Search Results: "hle"

3 November 2020

Martin Michlmayr: ledger2beancount 2.5 released

I released version 2.5 of ledger2beancount, a ledger to beancount converter. Here are the changes in 2.5: Thanks to input from Remco R nders, Yuri Khan, and Thierry. Thanks to Stefano Zacchiroli and Kirill Goncharov for testing my changes. You can get ledger2beancount from GitHub

6 October 2020

Iustin Pop: Late report for Nationalpark Bike Marathon 2020

I don t have to mention that 2020 is a special year, so all the normal race plan was out the window, and I was very happy and fortunate to be able to do even one race. And only delayed 3 weeks to write this race report :/ So, here s the story

Preparing for the race Because it was a special year, and everything was crazy, I actually managed to do more sports than usual, at least up to end of July. So my fitness, and even body weight, was relatively fine, so I subscribed to the mid-distance race (official numbers: 78km distance, 1570 meters altitude), and then off it went to a proper summer vacation in a hotel, even. And while I did do some bike rides during that vacation, from then on my training regime went just off? I did train, I did ride, I did get significant PRs, but it didn t click anymore. Plus, due to well, actually not sure what, work or coffee or something my sleep regime also got completely ruined On top of that, I didn t think about the fact that the race was going to be mid-September, and that high up in the mountains, the weather could have be bad enough (I mean, in 2018 the weather was really bad even in August ) such that I d need to seriously think about clothing.

Race week I arrive in Scuol two days before the race, very tired (I think I got only 6 hours of sleep the night before), and definitely not in a good shape. I was feeling bad enough that I was not quite sure I was going to race. At least weather was OK, such that normal summer clothing would suffice. But the race info was mentioning dangerous segments, to be very careful, etc. etc. so I was quite anxious. Note 1: my wife says, this was not the first time, and likely not the last time that two days before the race I feel like quitting. And as I m currently on-and-off reading the interesting The Brave Athlete: Calm the Fuck Down and Rise to the Occasion book (by Lesley Paterson and Simon Marshall; it s an interesting book, not sure if I recommend it or not), I am beginning to think that this is my reaction to races where I have overshot my usual distance. Or, in general, races where I fear the altitude gain. Not quite sure, but I think it is indeed the actual cause. So I spend Thursday evening feeling unwell, and thinking I ll see how Friday goes. Friday comes, and having slept reasonably well entire night, I pick up my race number, then I take another nap in the afternoon - in total, I ve slept around 13 hours that day. So I felt much better, and was looking forward to the race. Saturday morning comes, I manage to wake up early, and get ready in time; almost didn t panic at all that I m going to be late. Note 2: my wife also says that this is the usual way I behave. Hence, it must be most of it a mental issue, rather than real physical one

Race I reach the train station in time, I get on the train, and by the time the train reached Zernez, I fully calm down. There was am entire hour wait though before the race, and it was quite chilly. Of course I didn t bring anything beside what I was wearing, relying on temperature getting better later in the day. During the wait, there were two interesting things happening. First, we actually got there (in Zernez) before the first people from the long distance passed by, both men and women. Seeing them pass by was cool, thinking they already had ~1 200m altitude in just 30-ish kilometres. The second thing was, as this was the middle and not the shortest distance, the people in the group looked differently than in previous years. More precisely, they were looking very fit, and I was feeling fat. Well, I am overweight, so it was expected, but I was feeling it even more than usual. I think only one or two in ten people were looking as fit as me or less And of course, the pictures post-race show me even less fit-looking than I thought. Ah, self-deception is a sweet thing And yes, we all had to wear masks, up until the last minute. It was interesting, but not actually annoying - and small enough price for being able to race! Then the race starts, and as opposed to many other years, it starts slow. I didn t feel that rush of people starting fast, it was reasonable?

First part of the race (good) Thus started the first part of the race, on a new route that I was unfamiliar with. There was not too much climbing, to be honest, and there was some tricky single-trail through the woods, with lots of the roots. I actually had to get off the bike and push it, since it was too difficult to pedal uphill on that path. Other than that, I was managing so far to adjust my efforts well enough that my usual problems related to climbing (lower back pain) didn t yet appear, even as the overall climbed meters were increasing. I was quite happy at that, and had lots of reserves. To my (pleasant) surprise, two positive things happened:
  • I was never alone, a sign that I wasn t too far back.
  • I was passing/being passed by people, both on climbs but also on descents! It s rare, but I did overtake a few people on a difficult trail downhill.
With all the back and forth, a few people became familiar (or at least their kit), and it was fun seeing who is better uphill vs. downhill.

And second part (not so good) I finally get to (around) S-chanf, on a very nice but small descent, and on flat roads, and start the normal route for the short race. Something was off though - I knew from past years that these last ~47km have around 700-800m altitude, but I had already done around 1000m. So the promised 1571m were likely to be off, by at least 100-150m. I set myself a new target of 1700m, and adjust my efforts based on that. And then, like clockwork on the 3:00:00 mark, the route exited the forest, the sun got out of the clouds, and the temperature started to increase from 16-17 C to 26 +, with peaks of 31 C. I m not joking: at 2:58:43, temp was 16 , at 3:00:00, it was 18 , at 3:05:45, it was 26 . Heat and climbing are my two nemeses, and after having a pretty good race for the first 3 hours and almost exactly 1200m of climbing, I started feeling quite miserable. Well, it was not all bad. There were some nice stretches of flat, where I knew I can pedal strongly and keep up with other people, until my chain dropped, so I had to stop, re-set it, and lose 2 minutes. Sigh. But, at least, I was familiar with this race, or so I thought. I completely mis-remembered the last ~20km as a two-punch climb, Guarda and Ftan, whereas it is actually a three-punch one: Guarda, Ardez, and only then Ftan. Doesn t help that Ardez has the nice ruins that I was remembering and which threw me off. The saddest part of the day was here, on one of the last climbs - not sure if to Guarda or to Arddez, where a guy overtakes me, and tells me he s glad he finally caught up with me, he almost got me five or six times (!), but I always managed to break off. Always, until now. Now, this was sad (I was huffing and puffing like a steam locomotive now), but also positive, as I never had that before. One good, one bad? And of course, it was more than 1 700m altitude, it was 1 816m. And the descent to Scuol shorter and it didn t end as usual with the small but sharp climb which I just love, due to Covid changes. But, I finished, and without any actual issues, and no dangerous segments as far as I saw. I was anxious for no good reason

Conclusion (or confusion?) So this race was interesting: three hours (to the minute) in which I went 43.5km, climbed 1200m, felt great, and was able to push and push. And then the second part, only ~32km, climbed only 600m, but which felt quite miserable. I don t know if it was mainly heat, mainly my body giving up after that much climbing (or time?), or both. But it s clear that I can t reliably race for more than around these numbers: 3 hours, ~1000+m altitude, in >20 C temperature. One thing that I managed to achieve though: except due to the technically complex trail at the beginning where I pushed the bike, I did not ever stop and push the bike uphill because I was too tired. Instead, I managed (badly) to do the switch sitting/standing as much as I could motivate myself, and thus continue pushing uphill. This is an achievement for me, since mentally it s oh so easy to stop and push the bike, so I was quite glad. As to the race results, they were quite atrocious:
  • age category (men), 38 out of 52 finishers, 4h54m, with first finisher doing 3h09m, so 50% slower (!)
  • overall (men), 138 out of 173 finishers, with first finisher 2h53m.
These results clearly don t align with my feeling of a good first half of the race, so either it was purely subjective, or maybe in this special year, only really strong people registered for the race, or something else One positive aspect though, compared to most other years, was the consistency of my placement (age and overall):
  • Zuoz: 38 / 141
  • S-Chanf: 39 / 141
  • Zernez: 39 / 141
  • Guarda: 38 / 138
  • Ftan: 38 / 138
  • ( next - whatever this is): 38 / 138
  • Finish: 38 / 138
So despite all my ranting above, and all the stats I m pulling out of my own race, it looks like my position in the race was fully settled in the really first part, and I didn t gain nor lose practically anything afterwards. I did dip one place but then gained it back (on the climb to Guarda, even). The split times (per-segment rankings) are a bit more variable, and show that I was actually fast on the climbs but losing speed on the descents, which I really don t understand anymore:
  • Zernez-Zuoz (unclear type): 38 / 141
  • Zuoz-S-Chanf (unclear type): 40 / 141
  • S-Chanf-Zernez (mostly downhill): 39 / 143
  • Zernez-Guarda (mostly uphill): 37 / 136
  • Guarda-Ftan (mostly uphill): 37 / 131
  • Ftan-Scuol (mostly downhill): 43 / 156
The difference at the end is striking. I m visually matching the map positions to km and then use VeloViewer for computing the altitude gain, but Zernez to Guarda is 420m altitude, and Guarda to Ftan is 200m altitude gain, and yet on both, I was faster than my final place, and by quite a few places on overall, only to lose that on the descent (Ftan-Scuol), and by a large margin. So, amongst all the confusion here, I think the story overall is:
  • indeed I was quite fit for me, so the climbs were better than my place in the race (if that makes sense).
  • however, I m not actually good at climbing nor fit (watts/kg), so I m still way back in the pack (oops!).
  • and I do suck at descending, both me (skills) and possible my bike setup as well (too high tyre pressure, etc.) so I lose even more time here
As usual, the final take-away points are: lose the extra weight that is not needed, get better skills, get better core to be better at climbing. I ll finish here with one pic, taken in Guarda (4 hours into the race, more or less):
Climbing in Guarda Climbing in Guarda
Until next year!

