Bugs can be annoying. Especially the ones that crash or hang and do not have a root cause. A good example of such annoyance can be kernel bugs, where a faulty hardware/device driver hinders the kernel's suspend/resume process. Because, as a user, while in the middle of your work, you suspend your machine hoping to resume your work, back when at your destination. But, during suspend, or during resume, randomly the bug triggers leaving you with no choice but a hardware reset. Ultimately, resulting in you losing the entire work state you were in. Such is a situation I encountered with my 2 year old, Lenovo Yoga 2 13. For 2 years, I had been living with this bug with all the side-effects mentioned.

Mar 01 18:43:28 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 38 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:43:54 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 123 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:00 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 125 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:11 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 25 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:16 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 26 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:22 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 27 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:22 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:22 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:22 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 28 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:23 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:23 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:23 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 29 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:23 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Device not responding to setup address.
Mar 01 18:44:23 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Device not responding to setup address.
Mar 01 18:44:23 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device not accepting address 29, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:24 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 30 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:24 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Device not responding to setup address.
Mar 01 18:44:24 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Device not responding to setup address.
Mar 01 18:44:24 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device not accepting address 30, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:24 learner kernel: usb usb2-port4: unable to enumerate USB device
Mar 01 18:44:24 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 31 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:24 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:25 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 32 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:30 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 33 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:30 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:31 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:31 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 34 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:36 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 35 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:36 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:36 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:37 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 36 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:37 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:37 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:37 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 37 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:37 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Device not responding to setup address.
Mar 01 18:44:37 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Device not responding to setup address.
Mar 01 18:44:38 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device not accepting address 37, error -71
Mar 01 18:44:38 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 38 using xhci_hcd
Mar 01 18:44:38 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Device not responding to setup address.

Mar 02 13:34:05 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 45 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:05 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 46 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:05 learner kernel: usb 2-4: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=0129
Mar 02 13:34:05 learner kernel: usb 2-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Mar 02 13:34:05 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Product: USB2.0-CRW
Mar 02 13:34:05 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Manufacturer: Generic
Mar 02 13:34:05 learner kernel: usb 2-4: SerialNumber: 20100201396000000
Mar 02 13:34:06 learner kernel: usb 2-4: USB disconnect, device number 46
Mar 02 13:34:16 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 47 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:21 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 48 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:26 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 49 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:32 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 51 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:37 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 52 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:43 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 54 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:43 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 55 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:49 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 57 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:34:55 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 58 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:00 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 60 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:06 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 61 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:11 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 63 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:17 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 64 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:22 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 65 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:28 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 66 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:33 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 68 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:39 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 69 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:44 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 70 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:50 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 71 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:50 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Device not responding to setup address.
Mar 02 13:35:50 learner kernel: usb 2-4: Device not responding to setup address.
Mar 02 13:35:50 learner kernel: usb 2-4: device not accepting address 71, error -71
Mar 02 13:35:50 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 73 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:51 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 74 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:56 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 75 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:35:57 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 77 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:36:03 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 78 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:36:08 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 79 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:36:14 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 80 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:36:20 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 83 using xhci_hcd
Mar 02 13:36:26 learner kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 86 using xhci_hcd

Thanks to the Linux USB maintainers, we tried investigating the issue, which resulted in uncovering other bugs. Unfortunately, this bug was concluded as a possible hardware bug. The only odd bit is that this machine has a Windows 8.1 copy still lying on the spare partition, where the issue was not seen at all. It could very well be that it was not a hardware bug at all, or a hardware bug which had a workaround in the Windows driver. But, the results of the exercise weren't much useful to me because I use the machine under the Linux kernel most of the time. So, this March 2017, with 2 years completion on me purchasing the device, I was annoyed enough by the bugs. That led me trying out finding other ways to taming this issue. Lenovo has some variations of this device. I know that it comes with multiple options for the storgae and the wifi component. I'm not sure if there are more differences. The majority of the devices are connected over the xHCI bus on this machine. If a single device is faulty, or has faulty hardware; it could screw up the entire user experience for that machine. Such is my case. Hardware manufacturers could do a better job if they could provide a means to disable hardware, for example in the BIOS. HP shipped machines have such an option in the BIOS where you can disable devices that do not have an important use case for the user. Good example of such devices are Fingerprint Readers, SD Card Readers, LOMs and mabye Bluetooth too. At least the latter should apply for Linux users, as majority of us have an unpleasant time getting Bluetooth to work out of the box. But on my Lenovo Yoga, it came with a ridiculous BIOS/UEFI, with very very limited options for change. Thankfully, they did have an option to set the booting mode for the device, giving the choices of Legacy Boot and UEFI. Back to the topic, with 2 years of living with the bug, and no clarity on if and whether it was a hardware bug or a driver bug, it left me with no choice but to open up the machine. Next to the mSATA HDD sits the additional board, which houses the Power, USB, Audio In, and the SD Card reader. Opening that up, I got the small board. I barely use the SD Card reader, and given the annoyances I had to suffer because of it, there was no more mercy in killing that device. So, next was to unsolder the SD Card reader completely. Once done, and fitted back into the machine, everything has been working awesomely great in the last 2 weeks. This entire fix costed me 0. So sometimes, fixing a bug is all that matters. In the Hindi language, a nice phrase for such a scenario remnids me of the great Chanakya, " , , ".

,

I own a Fitbit Surge. But Fitibit chose to remain exclusive in terms of interoperability. Which means to make any sense out of the data that the watch gathers, you need to stick with what Fitbit mandates. Fair enough in today's trends. It also is part of their business model to restrict useful aspects of the report to Premium Membership. Again, fair enough in today's business' trends. But a nice human chose to write a bridge; to extract Fitbit data and feed into Google Fit. The project is written in Python, so you can get it to work on most common computer platforms. I never bothered to package this tool for Debian, because I never was sure when I'd throw away the Fitbit. But until that happens, I decided to use the tool to sync my data to Google Fit. Which led me to requirements.txt This project's requirement.txt lists versioned module dependencies, of which many modules in Debian, were either older or newer than what was mentioned in the requirements. To get the tool working, I installed it the pip way. 3 months later, something broke and I needed to revisit the installed modules. At that point, I realized that there's no such thing as: pip upgrade That further led me to dig on why anyone wouldn't add something so simple, because today, in the days of pip, snap, flatpak and dockers, Distributions are predicted to go obsolete and irrelevant. Users should get the SOURCES directly from the developers. But just looking at the date the bug was filed, killed my enthusiasm any further. So, without packaging for Debian, and without installing through pip, I was happy that my init has the ability to create confined and containerized environments, something that I could use to get the job done.

rrs@chutzpah:~$ sudo machinectl login fitbit
[sudo] password for rrs:
Connected to machine fitbit. Press ^] three times within 1s to exit session.
Debian GNU/Linux 9 fitbit pts/0
fitbit login: root
Last login: Fri Feb 17 12:44:25 IST 2017 on pts/1
The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
root@fitbit:~# tail -n 25 /var/tmp/lxc/fitbit-google.log
synced calories - 1440 data points
------------------------------   2017-02-19  -------------------------
synced steps - 1440 data points
synced distance - 1440 data points
synced heart_rate - 38215 data points
synced weight - 0 logs
synced body_fat - 0 logs
synced calories - 1440 data points
------------------------------   2017-02-20  -------------------------
synced steps - 1270 data points
synced distance - 1270 data points
synced heart_rate - 32547 data points
synced weight - 0 logs
synced body_fat - 0 logs
synced calories - 1271 data points
Synced 7 exercises between : 2017-02-15 -- 2017-02-20
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     Like it ?
star the repository : https://github.com/praveendath92/fitbit-googlefit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
root@fitbit:~#

In my ongoing quest to get Tablet-Mode working on my Hybrid machine, here's how I've been living with it so far. My intent is to continue using Free Software for both use cases. My wishful thought is to use the same software under both use cases.

