For the Corollas advertised on Drive the majority of them seem to be advertised for around $15,000, but the volume on sale is great enough that there is a significant minority advertised for lower prices. There are 173 Corollas advertised for between $2,500 and $5,000 it might be possible to find one of those that has no significant problems. So it seems that ebay is not the place to buy a Corolla! So it seems that the main premise of the article (that you can’t sell a second-hand large car and buy a small car) is correct. If you were to sell a 1990’s Falcon or Commodore and buy a Corolla (which cost about half as much as a high-end Falcon or Commodore when new) of the same age then you would be lucky to get more than half the Corolla purchase price. Then of course there’s a 4% “stamp duty” tax to pay and the risk that a second-hand car you buy might have some hidden problem (the cheaper cars are unlikely to have been well serviced).

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Jeff Bailey: Toronto, Owen Sound, Montreal

Yay! Now that a surprise visit to a friend has passed, I can finally post that we're in Toronto, Owen Sound, and Montreal over the next two weeks for visiting friends / attending a wedding.

Saw Bethany and Chris today, meeting Alex tonight. Somewhere in here I have some homework and dayjob work to catch up on.

Wouter Verhelst: Rijksregister access through Belgian electronic ID card

On the mijndossier website, it is possible to view your own file in the belgian 'rijksregister' (state register), provided you have an electronic ID card and a computer set up to use it. I should note that the website uses a certificate that iceweasel on Debian, in its default configuration and after installing and configuring the necessary packages for using the electronic ID card, still warns about the certificate being 'not safe'. I should check what's going on there. But that is not what this post is about. What it is about, however, is the fact that this website contains a "death" chapter. Now, by definition, this "death" chapter can never be filled in, since one can only access their own data. And I can hardly do that if I'm death, can I? Oh well, not that I care or anything.

Gustavo Noronha Silva: 3 Aug 2008

First day at debconf8's debcamp! I have published an ical file with the stuff I plan to attend, if anyone is interested: http://people.debian.org/~kov/kov_debconf8.ical. Btw, dear lazy web, the official ical file is using ART as TZID, and that seems to make Evolution go nuts on the timing of the talks. Anyone has got a clue on what my be happening? I downloaded the file and changed it to use America/Sao_Paulo as TZID and now Evo acts correctly.

2 August 2008

Russell Coker: On Talking to Police

The lecture by Professor James Duane about why you should not talk to the police (in the US at least) is doing the rounds at the moment. The Google video site doesn’t work for me, so I downloaded it from youtube with the following references:
part 1 [rVq6N0xAEEM]
part 2 [-Z0bpj3EEHI]
part 3 [44-GSZofXIE]
part 4 [zSvxiaO-TG8]
part 5 [gzYHnWrqfWg]
part 6 [BErNzdOnWGY] The first thing that struck me about this is that it’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone clearly state the problem with the excessive number and complexity of the laws. It’s impossible to know whether you are breaking the law. This is obviously wrong and it should be a legislative priority to reduce the number of laws and the complexity of the laws. If for every law they sought evidence regarding whether it helped people or helped preserve the state then that would be a good start. The excessive number of laws is not just a problem due to the risk of accidentally breaking a law, but also due to the fact that a malicious cop could arrest anyone that they wished - it would merely be a matter of following them for long enough. In the second half of the lecture Officer George Bruch from the Virginia Beach Police Department gives his side of the story. At one point he cites an example of the road laws where he can follow a car and find a legitimate reason for booking the driver if he wishes. Virginian law allows the police to destroy primary evidence. If they tape an interview then they can transcribe it to a written record and then destroy the original tape. If the transcription removes some of the content that has meaning then the defendant is probably going to suffer for it. It’s often stated that on the net you have to make extra effort to make your meaning clear as jokes can’t be recognised by the tone of voice. It seems that the same effort would need to be made in a police interview (but without the possibility of going back and saying “sorry I was misunderstood” that you have in email). It’s also legal for police to lie to suspects. While I can imagine some situations where this could be reasonable, it seems that at a minimum there should be some protection for child suspects against being lied to by police (there have been some travesties of justice stemming from children trusting police in an interview room). It seems that if someone doesn’t get a good lawyer and refuse to talk to the police then they will be likely to be convicted regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent. Officer Bruch says that he tries to avoid interviewing innocent people. So I guess whether someone ends up in jail or not will depend to some extent on the opinion of a cop who may or may not interview them. While I guess a high rate of success at securing convictions is in most cases a good thing, the fact that convicting an innocent person is the absolute best way of letting a criminal escape justice seems to be forgotten. Another issue is the fact that a witness may have reason to believe that they could be a suspect. The advice that a suspect should never talk to a police officer seems to logically imply that intelligent people will be hesitant about providing witness statements in situations where they may be a suspect. I wonder how the legal system in Australia compares to the US in regard to these issues. I know that we have far too many laws and too many complex laws which can not be understood and obeyed by a reasonable person.

