Search Results: "lus"

6 April 2024

John Goerzen: Facebook is Censoring Stories about Climate Change and Illegal Raid in Marion, Kansas

It is, sadly, not entirely surprising that Facebook is censoring articles critical of Meta. The Kansas Reflector published an artical about Meta censoring environmental articles about climate change deeming them too controversial . Facebook then censored the article about Facebook censorship, and then after an independent site published a copy of the climate change article, Facebook censored it too. The CNN story says Facebook apologized and said it was a mistake and was fixing it. Color me skeptical, because today I saw this: Yes, that s right: today, April 6, I get a notification that they removed a post from August 12. The notification was dated April 4, but only showed up for me today. I wonder why my post from August 12 was fine for nearly 8 months, and then all of a sudden, when the same website runs an article critical of Facebook, my 8-month-old post is a problem. Hmm. Riiiiiight. Cybersecurity. This isn t even the first time they ve done this to me. On September 11, 2021, they removed my post about the social network Mastodon (click that link for screenshot). A post that, incidentally, had been made 10 months prior to being removed. While they ultimately reversed themselves, I subsequently wrote Facebook s Blocking Decisions Are Deliberate Including Their Censorship of Mastodon. That this same pattern has played out a second time again with something that is a very slight challenege to Facebook seems to validate my conclusion. Facebook lets all sort of hateful garbage infest their site, but anything about climate change or their own censorship gets removed, and this pattern persists for years. There s a reason I prefer Mastodon these days. You can find me there as @jgoerzen@floss.social. So. I ve written this blog post. And then I m going to post it to Facebook. Let s see if they try to censor me for a third time. Bring it, Facebook.

2 April 2024

Dirk Eddelbuettel: ulid 0.3.1 on CRAN: New Maintainer, Some Polish

Happy to share that ulid is now (back) on CRAN. It provides universally unique identifiers that are lexicographically sortable, which improves over the more well-known uuid generators. ulid is a neat little package put together by Bob Rudis a few years ago. It had recently drifted off CRAN so I offered to brush it up and re-submit it. And as tooted earlier today, it took just over an hour to finish that (after the lead up work I had done, including prior email with CRAN in the loop, the repo transfer from Bob s to my ulid repo plus of course a wee bit of actual maintenance; see below for more). The NEWS entry follows.

Changes in version 0.3.1 (2024-04-02)
  • New Maintainer
  • Deleted several repository files no longer used or needed
  • Added .editorconfig, ChangeLog and cleanup
  • Converted NEWS.md to NEWS.Rd
  • Simplified R/ directory to one source file
  • Simplified src/ removing redundant Makevars
  • Added ulid() alias
  • Updated / edited roxygen and README.md documention
  • Removed vignette which was identical to README.md
  • Switched continuous integration to GitHub Actions
  • Placed upstream (header-only) library into src/ulid/
  • Renamed single interface file to src/wrapper

If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub.

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

1 April 2024

Arturo Borrero Gonz lez: Kubecon and CloudNativeCon 2024 Europe summary

Kubecon EU 2024 Paris logo This blog post shares my thoughts on attending Kubecon and CloudNativeCon 2024 Europe in Paris. It was my third time at this conference, and it felt bigger than last year s in Amsterdam. Apparently it had an impact on public transport. I missed part of the opening keynote because of the extremely busy rush hour tram in Paris. On Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and GPUs Talks about AI, ML, and GPUs were everywhere this year. While it wasn t my main interest, I did learn about GPU resource sharing and power usage on Kubernetes. There were also ideas about offering Models-as-a-Service, which could be cool for Wikimedia Toolforge in the future. See also: On security, policy and authentication This was probably the main interest for me in the event, given Wikimedia Toolforge was about to migrate away from Pod Security Policy, and we were currently evaluating different alternatives. In contrast to my previous attendances to Kubecon, where there were three policy agents with presence in the program schedule, Kyverno, Kubewarden and OpenPolicyAgent (OPA), this time only OPA had the most relevant sessions. One surprising bit I got from one of the OPA sessions was that it could work to authorize linux PAM sessions. Could this be useful for Wikimedia Toolforge? OPA talk I attended several sessions related to authentication topics. I discovered the keycloak software, which looks very promising. I also attended an Oauth2 session which I had a hard time following, because I clearly missed some additional knowledge about how Oauth2 works internally. I also attended a couple of sessions that ended up being a vendor sales talk. See also: On container image builds, harbor registry, etc This topic was also of interest to me because, again, it is a core part of Wikimedia Toolforge. I attended a couple of sessions regarding container image builds, including topics like general best practices, image minimization, and buildpacks. I learned about kpack, which at first sight felt like a nice simplification of how the Toolforge build service was implemented. I also attended a session by the Harbor project maintainers where they shared some valuable information on things happening soon or in the future , for example: On networking I attended a couple of sessions regarding networking. One session in particular I paid special attention to, ragarding on network policies. They discussed new semantics being added to the Kubernetes API. The different layers of abstractions being added to the API, the different hook points, and override layers clearly resembled (to me at least) the network packet filtering stack of the linux kernel (netfilter), but without the 20 (plus) years of experience building the right semantics and user interfaces. Network talk I very recently missed some semantics for limiting the number of open connections per namespace, see Phabricator T356164: [toolforge] several tools get periods of connection refused (104) when connecting to wikis This functionality should be available in the lower level tools, I mean Netfilter. I may submit a proposal upstream at some point, so they consider adding this to the Kubernetes API. Final notes In general, I believe I learned many things, and perhaps even more importantly I re-learned some stuff I had forgotten because of lack of daily exposure. I m really happy that the cloud native way of thinking was reinforced in me, which I still need because most of my muscle memory to approach systems architecture and engineering is from the old pre-cloud days. That being said, I felt less engaged with the content of the conference schedule compared to last year. I don t know if the schedule itself was less interesting, or that I m losing interest? Finally, not an official track in the conference, but we met a bunch of folks from Wikimedia Deutschland. We had a really nice time talking about how wikibase.cloud uses Kubernetes, whether they could run in Wikimedia Cloud Services, and why structured data is so nice. Group photo

