Search Results: "andres"

14 December 2015

Matthias Klumpp: AppStream/DEP-11 fully supported in Debian now!

AppStream on DebianBack in 2011, when the AppStream meeting in N rnberg had just happened, I published the DEP-11 (Debian Extension Project 11) draft together with Michael Vogt and Julian Andres Klode, as an approach to implement AppStream in Debian. Back then, the FTPMasters team rejected the suggestion to use the official XML specification, and so the DEP-11 specification was adapted to be based on YAML instead of XML. This wasn t much of a big deal, since the initial design of DEP-11 was to be a superset of the AppStream specification, so it wasn t meant to be exactly like AppStream anyway. AppStream back then was only designed for applications (as in stuff that provides a .desktop file ), but with DEP-11 we aimed for much more: DEP-11 should also describe fonts, drivers, pkg-config files and other metadata, so in the end one would be able to ask the package manager meaningful questions like is the firmware of device X installed? or request actions such as please install me the GIMP , making it unnecessary to know package names at all, and making packages a mere implementation detail. Then, GNOME-Software happened and demanded all these features. Back then, I was the de-facto maintainer of the AppStream upstream project already, but didn t feel like being the maintainer yet, so I only curated the existing specification, without extending it much. The big push forward GNOME-Software created changed that dramatically, and with me taking control of the specification and documenting it properly, the very essence of DEP-11 became AppStream (that was around the AppStream 0.6 release). So today, DEP-11 is mainly a YAML-based version of the AppStream XML specification. AppStream XML and DEP-11 YAML are implemented by two projects, GLib and Qt libraries exist to access the metadata and AppStream is used by the software centers of GNOME, KDE and Elementary. Today there are two things to celebrate for me: First of all, there is the release of AppStream 0.9 (that happened last Saturday already), which brings some nice improvements to the API for developers and some micro-optimizations to speed up Xapian database queries. Yay! The second thing is full DEP-11 support in Debian! This means that you don t need to copy metadata around manually, or install extra packages: All you need to do is to install the appstream package, everything else is done for you, and the data is kept up to date automatically. This is made possible by APT 1.1 (thanks to the whole APT team!), some dedicated support for it in AppStream directly, the work of our Sysadmin team at Debian, which set up infrastructure to build the metadata automatically, as well as our FTPMasters team where Joerg helped with the final steps of getting the metadata into the archive. That AppStream data is now in the archive doesn t mean we live in a perfect utopia yet there are still issues to be handled, but all the major work is done now and we can now gradually improve the data generator and tools and squash the remaining bugs. And another item from the good news department: It s highly likely that Ubuntu will follow Debian in AppStream/DEP-11 support with the upcoming Xenial release! But how can I make use of the new metadata? Just install the appstream package everything is done for you! Another easy way is to install GNOME-Software, which makes use of the new metadata already. KDE Discover in Debian does not enable support for AppStream yet, this will likely come later. If you prefer to use the command-line, you can now use commands like 
sudo appsteamcli install org.kde.kate.desktop
This will simply install the Kate text editor. Who wants some statistics? At time the Debian Sid/Unstable suite contains 1714 valid software components. It could be even more if the errors generated during metadata extraction would be resolved. For that, the metadata generator has a nice statistics page, showing the amount of each hint type in the suite and the development of the available software components in Debian and the hint types count over time (this plot feature was just added recently, so we are still a bit low on data). For packagers and interested upstreams, the data extractor creates detailed reports for each package, explaining why data was not included and how to fix the issue (in case something is unclear, please file a bug report and/or get in contact with me). In summary Thanks to everyone who helped to make this happen! For me this project means a lot, when writing this blog post I realized that I am basically working on it for almost 5 years (!) now (and the idea is even older). Seeing it to grow to such a huge success in other distributions was a joy, but now Debian can join the game with first-class AppStream support as well, which makes me even happier. Afterall Debian is the distribution I feel most at home. There is still lots of work to do (and already a few bugs known), but the hardest part of the journey is done let s walk into a bright future with AppStream!

30 November 2015

Michael Vogt: APT 1.1 released

After 1.5 years of work we released APT 1.1 this week! I m very excited about this milestone. The new 1.1 has some nice new features but it also improves a lot of stuff under the hood. With APT 1.0 we did add a lot of UI improvements, this time the focus is on the reliability of the acquire system and the library. Some of the UI highlights include: Under the hood: Whats also very nice is that apt is now the exact same version on Ubuntu and Debian (no more delta between the packages)! If you want to know more, there is nice video from David Kalnischkies Debconf 2015 talk about apt at https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/216/this-apt-has-super-cow-powers/. Julian Andres Klode also wrote about the new apt some weeks ago here. The (impressive) full changelog is available at http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/a/apt/apt_1.1.3_changelog. And git has an even more detailed log if you are even more curious :) Enjoy the new apt!