• Browser: On the browser front, things are pretty decent. Chromium has good support for Touchscreen input. Most of the Touchscreen use cases work well with Chromium. On the Firefox side, after a huge delay, finally, Firefox seems to be catching up. Hopefully, with Firefox 51/52, we'll have a much more usable Touchscreen browser.
• Desktop Shell: One of the reason of migrating to GNOME was its touch support. From what I've explored so far, GNOME is the only desktop shell that has touch support natively done. The feature isn't complete yet, but is fairly well usable.
  • Given that GNOME has touchscreen support native, it is obvious to be using GNOME equivalent of tools for common use cases. Most of these tools inherit the touchscreen capabilities from the underneath GNOME libraries.
  • File Manager: Nautilus has decent support for touch, as a file manager. The only annoying bit is a right-click equivalent. Or in touch input sense, a long-press.
  • Movie Player: There's a decent movie player, based on GNOME libs; GNOME MPV. In my limited use so far, this interface seems to have good support. Other contenders are:
    • SMPlayer is based on Qt libs. So initial expectation would be that Qt based apps would have better Touch support. But I'm yet to see any serious Qt application with Touch input support. Back to SMPlayer, the dev is pragmatic enough to recognize tablet-mode users and as such has provided a so called "Tablet Mode" view for SMPlayer (The tooltip did not get captured in the screenshot).
    • MPV doesn't come with a UI but has basic management with OSD. And in my limited usage, the OSD implementation does seem capable to take touch input.
• Books / Documents: GNOME Documents/Books is very basic in what it has to offer, to the point that it is not much useful. But since it is based on the same GNOME libraries, it enjoys native touch input support. Calibre, on the other hand, is feature rich. But it is based on (Py)Qt. Touch input is told to work for Windows. For Linux, there's no support yet. The good thing about Calibre is that it has its own UI, which is pretty decent in a Tablet-Mode Touch workflow.
• Photo Management: With compact digital devices commonly available, digital content (Both Photos and Videos) is on the rise. The most obvious names that come to mind are Digikam and Shotwell.
  • Shotwell saw its reincarnation in the recent past. From what I recollect, it does have touch support but was lacking quite a bit in terms of features, as compared to Digikam.
  • Digikam is an impressive tool for digital content management. While Digikam is a KDE project, thankfully it does a great job in keeping its KDE dependencies to a bare minimum. But given that Digikam builds on KDE/Qt libs, I haven't had any much success in getting a good touch input solution for Tablet Mode. To make it barely usable in Table-Mode, one could choose a theme preference with bigger toolbars, labels and scrollbars. This helps in making a touch input workaround use case. As you can see, I've configured the Digikam UI with Text alongside Icons for easy touch input.
• Email: The most common use case. With Gmail and friends, many believe standalone email clients are no more a need. But there always are users like us who prefer emails offline, encrypted emails and prefer theis own email domains. Many of these are still doable with free services like Gmail, but still.
  • Thunderbird shows its age at times. And given the state of Firefox in getting touch support (and GTK3 port), I see nothing happening with TB.
  • KMail was something I discontinued while still being on KDE. The debacle that KDEPIM was, is something I'd always avoid, in the future. Complete waste of time/resource in building, testing, reporting and follow-ups.
  • Geary is another email client that recently saw its reincarnation. I recently had explored Geary. It enjoys similar benefits like the rest applications using GNOME libraries. There was one touch input bug I found, but otherwise Geary's featureset was limited in comparison to Evolution.
  • Migration to Evolution, when migrating to GNOME, was not easy. GNOME's philosophy is to keep things simple and limited. In doing that, they restrict possible flexibilities that users may find obvious. This design philosophy is easily visible across all applications of the GNOME family. Evolution is no different. Hence, coming from TB to E was a small unlearning + newLearning curve. And since Evolution is using the same GNOME libraries, it enjoys similar benefits. Touch input support in Evolution is fairly good. The missing bit is the new Toolbar and Menu structure that many have noticed in the newer GNOME applications (Photos, Documents, Nautilus etc). If only Evolution (and the GNOME family) had the option of customization beyond the developer/project's view, there wouldn't be any wishful thoughts.
    • Above is a screenshot of 2 windows of Evoluiton. In its current form too, Evolution is a gem at times. For my RSS feeds, they are stored in a VFolder in Evolution, so that I can read them when offline. RSS feeds are something I read up in Tablet-mode. On the right is an Evolution window with larger fonts, while on the left, Evoltuion still retains its default font size. This current behavior helps me get Table-Mode Touch working to an extent. In my wishful thoughts, I wish if Evolution provided flexibility to change Toolbar icon sizes. That'd really help easily touch the delete button when in Tablet Mode. A simple button, Tablet Mode, like what SMPlayer has done, would keep users sticky with Evolution.

My wishful thought is that people write (free) software, thinking more about usability across toolkits and desktop environments. Otherwise, the year of the Linux desktop, laptop, tablet; in my opinion, is yet to come. And please don't rip apart tools, in porting them to newer versions of the toolkits. When you rip a tool, you also rip all its QA, Bug Reporting and Testing, that was done over the years. Here's an example of a tool (Goldendict), so well written. Written in Qt, Running under GNOME, and serving over the Chromium interface. In this whole exercise of getting a hybrid working setup, I also came to realize that there does not seem to be a standardized interface, yet, to determine the current operating mode of a running hybrid machine. From what we explored so far, every product has its own way to doing it. Most hybrids come pre-installed and supported with Windows only. So, their mode detection logic seems to be proprietary too. In case anyone is awaer of a standard interface, please drop a note in the comments.