19 March 2024

Colin Watson: apt install everything?

On Mastodon, the question came up of how Ubuntu would deal with something like the npm install everything situation. I replied:
Ubuntu is curated, so it probably wouldn t get this far. If it did, then the worst case is that it would get in the way of CI allowing other packages to be removed (again from a curated system, so people are used to removal not being self-service); but the release team would have no hesitation in removing a package like this to fix that, and it certainly wouldn t cause this amount of angst. If you did this in a PPA, then I can t think of any particular negative effects.
OK, if you added lots of build-dependencies (as well as run-time dependencies) then you might be able to take out a builder. But Launchpad builders already run arbitrary user-submitted code by design and are therefore very carefully sandboxed and treated as ephemeral, so this is hardly novel. There s a lot to be said for the arrangement of having a curated system for the stuff people actually care about plus an ecosystem of add-on repositories. PPAs cover a wide range of levels of developer activity, from throwaway experiments to quasi-official distribution methods; there are certainly problems that arise from it being difficult to tell the difference between those extremes and from there being no systematic confinement, but for this particular kind of problem they re very nearly ideal. (Canonical has tried various other approaches to software distribution, and while they address some of the problems, they aren t obviously better at helping people make reliable social judgements about code they don t know.) For a hypothetical package with a huge number of dependencies, to even try to upload it directly to Ubuntu you d need to be an Ubuntu developer with upload rights (or to go via Debian, where you d have to clear a similar hurdle). If you have those, then the first upload has to pass manual review by an archive administrator. If your package passes that, then it still has to build and get through proposed-migration CI before it reaches anything that humans typically care about. On the other hand, if you were inclined to try this sort of experiment, you d almost certainly try it in a PPA, and that would trouble nobody but yourself.