17 May 2015

Lunar: Reproducible builds: week 3 in Stretch cycle

What happened about the reproducible builds effort for this week: Toolchain fixes Tomasz Buchert submitted a patch to fix the currently overzealous package-contains-timestamped-gzip warning. Daniel Kahn Gillmor identified #588746 as a source of unreproducibility for packages using python-support. Packages fixed The following 57 packages became reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: antlr-maven-plugin, aspectj-maven-plugin, build-helper-maven-plugin, clirr-maven-plugin, clojure-maven-plugin, cobertura-maven-plugin, coinor-ipopt, disruptor, doxia-maven-plugin, exec-maven-plugin, gcc-arm-none-eabi, greekocr4gamera, haskell-swish, jarjar-maven-plugin, javacc-maven-plugin, jetty8, latexml, libcgi-application-perl, libnet-ssleay-perl, libtest-yaml-valid-perl, libwiki-toolkit-perl, libwww-csrf-perl, mate-menu, maven-antrun-extended-plugin, maven-antrun-plugin, maven-archiver, maven-bundle-plugin, maven-clean-plugin, maven-compiler-plugin, maven-ear-plugin, maven-install-plugin, maven-invoker-plugin, maven-jar-plugin, maven-javadoc-plugin, maven-processor-plugin, maven-project-info-reports-plugin, maven-replacer-plugin, maven-resources-plugin, maven-shade-plugin, maven-site-plugin, maven-source-plugin, maven-stapler-plugin, modello-maven-plugin1.4, modello-maven-plugin, munge-maven-plugin, ocaml-bitstring, ocr4gamera, plexus-maven-plugin, properties-maven-plugin, ruby-magic, ruby-mocha, sisu-maven-plugin, syncache, vdk2, wvstreams, xml-maven-plugin, xmlbeans-maven-plugin. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed: Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues but not all of them: Ben Hutchings also improved and merged several changes submitted by Lunar to linux. Currently untested because in contrib: reproducible.debian.net
Thanks to the reproducible-build team for running a buildd from hell. gregor herrmann
Mattia Rizzolo modified the script added last week to reschedule a package from Alioth, a reason can now be optionally specified. Holger Levsen splitted the package sets page so each set now has its own page. He also added new sets for Java packages, Haskell packages, Ruby packages, debian-installer packages, Go packages, and OCaml packages. Reiner Herrmann added locales-all to the set of packages installed in the build environment as its needed to properly identify variations due to the current locale. Holger Levsen improved the scheduling so new uploads get tested sooner. He also changed the .json output that is used by tracker.debian.org to lists FTBFS issues again but only for issues unrelated to the toolchain or our test setup. Amongst many other small fixes and additions, the graph colors should now be more friendly to red-colorblind people. The fix for pbuilder given in #677666 by Tim Landscheidt is now used. This fixed several FTBFS for OCaml packages. Work on rebuilding with different CPU has continued, a kvm-on-kvm build host has been set been set up for this purpose. debbindiff development Version 19 of debbindiff included a fix for a regression when handling info files. Version 20 fixes a bug when diffing files with many differences toward a last line with no newlines. It also now uses the proper encoding when writing the text output to a pipe, and detects info files better. Documentation update Thanks to Santiago Vila, the unneeded -depth option used with find when fixing mtimes has been removed from the examples. Package reviews 113 obsolete reviews have been removed this week while 77 has been added.

14 October 2014

Julian Andres Klode: Key transition

I started transitioning from 1024D to 4096R. The new key is available at: https://people.debian.org/~jak/pubkey.gpg and the keys.gnupg.net key server. A very short transition statement is available at: https://people.debian.org/~jak/transition-statement.txt and included below (the http version might get extended over time if needed). The key consists of one master key and 3 sub keys (signing, encryption, authentication). The sub keys are stored on an OpenPGP v2 Smartcard. That s really cool, isn t it? Somehow it seems that GnuPG 1.4.18 also works with 4096R keys on this smartcard (I accidentally used it instead of gpg2 and it worked fine), although only GPG 2.0.13 and newer is supposed to work. 
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1,SHA512
Because 1024D keys are not deemed secure enough anymore, I switched to
a 4096R one.
The old key will continue to be valid for some time, but i prefer all
future correspondence to come to the new one.  I would also like this
new key to be re-integrated into the web of trust.  This message is
signed by both keys to certify the transition.
the old key was:
pub   1024D/00823EC2 2007-04-12
      Key fingerprint = D9D9 754A 4BBA 2E7D 0A0A  C024 AC2A 5FFE 0082 3EC2
And the new key is:
pub   4096R/6B031B00 2014-10-14 [expires: 2017-10-13]
      Key fingerprint = AEE1 C8AA AAF0 B768 4019  C546 021B 361B 6B03 1B00
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2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=VRZJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Filed under: Uncategorized

Julian Andres Klode: Key transition

I started transitioning from 1024D to 4096R. The new key is available at: https://people.debian.org/~jak/pubkey.gpg and the keys.gnupg.net key server. A very short transition statement is available at: https://people.debian.org/~jak/transition-statement.txt and included below (the http version might get extended over time if needed). The key consists of one master key and 3 sub keys (signing, encryption, authentication). The sub keys are stored on an OpenPGP v2 Smartcard. That s really cool, isn t it? Somehow it seems that GnuPG 1.4.18 also works with 4096R keys on this smartcard (I accidentally used it instead of gpg2 and it worked fine), although only GPG 2.0.13 and newer is supposed to work. 
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1,SHA512
Because 1024D keys are not deemed secure enough anymore, I switched to
a 4096R one.
The old key will continue to be valid for some time, but i prefer all
future correspondence to come to the new one.  I would also like this
new key to be re-integrated into the web of trust.  This message is
signed by both keys to certify the transition.
the old key was:
pub   1024D/00823EC2 2007-04-12
      Key fingerprint = D9D9 754A 4BBA 2E7D 0A0A  C024 AC2A 5FFE 0082 3EC2
And the new key is:
pub   4096R/6B031B00 2014-10-14 [expires: 2017-10-13]
      Key fingerprint = AEE1 C8AA AAF0 B768 4019  C546 021B 361B 6B03 1B00
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2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=VRZJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Filed under: Uncategorized