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Thijs Kinkhorst: Bad at math

This morning's newspaper featured a front page article reporting that elementary schools are bad at math. The third paragraph states:
"The quality of arithmetic education has a strong variation. Nearly a quarter of all schools is weak, over a quarter are strong. Exactly half scores 'average'."
Maybe I've been badly educated, but don't those statistics match what should be expected? If it's a normal (gaussian) distribution, both the lower and higher scoring chunks should be about the same size and indeed, the average part should be by far the largest. Of course I could be misunderstanding it all, probably due to me also being educated under this system.

Ben Armstrong: Bits from the Debian Eee PC team, summer 2008

As always, we’re doing lots of interesting and significant things and have more good ideas than we have people to do the work.  If you have an Eee PC or are planning to get one, or are otherwise interested in our work, some of which has uses beyond just the Eee, here are some highlights: Earliest Eee models supported in Lenny Lenny will release with the atl2 ethernet driver and the non-free madwifi-source now works with the earliest Eee models as well, so our patched version is no longer needed.  This means Lenny will work with all of the earliest models of the Eee PC: 701 (2G and 4G surf, 4G, 8G) and 900! All we need now for full support in Lenny is to replace the non-free wireless driver with the free ath5k driver when it is ready. Free drivers Nick Kossifidis has submitted patches on linux-wireless supporting the Eee models currently supported only by the non-free madwifi in ath5k.  This means we’ll soon realize our goal of a completely DFSG free system for the earliest models of the Eee.  By 2.6.27, or at the latest 2.6.28, these models will be supported.  Then we will see about making a patch to support whichever kernel makes it into Lenny. New models Model 901, 1000 and 1000H users are now able to install using the atl1e ethernet driver from eeepc.debian.net.  Support for wireless and other aspects of the new hardware will follow soon.  The debian-kernel team was prompt to add atl1e to 2.6.26 which has just been uploaded to sid.  We hope 2.6.26 makes it into Lenny. Wireless installer Glenn Saberton has been doing an upstanding job adding wireless support to our custom Debian-installer.  We have supported WEP authentication for several releases, now, and a beta version supports WPA.  Glenn is also making progress with these patches upstream so that non-Eee Debian users will benefit from our work. LXDE is in Lenny LXDE has entered Lenny, thanks to Andrew Lee.  It is a quite lightweight desktop environment that is made with the Eee PC in mind. Live images Two flavours of Debian-live USB images are available: a demo of the LXDE desktop and a minimal console-only image for rescue/backup.  The images are still in alpha stage of development.  If you’d like to help, give us a shout.

More interesting things are planned for the future that benefit Debian as a whole.  With a small amount of work patching live-helper, anyone will be able to make a live image that includes a customized Debian-installer. Mobile device initiative This month on debian-devel, there was some interesting discussion about Debian support for the Intel Atom processor and a possible mobile net device initiative.  That’s something we could get behind, if anything comes of it. Wiki translation Robert Epprecht has been keeping the German wiki translation in good shape, but we could always use some more help with any of the translations. New members welcome If you’d like to join us, check out our site at http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC and drop us a note on our list or join our irc channel and talk to us about what you’d like to do.    

1 August 2008

Junichi Uekawa: Trying to debug a race condition in dsh.

Trying to debug a race condition in dsh. I received a report that dsh drops a few hosts when running 'hostname' on parallel on 1000+ node clusters. I have set up some testsuite and simulation environment, and found some possible causes, and managed to reduce that rate to about 1/3000. However, it's not zero, and I feel uneasy that not all corner cases have been found. I hate this feeling.