18 March 2024

Simon Josefsson: Apt archive mirrors in Git-LFS

My effort to improve transparency and confidence of public apt archives continues. I started to work on this in Apt Archive Transparency in which I mention the debdistget project in passing. Debdistget is responsible for mirroring index files for some public apt archives. I ve realized that having a publicly auditable and preserved mirror of the apt repositories is central to being able to do apt transparency work, so the debdistget project has become more central to my project than I thought. Currently I track Trisquel, PureOS, Gnuinos and their upstreams Ubuntu, Debian and Devuan. Debdistget download Release/Package/Sources files and store them in a git repository published on GitLab. Due to size constraints, it uses two repositories: one for the Release/InRelease files (which are small) and one that also include the Package/Sources files (which are large). See for example the repository for Trisquel release files and the Trisquel package/sources files. Repositories for all distributions can be found in debdistutils archives GitLab sub-group. The reason for splitting into two repositories was that the git repository for the combined files become large, and that some of my use-cases only needed the release files. Currently the repositories with packages (which contain a couple of months worth of data now) are 9GB for Ubuntu, 2.5GB for Trisquel/Debian/PureOS, 970MB for Devuan and 450MB for Gnuinos. The repository size is correlated to the size of the archive (for the initial import) plus the frequency and size of updates. Ubuntu s use of Apt Phased Updates (which triggers a higher churn of Packages file modifications) appears to be the primary reason for its larger size. Working with large Git repositories is inefficient and the GitLab CI/CD jobs generate quite some network traffic downloading the git repository over and over again. The most heavy user is the debdistdiff project that download all distribution package repositories to do diff operations on the package lists between distributions. The daily job takes around 80 minutes to run, with the majority of time is spent on downloading the archives. Yes I know I could look into runner-side caching but I dislike complexity caused by caching. Fortunately not all use-cases requires the package files. The debdistcanary project only needs the Release/InRelease files, in order to commit signatures to the Sigstore and Sigsum transparency logs. These jobs still run fairly quickly, but watching the repository size growth worries me. Currently these repositories are at Debian 440MB, PureOS 130MB, Ubuntu/Devuan 90MB, Trisquel 12MB, Gnuinos 2MB. Here I believe the main size correlation is update frequency, and Debian is large because I track the volatile unstable. So I hit a scalability end with my first approach. A couple of months ago I solved this by discarding and resetting these archival repositories. The GitLab CI/CD jobs were fast again and all was well. However this meant discarding precious historic information. A couple of days ago I was reaching the limits of practicality again, and started to explore ways to fix this. I like having data stored in git (it allows easy integration with software integrity tools such as GnuPG and Sigstore, and the git log provides a kind of temporal ordering of data), so it felt like giving up on nice properties to use a traditional database with on-disk approach. So I started to learn about Git-LFS and understanding that it was able to handle multi-GB worth of data that looked promising. Fairly quickly I scripted up a GitLab CI/CD job that incrementally update the Release/Package/Sources files in a git repository that uses Git-LFS to store all the files. The repository size is now at Ubuntu 650kb, Debian 300kb, Trisquel 50kb, Devuan 250kb, PureOS 172kb and Gnuinos 17kb. As can be expected, jobs are quick to clone the git archives: debdistdiff pipelines went from a run-time of 80 minutes down to 10 minutes which more reasonable correlate with the archive size and CPU run-time. The LFS storage size for those repositories are at Ubuntu 15GB, Debian 8GB, Trisquel 1.7GB, Devuan 1.1GB, PureOS/Gnuinos 420MB. This is for a couple of days worth of data. It seems native Git is better at compressing/deduplicating data than Git-LFS is: the combined size for Ubuntu is already 15GB for a couple of days data compared to 8GB for a couple of months worth of data with pure Git. This may be a sub-optimal implementation of Git-LFS in GitLab but it does worry me that this new approach will be difficult to scale too. At some level the difference is understandable, Git-LFS probably store two different Packages files around 90MB each for Trisquel as two 90MB files, but native Git would store it as one compressed version of the 90MB file and one relatively small patch to turn the old files into the next file. So the Git-LFS approach surprisingly scale less well for overall storage-size. Still, the original repository is much smaller, and you usually don t have to pull all LFS files anyway. So it is net win. Throughout this work, I kept thinking about how my approach relates to Debian s snapshot service. Ultimately what I would want is a combination of these two services. To have a good foundation to do transparency work I would want to have a collection of all Release/Packages/Sources files ever published, and ultimately also the source code and binaries. While it makes sense to start on the latest stable releases of distributions, this effort should scale backwards in time as well. For reproducing binaries from source code, I need to be able to securely find earlier versions of binary packages used for rebuilds. So I need to import all the Release/Packages/Sources packages from snapshot into my repositories. The latency to retrieve files from that server is slow so I haven t been able to find an efficient/parallelized way to download the files. If I m able to finish this, I would have confidence that my new Git-LFS based approach to store these files will scale over many years to come. This remains to be seen. Perhaps the repository has to be split up per release or per architecture or similar. Another factor is storage costs. While the git repository size for a Git-LFS based repository with files from several years may be possible to sustain, the Git-LFS storage size surely won t be. It seems GitLab charges the same for files in repositories and in Git-LFS, and it is around $500 per 100GB per year. It may be possible to setup a separate Git-LFS backend not hosted at GitLab to serve the LFS files. Does anyone know of a suitable server implementation for this? I had a quick look at the Git-LFS implementation list and it seems the closest reasonable approach would be to setup the Gitea-clone Forgejo as a self-hosted server. Perhaps a cloud storage approach a la S3 is the way to go? The cost to host this on GitLab will be manageable for up to ~1TB ($5000/year) but scaling it to storing say 500TB of data would mean an yearly fee of $2.5M which seems like poor value for the money. I realized that ultimately I would want a git repository locally with the entire content of all apt archives, including their binary and source packages, ever published. The storage requirements for a service like snapshot (~300TB of data?) is today not prohibitly expensive: 20TB disks are $500 a piece, so a storage enclosure with 36 disks would be around $18.000 for 720TB and using RAID1 means 360TB which is a good start. While I have heard about ~TB-sized Git-LFS repositories, would Git-LFS scale to 1PB? Perhaps the size of a git repository with multi-millions number of Git-LFS pointer files will become unmanageable? To get started on this approach, I decided to import a mirror of Debian s bookworm for amd64 into a Git-LFS repository. That is around 175GB so reasonable cheap to host even on GitLab ($1000/year for 200GB). Having this repository publicly available will make it possible to write software that uses this approach (e.g., porting debdistreproduce), to find out if this is useful and if it could scale. Distributing the apt repository via Git-LFS would also enable other interesting ideas to protecting the data. Consider configuring apt to use a local file:// URL to this git repository, and verifying the git checkout using some method similar to Guix s approach to trusting git content or Sigstore s gitsign. A naive push of the 175GB archive in a single git commit ran into pack size limitations: remote: fatal: pack exceeds maximum allowed size (4.88 GiB) however breaking up the commit into smaller commits for parts of the archive made it possible to push the entire archive. Here are the commands to create this repository: git init
git lfs install
git lfs track 'dists/**' 'pool/**'
git add .gitattributes
git commit -m"Add Git-LFS track attributes." .gitattributes
time debmirror --method=rsync --host ftp.se.debian.org --root :debian --arch=amd64 --source --dist=bookworm,bookworm-updates --section=main --verbose --diff=none --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg --ignore .git .
git add dists project
git commit -m"Add." -a
git remote add origin git@gitlab.com:debdistutils/archives/debian/mirror.git
git push --set-upstream origin --all
for d in pool//; do
echo $d;
time git add $d;
git commit -m"Add $d." -a
git push
done The resulting repository size is around 27MB with Git LFS object storage around 174GB. I think this approach would scale to handle all architectures for one release, but working with a single git repository for all releases for all architectures may lead to a too large git repository (>1GB). So maybe one repository per release? These repositories could also be split up on a subset of pool/ files, or there could be one repository per release per architecture or sources. Finally, I have concerns about using SHA1 for identifying objects. It seems both Git and Debian s snapshot service is currently using SHA1. For Git there is SHA-256 transition and it seems GitLab is working on support for SHA256-based repositories. For serious long-term deployment of these concepts, it would be nice to go for SHA256 identifiers directly. Git-LFS already uses SHA256 but Git internally uses SHA1 as does the Debian snapshot service. What do you think? Happy Hacking!