31 August 2020

Chris Lamb: Free software activities in August 2020

Here is another monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world during August 2020 (previous month): I uploaded Lintian versions 2.86.0, 2.87.0, 2.88.0, 2.89.0, 2.90.0, 2.91.0 and 2.92.0, as well as made the following changes:

Reproducible Builds One of the original promises of open source software is that distributed peer review and transparency of process results in enhanced end-user security. However, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free and open source software for malicious flaws, almost all software today is distributed as pre-compiled binaries. This allows nefarious third-parties to compromise systems by injecting malicious code into ostensibly secure software during the various compilation and distribution processes. The motivation behind the Reproducible Builds effort is to ensure no flaws have been introduced during this compilation process by promising identical results are always generated from a given source, thus allowing multiple third-parties to come to a consensus on whether a build was compromised. The project is proud to be a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Conservancy acts as a corporate umbrella allowing projects to operate as non-profit initiatives without managing their own corporate structure. If you like the work of the Conservancy or the Reproducible Builds project, please consider becoming an official supporter. This month, I:

diffoscope I made the following changes to diffoscope, including preparing and uploading versions 155, 156, 157 and 158 to Debian:

Debian Debian LTS This month I have worked 18 hours on Debian Long Term Support (LTS) and 12 hours on its sister Extended LTS project. You can find out more about the project via the following video:


Uploads to Debian

23 August 2020

Enrico Zini: Doing things /together/

Here are the slides of mine and Ulrike's talk Doing things /together/.
Our thoughts about cooperation aspects of doing things together. Sometimes in Debian we do work together with others, and sometimes we are a number of people who work alone, and happen to all upload their work in the same place. In times when we have needed to take important decisions together, this distinction has become crucial, and some of us might have found that we were not as good at cooperation as we would have thought. This talk is intended for everyone who is part of a larger community. We will show concepts and tools that we think could help understand and shape cooperation.
Video of the talk: The slides have extensive notes: you can use View Notes in LibreOffice Impress to see them. Here are the Inkscape sources for the graphs: Here are links to resources quoted in the talk: In the Q&A, pollo asked:
How can we still have a good code review process without making it a "you need to be perfect" scenario? I often find picky code reviews help me write better code.
Ulrike wrote a more detailed answer: Code reviews: from nitpicking to cooperation

3 August 2020

Holger Levsen: 20200803-debconf5

DebConf5 This tshirt is 15 years old and from DebConf5. It still looks quite nice! :) DebConf5 was my 3rd DebConf and took place in Helsinki, or rather Espoo, in Finland. This was one of my most favorite DebConfs (though I basically loved them all) and I'm not really sure why, I guess it's because of the kind of community at the event. We stayed in some future dorms of the universtity, which were to be first used by some European athletics chamopionship and which we could use even before that, guests zero. Being in Finland there were of course saunas in the dorms, which we frequently used and greatly enjoyed. Still, one day we had to go on a trip to another sauna in the forest, because of course you cannot visit Finland and only see one sauna. Or at least, you should not. Another aspect which increased community bonding was that we had to authenticate using 802.10 (IIRC, please correct me) which was an authentication standard mostly used for wireless but which also works for wired ethernet, except that not many had used it on Linux before. Thus quite some related bugs were fixed in the first days of DebCamp... Then my powerpc ibook also decided to go bad, so I had to remove 30 screws to get the harddrive out and 30 screws back in, to not have 30 screws laying around for a week. Then I put the harddrive into a spare (x86) laptop and only used my /home partition and was very happy this worked nicely. And then, for travelling back, I had to unscrew and screw 30 times again. (I think my first attempt took 1.5h and the fourth only 45min or so ;) Back home then I bought a laptop where one could remove the harddrive using one screw. Oh, and then I was foolish during the DebConf5 preparations and said, that I could imagine setting up a team and doing video recordings, as previous DebConfs mostly didn't have recordings and the one that had, didn't have releases of them... And so we did videos. And as we were mostly inexperienced we did them the hard way: during the day we recorded on tape and then when the talks were done, we used a postprocessing tool called 'cinelerra' and edited them. And because Eric Evans was on the team and because Eric worked every night almost all night, all nights, we managed to actually release them all when DebConf5 was over. I very well remember many many (23 or 42) Debian people cleaning the dorms thoroughly (as they were brand new..) and Eric just sitting somewhere, exhausted and watching the cleaners. And everybody was happy Eric was idling there, cause we knew why. In the aftermath of DebConf5 Ben Hutchings then wrote videolink (removed from sid in 2013) which we used to create video DVDs of our recordings based on a simple html file with links to the actual videos. There were many more memorable events. The boat ride was great. A pirate flag appeared. One night people played guitar until very late (or rather early) close to the dorms, so at about 3 AM someone complained about it, not in person, but on the debian-devel mailinglist. And those drunk people playing guitar, replied immediatly on the mailinglist. And then someone from the guitar group gave a talk, at 9 AM, and the video is online... ;) (It's a very slowwwwwww talk.) If you haven't been to or close to the polar circles it's almost impossible to anticipate how life is in summer there. It get's a bit darker after midnight or rather after 1 AM and then at 3 AM it get's light again, so it's reaaaaaaally easy to miss the night once and it's absolutly not hard to miss the night for several nights in a row. And then I shared a room with 3 people who all snore quite loud... There was more. I was lucky to witness the first (or second?) cheese and whine party which at that time took place in a dorm room with, dunno 10 people and maybe 15 kinds of cheese. And, of course, I met many wonderful people there, to mention a few I'll say Jesus, I mean mooch or data, Amaya and p2. And thanks to some bad luck which turned well, I also had my first time ever Sushi in Helsinki. And and and. DebConfs are soooooooo good! :-) I'll stop here as I originally planned to only write a paragraph or two about each and there are quite some to be written! Oh, and as we all learned, there are probably no mosquitos in Helsinki, just in Espoo. And you can swim naked through a lake and catch a taxi on the other site, with no clothes and no money, no big deal. (And you might not believe it, but that wasn't me. I cannot swim that well.)

31 July 2020

Chris Lamb: Free software activities in July 2020

Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free and open source software world during July 2020 (previous month): For Lintian, the static analysis tool for Debian packages:

Reproducible Builds One of the original promises of open source software is that distributed peer review and transparency of process results in enhanced end-user security. However, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free and open source software for malicious flaws, almost all software today is distributed as pre-compiled binaries. This allows nefarious third-parties to compromise systems by injecting malicious code into ostensibly secure software during the various compilation and distribution processes. The motivation behind the Reproducible Builds effort is to ensure no flaws have been introduced during this compilation process by promising identical results are always generated from a given source, thus allowing multiple third-parties to come to a consensus on whether a build was compromised. The project is proud to be a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Conservancy acts as a corporate umbrella allowing projects to operate as non-profit initiatives without managing their own corporate structure. If you like the work of the Conservancy or the Reproducible Builds project, please consider becoming an official supporter. This month, I:

diffoscope Elsewhere in our tooling, I made the following changes to diffoscope, including preparing and uploading versions 150, 151, 152, 153 & 154 to Debian:

Debian In Debian, I made the following uploads this month:

Debian LTS This month I have worked 18 hours on Debian Long Term Support (LTS) and 12 for the Extended LTS project. This included: You can find out more about the project via the following video:

27 July 2020

Martin Michlmayr: ledger2beancount 2.4 released

I released version 2.4 of ledger2beancount, a ledger to beancount converter. There are two notable changes in this release:
  1. I fixed two regressions introduced in the last release. Sorry about the breakage!
  2. I improved support for hledger. I believe all syntax differences in hledger are supported now.
Here are the changes in 2.4: Thanks to Kirill Goncharov for pointing out one regressions, to Taylor R Campbell for for a patch, to Stefano Zacchiroli for some input, and finally to Simon Michael for input on hledger! You can get ledger2beancount from GitHub

24 July 2020

Martin Michlmayr: beancount2ledger 1.1 released

Martin Blais recently announced that he'd like to re-organize the beancount code and split out some functionality into separate projects, including the beancount to ledger/hledger conversion code previously provided by bean-report. I agreed to take on the maintenance of this code and I've now released beancount2ledger, a beancount to ledger/hledger converter. You can install beancount2ledger with pip: 
pip3 install beancount2ledger
Please report issues to the GitHub tracker. There are a number of outstanding issues I'll fix soon, but please report any other issues you encounter. Note that I'm not very familiar with hledger. I intend to sync up with hledger author Simon Michael soon, but please file an issue if you notice any problems with the hledger conversion. Version 1.1 contains a number of fixes compared to the latest code in bean-report: 1.1 (2020-07-24) 1.0 (2020-07-22)

6 July 2020

Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in June 2020

Welcome to the June 2020 report from the Reproducible Builds project. In these reports we outline the most important things that we and the rest of the community have been up to over the past month.

What are reproducible builds? One of the original promises of open source software is that distributed peer review and transparency of process results in enhanced end-user security. But whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free and open source software for malicious flaws, almost all software today is distributed as pre-compiled binaries. This allows nefarious third-parties to compromise systems by injecting malicious code into seemingly secure software during the various compilation and distribution processes.

News The GitHub Security Lab published a long article on the discovery of a piece of malware designed to backdoor open source projects that used the build process and its resulting artifacts to spread itself. In the course of their analysis and investigation, the GitHub team uncovered 26 open source projects that were backdoored by this malware and were actively serving malicious code. (Full article) Carl Dong from Chaincode Labs uploaded a presentation on Bitcoin Build System Security and reproducible builds to YouTube: The app intended to trace infection chains of Covid-19 in Switzerland published information on how to perform a reproducible build. The Reproducible Builds project has received funding in the past from the Open Technology Fund (OTF) to reach specific technical goals, as well as to enable the project to meet in-person at our summits. The OTF has actually also assisted countless other organisations that promote transparent, civil society as well as those that provide tools to circumvent censorship and repressive surveillance. However, the OTF has now been threatened with closure. (More info) It was noticed that Reproducible Builds was mentioned in the book End-user Computer Security by Mark Fernandes (published by WikiBooks) in the section titled Detection of malware in software. Lastly, reproducible builds and other ideas around software supply chain were mentioned in a recent episode of the Ubuntu Podcast in a wider discussion about the Snap and application stores (at approx 16:00).