6 October 2014

Julian Andres Klode: Acer Chromebook 13 (FHD): Initial impressions

Today, I received my Acer Chromebook 13, in the glorious FullHD variant with 4GB RAM. For those of you who don t know it, the Acer Chromebook 13 is a 13.3 inch chromebook powered by a Tegra K1 cpu. Chromebook This version cannot be ordered currently, only pre-orders were shipped yesterday (at least here in Germany). I cannot even review it on Amazon (despite having it bought there), as they have not enabled reviews for it yet. The device feels solidly built, and looks good. It comes in all-white matte plastic and is slightly reminiscent of the old white MacBooks. The keyboard is horrible, there s no well defined pressure point. It feels like your typing on a pillow. The display is OK, an IPS would be a lot nicer to work with, though. Oh, and it could be brighter. I do not think that using it outside on a sunny day would be a good idea. The speakers are loud and clear compared to my ThinkPad X230. The performance of the device is about acceptable (unfortunately, I do not have any comparison in this device class). Even when typing this blog post in the visual wordpress editor, I notice some sluggishness. Opening the app launcher or loading the new tab page while music is playing makes the music stop for or skip a few ms (20-50ms if I had to guess). Running a benchmark in parallel or browsing does not usually cause this stuttering, though. There are still some bugs in Chrome OS: Loading the Play Books library the first time resulted in some rendering issues. The Browser process always consumes at least 10% CPU, even when idling, with no page open; this might cause some of the sluggishness I mentioned above. Also watching Flash videos used more CPU than I expected given that it is hardware accelerated. Finally, Netflix did not work out of the box, despite the Chromebook shipping with a special Netflix plugin. I always get some unexpected issue-type page. Setting the user agent to Chrome 38 from Windows, thus forcing the use of the EME video player instead of the Netflix plugin, makes it work. I reported these software issues to Google via Alt+Shift+I. The issues appeared on the current version of the stable channel, 37.0.2062.120. What s next? I don t know.
Filed under: Chromebook

Julian Andres Klode: Acer Chromebook 13 (FHD): Initial impressions

Today, I received my Acer Chromebook 13, in the glorious FullHD variant with 4GB RAM. For those of you who don t know it, the Acer Chromebook 13 is a 13.3 inch chromebook powered by a Tegra K1 cpu. Chromebook This version cannot be ordered currently, only pre-orders were shipped yesterday (at least here in Germany). I cannot even review it on Amazon (despite having it bought there), as they have not enabled reviews for it yet. The device feels solidly built, and looks good. It comes in all-white matte plastic and is slightly reminiscent of the old white MacBooks. The keyboard is horrible, there s no well defined pressure point. It feels like your typing on a pillow. The display is OK, an IPS would be a lot nicer to work with, though. Oh, and it could be brighter. I do not think that using it outside on a sunny day would be a good idea. The speakers are loud and clear compared to my ThinkPad X230. The performance of the device is about acceptable (unfortunately, I do not have any comparison in this device class). Even when typing this blog post in the visual wordpress editor, I notice some sluggishness. Opening the app launcher or loading the new tab page while music is playing makes the music stop for or skip a few ms (20-50ms if I had to guess). Running a benchmark in parallel or browsing does not usually cause this stuttering, though. There are still some bugs in Chrome OS: Loading the Play Books library the first time resulted in some rendering issues. The Browser process always consumes at least 10% CPU, even when idling, with no page open; this might cause some of the sluggishness I mentioned above. Also watching Flash videos used more CPU than I expected given that it is hardware accelerated. Finally, Netflix did not work out of the box, despite the Chromebook shipping with a special Netflix plugin. I always get some unexpected issue-type page. Setting the user agent to Chrome 38 from Windows, thus forcing the use of the EME video player instead of the Netflix plugin, makes it work. I reported these software issues to Google via Alt+Shift+I. The issues appeared on the current version of the stable channel, 37.0.2062.120. What s next? I don t know.
Filed under: Chromebook

Julian Andres Klode: A weekend with the Acer Chromebook 13 FHD (AKA nyan-big)

I spent the weekend using almost exclusively my Chromebook 13, on a single charge Saturday and Sunday. Keyboard I think I like the keyboard better now than I used to when I first tried it. It gets nowhere near the ThinkPad X230 one, though; appart from the coating, which my (backlit) X230 unfortunately does not have. Screen While the screen appeared very grainy to me on first sight, having only used IPS screens in the past year, I got used to it over the weekend. I now do not notice much graininess anymore. The contrast still seems extremely poor, the colors are not vivid, and the vertical viewing angles are still a disaster, though. Battery life I think the battery life is awesome. I have 30% remaining now while I am writing this blog post and Chrome OS tells me I still have 3 hours and 19 minutes remaining. It could probably still be improved though, I notice that Chrome OS uses 7-14% CPU in idle normally (and up to 20% in exceptional cases). The maximum power usage I measured using the battery s internal sensor was about 9.2W, that was with 5 Big Buck Bunny 1080p videos played in parallel. Average power consumption is around 3-5W (up to 6.5 with single video playing), depending on brightness, and use. Performance While I do notice a performance difference to my much more high-end Ivy Bridge Core i5 laptop, it turns out to be usable enough to not make me want to throw it at a wall. Things take a bit longer than I am used to, but it is still acceptable. Input: Software Part The user interface is great. There are a lot of gestures available for navigating between windows, tabs, and in the history. For example, horizontally swiping with two finger moves in history, three fingers moves between tabs; and swiping down (or up for Australian scrolling) gives an overview of all windows (like expose on Mac, GNOME s activities, or the multi-tasking thing Maemo used to have). What I miss is a keyboard shortcut like Meta + Left/Right on GNOME which moves the active window to the left/right side of the screen. That would be very useful for mult-tasking situations. Issues I noticed some performance issues. For example, I can easily get the Chromebook to use 85% of a CPU by scrolling on a page with the touchpad or 70% for scrolling by keeping a key pressed (crbug.com/420452). While watching Big Buck Bunny on YouTube, I noticed some (micro) stuttering in the beginning of the film, as well as each time I move in or out of the video area when not in full-screen mode (crbug.com/420582). It also increases CPU usage to about 70%. Running a proper Linux? Today, I tried to play around a bit with Debian wheezy and Ubuntu trusty systems, in a chroot for now. I was trying to find out if I can get an accelerated X server with the standard ChromeOS kernel. The short answer is: No. I tried two things:
  1. Debian wheezy with the binaries from ChromeOS (they have the same xserver version)
  2. Ubuntu trusty with the Nvidia drivers
Unfortunately, they did not work. Option 1 failed because ChromeOS uses glibc 2.15 whereas wheezy uses 1.13. Option 2 failed because the sysfs interface is different between the ChromeOS and Linux4Tegra kernels. I guess I ll have to wait. I also tried booting a custom kernel from USB, but given that the u-boot always sets console= and there is no non-verified u-boot available yet, I could not see any output on the screen :( Maybe I should build a u-boot myself?
Filed under: Chromebook