I am pleased to announce the 1.71 release of Laptop Mode Tools. This release includes some new modules, some bug fixes, and there are some efficiency improvements too. Many thanks to our users; most changes in this release are contributions from our users. A filtered list of changes in mentioned below. For the full log, please refer to the git repository. Source tarball, Feodra/SUSE RPM Packages available at:
https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-tools/releases Debian packages will be available soon in Unstable. Homepage: https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-tools/wiki
Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/laptop-mode-tools

1.71 - Thu Jan 12 13:30:50 IST 2017
    * Fix incorrect import of os.putenv
    * Merge pull request #74 from Coucouf/fix-os-putenv
    * Fix documentation on where we read battery capacity from
    * cpuhotplug: allow disabling specific cpus
    * Merge pull request #78 from aartamonau/cpuhotplug
    * runtime-pm: refactor listed_by_id()
    * wireless-power: Use iw and fallback to iwconfig if it not available
    * Prefer available AC supply information over battery state to determine ON_AC
    * On startup, we want to force the full execution of LMT.
    * Device hotplugs need a forced execution for LMT to apply the proper settings
    * runtime-pm: Refactor list_by_type()
    * kbd-backlight: New module to control keyboard backlight brightness
    * Include Transmit power saving in wireless cards
    * Don't run in a subshell
    * Try harder to check battery charge
    * New module: vgaswitcheroo
    * Revive bluetooth module. Use rfkill primarily. Also don't unload (incomplete list of) kernel modules

What is Laptop Mode Tools

Description: Tools for Power Savings based on battery/AC status
 Laptop mode is a Linux kernel feature that allows your laptop to save
 considerable power, by allowing the hard drive to spin down for longer
 periods of time. This package contains the userland scripts that are
 needed to enable laptop mode.
 .
 It includes support for automatically enabling laptop mode when the
 computer is working on batteries. It also supports various other power
 management features, such as starting and stopping daemons depending on
 power mode, automatically hibernating if battery levels are too low, and
 adjusting terminal blanking and X11 screen blanking
 .
 laptop-mode-tools uses the Linux kernel's Laptop Mode feature and thus
 is also used on Desktops and Servers to conserve power

LIO -fb is the new SCSI Target for Debian. Previously, we maintained the LIO tools from the pre-fork upstream branch. But, with good reasons, we've now moved to the newer -fb (Free Branch). As the maintainer for those pacakges, I have a local LIO setup. Overy the years, I've been tuning and using this setup with a bunch of SCSI clients. Now with the new -fb packages it was worrisome for me, on how to migrate (Note: migration is not supported by the Debian packages) my old setup to the new one. Thanks to Andy Grover for mentioning it, migrating your configuration is doable. With some minor intervention, I was able to switch my config from old LIO setup to the new LIO -fb pacakges. As you can see from the output below, both the outputs look the same, which is a good thing. LIO reads its configuration from /etc/target/ and passes it into the kernel. The kernel loads the config. The real time config is present in configfs, within the kernel. Users willing for such migration need to ensure that the loaded config data remains in configfs. And then, using the new -fb tools (targetctl), the configuration data needs to be read and written to a new format in /etc/.

/> ls
o- / ......................................................................................................................... [...]
  o- backstores .............................................................................................................. [...]
    o- fileio ................................................................................................... [0 Storage Object]
    o- iblock .................................................................................................. [4 Storage Objects]
      o- CENTOS ................................................................................................. [/dev/vdd, in use]
      o- SAN1 ................................................................................................... [/dev/vdb, in use]
      o- SAN2 ................................................................................................... [/dev/vdc, in use]
      o- SANROOT .............................................. [/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-0QEMU_QEMU_HARDDISK_drive-scsi0-0-0-0, in use]
    o- pscsi .................................................................................................... [0 Storage Object]
    o- rd_mcp ................................................................................................... [0 Storage Object]
  o- ib_srpt ........................................................................................................... [0 Targets]
  o- iscsi ............................................................................................................. [3 Targets]
    o- iqn.1994-05.com.redhat:23d8eb7fa1fc ................................................................................. [1 TPG]
      o- tpg1 ............................................................................................................ [enabled]
        o- acls ............................................................................................................ [1 ACL]
          o- iqn.1994-05.com.redhat:23d8eb7fa1fc .................................................................... [1 Mapped LUN]
            o- mapped_lun0 ............................................................................................. [lun0 (rw)]
        o- luns ............................................................................................................ [1 LUN]
          o- lun0 ....................................................................................... [iblock/CENTOS (/dev/vdd)]
        o- portals ..................................................................................................... [4 Portals]
          o- 172.16.20.40:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
          o- 172.16.20.41:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
          o- 172.16.20.42:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
          o- 172.16.20.43:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
    o- iqn.2003-01.org.linux-iscsi.debian.sanboot .......................................................................... [1 TPG]
      o- tpg1 ............................................................................................................ [enabled]
        o- acls ............................................................................................................ [1 ACL]
          o- iqn.2005-03.org.open-iscsi:fd2bc2f4652a-sanboot ........................................................ [1 Mapped LUN]
            o- mapped_lun0 ............................................................................................. [lun0 (rw)]
        o- luns ............................................................................................................ [1 LUN]
          o- lun0 .................................... [iblock/SANROOT (/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-0QEMU_QEMU_HARDDISK_drive-scsi0-0-0-0)]
        o- portals ..................................................................................................... [4 Portals]
          o- 172.16.20.40:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
          o- 172.16.20.41:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
          o- 172.16.20.42:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
          o- 172.16.20.43:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
    o- iqn.2003-01.org.linux-iscsi.debian.x8664 ............................................................................ [1 TPG]
      o- tpg1 ............................................................................................................ [enabled]
        o- acls ............................................................................................................ [1 ACL]
          o- iqn.1993-08.org.debian:01:2972f6b5fc7 ................................................................. [2 Mapped LUNs]
            o- mapped_lun0 ............................................................................................. [lun0 (rw)]
            o- mapped_lun1 ............................................................................................. [lun1 (rw)]
        o- luns ........................................................................................................... [2 LUNs]
          o- lun0 ......................................................................................... [iblock/SAN1 (/dev/vdb)]
          o- lun1 ......................................................................................... [iblock/SAN2 (/dev/vdc)]
        o- portals ..................................................................................................... [4 Portals]
          o- 172.16.20.40:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
          o- 172.16.20.41:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
          o- 172.16.20.42:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
          o- 172.16.20.43:3260 ................................................................................. [OK, iser disabled]
  o- loopback .......................................................................................................... [0 Targets]
  o- qla2xxx ........................................................................................................... [0 Targets]
  o- tcm_fc ............................................................................................................ [0 Targets]
  o- vhost ............................................................................................................. [0 Targets]
/> 
/> ls
o- / ......................................................................................................................... [...]
  o- backstores .............................................................................................................. [...]
    o- block .................................................................................................. [Storage Objects: 4]
      o- CENTOS ........................................................................... [/dev/vdd (2.0GiB) write-thru activated]
      o- SAN1 ............................................................................. [/dev/vdb (1.0GiB) write-thru activated]
      o- SAN2 ............................................................................. [/dev/vdc (1.0GiB) write-thru activated]
      o- SANROOT ........................ [/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-0QEMU_QEMU_HARDDISK_drive-scsi0-0-0-0 (8.0GiB) write-thru activated]
    o- fileio ................................................................................................. [Storage Objects: 0]
    o- pscsi .................................................................................................. [Storage Objects: 0]
    o- ramdisk ................................................................................................ [Storage Objects: 0]
  o- iscsi ............................................................................................................ [Targets: 3]
    o- iqn.1994-05.com.redhat:23d8eb7fa1fc ............................................................................... [TPGs: 1]
      o- tpg1 ............................................................................................... [no-gen-acls, no-auth]
        o- acls .......................................................................................................... [ACLs: 1]
          o- iqn.1994-05.com.redhat:23d8eb7fa1fc .................................................................. [Mapped LUNs: 1]
            o- mapped_lun0 ................................................................................ [lun0 block/CENTOS (rw)]
        o- luns .......................................................................................................... [LUNs: 1]
          o- lun0 ........................................................................................ [block/CENTOS (/dev/vdd)]
        o- portals .................................................................................................... [Portals: 4]
          o- 172.16.20.40:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
          o- 172.16.20.41:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
          o- 172.16.20.42:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
          o- 172.16.20.43:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
    o- iqn.2003-01.org.linux-iscsi.debian.sanboot ........................................................................ [TPGs: 1]
      o- tpg1 ............................................................................................... [no-gen-acls, no-auth]
        o- acls .......................................................................................................... [ACLs: 1]
          o- iqn.2005-03.org.open-iscsi:fd2bc2f4652a-sanboot ...................................................... [Mapped LUNs: 1]
            o- mapped_lun0 ............................................................................... [lun0 block/SANROOT (rw)]
        o- luns .......................................................................................................... [LUNs: 1]
          o- lun0 ..................................... [block/SANROOT (/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-0QEMU_QEMU_HARDDISK_drive-scsi0-0-0-0)]
        o- portals .................................................................................................... [Portals: 4]
          o- 172.16.20.40:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
          o- 172.16.20.41:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
          o- 172.16.20.42:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
          o- 172.16.20.43:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
    o- iqn.2003-01.org.linux-iscsi.debian.x8664 .......................................................................... [TPGs: 1]
      o- tpg1 ............................................................................................... [no-gen-acls, no-auth]
        o- acls .......................................................................................................... [ACLs: 1]
          o- iqn.1993-08.org.debian:01:2972f6b5fc7 ................................................................ [Mapped LUNs: 2]
            o- mapped_lun0 .................................................................................. [lun0 block/SAN1 (rw)]
            o- mapped_lun1 .................................................................................. [lun1 block/SAN2 (rw)]
        o- luns .......................................................................................................... [LUNs: 2]
          o- lun0 .......................................................................................... [block/SAN1 (/dev/vdb)]
          o- lun1 .......................................................................................... [block/SAN2 (/dev/vdc)]
        o- portals .................................................................................................... [Portals: 4]
          o- 172.16.20.40:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
          o- 172.16.20.41:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
          o- 172.16.20.42:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
          o- 172.16.20.43:3260 ................................................................................................ [OK]
  o- loopback ......................................................................................................... [Targets: 0]
  o- vhost ............................................................................................................ [Targets: 0]
/> 