Christoph Berg: vcswatch and git --filter

Debian is running a "vcswatch" service that keeps track of the status of all packaging repositories that have a Vcs-Git (and other VCSes) header set and shows which repos might need a package upload to push pending changes out. Naturally, this is a lot of data and the scratch partition on qa.debian.org had to be expanded several times, up to 300 GB in the last iteration. Attempts to reduce that size using shallow clones (git clone --depth=50) did not result more than a few percent of space saved. Running git gc on all repos helps a bit, but is tedious and as Debian is growing, the repos are still growing both in size and number. I ended up blocking all repos with checkouts larger than a gigabyte, and still the only cure was expanding the disk, or to lower the blocking threshold. Since we only need a tiny bit of info from the repositories, namely the content of debian/changelog and a few other files from debian/, plus the number of commits since the last tag on the packaging branch, it made sense to try to get the info without fetching a full repo clone. The question if we could grab that solely using the GitLab API at salsa.debian.org was never really answered. But then, in #1032623, G bor N meth suggested the use of git clone --filter blob:none. As things go, this sat unattended in the bug report for almost a year until the next "disk full" event made me give it a try. The blob:none filter makes git clone omit all files, fetching only commit and tree information. Any blob (file content) needed at git run time is transparently fetched from the upstream repository, and stored locally. It turned out to be a game-changer. The (largish) repositories I tried it on shrank to 1/100 of the original size. Poking around I figured we could even do better by using tree:0 as filter. This additionally omits all trees from the git clone, again only fetching the information at run time when needed. Some of the larger repos I tried it on shrank to 1/1000 of their original size. I deployed the new option on qa.debian.org and scheduled all repositories to fetch a new clone on the next scan: The initial dip from 100% to 95% is my first "what happens if we block repos > 500 MB" attempt. Over the week after that, the git filter clones reduce the overall disk consumption from almost 300 GB to 15 GB, a 1/20. Some repos shrank from GBs to below a MB. Perhaps I should make all my git clones use one of the filters.