Julian Andres Klode: A weekend with the Acer Chromebook 13 FHD (AKA nyan-big)

I spent the weekend using almost exclusively my Chromebook 13, on a single charge Saturday and Sunday. Keyboard I think I like the keyboard better now than I used to when I first tried it. It gets nowhere near the ThinkPad X230 one, though; appart from the coating, which my (backlit) X230 unfortunately does not have. Screen While the screen appeared very grainy to me on first sight, having only used IPS screens in the past year, I got used to it over the weekend. I now do not notice much graininess anymore. The contrast still seems extremely poor, the colors are not vivid, and the vertical viewing angles are still a disaster, though. Battery life I think the battery life is awesome. I have 30% remaining now while I am writing this blog post and Chrome OS tells me I still have 3 hours and 19 minutes remaining. It could probably still be improved though, I notice that Chrome OS uses 7-14% CPU in idle normally (and up to 20% in exceptional cases). The maximum power usage I measured using the battery s internal sensor was about 9.2W, that was with 5 Big Buck Bunny 1080p videos played in parallel. Average power consumption is around 3-5W (up to 6.5 with single video playing), depending on brightness, and use. Performance While I do notice a performance difference to my much more high-end Ivy Bridge Core i5 laptop, it turns out to be usable enough to not make me want to throw it at a wall. Things take a bit longer than I am used to, but it is still acceptable. Input: Software Part The user interface is great. There are a lot of gestures available for navigating between windows, tabs, and in the history. For example, horizontally swiping with two finger moves in history, three fingers moves between tabs; and swiping down (or up for Australian scrolling) gives an overview of all windows (like expose on Mac, GNOME s activities, or the multi-tasking thing Maemo used to have). What I miss is a keyboard shortcut like Meta + Left/Right on GNOME which moves the active window to the left/right side of the screen. That would be very useful for mult-tasking situations. Issues I noticed some performance issues. For example, I can easily get the Chromebook to use 85% of a CPU by scrolling on a page with the touchpad or 70% for scrolling by keeping a key pressed (crbug.com/420452). While watching Big Buck Bunny on YouTube, I noticed some (micro) stuttering in the beginning of the film, as well as each time I move in or out of the video area when not in full-screen mode (crbug.com/420582). It also increases CPU usage to about 70%. Running a proper Linux? Today, I tried to play around a bit with Debian wheezy and Ubuntu trusty systems, in a chroot for now. I was trying to find out if I can get an accelerated X server with the standard ChromeOS kernel. The short answer is: No. I tried two things:
  1. Debian wheezy with the binaries from ChromeOS (they have the same xserver version)
  2. Ubuntu trusty with the Nvidia drivers
Unfortunately, they did not work. Option 1 failed because ChromeOS uses glibc 2.15 whereas wheezy uses 1.13. Option 2 failed because the sysfs interface is different between the ChromeOS and Linux4Tegra kernels. I guess I ll have to wait. I also tried booting a custom kernel from USB, but given that the u-boot always sets console= and there is no non-verified u-boot available yet, I could not see any output on the screen :( Maybe I should build a u-boot myself?
Filed under: Chromebook