Distribution work In the ArchLinux distribution, a goal to remove .doctrees from installed files was created via Arch s TODO list mechanism. These .doctree files are caches generated by the Sphinx documentation generator when developing documentation so that Sphinx does not have to reparse all input files across runs. They should not be packaged, especially as they lead to the package being unreproducible as their pickled format contains unreproducible data. Jelle van der Waa and Eli Schwartz submitted various upstream patches to fix projects that install these by default. Dimitry Andric was able to determine why the reproducibility status of FreeBSD s base.txz depended on the number of CPU cores, attributing it to an optimisation made to the Clang C compiler [ ]. After further detailed discussion on the FreeBSD bug it was possible to get the binaries reproducible again [ ]. For the GNU Guix operating system, Vagrant Cascadian started a thread about collecting reproducibility metrics and Jan janneke Nieuwenhuizen posted that they had further reduced their bootstrap seed to 25% which is intended to reduce the amount of code to be audited to avoid potential compiler backdoors. In openSUSE, Bernhard M. Wiedemann published his monthly Reproducible Builds status update as well as made the following changes within the distribution itself:

Debian Holger Levsen filed three bugs (#961857, #961858 & #961859) against the reproducible-check tool that reports on the reproducible status of installed packages on a running Debian system. They were subsequently all fixed by Chris Lamb [ ][ ][ ]. Timo R hling filed a wishlist bug against the debhelper build tool impacting the reproducibility status of 100s of packages that use the CMake build system which led to a number of tests and next steps. [ ] Chris Lamb contributed to a conversation regarding the nondeterministic execution of order of Debian maintainer scripts that results in the arbitrary allocation of UNIX group IDs, referencing the Tails operating system s approach this [ ]. Vagrant Cascadian also added to a discussion regarding verification formats for reproducible builds. 47 reviews of Debian packages were added, 37 were updated and 69 were removed this month adding to our knowledge about identified issues. Chris Lamb identified and classified a new uids_gids_in_tarballs_generated_by_cmake_kde_package_app_templates issue [ ] and updated the paths_vary_due_to_usrmerge as deterministic issue, and Vagrant Cascadian updated the cmake_rpath_contains_build_path and gcc_captures_build_path issues. [ ][ ][ ]. Lastly, Debian Developer Bill Allombert started a mailing list thread regarding setting the -fdebug-prefix-map command-line argument via an environment variable and Holger Levsen also filed three bugs against the debrebuild Debian package rebuilder tool (#961861, #961862 & #961864).

Development On our website this month, Arnout Engelen added a link to our Mastodon account [ ] and moved the SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH git log example to another section [ ]. Chris Lamb also limited the number of news posts to avoid showing items from (for example) 2017 [ ]. strip-nondeterminism is our tool to remove specific non-deterministic results from a completed build. It is used automatically in most Debian package builds. This month, Mattia Rizzolo bumped the debhelper compatibility level to 13 [ ] and adjusted a related dependency to avoid potential circular dependency [ ].

Upstream work The Reproducible Builds project attempts to fix unreproducible packages and we try to to send all of our patches upstream. This month, we wrote a large number of such patches including: Bernhard M. Wiedemann also filed reports for frr (build fails on single-processor machines), ghc-yesod-static/git-annex (a filesystem ordering issue) and ooRexx (ASLR-related issue).

diffoscope diffoscope is our in-depth diff-on-steroids utility which helps us diagnose reproducibility issues in packages. It does not define reproducibility, but rather provides a helpful and human-readable guidance for packages that are not reproducible, rather than relying essentially-useless binary diffs. This month, Chris Lamb uploaded versions 147, 148 and 149 to Debian and made the following changes:
  • New features:
    • Add output from strings(1) to ELF binaries. (#148)
    • Dump PE32+ executables (such as EFI applications) using objdump(1). (#181)
    • Add support for Zsh shell completion. (#158)
  • Bug fixes:
    • Prevent a traceback when comparing PDF documents that did not contain metadata (ie. a PDF /Info stanza). (#150)
    • Fix compatibility with jsondiff version 1.2.0. (#159)
    • Fix an issue in GnuPG keybox file handling that left filenames in the diff. [ ]
    • Correct detection of JSON files due to missing call to File.recognizes that checks candidates against file(1). [ ]
  • Output improvements:
    • Use the CSS word-break property over manually adding U+200B zero-width spaces as these were making copy-pasting cumbersome. (!53)
    • Downgrade the tlsh warning message to an info level warning. (#29)
  • Logging improvements:
  • Testsuite improvements:
    • Update tests for file(1) version 5.39. (#179)
    • Drop accidentally-duplicated copy of the --diff-mask tests. [ ]
    • Don t mask an existing test. [ ]
  • Codebase improvements:
    • Replace obscure references to WF with Wagner-Fischer for clarity. [ ]
    • Use a semantic AbstractMissingType type instead of remembering to check for both types of missing files. [ ]
    • Add a comment regarding potential security issue in the .changes, .dsc and .buildinfo comparators. [ ]
    • Drop a large number of unused imports. [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
    • Make many code sections more Pythonic. [ ][ ][ ][ ]
    • Prevent some variable aliasing issues. [ ][ ][ ]
    • Use some tactical f-strings to tidy up code [ ][ ] and remove explicit u"unicode" strings [ ].
    • Refactor a large number of routines for clarity. [ ][ ][ ][ ]
trydiffoscope is the web-based version of diffoscope. This month, Chris Lamb also corrected the location for the celerybeat scheduler to ensure that the clean/tidy tasks are actually called which had caused an accidental resource exhaustion. (#12) In addition Jean-Romain Garnier made the following changes:
  • Fix the --new-file option when comparing directories by merging DirectoryContainer.compare and Container.compare. (#180)
  • Allow user to mask/filter diff output via --diff-mask=REGEX. (!51)
  • Make child pages open in new window in the --html-dir presenter format. [ ]
  • Improve the diffs in the --html-dir format. [ ][ ]
Lastly, Daniel Fullmer fixed the Coreboot filesystem comparator [ ] and Mattia Rizzolo prevented warnings from the tlsh fuzzy-matching library during tests [ ] and tweaked the build system to remove an unwanted .build directory [ ]. For the GNU Guix distribution Vagrant Cascadian updated the version of diffoscope to version 147 [ ] and later 148 [ ].

Testing framework We operate a large and many-featured Jenkins-based testing framework that powers tests.reproducible-builds.org. Amongst many other tasks, this tracks the status of our reproducibility efforts across many distributions as well as identifies any regressions that have been introduced. This month, Holger Levsen made the following changes:
  • Debian-related changes:
    • Prevent bogus failure emails from rsync2buildinfos.debian.net every night. [ ]
    • Merge a fix from David Bremner s database of .buildinfo files to include a fix regarding comparing source vs. binary package versions. [ ]
    • Only run the Debian package rebuilder job twice per day. [ ]
    • Increase bullseye scheduling. [ ]
  • System health status page:
    • Add a note displaying whether a node needs to be rebooted for a kernel upgrade. [ ]
    • Fix sorting order of failed jobs. [ ]
    • Expand footer to link to the related Jenkins job. [ ]
    • Add archlinux_html_pages, openwrt_rebuilder_today and openwrt_rebuilder_future to known broken jobs. [ ]
    • Add HTML <meta> header to refresh the page every 5 minutes. [ ]
    • Count the number of ignored jobs [ ], ignore permanently known broken jobs [ ] and jobs on known offline nodes [ ].
    • Only consider the known offline status from Git. [ ]
    • Various output improvements. [ ][ ]
  • Tools:
    • Switch URLs for the Grml Live Linux and PureOS package sets. [ ][ ]
    • Don t try to build a disorderfs Debian source package. [ ][ ][ ]
    • Stop building diffoscope as we are moving this to Salsa. [ ][ ]
    • Merge several is diffoscope up-to-date on every platform? test jobs into one [ ] and fail less noisily if the version in Debian cannot be determined [ ].
In addition: Marcus Hoffmann was added as a maintainer of the F-Droid reproducible checking components [ ], Jelle van der Waa updated the is diffoscope up-to-date in every platform check for Arch Linux and diffoscope [ ], Mattia Rizzolo backed up a copy of a remove script run on the Codethink-hosted jump server [ ] and Vagrant Cascadian temporarily disabled the fixfilepath on bullseye, to get better data about the ftbfs_due_to_f-file-prefix-map categorised issue. Lastly, the usual build node maintenance was performed by Holger Levsen [ ][ ], Mattia Rizzolo [ ] and Vagrant Cascadian [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ].
If you are interested in contributing to the Reproducible Builds project, please visit our Contribute page on our website. However, you can get in touch with us via:

This month s report was written by Bernhard M. Wiedemann, Chris Lamb, Eli Schwartz, Holger Levsen, Jelle van der Waa and Vagrant Cascadian. It was subsequently reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible Builds folks on IRC and the mailing list.

30 June 2020

Chris Lamb: Free software activities in June 2020

Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world during June 2020 (previous month): For Lintian, the static analysis tool for Debian packages:

Reproducible Builds One of the original promises of open source software is that distributed peer review and transparency of process results in enhanced end-user security. However, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free and open source software for malicious flaws, almost all software today is distributed as pre-compiled binaries. This allows nefarious third-parties to compromise systems by injecting malicious code into ostensibly secure software during the various compilation and distribution processes. The motivation behind the Reproducible Builds effort is to ensure no flaws have been introduced during this compilation process by promising identical results are always generated from a given source, thus allowing multiple third-parties to come to a consensus on whether a build was compromised. The project is proud to be a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Conservancy acts as a corporate umbrella allowing projects to operate as non-profit initiatives without managing their own corporate structure. If you like the work of the Conservancy or the Reproducible Builds project, please consider becoming an official supporter. This month, I:

Elsewhere in our tooling, I made the following changes to diffoscope including preparing and uploading versions 147, 148 and 149 to Debian: trydiffoscope is the web-based version of diffoscope. This month, I specified a location for the celerybeat scheduler to ensure that the clean/tidy tasks are actually called which had caused an accidental resource exhaustion. (#12)

Debian I filed three bugs against: Debian LTS This month I have worked 18 hours on Debian Long Term Support (LTS) and 5 hours on its sister Extended LTS project. You can find out more about the project via the following video:
Uploads

26 June 2020

Chris Lamb: On the pleasure of hating

People love to tell you that they "don't watch sports" but the story of Lance Armstrong provides a fascinating lens through which to observe our culture at large. For example, even granting all that he did and all the context in which he did it, why do sports cheats act like a lightning rod for such an instinctive hatred? After all, the sheer level of distaste directed at people such as Lance eludes countless other criminals in our society, many of whom have taken a lot more with far fewer scruples. The question is not one of logic or rationality, but of proportionality. In some ways it should be unsurprising. In all areas of life, we instinctively prefer binary judgements to moral ambiguities and the sports cheat is a clich of moral bankruptcy cheating at something so seemingly trivial as a sport actually makes it more, not less, offensive to us. But we then find ourselves strangely enthralled by them, drawn together in admiration of their outlaw-like tenacity, placing them strangely close to criminal folk heroes. Clearly, sport is not as unimportant as we like to claim it is. In Lance's case in particular though, there is undeniably a Shakespearean quality to the story and we are forced to let go of our strict ideas of right and wrong and appreciate all the nuance.