13 March 2024

Russell Coker: The Shape of Computers

Introduction There have been many experiments with the sizes of computers, some of which have stayed around and some have gone away. The trend has been to make computers smaller, the early computers had buildings for them. Recently for come classes computers have started becoming as small as could be reasonably desired. For example phones are thin enough that they can blow away in a strong breeze, smart watches are much the same size as the old fashioned watches they replace, and NUC type computers are as small as they need to be given the size of monitors etc that they connect to. This means that further development in the size and shape of computers will largely be determined by human factors. I think we need to consider how computers might be developed to better suit humans and how to write free software to make such computers usable without being constrained by corporate interests. Those of us who are involved in developing OSs and applications need to consider how to adjust to the changes and ideally anticipate changes. While we can t anticipate the details of future devices we can easily predict general trends such as being smaller, higher resolution, etc. Desktop/Laptop PCs When home computers first came out it was standard to have the keyboard in the main box, the Apple ][ being the most well known example. This has lost popularity due to the demand to have multiple options for a light keyboard that can be moved for convenience combined with multiple options for the box part. But it still pops up occasionally such as the Raspberry Pi 400 [1] which succeeds due to having the computer part being small and light. I think this type of computer will remain a niche product. It could be used in a add a screen to make a laptop as opposed to the add a keyboard to a tablet to make a laptop model but a tablet without a keyboard is more useful than a non-server PC without a display. The PC as box with connections for keyboard, display, etc has a long future ahead of it. But the sizes will probably decrease (they should have stopped making PC cases to fit CD/DVD drives at least 10 years ago). The NUC size is a useful option and I think that DVD drives will stop being used for software soon which will allow a range of smaller form factors. The regular laptop is something that will remain useful, but the tablet with detachable keyboard devices could take a lot of that market. Full functionality for all tasks requires a keyboard because at the moment text editing with a touch screen is an unsolved problem in computer science [2]. The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Fold [3] and related Lenovo products are very interesting. Advances in materials allow laptops to be thinner and lighter which leaves the screen size as a major limitation to portability. There is a conflict between desiring a large screen to see lots of content and wanting a small size to carry and making a device foldable is an obvious solution that has recently become possible. Making a foldable laptop drives a desire for not having a permanently attached keyboard which then makes a touch screen keyboard a requirement. So this means that user interfaces for PCs have to be adapted to work well on touch screens. The Think line seems to be continuing the history of innovation that it had when owned by IBM. There are also a range of other laptops that have two regular screens so they are essentially the same as the Thinkpad X1 Fold but with two separate screens instead of one folding one, prices are as low as $600US. I think that the typical interfaces for desktop PCs (EG MS-Windows and KDE) don t work well for small devices and touch devices and the Android interface generally isn t a good match for desktop systems. We need to invent more options for this. This is not a criticism of KDE, I use it every day and it works well. But it s designed for use cases that don t match new hardware that is on sale. As an aside it would be nice if Lenovo gave samples of their newest gear to people who make significant contributions to GUIs. Give a few Thinkpad Fold devices to KDE people, a few to GNOME people, and a few others to people involved in Wayland development and see how that promotes software development and future sales. We also need to adopt features from laptops and phones into desktop PCs. When voice recognition software was first released in the 90s it was for desktop PCs, it didn t take off largely because it wasn t very accurate (none of them recognised my voice). Now voice recognition in phones is very accurate and it s very common for desktop PCs to have a webcam or headset with a microphone so it s time for this to be re-visited. GPS support in laptops is obviously useful and can work via Wifi location, via a USB GPS device, or via wwan mobile phone hardware (even if not used for wwan networking). Another possibility is using the same software interfaces as used for GPS on laptops for a static definition of location for a desktop PC or server. The Interesting New Things Watch Like The wrist-watch [4] has been a standard format for easy access to data when on the go since it s military use at the end of the 19th century when the practical benefits beat the supposed femininity of the watch. So it seems most likely that they will continue to be in widespread use in computerised form for the forseeable future. For comparison smart phones have been in widespread use as pocket watches for about 10 years. The question is how will watch computers end up? Will we have Dick Tracy style watch phones that you speak into? Will it be the current smart watch functionality of using the watch to answer a call which goes to a bluetooth headset? Will smart watches end up taking over the functionality of the calculator watch [5] which was popular in the 80 s? With today s technology you could easily have a fully capable PC strapped to your forearm, would that be useful? Phone Like Folding phones (originally popularised as Star Trek Tricorders) seem likely to have a long future ahead of them. Engineering technology has only recently developed to the stage of allowing them to work the way people would hope them to work (a folding screen with no gaps). Phones and tablets with multiple folds are coming out now [6]. This will allow phones to take much of the market share that tablets used to have while tablets and laptops merge at the high end. I ve previously written about Convergence between phones and desktop computers [7], the increased capabilities of phones adds to the case for Convergence. Folding phones also provide new possibilities for the OS. The Oppo OnePlus Open and the Google Pixel Fold both have a UI based around using the two halves of the folding screen for separate data at some times. I think that the current user interfaces for desktop PCs don t properly take advantage of multiple monitors and the possibilities raised by folding phones only adds to the lack. My pet peeve with multiple monitor setups is when they don t make it obvious which monitor has keyboard focus so you send a CTRL-W or ALT-F4 to the wrong screen by