30 September 2014

Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 0.11.3

A new release 0.11.3 of Rcpp is now on the CRAN network for GNU R, and an updated Debian package has been uploaded too. Rcpp has become the most popular way of enhancing GNU R with C++ code. As of today, 273 packages on CRAN depend on Rcpp for making analyses go faster and further. This release brings a fairly large number of continued enhancements, fixes and polishing to Rcpp. These were provided by a total of seven different contributors---which is a new record as well. See below for a detailed list of changes extracted from the NEWS file, but some highlights included in this release are One sore point, however, is that we missed that packages using Rcpp Modules appear to require a rebuild. We are sorry for the inconvenience; this has highlighted a shortcoming in our fairly robust and extensive tests. While we test our packages against all known CRAN dependents, such tests check for the ability to compile and run freshly and not whether previously built packages still run. We intend to augment our testing in this direction to avoid a repeat occurrence of such a misfeature.
Changes in Rcpp version 0.11.3 (2014-09-27)
  • Changes in Rcpp API:
    • The deprecation of RCPP_FUNCTION_* which was announced with release 0.10.5 last year is proceeding as planned, and the file macros/preprocessor_generated.h has been removed.
    • Timer no longer records time between steps, but times from the origin. It also gains a get_timers(int) methods that creates a vector of Timer that have the same origin. This is modelled on the Rcpp11 implementation and is more useful for situations where we use timers in several threads. Timer also gains a constructor taking a nanotime_t to use as its origin, and a origin method. This can be useful for situations where the number of threads is not known in advance but we still want to track what goes on in each thread.
    • A cast to bool was removed in the vector proxy code as inconsistent behaviour between clang and g++ compilations was noticed.
    • A missing update(SEXP) method was added thanks to pull request by Omar Andres Zapata Mesa.
    • A proxy for DimNames was added.
    • A no_init option was added for Matrices and Vectors.
    • The InternalFunction class was updated to work with std::function (provided a suitable C++11 compiler is available) via a pull request by Christian Authmann.
    • A new_env() function was added to Environment.h
    • The return value of range eraser for Vectors was fixed in a pull request by Yixuan Qiu.
  • Changes in Rcpp Sugar:
    • In ifelse(), the returned NA type was corrected for operator[].
  • Changes in Rcpp Attributes:
    • Include LinkingTo in DESCRIPTION fields scanned to confirm that C++ dependencies are referenced by package.
    • Add dryRun parameter to sourceCpp.
    • Corrected issue with relative path and R chunk use for sourceCpp.
  • Changes in Rcpp Documentation:
    • The Rcpp-FAQ vignette was updated with respect to OS X issues.
    • A new entry in the Rcpp-FAQ clarifies the use of licenses.
    • Vignettes build results no longer copied to /tmp to please CRAN.
    • The Description in DESCRIPTION has been shortened.
  • Changes in Rcpp support functions:
    • The Rcpp.package.skeleton() function will now use pkgKitten package, if available, to create a package which passes R CMD check without warnings. A new Suggests: has been added for pkgKitten.
    • The modules=TRUE case for Rcpp.package.skeleton() has been improved and now runs without complaints from R CMD check as well.
  • Changes in Rcpp unit test functions:
    • Functions from the RUnit package are now prefixed with RUnit::
    • The testRcppModule and testRcppClass sample packages now pass R CMD check --as-cran cleanly with NOTES or WARNINGS
Thanks to CRANberries, you can also look at a diff to the previous release As always, even fuller details are on the Rcpp Changelog page and the Rcpp page which also leads to the downloads page, the browseable doxygen docs and zip files of doxygen output for the standard formats. A local directory has source and documentation too. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the R-Forge page.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

25 September 2014

Julian Andres Klode: hardlink 0.3.0 released; xattr support

Today I not only submitted my bachelor thesis to the printing company, I also released a new version of hardlink, my file deduplication tool. hardlink 0.3 now features support for xattr support, contributed by Tom Keel at Intel. If this does not work correctly, please blame him. I also added support for a minimum-size option. Most of the other code has been tested since the upload of RC1 to experimental in September 2012. The next major version will split up the code into multiple files and clean it up a bit. It s getting a bit long now in a single file.
Filed under: Uncategorized

Julian Andres Klode: hardlink 0.3.0 released; xattr support

Today I not only submitted my bachelor thesis to the printing company, I also released a new version of hardlink, my file deduplication tool. hardlink 0.3 now features support for xattr support, contributed by Tom Keel at Intel. If this does not work correctly, please blame him. I also added support for a minimum-size option. Most of the other code has been tested since the upload of RC1 to experimental in September 2012. The next major version will split up the code into multiple files and clean it up a bit. It s getting a bit long now in a single file.
Filed under: Uncategorized

24 September 2014

Julian Andres Klode: APT 1.1~exp3 released to experimental: First step to sandboxed fetcher methods

Today, we worked, with the help of ioerror on IRC, on reducing the attack surface in our fetcher methods. There are three things that we looked at:
  1. Reducing privileges by setting a new user and group
  2. chroot()
  3. seccomp-bpf sandbox
Today, we implemented the first of them. Starting with 1.1~exp3, the APT directories /var/cache/apt/archives and /var/lib/apt/lists are owned by the _apt user (username suggested by pabs). The methods switch to that user shortly after the start. The only methods doing this right now are: copy, ftp, gpgv, gzip, http, https. If privileges cannot be dropped, the methods will fail to start. No fetching will be possible at all. Known issues: We plan to also add chroot() and seccomp sandboxing later on; to reduce the attack surface on untrusted files and protocol parsing.
Filed under: Uncategorized

6 August 2014

Julian Andres Klode: Configuring an OpenWRT Router as a repeater for a FRITZ!Box with working Multicast