Now that we prepare for the next Debian Stable release (Stretch), it is time to provide some updates on what the current state of some of the (storage related) packages in Debian is. This is not an update on the complete list of packages related to storage, but it does cover some of them. REMOVALS

• iscsitarget - The iscsitarget stood as a great SCSI target for the Linux kernel. It seems to have had a good user base not just in Linux but also with VMWare users. But this storage target was always out-of-tree. With LIO having gotten merged as the default in-kernel SCSI Target, development on iscsitarget seems to have stalled. In Debian, for Stretch, there will be no iscsitarget. The package is already removed from Debian Testing and Debian Unstable, and nobody has volunteered to take over it.
• system-storage-manager - This tool intended to be a simple unified storage tool, through which one could work with various storage technologies like LVM, BTRFS, cryptsetup, SCSI etc. But the upstream development hasn't really been much lately. For Debian Stable, it shouldn't be part of it, given it has some bugs.
• libstoragemgmt - libstoragemgmt is a universal storage client-side library to talk to remote Storage Arrays. The project is active upstream. For Debian, the package is out-of-date and, now, also needs a maintainer. Unless someone picks up this package, it will not be part of Debian Stretch.

UPDATES

• open-iscsi - This is the default iSCSI Initiator for Linux distributions. After a long slow development, upstream recently did a new release. This new release accomplished an important milestone; Hardware Offloading for QLogic cards. A special thanks to Frank Fegert, who helped with many aspects of the new iscsiuio package. And thanks to Christian Seiler, who is now co-maintaining the package, it is in great shape. We have fixed some long outstanding bugs and open-iscsi now has much much better integration with the whole system. For Jessie too, we have the up-to-date open-iscsi pacakges (including the new iscsiuio package, with iSCSI Offload) available through jessie-packports
• open-isns - iSNS is the Naming Service for Storage. This is a new package in Debian Stretch. For users on Debian Jessie, Christian's efforts have made the open-isns package available in jessie-backports too.
• multipath-tools - After years of slow development, multipath-tools too saw some active development this year, thanks to Xose and Christophe. The Debian version is up-to-date with the latest upstream release. For Debian Stretch, multipath-tools should have good integration with systemd.
• sg3-utils - sg3 provides simple tools to query, using SCSI commands. The package is up-to-date and in good shape for Debian Stretch.
• LIO Target - This is going to be the big entry for Debian Stretch. LIO is the in-kernel SCSI Target for Linux. For various reasons, we did not have LIO in Jessie. For Stretch, thanks to Christian Seiler and Christophe Vu-Brugier, we now have the well maintained -fb fork into Debian, which will replace the initial packages from the pre-fork upstream. The -fb fork is maintained by Andy Grover, and now, seems to have users from many other distributions and the kernel community. And given that LIO -fb branch is also part of the RHEL product family, we hope to see a well maintained project and an active upstream. The older packages: targetcli, python-rtslib and python-configshell shall be removed from the archive soon.

Debian users and derivatives, using these storage tools, may want to test/report now. Because once Stretch is released, getting new fixes in may not be easy enough. So please, if you have reliance on these tools, please test and report bugs, now.

I am happy to announce the release of apt-offline 1.7.2. This has turned out in time for the next release of Debian, i.e. Debian Stretch. A long standing cosmetic issue in CLI of the progress bar total item count has been fixed. There are also a bunch of other bug fixes, for which the specifics are present in the git logs. Also, in this release, we've tried to catch-up on the Graphical Interface, adding the GUI equivalent of the features, that were added to apt-offline in the recent past. In 1.7.1, we added the changelog option, and in this release, we've added the GUI equivalent of it. The 'set' command had had many new options. So in this release the 'set' command's GUI has those options added. I hope you like this release. Please test and file bug reports in time so that we have a bug free version for Debian Stretch. Future tasks now will focus on porting the GUI to PyQt5 first and then apt-offline to Python3. Any help is welcome. You can download apt-offline from the github page or the alioth page. For Debian users, the package will show up in the repository soon. PS: What is apt-offline ?

Description: offline APT package manager
 apt-offline is an Offline APT Package Manager.
 .
 apt-offline can fully update and upgrade an APT based distribution without
 connecting to the network, all of it transparent to APT.
 .
 apt-offline can be used to generate a signature on a machine (with no network).
 This signature contains all download information required for the APT database
 system. This signature file can be used on another machine connected to the
 internet (which need not be a Debian box and can even be running windows) to
 download the updates.
 The downloaded data will contain all updates in a format understood by APT and
 this data can be used by apt-offline to update the non-networked machine.
 .
 apt-offline can also fetch bug reports and make them available offline.

Most GNOME users may be using one or more extensions for the GNOME Shell. These extensions allow extending functionality for the shell, or modify default behavior, to suit the taste of many users, who may want more than the default. Having flexibility to customize the desktop to ones personal need is a great feature, and the extensions help achieve them. The GNOME Shell Extensions distribution mechanism is primarily through the web. I think they aspire to achieve something similar to Chrome's Web Store. Up till recently, the ability to install those Shell Extensions was a) Through your distribution channel, where your distribution may have packaged some of the extensions. b) Through the Firefox web browser. GNOME Shell Extensions installation from the web, to most of what I'm aware of, until recently, only worked with Firefox browser. With the chrome-gnome-shell package, which is now available in Debian, Debian GNOME users should be able to use the Chromium browser for managing their GNOME Shell Extensions.