mistake, it s a problem that also happens on a single screen but is worse with multiple screens. There are rumours of phones described as three fold (where three means the number of segments with two folds between them), it will be interesting to see how that goes. Will phones go the same way as PCs in terms of having a separation between the compute bit and the input device? It s quite possible to have a compute device in the phone form factor inside a secure pocket which talks via Bluetooth to another device with a display and speakers. Then you could change your phone between a phone-size display and a tablet sized display easily and when using your phone a thief would not be able to easily steal the compute bit (which has passwords etc). Could the watch part of the phone (strapped to your wrist and difficult to steal) be the active part and have a tablet size device as an external display? There are already announcements of smart watches with up to 1GB of RAM (same as the Samsung Galaxy S3), that s enough for a lot of phone functionality. The Rabbit R1 [8] and the Humane AI Pin [9] have some interesting possibilities for AI speech interfaces. Could that take over some of the current phone use? It seems that visually impaired people have been doing badly in the trend towards touch screen phones so an option of a voice interface phone would be a good option for them. As an aside I hope some people are working on AI stuff for FOSS devices. Laptop Like One interesting PC variant I just discovered is the Higole 2 Pro portable battery operated Windows PC with 5.5 touch screen [10]. It looks too thick to fit in the same pockets as current phones but is still very portable. The version with built in battery is $AU423 which is in the usual price range for low end laptops and tablets. I don t think this is the future of computing, but it is something that is usable today while we wait for foldable devices to take over. The recent release of the Apple Vision Pro [11] has driven interest in 3D and head mounted computers. I think this could be a useful peripheral for a laptop or phone but it won t be part of a primary computing environment. In 2011 I wrote about the possibility of using augmented reality technology for providing a desktop computing environment [12]. I wonder how a Vision Pro would work for that on a train or passenger jet. Another interesting thing that s on offer is a laptop with 7 touch screen beside the keyboard [13]. It seems that someone just looked at what parts are available cheaply in China (due to being parts of more popular devices) and what could fit together. I think a keyboard should be central to the monitor for serious typing, but there may be useful corner cases where typing isn t that common and a touch-screen display is of use. Developing a range of strange hardware and then seeing which ones get adopted is a good thing and an advantage of Ali Express and Temu. Useful Hardware for Developing These Things I recently bought a second hand Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen3 for $359 which has stylus support [14], and it s generally a great little laptop in every other way. There s a common failure case of that model where touch support for fingers breaks but the stylus still works which allows it to be used for testing touch screen functionality while making it cheap. The PineTime is a nice smart watch from Pine64 which is designed to be open [15]. I am quite happy with it but haven t done much with it yet (apart from wearing it every day and getting alerts etc from Android). At $50 when delivered to Australia it s significantly more expensive than most smart watches with similar features but still a lot cheaper than the high end ones. Also the Raspberry Pi Watch [16] is interesting too. The PinePhonePro is an OK phone made to open standards but it s hardware isn t as good as Android phones released in the same year [17]. I ve got some useful stuff done on mine, but the battery life is a major issue and the screen resolution is low. The Librem 5 phone from Purism has a better hardware design for security with switches to disable functionality [18], but it s even slower than the PinePhonePro. These are good devices for test and development but not ones that many people would be excited to use every day. Wwan hardware (for accessing the phone network) in M.2 form factor can be obtained for free if you have access to old/broken laptops. Such devices start at about $35 if you want to buy one. USB GPS devices also start at about $35 so probably not worth getting if you can get a wwan device that does GPS as well. What We Must Do Debian appears to have some voice input software in the pocketsphinx package but no documentation on how it s to be used. This would be a good thing to document, I spent 15 mins looking at it and couldn t get it going. To take advantage of the hardware features in phones we need software support and we ideally don t want free software to lag too far behind proprietary software which IMHO means the typical Android setup for phones/tablets. Support for changing screen resolution is already there as is support for touch screens. Support for adapting the GUI to changed screen size is something that needs to be done even today s hardware of connecting a small laptop to an external monitor doesn t have the ideal functionality for changing the UI. There also seem to be some limitations in touch screen support with multiple screens, I haven t investigated this properly yet, it definitely doesn t work in an expected manner in Ubuntu 22.04 and I haven t yet tested the combinations on Debian/Unstable. ML is becoming a big thing and it has some interesting use cases for small devices where a smart device can compensate for limited input options. There s a lot of work that needs to be done in this area and we are limited by the fact that we can t just rip off the work of other people for use as training data in the way that corporations do. Security is more important for devices that are at high risk of theft. The vast majority of free software installations are way behind Android in terms of security and we need to address that. I have some ideas for improvement but there is always a conflict between security and usability and while Android is usable for it s own special apps it s not usable in a I want to run applications that use any files from any other applicationsin any way I want sense. My post about Sandboxing Phone apps is relevant for people who are interested in this [19]. We also need to extend security models to cope with things like ok google type functionality which has the potential to be a bug and the emerging class of LLM based attacks. I will write more posts about these thing. Please write comments mentioning FOSS hardware and software projects that address these issues and also documentation for such things.
Related posts:
  1. My Ideal Mobile Phone Based on my experience testing the IBM Seer software on...
  2. Do Desktop Computers Make Sense? Laptop vs Desktop Price Currently the smaller and cheaper USB-C...
  3. Mobile Phones Are Computers One thing I noticed when I got my new LG...