There is a lot of this nuance in Marina Zenovich's new documentary. In fact, there's a lot of everything. At just under four hours, ESPN's Lance combines the duration of a Tour de France stage with the depth of the peloton an endurance event compared to the bite-sized hagiography of Michael Jordan's The Last Dance. Even for those who follow Armstrong's story like a mini-sport in itself, Lance reveals new sides to this man for all seasons. For me, not only was this captured in his clumsy approximations at being a father figure but also in him being asked something I had not read in countless tell-all books: did his earlier experiments in drug-taking contribute to his cancer? But even in 2020 there are questions that remain unanswered. By needlessly returning to the sport in 2009, did Lance subconsciously want to get caught? Why does he not admit he confessed to Betsy Andreu back in 1999 but will happily apologise to her today for slurring her publicly on this very point? And why does he remain so vindictive towards former-teammate Floyd Landis? In all of Armstrong's evasions and masterful control of the narrative, there is the gnawing feeling that we don't even know what questions we should be even asking. As ever, the questions are more interesting than the answers.

Lance also reminded me of how professional cycling's obsession with national identity. Although I was intuitively aware of it to some degree, I had not fully grasped how much this kind of stereotyping runs through the veins of the sport itself, just like the drugs themselves. Journalist Daniel Friebe first offers us the portrait of:
Spaniards tend to be modest, very humble. Very unpretentious. And the Italians are loud, vain and outrageous showmen.
Former directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel then asserts that "Belgians are hard workers... they are ambitious to a certain point, but not overly ambitious", and cyclist J rg Jaksche concludes with:
The Germans are very organised and very structured. And then the French, now I have to be very careful because I am German, but the French are slightly superior.
This kind of lazy caricature is nothing new, especially for those brought up on a solid diet of Tintin and Asterix, but although all these examples are seemingly harmless, why does the underlying idea of ascribing moral, social or political significance to genetic lineage remain so durable in today's age of anti-racism? To be sure, culture is not quite the same thing as race, but being judged by the character of one's ancestors rather than the actions of an individual is, at its core, one of the many conflations at the heart of racism. There is certainly a large amount of cognitive dissonance at work, especially when Friebe elaborates:
East German athletes were like incredible robotic figures, fallen off a production line somewhere behind the Iron Curtain...
... but then bermensch Jan Ullrich is immediately described as "emotional" and "struggled to live the life of a professional cyclist 365 days a year". We see the habit to stereotype is so ingrained that even in the face of this obvious contradiction, Friebe unironically excuses Ullrich's failure to live up his German roots due to him actually being "Mediterranean".

I mention all this as I am known within my circles for remarking on these national characters, even collecting stereotypical examples of Italians 'being Italian' and the French 'being French' at times. Contrary to evidence, I don't believe in this kind of innate quality but what I do suspect is that people generally behave how they think they ought to behave, perhaps out of sheer imitation or the simple pleasure of conformity. As the novelist Will Self put it:
It's quite a complicated collective imposture, people pretending to be British and people pretending to be French, and then they get really angry with each other over what they're pretending to be.
The really remarkable thing about this tendency is that even if we consciously notice it there is no seemingly no escape even I could not smirk when I considered that a brash Texan winning the Tour de France actually combines two of America's cherished obsessions: winning... and annoying the French.

Martin Michlmayr: ledger2beancount 2.3 released

I released version 2.3 of ledger2beancount, a ledger to beancount converter. There are three notable changes with this release:
  1. Performance has significantly improved. One large, real-world test case has gone from around 160 seconds to 33 seconds. A smaller test case has gone from 11 seconds to ~3.5 seconds.
  2. The documentation is available online now (via Read the Docs).
  3. The repository has moved to the beancount GitHub organization.
Here are the changes in 2.3: Thanks to Colin Dean for some feedback. Thanks to Stefano Zacchiroli for prompting me into investigating performance issues (and thanks to the developers of the Devel::NYTProf profiler). You can get ledger2beancount from GitHub

17 May 2020

Matthew Palmer: Private Key Redaction: UR DOIN IT RONG

Because posting private keys on the Internet is a bad idea, some people like to redact their private keys, so that it looks kinda-sorta like a private key, but it isn t actually giving away anything secret. Unfortunately, due to the way that private keys are represented, it is easy to redact a key in such a way that it doesn t actually redact anything at all. RSA private keys are particularly bad at this, but the problem can (potentially) apply to other keys as well. I ll show you a bit of Inside Baseball with key formats, and then demonstrate the practical implications. Finally, we ll go through a practical worked example from an actual not-really-redacted key I recently stumbled across in my travels.

The Private Lives of Private Keys Here is what a typical private key looks like, when you come across it: 
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MGICAQACEQCxjdTmecltJEz2PLMpS4BXAgMBAAECEDKtuwD17gpagnASq1zQTYEC
CQDVTYVsjjF7IQIJANUYZsIjRsR3AgkAkahDUXL0RSECCB78r2SnsJC9AghaOK3F
sKoELg==
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
Obviously, there s some hidden meaning in there computers don t encrypt things by shouting BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY! , after all. What is between the BEGIN/END lines above is, in fact, a base64-encoded DER format ASN.1 structure representing a PKCS#1 private key. In simple terms, it s a list of numbers very important numbers. The list of numbers is, in order:
  • A version number (0);
  • The public modulus , commonly referred to as n ;
  • The public exponent , or e (which is almost always 65,537, for various unimportant reasons);
  • The private exponent , or d ;
  • The two private primes , or p and q ;
  • Two exponents, which are known as dmp1 and dmq1 ; and
  • A coefficient, known as iqmp .

Why Is This a Problem? The thing is, only three of those numbers are actually required in a private key. The rest, whilst useful to allow the RSA encryption and decryption to be more efficient, aren t necessary. The three absolutely required values are e, p, and q. Of the other numbers, most of them are at least about the same size as each of p and q. So of the total data in an RSA key, less than a quarter of the data is required. Let me show you with the above toy key, by breaking it down piece by piece1:
  • MGI DER for this is a sequence
  • CAQ version (0)
  • CxjdTmecltJEz2PLMpS4BX n
  • AgMBAA e
  • ECEDKtuwD17gpagnASq1zQTY d
  • ECCQDVTYVsjjF7IQ p
  • IJANUYZsIjRsR3 q
  • AgkAkahDUXL0RS dmp1
  • ECCB78r2SnsJC9 dmq1
  • AghaOK3FsKoELg== iqmp
Remember that in order to reconstruct all of these values, all I need are e, p, and q and e is pretty much always 65,537. So I could redact almost all of this key, and still give all the important, private bits of this key. Let me show you: 
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
..............................................................EC
CQDVTYVsjjF7IQIJANUYZsIjRsR3....................................
........
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
Now, I doubt that anyone is going to redact a key precisely like this but then again, this isn t a typical RSA key. They usually look a lot more like this: 
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
People typically redact keys by deleting whole lines, and usually replacing them with [...] and the like. But only about 345 of those 1588 characters (excluding the header and footer) are required to construct the entire key. You can redact about 4/5ths of that giant blob of stuff, and your private parts (or at least, those of your key) are still left uncomfortably exposed.

But Wait! There s More! Remember how I said that everything in the key other than e, p, and q could be derived from those three numbers? Let s talk about one of those numbers: n. This is known as the public modulus (because, along with e, it is also present in the public key). It is very easy to calculate: n = p * q. It is also very early in the key (the second number, in fact). Since n = p * q, it follows that q = n / p. Thus, as long as the key is intact up to p, you can derive q by simple division.

Real World Redaction At this point, I d like to introduce an acquaintance of mine: Mr. Johan Finn. He is the proud owner of the GitHub repo johanfinn/scripts. For a while, his repo contained a script that contained a poorly-redacted private key. He since deleted it, by making a new commit, but of course because git never really deletes anything, it s still available. Of course, Mr. Finn may delete the repo, or force-push a new history without that commit, so here is the redacted private key, with a bit of the surrounding shell script, for our illustrative pleasure: 
#Add private key to .ssh folder
cd /home/johan/.ssh/
echo  "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
 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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::.::
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::.::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLlL
 
 
 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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----" >> id_rsa
Now, if you try to reconstruct this key by removing the obvious garbage lines (the ones that are all repeated characters, some of which aren t even valid base64 characters), it still isn t a key at least, openssl pkey doesn t want anything to do with it. The key is very much still in there, though, as we shall soon see. Using a gem I wrote and a quick bit of Ruby, we can extract a complete private key. The irb session looks something like this: 
>> require "derparse"
>> b64 = <<EOF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>> b64 += <<EOF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>> der = b64.unpack("m").first
>> c = DerParse.new(der).first_node.first_child
>> version = c.value
=> 0
>> c = c.next_node
>> n = c.value
=> 80071596234464993385068908004931... # (etc)
>> c = c.next_node
>> e = c.value
=> 65537
>> c = c.next_node
>> d = c.value
=> 58438813486895877116761996105770... # (etc)
>> c = c.next_node
>> p = c.value
=> 29635449580247160226960937109864... # (etc)
>> c = c.next_node
>> q = c.value
=> 27018856595256414771163410576410... # (etc)
What I ve done, in case you don t speak Ruby, is take the two chunks of plausible-looking base64 data, chuck them together into a variable named b64, unbase64 it into a variable named der, pass that into a new DerParse instance, and then walk the DER value tree until I got all the values I need. Interestingly, the q value actually traverses the split in the two chunks, which means that there s always the possibility that there are lines missing from the key. However, since p and q are supposed to be prime, we can sanity check them to see if corruption is likely to have occurred: 
>> require "openssl"
>> OpenSSL::BN.new(p).prime?
=> true
>> OpenSSL::BN.new(q).prime?
=> true
Excellent! The chances of a corrupted file producing valid-but-incorrect prime numbers isn t huge, so we can be fairly confident that we ve got the real p and q. Now, with the help of another one of my creations we can use e, p, and q to create a fully-operational battle key: 
>> require "openssl/pkey/rsa"
>> k = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.from_factors(p, q, e)
=> #<OpenSSL::PKey::RSA:0x0000559d5903cd38>
>> k.valid?
=> true
>> k.verify(OpenSSL::Digest::SHA256.new, k.sign(OpenSSL::Digest::SHA256.new, "bob"), "bob")
=> true
and there you have it. One fairly redacted-looking private key brought back to life by maths and far too much free time. Sorry Mr. Finn, I hope you re not still using that key on anything Internet-facing.