Since some time, those crappy Fritz!Box devices do not support WDS anymore, but rather a proprietary solution created by AVM. Now what happens if you have devices in another room that need/want wired access (like TVs, Playstations) or if you want to extend the range of your network? Buying another Fritz!Box is not very cost efficient What I did was to buy a cheap TP-Link TL-WR841N (can be bought for 18 euros) and installed OpenWRT on it. Here s how I configured it to act as a WiFi bridge. Basic overview: You configure OpenWRT into station mode (that is, as a WiFi client) and use relayd to relay between the WiFi network and your local network. You also need igmpproxy to proxy multicast packages between those networks, other UPnP stuff won t work. I did this on the recent Barrier Braker RC2. It should work on older versions as well, but I cannot promise it (I did not get igmpproxy to work in Attitude Adjustment, but that was probably my fault). Note: I don t know if it works with IPv6, I only use IPv4. You might want to re-start (or start) services after the steps, or reboot the router afterwards. Configuring WiFi connection to the FRITZ!Box Add to: /etc/config/network 
config interface 'wwan'
	option proto 'dhcp'
(you can use any other name you want instead of wwan, and a static IP. This will be your uplink to the Fritz!Box) Replace wifi-iface in: /etc/config/wireless: 
config wifi-iface
	option device 'radio0'
	option mode 'sta'
	option ssid 'FRITZ!Box 7270'
	option encryption 'psk2'
	option key 'PASSWORD'
	option network 'wwan'
(adjust values as needed for your network) Setting up the pseudo-bridge First, add wwan to the list of networks in the lan zone in the firewall. Then add a forward rule for the lan network (not sure if needed). Afterwards, configure a new stabridge network and disable the built-in DHCP server. Diff for /etc/config/firewall 
@@ -10,2 +10,3 @@ config zone
 	list network 'lan'
+	list network 'wwan'
 	option input 'ACCEPT'
@@ -28,2 +29,7 @@ config forwarding
 
+# Not sure if actually needed
+config forwarding
+	option src 'lan'
+	option dest 'lan'
+
 config rule
Add to /etc/config/network 
config interface 'stabridge'
	option proto 'relay'
	option network 'lan wwan'
	option ipaddr '192.168.178.26'
(Replace 192.168.178.26 with the IP address your OpenWRT router was given by the Fritz!Box on wlan0) Also make sure to ignore dhcp on the lan interface, as the DHCP server of the FRITZ!Box will be used: Diff for /etc/config/dhcp 
@@ -24,2 +24,3 @@ config dhcp 'lan'
        option ra 'server'
+       option ignore '1'
Proxying multicast packages For proxying multicast packages, we need to install igmpproxy and configure it: Add to: /etc/config/firewall 
# Configuration for igmpproxy
config rule
	option src      lan
	option proto    igmp
	option target   ACCEPT
config rule
	option src      lan
	option proto    udp
	option dest     lan
	option target   ACCEPT
(OpenWRT wiki gives a different 2nd rule now, but this is the one I currently use) Replace /etc/config/igmpproxy with: 
config igmpproxy
	option quickleave 1
config phyint
	option network wwan
	option direction upstream
	list altnet 192.168.178.0/24
config phyint
	option network lan
	option direction downstream
	list altnet 192.168.178.0/24
(Assuming Fritz!Box uses the 192.168.178.0/24 network) Don t forget to enable the igmpproxy script: 
# /etc/init.d/igmpproxy enable
Optional: Repeat the WiFi signal If you want to repeat your WiFi signal, all you need to do is add a second wifi-iface to your /etc/config/wireless. 
config wifi-iface
	option device 'radio0'
	option mode 'ap'
	option network 'lan'
	option encryption 'psk2+tkip+ccmp'
	option key 'PASSWORD'
	option ssid 'YourForwardingSSID'
Known Issues If I was connected via WiFi to the OpenWRT AP and switch to the FRITZ!Box AP, I cannot connect to the OpenWRT router for some time. The igmpproxy tool writes to the log about changing routes. Future Work I ll try to get the FRITZ!Box replaced by something that runs OpenWRT as well, and then use OpenWRT s WDS support for repeating; because the FRITZ!Box 7270v2 is largely crap loading a page in its web frontend takes 5 (idle) 20 seconds (1 download), and it s WiFi speed is limited to about 20 Mbit/s in WiFi-n mode (2.4 GHz (or 5 GHz, does not matter), 40 MHz channel). It seems the 7270 has a really slow CPU.
Filed under: OpenWRT