Freexian Collaborators: Debian Contributions: Upcoming Improvements to Salsa CI, /usr-move, packaging simplemonitor, and more! (by Utkarsh Gupta)

Contributing to Debian is part of Freexian s mission. This article covers the latest achievements of Freexian and their collaborators. All of this is made possible by organizations subscribing to our Long Term Support contracts and consulting services.

/usr-move, by Helmut Grohne Much of the work was spent on handling interaction with time time64 transition and sending patches for mitigating fallout. The set of packages relevant to debootstrap is mostly converted and the patches for glibc and base-files have been refined due to feedback from the upload to Ubuntu noble. Beyond this, he sent patches for all remaining packages that cannot move their files with dh-sequence-movetousr and packages using dpkg-divert in ways that dumat would not recognize.

Upcoming improvements to Salsa CI, by Santiago Ruano Rinc n Last month, Santiago Ruano Rinc n started the work on integrating sbuild into the Salsa CI pipeline. Initially, Santiago used sbuild with the unshare chroot mode. However, after discussion with josch, jochensp and helmut (thanks to them!), it turns out that the unshare mode is not the most suitable for the pipeline, since the level of isolation it provides is not needed, and some test suites would fail (eg: krb5). Additionally, one of the requirements of the build job is the use of ccache, since it is needed by some C/C++ large projects to reduce the compilation time. In the preliminary work with unshare last month, it was not possible to make ccache to work. Finally, Santiago changed the chroot mode, and now has a couple of POC (cf: 1 and 2) that rely on the schroot and sudo, respectively. And the good news is that ccache is successfully used by sbuild with schroot! The image here comes from an example of building grep. At the end of the build, ccache -s shows the statistics of the cache that it used, and so a little more than half of the calls of that job were cacheable. The most important pieces are in place to finish the integration of sbuild into the pipeline. Other than that, Santiago also reviewed the very useful merge request !346, made by IOhannes zm lnig to autodetect the release from debian/changelog. As agreed with IOhannes, Santiago is preparing a merge request to include the release autodetection use case in the very own Salsa CI s CI.

Packaging simplemonitor, by Carles Pina i Estany Carles started using simplemonitor in 2017, opened a WNPP bug in 2022 and started packaging simplemonitor dependencies in October 2023. After packaging five direct and indirect dependencies, Carles finally uploaded simplemonitor to unstable in February. During the packaging of simplemonitor, Carles reported a few issues to upstream. Some of these were to make the simplemonitor package build and run tests reproducibly. A reproducibility issue was reprotest overriding the timezone, which broke simplemonitor s tests. There have been discussions on resolving this upstream in simplemonitor and in reprotest, too. Carles also started upgrading or improving some of simplemonitor s dependencies.

Miscellaneous contributions
  • Stefano Rivera spent some time doing admin on debian.social infrastructure. Including dealing with a spike of abuse on the Jitsi server.
  • Stefano started to prepare a new release of dh-python, including cleaning out a lot of old Python 2.x related code. Thanks to Niels Thykier (outside Freexian) for spear-heading this work.
  • DebConf 24 planning is beginning. Stefano discussed venues and finances with the local team and remotely supported a site-visit by Nattie (outside Freexian).
  • Also in the DebConf 24 context, Santiago took part in discussions and preparations related to the Content Team.
  • A JIT bug was reported against pypy3 in Debian Bookworm. Stefano bisected the upstream history to find the patch (it was already resolved upstream) and released an update to pypy3 in bookworm.
  • Enrico participated in /usr-merge discussions with Helmut.
  • Colin Watson backported a python-channels-redis fix to bookworm, rediscovered while working on debusine.
  • Colin dug into a cluster of celery build failures and tracked the hardest bit down to a Python 3.12 regression, now fixed in unstable. celery should be back in testing once the 64-bit time_t migration is out of the way.
  • Thorsten Alteholz uploaded a new upstream version of cpdb-libs. Unfortunately upstream changed the naming of their release tags, so updating the watch file was a bit demanding. Anyway this version 2.0 is a huge step towards introduction of the new Common Print Dialog Backends.
  • Helmut send patches for 48 cross build failures.
  • Helmut changed debvm to use mkfs.ext4 instead of genext2fs.
  • Helmut sent a debci MR for improving collector robustness.
  • In preparation for DebConf 25, Santiago worked on the Brest Bid.