What About Other Key Types? EC keys are very different beasts, but they have much the same problems as RSA keys. A typical EC key contains both private and public data, and the public portion is twice the size so only about 1/3 of the data in the key is private material. It is quite plausible that you can redact an EC key and leave all the actually private bits exposed.

What Do We Do About It? In short: don t ever try and redact real private keys. For documentation purposes, just put KEY GOES HERE in the appropriate spot, or something like that. Store your secrets somewhere that isn t a public (or even private!) git repo. Generating a dummy private key and sticking it in there isn t a great idea, for different reasons: people have this odd habit of reusing demo keys in real life. There s no need to encourage that sort of thing.
  1. Technically the pieces aren t 100% aligned with the underlying DER, because of how base64 works. I felt it was easier to understand if I stuck to chopping up the base64, rather than decoding into DER and then chopping up the DER.

13 April 2020

Giovanni Mascellani: DKIM for Debian Developers

What is DKIM? DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), as Wikipedia puts it, "is an email authentication method designed to detect forged sender addresses in emails (email spoofing), a technique often used in phishing and email spam". More prosaically, one of the reasons email spam is so abundant is that, given a certain email message, there is no simple way to know for certain who sent it and how reputable they are. So even if people having addresses @debian.org are very nice and well-behaving, any random spammer can easily send emails from whatever@debian.org, and even if you trust people from @debian.org you cannot easily configure your antispam filter to just accept all emails from @debian.org, because spammers would get in too. Since nearly ten years DKIM is there to help you. If you send an email from @debian.org with DKIM, it will have a header like this: 
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=simple/simple; d=debian.org;
    s=vps.gio.user; t=1586779391;
    bh=B6tckJy2cynGjNRdm3lhFDrp0tD7fF8hS4x0FCfLADo=;
    h=From:Subject:To:Date:From;
    b=H4EDlATxVm7XNqPy2x7IqCchBUz1SxFtUSstB23BAsdyTKJIohM0O4RRWhrQX+pqE
     prPVhzcfNALMwlfExNE69940Q6pMCuYsoxNQjU7Jl/UX1q6PGqdVSO+mKv/aEI+N49
     vvYNgPJNLaAFnYqbWCPI8mNskLHLe2VFYjSjE4GJFOxl9o2Gpe9f5035FYPJ/hnqBF
     XPnZq7Osd9UtBrBq8agEooTCZHbNFSyiXdS0qp1ts7HAo/rfrBfbQSk39fOOQ5GbjV
     6FehkN4GAXFNoFnjfmjrVDJC6hvA8m0tJHbmZrNQS0ljG/SyffW4OTlzFzu4jOmDNi
     UHLnEgT07eucw==
The field d=debian.org is the domain this email claims to be from and the fields bh= and b= are a cryptographic public key signature certifying this fact. How do I check that the email is actually from @debian.org? I use the selector s=vps.gio.user to fetch the public key via DNS, and then use the public key to verify the signature. 
$ host -t TXT vps.gio.user._domainkey.debian.org
vps.gio.user._domainkey.debian.org descriptive text "v=DKIM1; k=rsa; s=email; h=sha256; p=" "MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAsM/W/kxtKWT58Eak0cfm/ntvurfbkkvugrG2jfvSMnHHkFyfJ34Xvn/HhQPLwX1QsjhuLV+tW+BQtxY7jxSABCee6nHQRBrpDej1t86ubw3CSrxcg1mzJI5BbL8un0cwYoBtUvhCYAZKarv1W2otCGs43L0s" "GtEqqtmYN/hIVVm4FcqeYS1cYrZxDsjPzCEocpYBhqHh1MTeUEddVmPHKZswzvllaWF0mgIXrfDNAE0LiX39aFKWtgvflrYFKiL4hCDnBcP2Mr71TVblfDY0wEdAEbGEJqHR1SxvWyn0UU1ZL4vTcylB/KJuV2gMhznOjbnQ6cjAhr2JYpweTYzz3wIDAQAB"
There it is! Debian declares in its DNS record that that key is authorized to sign outbound email from @debian.org. The spammer hopefully does not have access to Debian's DKIM keys, and they cannot sign emails. Many large and small email services have already deployed DKIM since years, while most @debian.org emails still do not use it. Why not? Because people send @debian.org emails from many different servers. Basically, every DD used their @debian.org address sends email from their own mail server, and those mail servers (fortunately) do not have access to Debian's DNS record to install their DKIM keys. Well, that was true until yesterday! :-) A few weeks ago I poked DSA asking to allow any Debian Developer to install their DKIM keys, so that DDs could use DKIM to sign their emails and hopefully reduce the amount of spam sent from @debian.org. They have done it (thank you DSA very much, especially adsb), and now it is possible to use it! How do I configure it? I will not write here a full DKIM tutorial, there are many around. You have to use opendkim-genkey to generate a key and then configure your mail server to use opendkim to digitally sign outbound email. There are a few Debian-specific things you have to care about, though. First the have to choose a selector, which is a string used to distinguish many DKIM keys belonging to the same domain. Debian allows you to installa a key whose selector is <something>.<uid>.user, where <uid> is your Debian uid (this is done both for namespacing reasons and for exposing who might be abusing the system). So check carefully that your selector has this form. Then you cannot edit directly Debian's DNS record. But you can use the email-LDAP gateway on db.debian.org to install your key in a way similar to how entries in debian.net are handled (see the updated documentation). Specifically, suppose that opendkim-genkey generated the following thing for selector vps.gio.user and domain debian.org: 
vps.gio.user._domainkey IN  TXT ( "v=DKIM1; h=sha256; k=rsa; "
      "p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAsM/W/kxtKWT58Eak0cfm/ntvurfbkkvugrG2jfvSMnHHkFyfJ34Xvn/HhQPLwX1QsjhuLV+tW+BQtxY7jxSABCee6nHQRBrpDej1t86ubw3CSrxcg1mzJI5BbL8un0cwYoBtUvhCYAZKarv1W2otCGs43L0sGtEqqtmYN/hIVVm4FcqeYS1cYrZxDsjPzCEocpYBhqHh1MTeUE"
      "ddVmPHKZswzvllaWF0mgIXrfDNAE0LiX39aFKWtgvflrYFKiL4hCDnBcP2Mr71TVblfDY0wEdAEbGEJqHR1SxvWyn0UU1ZL4vTcylB/KJuV2gMhznOjbnQ6cjAhr2JYpweTYzz3wIDAQAB" )  ; ----- DKIM key vps.gio.user for debian.org
Then you have to carefully copy the content of the p= field (without being fooled by it being split between different strings) and construct a request of the form: 
dkimPubKey: vps.gio.user MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAsM/W/kxtKWT58Eak0cfm/ntvurfbkkvugrG2jfvSMnHHkFyfJ34Xvn/HhQPLwX1QsjhuLV+tW+BQtxY7jxSABCee6nHQRBrpDej1t86ubw3CSrxcg1mzJI5BbL8un0cwYoBtUvhCYAZKarv1W2otCGs43L0sGtEqqtmYN/hIVVm4FcqeYS1cYrZxDsjPzCEocpYBhqHh1MTeUEddVmPHKZswzvllaWF0mgIXrfDNAE0LiX39aFKWtgvflrYFKiL4hCDnBcP2Mr71TVblfDY0wEdAEbGEJqHR1SxvWyn0UU1ZL4vTcylB/KJuV2gMhznOjbnQ6cjAhr2JYpweTYzz3wIDAQAB
and then send it GPG-signed to changes@db.debian.org: 
echo 'dkimPubKey: vps.gio.user blahblahblah'   gpg --clearsign   mail changes@db.debian.org
Then use host -t TXT vps.gio.user._domainkey.debian.org to chech the key gets published (it will probably take some minutes/hours, I don't know). Once it is published, you can enable DKIM in you mail server and your email will be signed. Congratulations, you will not look like a spammer any more! You can send an email to check-auth@verifier.port25.com to check that your setup is correct. They will reply with a report, including the success of DKIM test. Notice that currently Debian's setup only allows you to use RSA DKIM keys and doesn't allow you to set other DKIM fields (but you probably won't need to set them). EDIT DSA made an official announcement about DKIM support, which you might want to check out as well, together with its links. EDIT 2 Now ed25519 keys are supported, the syntax for specifying keys on LDAP is a little bit more flexible and you can also insert CNAME records. See the official documentation for the updated details. So we have solved our problems with spam? Ha, no! DKIM is only a small step. Useful, also because it enable other steps to be taken in the future, but small. In particular, DKIM enables you to say: "This particular email actually comes from @debian.org", but doesn't tell anybody what to do with emails that are not signed. A third-party mail server might wonder whether @debian.org emails are actually supposed to be signed or not. There is another standard for dealing with that, which is called DMARD, and I believe that Debian should eventually use it, but not now: the problem is that currently virtually no email from @debian.org is signed with DKIM, so if DMARC was enabled other mail servers would start to nuke all @debian.org emails, except those which are already signed, a minority. If people and services sending emails from @debian.org will start configuring DKIM on their servers, which is now possible, it will eventually come a time when DMARC can be enabled, and spammers will find themselves unable to send forged @debian.org emails. We are not there yet, but todays we are a little step closer than yesterday. Also, notice that having DKIM on @debian.org only counters spam pretending to be from @debian.org, but there is much more. The policy on what to accept is mostly independent on that on what you send. However, knowing that @debian.org emails have DKIM and DMARC would mean that we can set our spam filters to be more aggressive in general, but whitelist official Debian Developers and services. And the same can be done for other domains using DKIM and DMARC. Finally, notice that some incompatibilities between DKIM and mailing lists are known, and do not have a definitive answer yet. Basically, most mailing list engines modify either the body of the headers in forwarded emails, which means that DKIM does not validate any more. There are many proposed solutions, possibly none completely satisfying, but since spam is not very satisfying as well, something will have to be worked out. I wrote a lot already, though, so I wont't discuss this here.