1. Install package chrome-gnome-shell
2. Open Chromium Browser and go to Web Store
3. Install Chrome Shell Integration extension for Chromium
   1. .
4. Point your browser to: https://extensions.gnome.org/local
   1. 

In future releases, the plan is to automate the installation of the browser extension (step 3), when the package is installed. This feature is Chromium specific and will be achieved using a system-wide chromium browser policy, which can be set/overridden by an administrator.

I'm pleased to announce the release of Laptop Mode Tools, version 1.70. This release adds support for AHCI Runtime PM, introduced in Linux 4.6. It also includes many important bug fixes, mostly related to invocation and determination of power states. Changelog: 1.70 - Sat Sep 24 16:51:02 IST 2016
* Deal harder with broken battery states
* On machines with 2+ batteries, determine states from all batteries
* Limit status message logging frequency. Some machines tend to send
ACPI events too often. Thanks Maciej S. Szmigiero
* Try harder to determine power states. As reports have shown, the
power_supply subsystem has had incorrect state reporting on many machines,
for both, BAT and AC.
* Relax conditional events where Laptop Mode Tools should be executed. This
affected for use cases of Laptop being docked and undocked
Thanks Daniel Koch.
* CPU Hotplug settings extended
* Cleanup states for improved Laptop Mode Tools invocation
Thanks: Tomas Janousek
* Align Intel P State default to what the actual driver (intel_pstate.c)
uses
Thanks: George Caswell and Matthew Gabeler-Lee
* Add support for AHCI Runtime PM in module intel-sata-powermgmt
* Many systemd and initscript fixes
* Relax default USB device list. This avoids the long standing issues with
USB devices (mice, keyboard) that mis-behaved during autosuspend Source tarball, Feodra/SUSE RPM Packages available at:
https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-tools/releases Debian packages will be available soon in Unstable. Homepage: https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-tools/wiki
Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/laptop-mode-tools

I am happy to mention the release of apt-offline, version 1.7.1. This release includes many bug fixes, code cleanups and better integration.

• Integration with PolicyKit
• Better integration with apt gpg keyring
• Resilient to failures when a sub-task errors out
• New Feature: Changelog
  • This release adds the ability to deal with package changelogs ('set' command option: --generate-changelog) based on what is installed, extract changelog (Currently support with python-apt only) from downloaded packages and display them during installation ('install' command opiton: --skip-changelog, if you want to skip display of changelog)
• New Option: --apt-backend
  • Users can now opt to choose an apt backend of their choice. Currently support: apt, apt-get (default) and python-apt

Hopefully, there will be one more release, before the release to Stretch. apt-offline can be downloaded from its homepage or from Github page. Update: The PolicyKit integration requires running the apt-offline-gui command with pkexec (screenshot). It also work fine with sudo, su etc.

Recently, we had the User-Mode Linux suite out of Debian, which included user-mode-linux, user-mode-linux-doc and uml-utilities package. We are happy that we were able to bring it back into the archvie quick, and hope to maintain it active. For many who may not know about UML, here's a discription from its website:

User-Mode Linux is a safe, secure way of running Linux versions and Linux processes. Run buggy software, experiment with new Linux kernels or distributions, and poke around in the internals of Linux, all without risking your main Linux setup.
User-Mode Linux gives you a virtual machine that may have more hardware and software virtual resources than your actual, physical computer. Disk storage for the virtual machine is entirely contained inside a single file on your physical machine. You can assign your virtual machine only the hardware access you want it to have. With properly limited access, nothing you do on the virtual machine can change or damage your real computer, or its software.

Most of the use cases mentioned here are achievable with Containers today. The big difference UML provides in, is with a separate kernel. UML is an implementation of Linux as an architecture of Linux itself. It supports x86 and x86_64 architecture. And given that it is the port of the kernel, you can do many of the tests and experiments of the regular kernel, safely inside a confined UML environment. As with other virtualization implementations, the limitation comes in if you are working on physical hardware. With its re-entry in Debian, I wanted to revive my local setup. First is the packaging structure and the second is its integration with current standard tools

• Packaging: For packaging UML in Debian, we rely on the packaged linux-source package provided by the kernel team.
  • linux-source package: We build UML from the linux sources that are provided by the debian kernel team. This works fine for now. Whenever there's a kernel vulnerability, there'll be an updated source package, to which we'll rebuild the UML package.
  • Merge with debian-kernel: In the longer run, we'd like to push UML package into the debian kernel team. UML is a component of the Linux kernel, and that is where it should be built from.
• Integration: It works fairly well right now. On modern systems with systemd, where (nspawn) containers can easily have a network interface bound to it, UML lacks a bit behind. It'd be nice if we could see some UML integration with systemd.
  • Networking under systemd: Setting up networking, for UML, under systemd is fairly straight. In fact, with systemd, it is much simpler. Below is the host network (tuntap) setup, to which UML can bind for all its network needs.

rrs@learner:~/tidBits (master)$ cat /etc/systemd/network/tap.netdev 
[NetDev]
Name=tap0
Kind=tap
[TAP]
Group=uml-net
User=uml-net
2016-08-01 / 15:41:40       
rrs@learner:~/tidBits (master)$ cat /etc/systemd/network/tap.network 
[Match]
Name=tap0
[Network]
DHCPServer=yes
IPForward=yes
IPMasquerade=yes
Address=172.16.20.2
LLMNR=yes
MulticastDNS=yes
DNS=172.16.20.1
2016-08-01 / 15:41:43       

systemd allows for defining user/group ownership in its file. With this setup, and uml-utilities running, one can simply fire a UML instance as below:

rrs@learner:~/rrs-home/Community/Packaging/user-mode-linux (master)$ linux ubd0=~/rrs-home/NoTrack/uml.img eth0=daemon mem=1024M rw  
Core dump limits :
    soft - 0
    hard - NONE
Checking that ptrace can change system call numbers...OK
Checking syscall emulation patch for ptrace...OK
Checking advanced syscall emulation patch for ptrace...OK
Checking environment variables for a tempdir...none found
Checking if /dev/shm is on tmpfs...OK
Checking PROT_EXEC mmap in /dev/shm...OK
Adding 23609344 bytes to physical memory to account for exec-shield gap
Linux version 4.6.3 (root@chutzpah) (gcc version 5.4.0 20160609 (Debian 5.4.0-6) ) #2 Sat Jul 16 16:22:22 UTC 2016
Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on.  Total pages: 263721
Kernel command line: ubd0=/home/rrs/rrs-home/NoTrack/uml.img eth0=daemon mem=1024M rw root=98:0
PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 262144 (order: 9, 2097152 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
Memory: 1020852K/1071632K available (4803K kernel code, 1207K rwdata, 1340K rodata, 157K init, 217K bss, 50780K reserved, 0K cma-reserved)
SLUB: HWalign=64, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
NR_IRQS:15
.....snipped.......
root@uml:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor    : 0
vendor_id    : User Mode Linux
model name    : UML
mode        : skas
host        : Linux learner 4.6.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.6.4-1 (2016-07-18) x86_64
bogomips    : 6048.97
root@uml:~# ping www.debian.org
PING www.debian.org (130.89.148.14) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from klecker4.snt.utwente.nl (130.89.148.14): icmp_seq=1 ttl=46 time=372 ms
64 bytes from klecker4.snt.utwente.nl (130.89.148.14): icmp_seq=2 ttl=46 time=395 ms
64 bytes from klecker4.snt.utwente.nl (130.89.148.14): icmp_seq=3 ttl=46 time=315 ms
^C
--- www.debian.org ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2002ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 315.550/361.064/395.440/33.556 ms