Russell Coker: Postfix and chroot

I have written a script named postfix-nochroot to disable the chroot functionality of Postfix. I plan to initially include this in the selinux-basics package in Debian, but if the script was adopted by the Postfix package or some other package that seems more appropriate then I would remove it from selinux-basics. The reason for disabling chroot is that when running SE Linux the actions of the various Postfix processes are restricted greatly, such that granting chroot access would increase the privileges. Another issue is the creation of the chroot environment, the Postfix package in Debian will recreate the files needed for the chroot under /var/spool/postfix when it is started. The first problem with this is that when a package is ugraded the chroot environment won’t be upgraded (with the exceptions of some packages that have special code to restart Postfix) and when the sys-admin edits files under /etc those changes won’t be mirrored in the chroot environment either. The real problem when running SE Linux is that it requires extra privileges to be granted to the Postfix processes (to be able to call chroot()). While the SE Linux policy places much greater restrictions on the actions of daemons than a chroot would. For example a non-chrooted daemon process running with SE Linux will not be able to see most processes in ps output (it will be able to see that processes exist through entries under /proc, but without the ability to search the subdirectories of /proc related to other processes it won’t be able to see what they are). It would be possible for my script to be used as the first step towards making a Postfix installation automatically use a chroot when SE Linux is disabled or in permissive mode, and not use a chroot when SE Linux is in enforcing mode. I’ve probably done about half the work that is needed if this was the end goal, but I have no great interest in such configuration and no time to work on it. I would be prepared to accept patches from other people who want to go in this direction.

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Petr Rockai: adept 3.0 alpha 5

Short introduction: Adept is an APT frontend for KDE. You can use it to search for packages, install, uninstall, upgrade, all the usual things. It’s gone through a number of changes since 2.1, which has been the default package manager on Kubuntu for some time now. What’s new since 2.1
  • A KDE 4 application,
  • mostly rewritten from scratch,
  • more reliable already (in alpha) than 2.1,
  • much better & more reliable handling of interactive installs (debconf, changed config files),
  • fulltext search (powered by Xapian),
  • all new user interface,
  • faster and more responsive in about every respect.
Where to get Since compilation is still not that trivial (well, it’s 3 packages to compile and install, really, and you have to get them with darcs), I have prepared binary packages for the two main “target distributions”. In Debian, you can install alpha 5 from experimental: 
apt-get install -t experimental adept
The sources.list line is: 
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian experimental main
If you are on Kubuntu Intrepid, the line is 
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mornfall/ubuntu intrepid main
(more instructions on https://launchpad.net/~mornfall/+archive) What (and how) to test All of the previous components (save for notifier, which is not included at all yet) have been merged into a single binary, that is adept. I have missed desktop files in this alpha (it might be a little on purpose too, as I’d like people to run the program from terminal to be able to check the debug output and possibly send it along with problem reports). If you have sudo (Kubuntu-ers do, the rest can use kdesu or similar): 
sudo adept
sudo adept installer
sudo adept updater
are the magic commands. Please give a go to all of them, report rough edges, crashes and all that, either through irc (mornfall at freenode, oftc) or mail me-at-mornfall-dot-net or use KDE Bugzilla to report bugs. Missing features I have one outstanding issue on “must have for 3.0”, that being filtering packages according to their state. There is also no actual way to browse through the 19k+ packages, but might have to give for 3.0. A “browsing” mode is likely for 3.1, although still could make it for 3.0 if I get my act together on that one. We’ll see how alpha testing goes, maybe I’ll have hands full of bugs to fix and won’t get anywhere on features… Known Issues
  • It seems that alpha5 does not play very well with the “autoremove” apt-get feature, I have that on todo, but please don’t blindly run autoremove after using alpha5.
  • It seems to crash upon exit, with a “double free or corruption” error from glibc. I’ll deal with that.
  • In alpha3, it used to keep running after you have closed its window. Please check that you don’t have stray adept process after exiting (I have not seen that happen in alpha5, but you never know) and if you do, please report.
  • The search in installer is case-sensitive, exact substring match, against I think short description only. That needs to be addressed.
Reward For the brave, fearless testers, I unfortunately cannot promise anything else than fuzzy feeling for doing a good thing… I won’t be at aKademy nor Debconf this year, so I can’t even promise beers. Maybe next time. ; - )

John Goerzen: The Eee 901: Awesome

An Eee 901 showed up here recently, and I've had a (little) time to play with it.

What an awesome little machine that thing is. The keyboard is better than I expected, and so is the screen.

I got annoyed at the lack of things like Emacs on the default Xandros install, so decided to zap it and install Debian. But first, I wanted to take a backup of it.

I was thinking to myself that this is a Linux environment, but I can't just boot up a Linux rescue thingy to get stuff off it because it's not a regular PC.

Oh wait. It IS a regular PC. It is so small that I wasn't even thinking about it in the right terms. So a little dd, gzip, and nc later I have my backup image.

Debian went on smoothly -- booted from a 16MB image on a USB drive. X, suspend/resume, etc. all worked out of the box. Compiled the wifi driver and it works.