1 April 2020

Sylvain Beucler: Debian LTS and ELTS - March 2020

Debian LTS Logo Here is my transparent report for my work on the Debian Long Term Support (LTS) and Debian Extended Long Term Support (ELTS), which extend the security support for past Debian releases, as a paid contributor. In March, the monthly sponsored hours were split evenly among contributors depending on their max availability - I was assigned 30h for LTS (out of 30 max; all done) and 20h for ELTS (out of 20 max; I did 0). Most contributors claimed vulnerabilities by performing early CVE monitoring/triaging on their own, making me question the relevance of the Front-Desk role. It could be due to a transient combination of higher hours volume and lower open vulnerabilities. Working as a collective of hourly paid freelancers makes it more likely to work in silos, resulting in little interaction when raising workflow topics on the mailing list. Maybe we're reaching a point where regular team meetings will be benefical. As previously mentioned, I structure my work keeping the global Debian security in mind. It can be stressful though, and I believe current communication practices may deter such initiatives. ELTS - Wheezy LTS - Jessie Documentation/Scripts

17 October 2017

Antoine Beaupr : A comparison of cryptographic keycards

An earlier article showed that private key storage is an important problem to solve in any cryptographic system and established keycards as a good way to store private key material offline. But which keycard should we use? This article examines the form factor, openness, and performance of four keycards to try to help readers choose the one that will fit their needs. I have personally been using a YubiKey NEO, since a 2015 announcement on GitHub promoting two-factor authentication. I was also able to hook up my SSH authentication key into the YubiKey's 2048 bit RSA slot. It seemed natural to move the other subkeys onto the keycard, provided that performance was sufficient. The mail client that I use, (Notmuch), blocks when decrypting messages, which could be a serious problems on large email threads from encrypted mailing lists. So I built a test harness and got access to some more keycards: I bought a FST-01 from its creator, Yutaka Niibe, at the last DebConf and Nitrokey donated a Nitrokey Pro. I also bought a YubiKey 4 when I got the NEO. There are of course other keycards out there, but those are the ones I could get my hands on. You'll notice none of those keycards have a physical keypad to enter passwords, so they are all vulnerable to keyloggers that could extract the key's PIN. Keep in mind, however, that even with the PIN, an attacker could only ask the keycard to decrypt or sign material but not extract the key that is protected by the card's firmware.

Form factor The Nitrokey Pro, YubiKey NEO (worn out), YubiKey 4, and FST-01 The four keycards have similar form factors: they all connect to a standard USB port, although both YubiKey keycards have a capacitive button by which the user triggers two-factor authentication and the YubiKey 4 can also require a button press to confirm private key use. The YubiKeys feel sturdier than the other two. The NEO has withstood two years of punishment in my pockets along with the rest of my "real" keyring and there is only minimal wear on the keycard in the picture. It's also thinner so it fits well on the keyring. The FST-01 stands out from the other two with its minimal design. Out of the box, the FST-01 comes without a case, so the circuitry is exposed. This is deliberate: one of its goals is to be as transparent as possible, both in terms of software and hardware design and you definitely get that feeling at the physical level. Unfortunately, that does mean it feels more brittle than other models: I wouldn't carry it in my pocket all the time, although there is a case that may protect the key a little better, but it does not provide an easy way to hook it into a keyring. In the group picture above, the FST-01 is the pink plastic thing, which is a rubbery casing I received along with the device when I got it. Notice how the USB connectors of the YubiKeys differ from the other two: while the FST-01 and the Nitrokey have standard USB connectors, the YubiKey has only a "half-connector", which is what makes it thinner than the other two. The "Nano" form factor takes this even further and almost disappears in the USB port. Unfortunately, this arrangement means the YubiKey NEO often comes loose and falls out of the USB port, especially when connected to a laptop. On my workstation, however, it usually stays put even with my whole keyring hanging off of it. I suspect this adds more strain to the host's USB port but that's a tradeoff I've lived with without any noticeable wear so far. Finally, the NEO has this peculiar feature of supporting NFC for certain operations, as LWN previously covered, but I haven't used that feature yet. The Nitrokey Pro looks like a normal USB key, in contrast with the other two devices. It does feel a little brittle when compared with the YubiKey, although only time will tell how much of a beating it can take. It has a small ring in the case so it is possible to carry it directly on your keyring, but I would be worried the cap would come off eventually. Nitrokey devices are also two times thicker than the Yubico models which makes them less convenient to carry around on keyrings.

Open and closed designs The FST-01 is as open as hardware comes, down to the PCB design available as KiCad files in this Git repository. The software running on the card is the Gnuk firmware that implements the OpenPGP card protocol, but you can also get it with firmware implementing a true random number generator (TRNG) called NeuG (pronounced "noisy"); the device is programmable through a standard Serial Wire Debug (SWD) port. The Nitrokey Start model also runs the Gnuk firmware. However, the Nitrokey website announces only ECC and RSA 2048-bit support for the Start, while the FST-01 also supports RSA-4096. Nitrokey's founder Jan Suhr, in a private email, explained that this is because "Gnuk doesn't support RSA-3072 or larger at a reasonable speed". Its devices (the Pro, Start, and HSM models) use a similar chip to the FST-01: the STM32F103 microcontroller. Nitrokey Pro with STM32F103TBU6 MCU Nitrokey also publishes its hardware designs, on GitHub, which shows the Pro is basically a fork of the FST-01, according to the ChangeLog. I opened the case to confirm it was using the STM MCU, something I should warn you against; I broke one of the pins holding it together when opening it so now it's even more fragile. But at least, I was able to confirm it was built using the STM32F103TBU6 MCU, like the FST-01. Nitrokey back side But this is where the comparison ends: on the back side, we find a SIM card reader that holds the OpenPGP card that, in turn, holds the private key material and does the cryptographic operations. So, in effect, the Nitrokey Pro is really a evolution of the original OpenPGP card readers. Nitrokey confirmed the OpenPGP card featured in the Pro is the same as the one shipped by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE): the BasicCard built by ZeitControl. Those cards, however, are covered by NDAs and the firmware is only partially open source. This makes the Nitrokey Pro less open than the FST-01, but that's an inevitable tradeoff when choosing a design based on the OpenPGP cards, which Suhr described to me as "pretty proprietary". There are other keycards out there, however, for example the SLJ52GDL150-150k smartcard suggested by Debian developer Yves-Alexis Perez, which he prefers as it is certified by French and German authorities. In that blog post, he also said he was experimenting with the GPL-licensed OpenPGP applet implemented by the French ANSSI. But the YubiKey devices are even further away in the closed-design direction. Both the hardware designs and firmware are proprietary. The YubiKey NEO, for example, cannot be upgraded at all, even though it is based on an open firmware. According to Yubico's FAQ, this is due to "best security practices": "There is a 'no upgrade' policy for our devices since nothing, including malware, can write to the firmware." I find this decision questionable in a context where security updates are often more important than trying to design a bulletproof design, which may simply be impossible. And the YubiKey NEO did suffer from critical security issue that allowed attackers to bypass the PIN protection on the card, which raises the question of the actual protection of the private key material on those cards. According to Niibe, "some OpenPGP cards store the private key unencrypted. It is a common attitude for many smartcard implementations", which was confirmed by Suhr: "the private key is protected by hardware mechanisms which prevent its extraction and misuse". He is referring to the use of tamper resistance. After that security issue, there was no other option for YubiKey NEO users than to get a new keycard (for free, thankfully) from Yubico, which also meant discarding the private key material on the key. For OpenPGP keys, this may mean having to bootstrap the web of trust from scratch if the keycard was responsible for the main certification key. But at least the NEO is running free software based on the OpenPGP card applet and the source is still available on GitHub. The YubiKey 4, on the other hand, is now closed source, which was controversial when the new model was announced last year. It led the main Linux Foundation system administrator, Konstantin Ryabitsev, to withdraw his endorsement of Yubico products. In response, Yubico argued that this approach was essential to the security of its devices, which are now based on "a secure chip, which has built-in countermeasures to mitigate a long list of attacks". In particular, it claims that:
A commercial-grade AVR or ARM controller is unfit to be used in a security product. In most cases, these controllers are easy to attack, from breaking in via a debug/JTAG/TAP port to probing memory contents. Various forms of fault injection and side-channel analysis are possible, sometimes allowing for a complete key recovery in a shockingly short period of time.
While I understand those concerns, they eventually come down to the trust you have in an organization. Not only do we have to trust Yubico, but also hardware manufacturers and designs they have chosen. Every step in the hidden supply chain is then trusted to make correct technical decisions and not introduce any backdoors. History, unfortunately, is not on Yubico's side: Snowden revealed the example of RSA security accepting what renowned cryptographer Bruce Schneier described as a "bribe" from the NSA to weaken its ECC implementation, by using the presumably backdoored Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm. What makes Yubico or its suppliers so different from RSA Security? Remember that RSA Security used to be an adamant opponent to the degradation of encryption standards, campaigning against the Clipper chip in the first crypto wars. Even if we trust the Yubico supply chain, how can we trust a closed design using what basically amounts to security through obscurity? Publicly auditable designs are an important tradition in cryptography, and that principle shouldn't stop when software is frozen into silicon. In fact, a critical vulnerability called ROCA disclosed recently affects closed "smartcards" like the YubiKey 4 and allows full private key recovery from the public key if the key was generated on a vulnerable keycard. When speaking with Ars Technica, the researchers outlined the importance of open designs and questioned the reliability of certification:
Our work highlights the dangers of keeping the design secret and the implementation closed-source, even if both are thoroughly analyzed and certified by experts. The lack of public information causes a delay in the discovery of flaws (and hinders the process of checking for them), thereby increasing the number of already deployed and affected devices at the time of detection.
This issue with open hardware designs seems to be recurring topic of conversation on the Gnuk mailing list. For example, there was a discussion in September 2017 regarding possible hardware vulnerabilities in the STM MCU that would allow extraction of encrypted key material from the key. Niibe referred to a talk presented at the WOOT 17 workshop, where Johannes Obermaier and Stefan Tatschner, from the Fraunhofer Institute, demonstrated attacks against the STMF0 family MCUs. It is still unclear if those attacks also apply to the older STMF1 design used in the FST-01, however. Furthermore, extracted private key material is still protected by user passphrase, but the Gnuk uses a weak key derivation function, so brute-forcing attacks may be possible. Fortunately, there is work in progress to make GnuPG hash the passphrase before sending it to the keycard, which should make such attacks harder if not completely pointless. When asked about the Yubico claims in a private email, Niibe did recognize that "it is true that there are more weak points in general purpose implementations than special implementations". During the last DebConf in Montreal, Niibe explained:
If you don't trust me, you should not buy from me. Source code availability is only a single factor: someone can maliciously replace the firmware to enable advanced attacks.
Niibe recommends to "build the firmware yourself", also saying the design of the FST-01 uses normal hardware that "everyone can replicate". Those advantages are hard to deny for a cryptographic system: using more generic components makes it harder for hostile parties to mount targeted attacks. A counter-argument here is that it can be difficult for a regular user to audit such designs, let alone physically build the device from scratch but, in a mailing list discussion, Debian developer Ian Jackson explained that:
You don't need to be able to validate it personally. The thing spooks most hate is discovery. Backdooring supposedly-free hardware is harder (more costly) because it comes with greater risk of discovery. To put it concretely: if they backdoor all of them, someone (not necessarily you) might notice. (Backdooring only yours involves messing with the shipping arrangements and so on, and supposes that you specifically are of interest.)
Since that, as far as we know, the STM microcontrollers are not backdoored, I would tend to favor those devices instead of proprietary ones, as such a backdoor would be more easily detectable than in a closed design. Even though physical attacks may be possible against those microcontrollers, in the end, if an attacker has physical access to a keycard, I consider the key compromised, even if it has the best chip on the market. In our email exchange, Niibe argued that "when a token is lost, it is better to revoke keys, even if the token is considered secure enough". So like any other device, physical compromise of tokens may mean compromise of the key and should trigger key-revocation procedures.