And here are some (incomplete and non-conclusive) performance numbers

root@uml:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=foo.img bs=1M count=2500 conv=fsync
2500+0 records in
2500+0 records out
2621440000 bytes (2.6 GB, 2.4 GiB) copied, 39.4876 s, 66.4 MB/s
vs
rrs@learner:/var/tmp/Debian-Build/Result$ dd if=/dev/zero of=foo.img bs=1M count=2500 conv=fsync
2500+0 records in
2500+0 records out
2621440000 bytes (2.6 GB, 2.4 GiB) copied, 41.2126 s, 63.6 MB/s
2016-08-01 / 15:59:15       

I finally made full switch to SSL for my website. Thanks to this simple howto on Let's Encrypt. I had to use the upstream git repo though. The Debian packaged tool, letsencrypt.sh, did not have enough documentation/pointers in place. And finally, thanks to the Let's Encrypt project as a whole. PS: http is now redirected to https. I hope nothing really breaks externally.

During my recent travel, I had quite a long layover at the Doha International Airport in Qatar. While killing time, I watched an interesting programme on the Al Jazeera network. The program aired on Al Jazeera is Lifelines. This special episode I watched, covered about "Leprosy in India". After having watched the entire programme, I felt the urge to blog about it. First of all, it was quite depressing to me, to know through the programme, that the Govt. of India had officially marked "Leprosy" eradicated from India in 2005. As per Wikipedia, "Globally in 2012, the number of chronic cases of leprosy was 189,000, down from some 5.2 million in the 1980s. The number of new cases was 230,000. Most new cases occur in 16 countries, with India accounting for more than half.^" Of the data presented on Lifelines, they just covered a couple of districts from 2 States (of the 28+ States) of India. So, with many states remaining, and unserveyed, and uncounted, we are far away from making such statements. Given that the Govt., on paper, has marked Leprosy eradicated; so does WHO. Which means that there is no more funding to help people suffering from the disease. And with no Govt. (or International) funding, it is a rather disappointing situation. I come from a small town on the Indo-Nepal intl. border, named Raxaul. And here, I grew up seeing many people who suffered from Leprosy. As a child, I never much understood the disease, because as is mentioned in the programme, I was told it was a communicable disease. Those suffering, were (and are) tagged as Untouchables (Hindi: ). Of my small town, there was and still is a sub-town, named Sunderpur. This town houses patients suffering from Leprosy, from around multiple districts closeby. I've never been there, but have been told that it is run by an NGO, and helps patients fight the disease. Lifelines also reported that fresh surveys done by the Lepra society, just a 3 day campaign, resulted in 3808 new cases of people suffering from Leprosy. That is a big number, given accessibility to small towns only happens once a week on market day. And in 3 days the team hardly covered a couple of district towns. My plea to the Media Houses of India. Please spend some time to look beyond the phony stuff that you mostly present. There are real issues that could be brought to a wider audience. As for the government, it is just depressing to know how rogue some/most of your statements are.

During my recent travel, I had quite a long layover at the Doha International Airport in Qatar. While killing time, I watched an interesting programme on the Al Jazeera network. The program aired on Al Jazeera is Lifelines. This special episode I watched, covered about "Leprosy in India". After having watched the entire programme, I felt the urge to blog about it. First of all, it was quite depressing to me, to know through the programme, that the Govt. of India had officially marked "Leprosy" eradicated from India in 2005. As per Wikipedia, "Globally in 2012, the number of chronic cases of leprosy was 189,000, down from some 5.2 million in the 1980s. The number of new cases was 230,000. Most new cases occur in 16 countries, with India accounting for more than half.^" Of the data presented on Lifelines, they just covered a couple of districts from 2 States (of the 28+ States) of India. So, with many states remaining, and unserveyed, and uncounted, we are far away from making such statements. Given that the Govt., on paper, has marked Leprosy eradicated; so does WHO. Which means that there is no more funding to help people suffering from the disease. And with no Govt. (or International) funding, it is a rather disappointing situation. I come from a small town on the Indo-Nepal intl. border, named Raxaul. And here, I grew up seeing many people who suffered from Leprosy. As a child, I never much understood the disease, because as is mentioned in the programme, I was told it was a communicable disease. Those suffering, were (and are) tagged as Untouchables (Hindi: ). Of my small town, there was and still is a sub-town, named Sunderpur. This town houses patients suffering from Leprosy, from around multiple districts closeby. I've never been there, but have been told that it is run by an NGO, and helps patients fight the disease. Lifelines also reported that fresh surveys done by the Lepra society, just a 3 day campaign, resulted in 3808 new cases of people suffering from Leprosy. That is a big number, given accessibility to small towns only happens once a week on market day. And in 3 days the team hardly covered a couple of district towns. My plea to the Media Houses of India. Please spend some time to look beyond the phony stuff that you mostly present. There are real issues that could be brought to a wider audience. As for the government, it is just depressing to know how rogue some/most of your statements are.

For Debian Jessie, the version of apt-offline available is: 1.5.1. This version has had some issues. My very 1st backports is available in the form of apt-offline 1.7 for Debian Jessie Backports. For Debian Jessie users, this should fix most of the issues.

Today is an auspicious day. For those who know (or follow) the Hindu religion will be familiar; Today is Maha Shivaratri On this day, It is great delight for me to be able to release Laptop Mode Tools, version 1.69 This release adds on many bug fixes and some enhancements. There is a new module (disabled by default) for cpuhotplug. The release tarball also includes a basic PolicyKit file for convenience, that packagers can use for the Laptop Mode Tools Graphical Configuration Interface. Apart from the policykit file, the graphical invocation script has been slightly fine tuned to work under pkexec and sudo. Some defaults have been tuned based on user requests - This should improve in situations where your External USB Mouse/Keyboard used to suspend after idle time periods. In January this year, I had the pleasure of meeting Bart Samwel in person at his office in Amsterdam. For those who don't know, Bart started off Laptop Mode Tools around 2004, and I took over maintenance around 2008. Meeting in person has been a delight, especially with the ones you work over email for years; This is something I cherished last year at Debconf 15 too. IMPORTANT:- Until now, Laptop Mode Tools project was hosted on Bart's webserver. Now, as you read, the homepage and mailing lists have changed. I'd urge all users to subscribe to the new mailing list and update their bookmarks. Homepage: https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-tools/wiki Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/laptop-mode-tools Note: For users who are not comfortable with creating a google a/c for mailing list subscription, you should still be able to subscribe with your personal email address. Please follow the steps in the mentioned homepage. Since last couple releases, I've also been providing RPM packages for Opensuse Tumbleweed and Fedora. The same should be available on the github release page. The Debian package will follow shortly in the Debian repository. Thank you and a Happy Maha Shivaratri. Har Har Mahadev.