20 July 2014

Laura Arjona: Upgrading my laptop to Debian Jessie

Some days ago I decided to upgrade my laptop from stable to testing. I had tried Jessie since several months, in my husband s laptop, but that was a fresh install, and a not-so-old laptop, and we have not much software installed there. In my netbook (Compaq Mini 110c), with stable, I already had installed Pumpa, Dianara and how-can-i-help from testing, and since the freeze is coming, I thought that I could full-upgrade and use Jessie from now on, and report my issues and help to diagnose or fix them, if possible, before the freeze. I keep Debian stable at work for my desktop and servers (well, some of them are still in oldstable, thanks LTS team!!), and I have testing in a laptop that I use as clonezilla/drbl server (but I had issues, next week I ll put some time on them and I ll write here my findings, and report bugs, if any). So! let s go. Here I write my experience and the issues that I found (very few! and not sure if they are bugs or configuration problems or what, I ll keep an eye on them). The upgrade I pointed my /etc/apt/sources.list to jessie, then apt-get update, then apt-get dist-upgrade. (With the servers I am much more careful, read the release notes, upgrade guides and so, or directly I go for a fresh install, but with my laptop, I am too lazy). I went to bed (wow, risky LArjona!) and when I got up for going to work, the laptop was waiting for me to accept to block root from ssh access, or restart some services, and so. Ok! the upgrade resumed but I have to go to work and I wanted my laptop! Since all the packages were already downloaded, I closed the lid (double risky LArjona!) unplugged it, put everything in my bag, and catched the bus in time :) At the bus, I opened again the lid of my laptop (crossing fingers!) and perfect, the laptop had suspended and returned back to life, and the upgrade just resumed with no problem. Wow! I love you Debian! After 15 minutes, I had to suspend again, since the bus arrived and I had to take the metro. In the metro, the upgrade resumed, and finished. I shutdown my laptop and arrive to work. Testing testing :) In a break for lunch, I opened my brand new laptop (the hardware is the same, but the software totally renewed, so it s brand new for me). I have to say that use xfce, with some GNOME/GTK apps installed (gedit, cheese, evince, XChat ) and some others that use Qt or are part of the KDE project (Okular, Kile, QtLinguist, Pumpa, Dianara). I don t know/care too much about desktops and tweaking my desktop: I just put the terminal and gedit in black background, Debian wallpaper is enough dark for me so ok, put the font size a bit smaller to better use my low-vertical-resolution, and that s all, I only go to configure something else if there s something that really annoys me. My laptop booted correctly and a nice, more modern LightDM was greeting me. I logged in and everything worked ok, except some issues that follow. Network Manager and WPA2-enterprise wireless connections I had to reconfigure some wireless connections in Network Manager. At the University we use WPA2-enterprise, TTLS + PAP. I had stored my username and password in the connection, and network manager seemed to remember the username but not the password. No problem, I said, and I wrote it when it asked, but the Save or OK button was greyed out. I could not click it. Then I went to edit the connections, and more or less the same, it seems that I could edit, but not save the (new) configuration. Finally, I removed the wireless connection and created it again, and everything worked as a charm. This, I had to do it with the two wireless in my University (both of them are WPA2-enterprise TTLS + PAP). At home, I have WPA2 personal, and I had no issues, everything worked ok. This problem is not appearing in a fresh install, since there are no old configs to keep. Adblock Plus not working any more I opened Iceweasel and I began to see ads in the webpages that I visited. What? I checked and Adblock plus was installed and activated I reinstalled the package xul-ext-adblock-plus and it worked again. Strange display in programs based on Qt When I opened Pumpa I noticed that the edges of the windows where too rough, as if it was not using a desktop theme. I asked to a friend that uses Plasma and he suggested to install qt4-qtconfig, and then, select a theme for my Qt apps. It worked like a charm, but I find strange that I didn t need it before in stable. Maybe the default xfce configuration from stable is setting a theme, and the new one is not setting it, and so, the Qt apps are left barefoot .
With qtconfig I chose a GTK+ Style GUI for my Qt apps and then, they looked similar to what I had in stable (frankly, I cannot say if it was similar or exactly the same , but I didn t find them strange as before, so I m fine). Strange display in programs from GNOME Well, this is not a Jessie problem, it s just that some programs adopted the new GNOME appearance, and since I m on xfce, not on GNOME, they look a bit strange (no menus integration, and so). I am not sure that I can run GNOME (fallback, classic?) in my 1 GB RAM laptop, I have to investigate if I can tweak it to use less memory, or what. I m not very tied to xfce, and in fact it does not look so light (well, on top of it, I don t run light programs, I run Iceweasel, Icedove, Libreoffice, and some others). At work I use GNOME in my desktop, but with GNOME shell, not the fallback or classic modes, so I m thinking about giving a chance to MATE or second chance to LXDE. We ll see. Issues when opening the lid (waking up from suspend) This is the most strange thing I found in the migration, and the most dangerous one, I think. As I said before, I don t tweak too much my desktop, if it works with the default configuration. I m not sure that I know the differences between suspend, hibernate, hard disks disconnections and so. When I was in stable, and I closed the lid of my laptop, it just shutdown the screen, then I heard something like the system going to suspend or whatever, and after some seconds, the harddisk and fans stop, the wireless led turns off, and the power led begins to blink. Ok. When I open the lid, then it was waking up itself (the power led stayed on, the wireless led turns on, and when I tap the touchpad or type anything, the screen was coming, with the xscreensaver asking for my password). Just sometimes, when the screen was turning on, I could see my desktop for less than a second, before xscreensaver turns the background black and asks for the password. Now since I migrated to Jessie, I m experiencing a different behavior. When I close the lid, the laptop behaves the same. When I open the lid, the laptop behaves the same, but when I type or tap the touchpad and xscreensaver comes to ask the password, before than I can type it, the laptop just suspends again (or hibernates, I m not sure), and I have to press the power button in order to bring it back to life (then I see the xscreensaver again asking for the password, I type it, and my desktop is there, the same as I left it when I closed the lid). Strange, isn t it? I have tried to suspend my laptop directly from the menu, and it comes to the same state in which I have to press the power button in order to bring it back to life, but then, no xscreensaver password is required (which is double strange, IMHO). Things I miss in Jessie Well, until now, the only thing I miss in Jessie is the software center. I rarely use it (I love apt) but I think it makes a good job in easing the installation of programs in Debian for people coming from other operative systems (specially after smartphones and their copied software stores became popular). I hope the maintainer can upload a new version before the freeze, and so, it enters in the release. I ll try to contact him. Update 2014/07/20: Julian Andres Klode, maintainer of software-center, just replied (see his comment below) and pointed to GNOME Software (gnome-packagekit) as alternative. I just installed and it looks neat and nice. I m very happy! TODO I have a Debian stable laptop at work (this one with xfce + GNOME), I ll try to upgrade it and see if I see the same problems that I notice in mine. Then, I ll check the corresponding packages to see if there are open bugs about them, and if not, report them to their maintainers. I have to review the wiki pages related to the Jessie Desktop theme selection, I think they wanted the wallpaper to be inside before the freeze. Maybe I can help in publicity about that, handle the votings and so. I like Joy, but it s time to change a bit, new fresh air into the room!
Filed under: My experiences and opinion Tagged: Contributing to libre software, Debian, English, Free Software, Moving into free software