Algorithms and performance To establish reliable performance results, I wrote a benchmark program naively called crypto-bench that could produce comparable results between the different keys. The program takes each algorithm/keycard combination and runs 1000 decryptions of a 16-byte file (one AES-128 block) using GnuPG, after priming it to get the password cached. I assume the overhead of GnuPG calls to be negligible, as it should be the same across all tokens, so comparisons are possible. AES encryption is constant across all tests as it is always performed on the host and fast enough to be irrelevant in the tests. I used the following:
  • Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100U CPU @ 2.30GHz running Debian 9 ("stretch"/stable amd64), using GnuPG 2.1.18-6 (from the stable Debian package)
  • Nitrokey Pro 0.8 (latest firmware)
  • FST-01, running Gnuk version 1.2.5 (latest firmware)
  • YubiKey NEO OpenPGP applet 1.0.10 (not upgradable)
  • YubiKey 4 4.2.6 (not upgradable)
I ran crypto-bench for each keycard, which resulted in the following:
Algorithm Device Mean time (s)
ECDH-Curve25519 CPU 0.036
FST-01 0.135
RSA-2048 CPU 0.016
YubiKey-4 0.162
Nitrokey-Pro 0.610
YubiKey-NEO 0.736
FST-01 1.265
RSA-4096 CPU 0.043
YubiKey-4 0.875
Nitrokey-Pro 3.150
FST-01 8.218
Decryption graph There we see the performance of the four keycards I tested, compared with the same operations done without a keycard: the "CPU" device. That provides the baseline time of GnuPG decrypting the file. The first obvious observation is that using a keycard is slower: in the best scenario (FST-01 + ECC) we see a four-fold slowdown, but in the worst case (also FST-01, but RSA-4096), we see a catastrophic 200-fold slowdown. When I presented the results on the Gnuk mailing list, GnuPG developer Werner Koch confirmed those "numbers are as expected":
With a crypto chip RSA is much faster. By design the Gnuk can't be as fast - it is just a simple MCU. However, using Curve25519 Gnuk is really fast.
And yes, the FST-01 is really fast at doing ECC, but it's also the only keycard that handles ECC in my tests; the Nitrokey Start and Nitrokey HSM should support it as well, but I haven't been able to test those devices. Also note that the YubiKey NEO doesn't support RSA-4096 at all, so we can only compare RSA-2048 across keycards. We should note, however, that ECC is slower than RSA on the CPU, which suggests the Gnuk ECC implementation used by the FST-01 is exceptionally fast. In discussions about improving the performance of the FST-01, Niibe estimated the user tolerance threshold to be "2 seconds decryption time". In a new design using the STM32L432 microcontroller, Aurelien Jarno was able to bring the numbers for RSA-2048 decryption from 1.27s down to 0.65s, and for RSA-4096, from 8.22s down to 3.87s seconds. RSA-4096 is still beyond the two-second threshold, but at least it brings the FST-01 close to the YubiKey NEO and Nitrokey Pro performance levels. We should also underline the superior performance of the YubiKey 4: whatever that thing is doing, it's doing it faster than anyone else. It does RSA-4096 faster than the FST-01 does RSA-2048, and almost as fast as the Nitrokey Pro does RSA-2048. We should also note that the Nitrokey Pro also fails to cross the two-second threshold for RSA-4096 decryption. For me, the FST-01's stellar performance with ECC outshines the other devices. Maybe it says more about the efficiency of the algorithm than the FST-01 or Gnuk's design, but it's definitely an interesting avenue for people who want to deploy those modern algorithms. So, in terms of performance, it is clear that both the YubiKey 4 and the FST-01 take the prize in their own areas (RSA and ECC, respectively).

Conclusion In the above presentation, I have evaluated four cryptographic keycards for use with various OpenPGP operations. What the results show is that the only efficient way of storing a 4096-bit encryption key on a keycard would be to use the YubiKey 4. Unfortunately, I do not feel we should put our trust in such closed designs so I would argue you should either stick with 2048-bit encryption subkeys or keep the keys on disk. Considering that losing such a key would be catastrophic, this might be a good approach anyway. You should also consider switching to ECC encryption: even though it may not be supported everywhere, GnuPG supports having multiple encryption subkeys on a keyring: if one algorithm is unsupported (e.g. GnuPG 1.4 doesn't support ECC), it will fall back to a supported algorithm (e.g. RSA). Do not forget your previously encrypted material doesn't magically re-encrypt itself using your new encryption subkey, however. For authentication and signing keys, speed is not such an issue, so I would warmly recommend either the Nitrokey Pro or Start, or the FST-01, depending on whether you want to start experimenting with ECC algorithms. Availability also seems to be an issue for the FST-01. While you can generally get the device when you meet Niibe in person for a few bucks (I bought mine for around \$30 Canadian), the Seeed online shop says the device is out of stock at the time of this writing, even though Jonathan McDowell said that may be inaccurate in a debian-project discussion. Nevertheless, this issue may make the Nitrokey devices more attractive. When deciding on using the Pro or Start, Suhr offered the following advice:
In practice smart card security has been proven to work well (at least if you use a decent smart card). Therefore the Nitrokey Pro should be used for high security cases. If you don't trust the smart card or if Nitrokey Start is just sufficient for you, you can choose that one. This is why we offer both models.
So far, I have created a signing subkey and moved that and my authentication key to the YubiKey NEO, because it's a device I physically trust to keep itself together in my pockets and I was already using it. It has served me well so far, especially with its extra features like U2F and HOTP support, which I use frequently. Those features are also available on the Nitrokey Pro, so that may be an alternative if I lose the YubiKey. I will probably move my main certification key to the FST-01 and a LUKS-encrypted USB disk, to keep that certification key offline but backed up on two different devices. As for the encryption key, I'll wait for keycard performance to improve, or simply switch my whole keyring to ECC and use the FST-01 or Nitrokey Start for that purpose.
[The author would like to thank Nitrokey for providing hardware for testing.] This article first appeared in the Linux Weekly News.

2 October 2017

James McCoy: Monthly FLOSS activity - 2017/09 edition

Debian devscripts Before deciding to take an indefinite hiatus from devscripts, I prepared one more upload merging various contributed patches and a bit of last minute cleanup. I also setup integration with Travis CI to hopefully catch issues sooner than "while preparing an upload", as was typically the case before. Anyone with push access to the Debian/devscripts GitHub repo can take advantage of this to test out changes, or keep the development branches up to date. In the process, I was able to make some improvements to travis.debian.net, namely support for DEB_BUILD_PROFILES and using a separate, minimal docker image for running autopkgtests. unibilium neovim Oddly, the mips64el builds were in BD-Uninstallable state, even though luajit's buildd status showed it was built. Looking further, I noticed the libluajit-5.1 ,-dev binary packages didn't have the mips64el architecture enabled, so I asked for it to be enabled. msgpack-c There were a few packages left which would FTBFS if I uploaded msgpack-c 2.x to unstable. All of the bug reports had either trivial work arounds (i.e., forcing use of the v1 C++ API) or trivial patches. However, I didn't want to continue waiting for the packages to get fixed since I knew other people had expressed interest in the new msgpack-c. Trying to avoid making other packages insta-buggy, I NMUed autobahn-cpp with the v1 work around. That didn't go over well, partly because I didn't send a finalized "Hey, I'd like to get this done and here's my plan to NMU" email. Based on that feedback, I decided to bump the remaining bugs to "serious" instead of NMUing and upload msgpack-c. Thanks to Jonas Smedegaard for quickly integrating my proposed fix for libdata-messagepack-perl. Hopefully, upstream has some time to review the PR soon. vim subversion
neovim