1.69 - Mon Mar  7 17:44:42 IST 2016
    * Wait for all forked modules to complete
    * Add new module: cputhotplug
    * CPU online/offine is reverse here
    * Fix shell syntax
    * Install policykit file
    * Detach polling daemon from main process
    * Do NOT touch speed if throttling is not set
    * Restore to MAX speed when back to AC Power
    * Fix manpage about DISABLE_ETHERNET_ON_BATTERY setting
    * Update documentation about ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC setting
    * Change powersaving default for USB class devices
    * Drop usbhid from default (black)list
    * Add usb keyboard driver to the list default list
    * Be consistent with passing args to LMT from different invokers
    * Honor device plug/unplug events on a per device basis;
      like how Chromium initially submitted this patch
    * Also be consistent with option in the event parser
    * Update links in README.md
    * Update new github homepage location
    * Add lmt-config-gui shell script

Having moved to a new place, now at times, I also have to deal with power outages. As heat increases, the power outages will be much longer and more frequent. So much, that UPS and Power Inverters run out. Such are ideal times to measure idle power consumption for my laptop. Here's what my default (and idle) OS looks like. It should be standard to most "typical" users. Some minor odds could be apport, dnsmasq, and maybe, tor. Also, thanks to systemd, there are some native services which are now converted to socket activation based ones. There's also Laptop Mode Tools for userspace power savings. But huge thanks to Intel's work in making the kernel more power efficient. With things like Runtime PM and Intel P-State, we can now define, default and aggressive power-savings modes, helping conserve more power. We still have challenges with things like binary-only drivers; and also stock GPL drivers but with an external firmware blob. There have been many instances when my previous machines (which had both) ran into severe power drain. The challenge with power savings is that it is not just the job of the kernel. All components, kernel and userspace, need to be made aware of, and work in unison. Otherwise, one ill behaving web browser tab can be the cause of power drain. P-State driver seems to already be doing some scale down of CPU resources. And with CGroups maturing moe I think we'll eventually have all Desktop Environments making use of it.

systemd-+-ModemManager-+- gdbus 
                        - gmain 
         -NetworkManager-+- gdbus 
                          - gmain 
         -accounts-daemon-+- gdbus 
                           - gmain 
         -agetty
         -apport-notifyd
         -atd
         -avahi-daemon---avahi-daemon
         -bluetoothd
         -colord-+- gdbus 
                  - gmain 
         -cron
         -dbus-daemon
         -dnsmasq
         -evolution-+- book-client-dbu 
                     - dconf worker 
                     -7*[ evolution ]
                     - gdbus 
                     - gmain 
         -gdm3-+-gdm-session-wor-+-gdm-x-session-+-Xorg
                                                  -gnome-session-b-+-gnome-settings--+- dconf worker 
                                                                                      - gdbus 
                                                                                      - gmain 
                                                                                      - pool 
                                                                                      - threaded-ml 
                                                                    -gnome-shell-+-ibus-daemon-+-ibus-dconf-+- dconf worker 
                                                                                                             - gdbus 
                                                                                                             - gmain 
                                                                                                -ibus-engine-sim-+- gdbus 
                                                                                                                  - gmain 
                                                                                                - gdbus 
                                                                                                - gmain 
                                                                                  - JS GC Helper 
                                                                                  - JS Sour~ Thread 
                                                                                  - dconf worker 
                                                                                  - gdbus 
                                                                                  - gmain 
                                                                                  - threaded-ml 
                                                                    - dconf worker 
                                                                    - gdbus 
                                                                    - gmain 
                                                  - gdbus 
                                                  - gmain 
                                  - gdbus 
                                  - gmain 
                -gdm-session-wor-+-gdm-x-session-+-Xorg
                                                  -gnome-session-b-+-evolution-alarm-+- cal-client-dbus 
                                                                                      - dconf worker 
                                                                                      - evolution-alarm 
                                                                                      - gdbus 
                                                                                      - gmain 
                                                                    -gnome-settings--+- dconf worker 
                                                                                      - gdbus 
                                                                                      - gmain 
                                                                                      - pool 
                                                                                      - threaded-ml 
                                                                    -gnome-shell-+-2*[redshift-+- gdbus ]
                                                                                                - gmain ]
                                                                                  - JS GC Helper 
                                                                                  - JS Sour~ Thread 
                                                                                  - dconf worker 
                                                                                  - gdbus 
                                                                                  - gmain 
                                                                                  - threaded-ml 
                                                                    -parcimonie
                                                                    -parcimonie-appl-+- gdbus 
                                                                                      - gmain 
                                                                    -python3---libinput-debug-
                                                                    -ssh-agent
                                                                    -tracker-extract-+- dconf worker 
                                                                                      - gdbus 
                                                                                      - gmain 
                                                                                      -10*[ pool ]
                                                                    -tracker-miner-a-+- gdbus 
                                                                                      - gmain 
                                                                    -tracker-miner-f-+- dconf worker 
                                                                                      - gdbus 
                                                                                      - gmain 
                                                                    -tracker-miner-u-+- gdbus 
                                                                                      - gmain 
                                                                    - dconf worker 
                                                                    - gdbus 
                                                                    - gmain 
                                                  - gdbus 
                                                  - gmain 
                                  - gdbus 
                                  - gmain 
                - gdbus 
                - gmain 
         -geoclue-+- gdbus 
                   - gmain 
         -gnome-keyring-d-+- gdbus 
                           - gmain 
                           - timer 
         -gpg-agent
         -gsd-printer-+- gdbus 
                       - gmain 
         -ibus-daemon-+-ibus-dconf-+- dconf worker 
                                    - gdbus 
                                    - gmain 
                       -ibus-engine-sim-+- gdbus 
                                         - gmain 
                       - gdbus 
                       - gmain 
         -ibus-x11-+- gdbus 
                    - gmain 
         -iio-sensor-prox-+- gdbus 
                           - gmain 
         -inetd---leafnode
         -libvirtd---15*[ libvirtd ]
         -lvmetad
         -master-+-pickup
                  -qmgr
                  -tlsmgr
         -mcelog
         -minissdpd
         -mount.ntfs
         -onboard-+- dconf worker 
                   - gdbus 
                   - gmain 
         -packagekitd-+- gdbus 
                       - gmain 
         -polkitd-+- gdbus 
                   - gmain 
         -2*[pulseaudio-+-gconf-helper]
                         - alsa-sink-ALC23 ]
                         - alsa-sink-HDMI  ]
                         - alsa-sink-pcspe ]
                         - alsa-source-ALC ]
         -rtkit-daemon---2*[ rtkit-daemon ]
         -systemd-+-(sd-pam)
                   -at-spi-bus-laun-+-dbus-daemon
                                     - dconf worker 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -at-spi2-registr-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -dbus-daemon
                   -dconf-service-+- gdbus 
                                   - gmain 
                   -goa-daemon-+- dconf worker 
                                - gdbus 
                                - gmain 
                   -goa-identity-se-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                                     - pool 
                   -gvfs-afc-volume-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                                     - gvfs-afc-volume 
                   -gvfs-goa-volume-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -gvfs-gphoto2-vo-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -gvfs-mtp-volume-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -gvfs-udisks2-vo-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -gvfsd-+- gdbus 
                           - gmain 
                   -gvfsd-fuse-+- gdbus 
                                - gmain 
                                - gvfs-fuse-sub 
                                -2*[ gvfsd-fuse ]
                   -gvfsd-metadata-+- gdbus 
                                    - gmain 
                   -mission-control-+- dconf worker 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
         -systemd-+-(sd-pam)
                   -at-spi-bus-laun-+-dbus-daemon
                                     - dconf worker 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -at-spi2-registr-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -dbus-daemon
                   -gconfd-2
         -systemd-+-(sd-pam)
                   -at-spi-bus-laun-+-dbus-daemon
                                     - dconf worker 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -at-spi2-registr-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -dbus-daemon
                   -dconf-service-+- gdbus 
                                   - gmain 
                   -evolution-addre-+-2*[evolution-addre-+- dconf worker ]
                                                          - evolution-addre ]
                                                          - gdbus ]
                                                          - gmain ]
                                     - dconf worker 
                                     - evolution-addre 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -evolution-calen-+-evolution-calen-+- dconf worker 
                                                       - evolution-calen 
                                                       - gdbus 
                                                       - gmain 
                                                       -6*[ pool ]
                                     -evolution-calen-+- book-client-dbu 
                                                       - dconf worker 
                                                       - evolution-calen 
                                                       - gdbus 
                                                       - gmain 
                                                       - pool 
                                     -2*[evolution-calen-+- dconf worker ]
                                                          - evolution-calen ]
                                                          - gdbus ]
                                                          - gmain ]
                                     - dconf worker 
                                     - evolution-calen 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -evolution-sourc-+- dconf worker 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -gconfd-2
                   -gnome-shell-cal-+- cal-client-dbus 
                                     - dconf worker 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                                     - gnome-shell-cal 
                   -gnome-terminal--+-bash---pstree
                                     -bash
                                     - dconf worker 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -goa-daemon-+- dconf worker 
                                - gdbus 
                                - gmain 
                   -goa-identity-se-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                                     - pool 
                   -gpaste-daemon-+- dconf worker 
                                   - gdbus 
                                   - gmain 
                   -gvfs-afc-volume-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                                     - gvfs-afc-volume 
                   -gvfs-goa-volume-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -gvfs-gphoto2-vo-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -gvfs-mtp-volume-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -gvfs-udisks2-vo-+- gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -gvfsd-+- gdbus 
                           - gmain 
                   -gvfsd-burn-+- gdbus 
                                - gmain 
                   -gvfsd-dnssd-+- gdbus 
                                 - gmain 
                   -gvfsd-fuse-+- gdbus 
                                - gmain 
                                - gvfs-fuse-sub 
                                -2*[ gvfsd-fuse ]
                   -gvfsd-metadata-+- gdbus 
                                    - gmain 
                   -gvfsd-network-+- dconf worker 
                                   - gdbus 
                                   - gmain 
                   -gvfsd-trash-+- gdbus 
                                 - gmain 
                   -mission-control-+- dconf worker 
                                     - gdbus 
                                     - gmain 
                   -nautilus-+-gedit
                              - dconf worker 
                              - gdbus 
                              - gmain 
                   -tracker-store-+- dconf worker 
                                   - gdbus 
                                   - gmain 
                                   -4*[ pool ]
         -systemd-journal
         -systemd-logind
         -systemd-network
         -systemd-timesyn--- sd-resolve 
         -systemd-udevd
         -thermald--- thermald 
         -tor
         -udisksd-+- cleanup 
                   - gdbus 
                   - gmain 
                   - probing-thread 
         -upowerd-+- gdbus 
                   - gmain 
         -wpa_supplicant