9 April 2014

Julian Andres Klode: ThinkPad X230 UEFI broken by setting a setting

Today, I decided to set my X230 back to UEFI-only boot, after having changed that for a bios upgrade recently (to fix a resume bug). I then choose to save the settings and received several error messages telling me that the system ran out of resources (probably storage space for UEFI variables). I rebooted my machine, and saw no logo appearing. Just something like an underscore on a text console. The system appears to boot normally otherwise, and once the i915 module is loaded (and we re switching away from UEFI s Graphical Output Protocol [GOP]) the screen works correctly. So it seems the GOP broke. What should I do next?
Filed under: General

6 January 2014

Julian Andres Klode: python-apt now native Python 3 code

Today I made an important change to the python-apt code: It is now native Python 3 code (but also works under Python 2). The previous versions all run 2to3 during the build process to create a Python 3 version. This is no longer needed, as the code is now identical. As part of that change, python-apt now only supports Python 2.7, Python 3.3, and newer. I m using some features only present in 3.3 like Python2 unicode literal syntax in order to keep the code simple. Here s how I did it: I took the Python 2 code and ran 2to3 -f print -x future on it. This turned every print statement in a call to the print function. I then went ahead and added a from __future__ import print_function to the top of each module. This was the first commit. For the second commit, I ran 2to3 -p -x future to convert the remaining stuff to Python 3, and then undid some changes (like unicode literals) and fixed the rest of the changes to work under both Python 2 and 3. Sometimes I added a top-level code like: 
if sys.version_info_major >= 3:
    unicode = str
So I could use unicode in the code for the Python 2 cases. I used various backported modules like io and stuff only available in Python 2.7, so dropped support for Python 2.6.
Filed under: Debian, Python

21 December 2013

Russell Coker: Links December 2013

Andres Lozano gave an interesting TED talk about the use of electrodes inside the brain (deep brain stimulation) to treat Alzheimers disease, Parkinson s disease, and depression [1]. Daniel Pocock wrote an interesting post commenting on some bad political decisions being made in Australia titled Evacuating Australia [2]. You can read that as a suggestion to leave Australia or to try and make Australia better. Marco Tempest gave an interesting TED talk about Nikola Tesla [3]. The presentation method is one that I ve never seen before so I recommend watching the talk even if you already know all about Tesla. Charmian Gooch gave an interesting TED talk about global corruption [4]. I think we need people to send the information on shell company ownership to organisations like Wikileaks. The punishment for leaking such information would be a lot less than Chelsea Manning is getting and the chance of getting caught is also low. Rich Mogul wrote an interesting and insightful article for Macworld about the Apple approach to security problems [5]. To avoid the problem of users disabling security features they work to make the secure way of doing things EASIER for the user. That won t work with all security problems but it s something we need to think about when working on computer security. Ray Raphael gave an interesting TED talk about the parts of the US revolution that don t appear in history books [6]. He warns the listener to beware of the narrative forms, but another way to interpret his talk is that you should present your version of history in the narrative form that is best accepted. That lesson is well known and it s easy to see history being deliberately distorted in most media outlets. Will Wright gave an interesting TED talk about how he designed the game Spore and his ideas about games in general [7]. Spore is a really good game. Chris Lintott gave an interesting TED talk about crowd-sourced astronomy titled How to Discover a Planet from Your Sofa [8]. He referenced the Zooniverse.org site which lists many crowd-sourced science projects [9]. Jake Socha gave an interesting TED talk about flying snakes, you have to see this to believe it [10]. Nikita Bier gave an interesting TED talk about his webapp to analyse economic policies [11]. Apparently 60% of people were going to vote in their best economic interest before seeing his site and 66% would do so afterwards that could change an election result. Anya Kamenetz wrote an interesting article for Salon about The Iliad Project which aims to use Indigogo to help identify new anti-biotics [12]. The current ways of discovering anti-biotics aren t working, lets hope this one does. Peter Finocchiaro wrote an interesting Salon article about how right-wing politicians in the US were opposed to Nelson Mandela [13] racism meets anti-communism. Katie McDonough wrote an interesting Salon article about Rick Santorum and Bill O Reilly comparing Obamacare to apartheid while supposedly honoring Nelson Mandela [14], Katie also notes that Nelson enshrined universal healthcare in the South African constitution something all countries should do. Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote a Salon article about Susan Boyle s announcement about being diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome [15]. Not a surprise though, some people can be diagnosed with Autism by merely watching them on TV. Amelia Hill wrote an article for The Guardian/The Observer about the educational results of Home Schooling [16]. Apparently Home-Schooled kids learn significantly more and home-educated children of working-class parents achieved considerably higher marks in tests than the children of professional, middle-class parents and that gender differences in exam results disappear among home-taught children . Wow, Home Schooling beats gender and class problems! I m sure it s even better for GLBT kids too. Robert Reich wrote an interesting Salon article about the way rich people in the US give tax-deductable (taxpayer supported) donations to charities that benefit themselves [17]. Dan Savage wrote a very funny review of Sarah Palin s latest Christmas book, one classic quote is why should I have to read the whole thing? Lord knows Sarah Palin didn t write the whole thing [18]. He makes a good point that we should use the term happy holidays instead of happy Christmas just to show that we aren t assholes.

17 November 2013

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2013/46

not my most active RC bug squashing week but still, a few things done:

21 October 2013

Julian Andres Klode: python-apt 0.9 released

I released python-apt 0.9. This completely removes support for the old API from the code base (it was disabled for the entirety of 0.8 in Debian, and in Ubuntu since saucy). Highlights:
Filed under: Debian

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