26 September 2017

Russ Allbery: Review: Artemis Fowl

Review: Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer
Series: Artemis Fowl #1
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Copyright: 2001
ISBN: 1-4231-2452-9
Format: Kindle
Pages: 281
Artemis Fowl is the heir to the Fowl criminal empire and a child prodigy. He's also one of the few humans to know of the existence of fairies, who are still present in the world, hiding from humans and living by their own rules. As the book opens, he's in search of those rules: a copy of the book that governs the lives of fairies. With that knowledge, he should be able to pull off a heist worthy of his family's legacy. Captain Holly Short is a leprechaun... or, more correctly, a LEPrecon. She's one of the fairy police officers that investigate threats to the fairies who are hiding in a vast underground civilization. The fairies have magic, but they also have advanced (and miniaturized) technology, maintained in large part by a grumpy and egotistical centaur (named Foaly, because it's that sort of book). She's also the fairy unlucky enough to be captured by Artemis's formidable personal bodyguard their first attempt to kidnap a hostage for their ransom demands. This is the first book of a long series of young adult novels that has also spawned graphic novels and a movie currently in production. It has that lean and clear feeling of the younger side of young adult writing: larger-than-life characters who are distinctive and easy to remember, a short introductory setup that dives directly into the main plot, and a story that neatly pulls together every element raised in the story. The world-building is its strongest point, particularly the mix of tongue-in-cheek technology ships that ride magma plumes, mechanical wings, and helmet-mounted lights to blind trolls and science-tinged magic that the fairies build their police and army on. Fairies are far beyond humans in capability, and can be deadly and ruthless, but they have to follow a tightly constrained set of rules that are often not convenient. Sadly, the characters don't live up to the world-building. I did enjoy a few of them, particularly Artemis's loyal bodyguards and the dwarf Mulch Diggums. But Holly, despite being likable, is a bit of a blank slate: the empathetic, overworked trooper who is mostly indistinguishable from other characters in similar stories. The gruff captain, the sarcastic technician Foaly, and the various other LEP agents all felt like they were taken straight from central casting. And then there's Artemis himself. Artemis is the protagonist of the story, in that he's the one who initiates all of the action and the one who has the most interesting motivations. The story is about him, as the third-person narrator in the introduction makes clear. He's trying very hard to be a criminal genius with the deductive abilities of Sherlock Holmes and the speaking style of a Bond villain, but he's also twelve, his father has disappeared, and his mother is going slowly insane. I picked this book up on the recommendation of another reader who found that contrast compelling. Unfortunately, I thought Artemis was just an abusive jerk. Yes, yes, family tragedy, yes, he's trapped in his conception of himself, but he's arrogant, utterly uncaring about how his actions affect other people, and dismissive and cruel even to his bodyguards (who are much better friends than he deserves). I think liking this book requires liking Artemis at least well enough to consider him an anti-hero, and I can squint and see that appeal if you have that reaction. But I just wanted him to lose. Not in the "you will be slowly redeemed over the course of a long series" way, but in the "you are a horrible person and I hope you get what's coming to you" way. The humor of the fairy parts of the book was undermined too much by the fact that many of them would like to kill Artemis for real, and I mostly wanted them to succeed. This may or may not have to do with my low tolerance for egotistical smart-asses who order other people to do things that they refuse to explain. Without some appreciation for Artemis, this is a story with some neat world-building, a fairly generic protagonist in Holly, and a plot in which the bad guys win. To make matters worse, I thought the supposedly bright note at the end of the story was just creepy, as was everything else involving Artemis's mother. The review I read was of the first three books, so it's entirely possible that this series gets better as it goes along, but there wasn't enough I enjoyed in the first book for me to keep reading. Followed by Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident. Rating: 5 out of 10

29 August 2017

Colin Watson: env chdir

I was recently asked to sort things out so that snap builds on Launchpad could themselves install snaps as build-dependencies. To make this work we need to start doing builds in LXD containers rather than in chroots. As a result I ve been doing some quite extensive refactoring of launchpad-buildd: it previously had the assumption that it was going to use a chroot for everything baked into lots of untested helper shell scripts, and I ve been rewriting those in Python with unit tests and with a single Backend abstraction that isolates the high-level logic from the details of where each build is being performed. This is all interesting work in its own right, but it s not what I want to talk about here. While I was doing all this refactoring, I ran across a couple of methods I wrote a while back which looked something like this: 
def chroot(self, args, echo=False):
    """Run a command in the chroot.
    :param args: the command and arguments to run.
    """
    args = set_personality(
        args, self.options.arch, series=self.options.series)
    if echo:
        print("Running in chroot: %s" %
              ' '.join("'%s'" % arg for arg in args))
        sys.stdout.flush()
    subprocess.check_call([
        "/usr/bin/sudo", "/usr/sbin/chroot", self.chroot_path] + args)
def run_build_command(self, args, env=None, echo=False):
    """Run a build command in the chroot.
    This is unpleasant because we need to run it in /build under sudo
    chroot, and there's no way to do this without either a helper
    program in the chroot or unpleasant quoting.  We go for the
    unpleasant quoting.
    :param args: the command and arguments to run.
    :param env: dictionary of additional environment variables to set.
    """
    args = [shell_escape(arg) for arg in args]
    if env:
        args = ["env"] + [
            "%s=%s" % (key, shell_escape(value))
            for key, value in env.items()] + args
    command = "cd /build && %s" % " ".join(args)
    self.chroot(["/bin/sh", "-c", command], echo=echo)
(I ve already replaced the chroot method with a call to Backend.run, but it s easier to see what I m talking about in the original form.) One thing to notice about this code is that it uses several adverbial commands: that is, commands that run another command in a different way. For example, sudo runs another command as another user, while chroot runs another command with a different root directory, and env runs another command with different environment variables set. These commands chain neatly, and they also have the useful property that they take the subsidiary command and its arguments as a list of arguments. coreutils has several other commands that behave this way, and adverbio is another useful example. By contrast, su -c is something you might call a quasi-adverbial command: it does modify the behaviour of another command, but it takes it as a single argument which it then passes to sh -c. Every time you have something that s passed to a shell like this, you need a corresponding layer of shell quoting to escape any shell metacharacters that should be interpreted literally. This is often cumbersome and is easy to get wrong. My Python implementation is as follows, and I wouldn t be totally surprised to discover that it contained a bug: 
import re
non_meta_re = re.compile(r'^[a-zA-Z0-9+,./:=@_-]+$')
def shell_escape(arg):
    if non_meta_re.match(arg):
        return arg
    else:
        return "'%s'" % arg.replace("'", "'\\''")
Python >= 3.3 has shlex.quote, which is an improvement and we should probably use that instead, but it s still another thing to forget to call. This is why process-spawning libraries such as Python s subprocess, Perl s system and open, and my own libpipeline for C encourage programmers to use a list syntax and to avoid involving the shell entirely wherever possible. One thing that the standard Unix tools don t let you do in an adverbial way is to change your working directory, and I ve run into this annoying limitation several times. This means that it s difficult to chain that operation together with other adverbs, for example to run a command in a particular working directory inside a chroot. The workaround I used above was to invoke a shell that runs cd /build && ..., but that s another command that s only quasi-adverbial, since the extra shell means an extra layer of shell quoting. (Ian Jackson rightly observes that you can in fact write the necessary adverb as something like sh -ec 'cd "$1"; shift; exec "$@"' chdir. I think that s a bit uglier than I ideally want to use in production code, but you might reasonably think that it s worth it to avoid the extra layer of shell quoting.) I therefore decided that this was a feature that belonged in coreutils, and after a bit of mailing list discussion we felt it was best implemented as a new option to env(1). I sent a patch for this which has been accepted. This means that we have a new composable adverb, env --chdir=NEWDIR, which will allow the run_build_command method above to be rewritten as something like this: 
def run_build_command(self, args, env=None, echo=False):
    """Run a build command in the chroot.
    :param args: the command and arguments to run.
    :param env: dictionary of additional environment variables to set.
    """
    env_args = ["env", "--chdir=/build"]
    if env:
        for key, value in env.items():
            env_args.append("%s=%s" % (key, value))
    self.chroot(env_args + args, echo=echo)
The env --chdir option will be in coreutils 8.28. We won t be able to use it in launchpad-buildd until that s available in all Ubuntu series we might want to build for, so in this particular application that s going to take a few years; but other applications may well be able to make use of it sooner.

11 August 2017

Mike Gabriel: @DebConf17: Story Telling about Debian Edu in Northern Germany

Last Monday, I gave a 20min talk about our little FLOSS school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" at the Debian Conference 17 in Montreal. The talk had video coverage, so may want to peek in, if you couldn't manage to watch the life stream: http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2017/debconf17/su... I'd like to share some major outcomes (so far) of this talk.
  1. I realized how attached I am to "IT-Zukunft Schule" and how much it means to me that our kids grow up in a world of freedom and choice. Also and esp. when it comes to choosing your daily communication tools and computer working environment
  2. I met Foteini Tsiami and Alkis Georgopoulos from Greece. They work on LTSP and have deployed 1000+ schools in Greece with LTSP + Debian GNU/Linux + MATE Desktop Environment
  3. I met Vagrant Cascadian who is the maintainer of LTSP in Debian and also a major LTSP upstream contributor
  4. I received a lot of fine feedback that was very encouraging to go on with our local work in Schleswig-Holstein
If you have some more time for watching DebConf talks on video, I dearly recommend the talk given by Alkis and Foteini on their Greek FLOSS success story. If you don't have that much time, please skip through the video until you are at 26:15 and enjoy the map that shows how much Debian + LTSP has spread over all of Greece. http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2017/debconf17/lt... Unfortunately, the schools in Greece are so much smaller than schools in Germany. Most schools there have between 50 and 300 students. So at the Greek schools, it is possible to have a teacher machine being the server for one computer lab. This teacher / server machine provides the infrastructure for a room full of LTSP fat clients (no hard drive inside) and that's it. For German schools, unfortunately, we need a larger scale setup. German schools often have 800+ students and network services need to be spread over more than one server machine. So, the current approach with one server running LDAP, Kerberos etc. is quite appropriate, but also extendible, possibly on municipality level or on county level. We (from IT-Zukunft Schule) are quite positive that there will be opportunities for introducing FLOSS approaches more on the county level in Schleswig-Holstein in the near future. So stay tuned...

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