So I used the standard power measurement tool, powertop. Below is a screenshot of PowerTop claiming 9 - 10 hours of possible battery backup. This is idle state. "Idle" would mean when the user is not interacting with the machine. When under basic usage (email, web), the actual battery backup I've sensed is somewhere around 6-7 hrs, which is still good from what we got a couple years ago. There's one oddity in the screenshot though. The estimated power consumption reported is 4.55W, where as, the power consumption of just the wifi card is reported 6.17W. That too, when the wifi was disconnected. This reminded me of the bug report against PowerTop, which is now more than 2 years old. We've still not concluded in that bug report, so if anyone can shed some light on PowerTop's reporting, please do share it in the bug report. Note: Please ignore the terminal's title in the screenshot. That is wrong and I've not bothered to figure out why it is displaying the title name constructed from an outdated session, which is already terminated.

I very recently met someone, and we had a good productive discussion on the features and (long standing) bugs of the Linux kernel. No doubt, Linux is the most featureful kernel in the market. Is also a lot appealing given its breadth of platform support. Of that discussion we had, it led about Linux's behavior in tighter stressed scenarios where there is a lot of contention among the core subsystems. From the conversation, I got the feedback that perhaps the issue is no more valid. My conclusion was I must have missed out on the fix because I haven't really spent any Engineering Lab time in recent past. But a picture says a thousand words. And no, the issue is NOT fixed. And it is still simple to reproduce the bug. And it is just that we have faster advancements in underlying hardware, that we may eventually find it much harder to reproduce these bugs. The kernel spitting the screen is Linux 4.4 Stock Debian.

In trying to improve the WiFi service in my house, I recently dug out my old Linksys WRT54G Router. It is a 802.11 bg router, which can do 54 MBPS. Currently, I use a TPLink based router, with a DD-WRT community firmware, which claims is 802.11 bgn and can do 300 MBPS. The overall wifi signal isn't adequate, so I thought of using the old router as a repeater. The default Linksys VXWorks firmware does not have the bridging capabilities, so it was time to flashback, again, the dd-wrt image onto it (The last time I did, I eventually had to revert back to the stock firmware because my ISP claimed that the router was giving too many packet drops). Being an old device, and me being lazy, I did not pay much attention to the exact steps; and ended up bricking my router, wherein it wouldn't give me the Management Console to flash a new firmware; nor would it give me the old VXWorks firmware interface. All it gave was a White Screen of Death and an active IP connection. Turns out I'm not the only one bricking routers, so some good soul documented the process on unbricking the router. I was in a slightly more better position than the author, cause I did have the network available. My initial hope was to just push the firmware image over tftp, and that it would work. But that didn't happen. So, I was forced to follow the steps in the article, i.e. to use the Windows Tool mentioned in it (Infact that is what triggered me to write the article). Not having Windows available, my choice was to try it out over Crossover/Wine. It got the job done; so Thank You. BTW, does anyone know what goodie does the Windows Tool do that plain tftp did not ? The Windows Tool too pushed the image over tftp, so it must be doing something within the tftp spec to trigger the firmware upload and flash. That done, getting the Repeater Bridge wasn't that painful. If you build a Repeater Bridge setup, just follow dd-wrt instructions. The only extra I'd add is that You should keep your Virtual AP's credentials the same as that of your Primary Router's AP's. I'm not sure why that is needed but that ate my good 2-3 hrs.