This is, I think, the perfect laptop size. Also the price is good, it's solid... what's not to love?

Eddy Petrișor: Recommending the MSI MegaBook PR200WX-058EU laptop to Linux users

I recently bought a new MSI laptop and I am really pleased with my choice so far.

Since with the previous laptop I managed to kill two of my desired features, long battery life and pretty portable, I decided is time to look really well and see what the market has to offer.

I settled on a MSI PR200WX-058EU which has the following:
  • built on a Centrino platform
    • Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T8300 @ 2.40GHz
    • Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN
    • Intel mobile chipset
  • 3GB of memory (yes, I would have enjoyed 4, but it seems the 32 bit barrier still decides hardware configurations)
  • 320GB HDD
  • DVD+/-RW
  • Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller
  • 12" wide screen (1280x800)
  • 1 Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
  • 8 cell battery by default (long battery life)
  • 1 USB 2.0 Camera - uses luvc driver
  • bluetooth
  • 1 card reader
  • 3 USB port, 1 HDMI, 1 D-sub 15 connector, 1 PCI Express port, modem port
  • fingerprint reader
  • an advertised weight of 1.8kg (I weighted it at 2.1kg with the 8 cell battery)

In other words a small and mobile powerhouse for which I payed 3800 RON (approx. 1100 ). I'd say not too bad at all.

Thanks to Gon ri Le Bouder and some searches on the internet I concluded that
the brand is not bad at all, and now that I have it I really am sure.

Of course, I installed Debian Lenny on it (I also sent an installation report), and, in spite of the initial problems, I managed to make the laptop work pretty nice, but I am especially excited about the webcam, which works with the linux-uvc driver.


There were some issues, but I managed to fix some them while I have been ignoring some other. The LaptopTestingTeam page for MSI PR200 on the ubuntu wiki was very helpful.
What have I been ignoring?
  • it seems that from time to time the battery charge status isincorrect, or acpi report that the AC is plugged in
  • headphones don't automatically turn off the speakers
  • fingerprint reader is not used yet, but I intent to experiment at some point with it (authentication via the fingerprint would be cool)
  • the keyboard seems a little bit too hard (but I hope it will loose up with time)
  • modem isn't probably working, but I don't think I'll ever try
  • there are some issues in gnome-power-manager which cause strange behaviour and grief wrt screen brighness
  • sleep doesn't work,but hibernation does



What would you do if I'd tell you that the battery lasts 4 hours or even more while the wlan is on and working (browsing and stuff like installing new packages, configs) with the brightness set to minimum?


I am really excited about this and I can say that I think I have found my next generation laptop, so if you're thinking of a cheap mobile powerhouse on which Linux must run, this laptop might be for you.

I find the following to be selling points (for a Linux buyer or others):
  • comes with FreeDOS, so no extra money for an OS you don't use
  • wifi works
  • webcam works with luvc
  • no big problems during install (the most severe are already fixed)
  • long battery life, even when using wifi (4+ hours in browsing+some package installation mode, according to my tests)
  • light enough to carry around easily (2.1kg, 2.4kg with charger)
  • nice design - some people asked me if I bought a MacBook
  • 4 state kill switch for all possible combinations for wifi/bluetooth
  • hibernate works with 2.6.24 or newer (sleep doesn't, but I will try a few things later)
  • there's no mechanical latch for the lid, there is a magnet, so there's no plastic to be broken, the laptop is more robust
  • the 8 cell battery is thicker than the regular one, allowing better ventilation
  • it seems it doesn't get too hot to put on my lap (still, I am a little afraid of blocking its ventilation due to the fabric of my clothes, so I'll probably try to carry around a hard paperboard or something like that)
  • the big resolution 1280x800 (for this screen size) seems to partly compensate for the reduced physical size of the screen (12")
  • bright screen

So, thanks again to Gon ri, Debian Installer team, LVM2 maintainers, Ubuntu Laptop Testing team, linux uvc developers, Lilo developers and maintainers, all the nice people who made and still make Debian possible.

Jordi Mallach: Pyrenees and Mallorca

This is the last thing I type before I leave office, pick up my backpack and drive all the way to Espot, in the Catalan Pyrenees, to hike around the GR 12 during 7 or 8 days. After that, we'll take a plane to Mallorca, to spend another week with Jeroni and others in a small town (I always forget its name). I'm really looking forward to this, it's been two years since my last trip to the Pyrenees, and I've been wanting to visit Mallorca for a long time. I'm glad I'll be completely incommunicado, so see you on my return on the 18th. Have a nice DebConf, you lucky ones!

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