12 March 2024

Russell Coker: Android vs FOSS Phones

To achieve my aims regarding Convergence of mobile phone and PC [1] I need something a big bigger than the 4G of RAM that s in the PinePhone Pro [2]. The PinePhonePro was released at the end of 2021 but has a SoC that was first released in 2016. That SoC seems to compare well to the ones used in the Pixel and Pixel 2 phones that were released in the same time period so it s not a bad SoC, but it doesn t compare well to more recent Android devices and it also isn t a great fit for the non-Android things I want to do. Also the PinePhonePro and Librem5 have relatively short battery life so reusing Android functionality for power saving could provide a real benefit. So I want a phone designed for the mass market that I can use for running Debian. PostmarketOS One thing I m definitely not going to do is attempt a full port of Linux to a different platform or support of kernel etc. So I need to choose a device that already has support from a somewhat free Linux system. The PostmarketOS system is the first I considered, the PostmarketOS Wiki page of supported devices [3] was the first place I looked. The main supported devices are the PinePhone (not Pro) and the Librem5, both of which are under-powered. For the community devices there seems to be nothing that supports calls, SMS, mobile data, and USB-OTG and which also has 4G of RAM or more. If I skip USB-OTG (which presumably means I d have to get dock functionality via wifi not impossible but not great) then I m left with the SHIFT6mq which was never sold in Australia and the Xiomi POCO F1 which doesn t appear to be available on ebay. LineageOS The libhybris libraries are a compatibility layer between Android and glibc programs [4]. Which includes running Wayland with Android display drivers. So running a somewhat standard Linux desktop on top of an Android kernel should be possible. Here is a table of the LineageOS supported devices that seem to have a useful feature set and are available in Australia and which could be used for running Debian with firmware and drivers copied from Android. I only checked LineageOS as it seems to be the main free Android build.
Phone RAM External Display Price
Edge 20 Pro [5] 6-12G HDMI $500 not many on sale
Edge S aka moto G100 [6] 6-8G HDMI $500 to $600+
Fairphone 4 6-8G USBC-DP $1000+
Nubia Red Magic 5G 8-16G USBC-DP $600+
The LineageOS device search page [9] allows searching by kernel version. There are no phones with a 6.6 (2023) or 6.1 (2022) Linux kernel and only the Pixel 8/8Pro and the OnePlus 11 5G run 5.15 (2021). There are 8 Google devices (Pixel 6/7 and a tablet) running 5.10 (2020), 18 devices running 5.4 (2019), and 32 devices running 4.19 (2018). There are 186 devices running kernels older than 4.19 which aren t in the kernel.org supported release list [10]. The Pixel 8 Pro with 12G of RAM and the OnePlus 11 5G with 16G of RAM are appealing as portable desktop computers, until recently my main laptop had 8G of RAM. But they cost over $1000 second hand compared to $359 for my latest laptop. Fosdem had an interesting lecture from two Fairphone employees about what they are doing to make phone production fairer for workers and less harmful for the environment [11]. But they don t have the market power that companies like Google have to tell SoC vendors what they want. IP Laws and Practices Bunnie wrote an insightful and informative blog post about the difference between intellectual property practices in China and US influenced countries and his efforts to reverse engineer a commonly used Chinese SoC [12]. This is a major factor in the lack of support for FOSS on phones and other devices. Droidian and Buying a Note 9 The FOSDEM 2023 has a lecture about the Droidian project which runs Debian with firmware and drivers from Android to make a usable mostly-FOSS system [13]. It s interesting how they use containers for the necessary Android apps. Here is the list of devices supported by Droidian [14]. Two notable entries in the list of supported devices are the Volla Phone and Volla Phone 22 from Volla a company dedicated to making open Android based devices [15]. But they don t seem to be available on ebay and the new price of the Volla Phone 22 is E452 ($AU750) which is more than I want to pay for a device that isn t as open as the Pine64 and Purism products. The Volla Phone 22 only has 4G of RAM.
Phone RAM Price Issues
Note 9 128G/512G 6G/8G <$300 Not supporting external display
Galaxy S9+ 6G <$300 Not supporting external display
Xperia 5 6G >$300 Hotspot partly working
OnePlus 3T 6G $200 $400+ photos not working
I just bought a Note 9 with 128G of storage and 6G of RAM for $109 to try out Droidian, it has some screen burn but that s OK for a test system and if I end up using it seriously I ll just buy another that s in as-new condition. With no support for an external display I ll need to setup a software dock to do Convergence, but that s not a serious problem. If I end up making a Note 9 with Droidian my daily driver then I ll use the 512G/8G model for that and use the cheap one for testing. Mobian I should have checked the Mobian list first as it s the main Debian variant for phones. From the Mobian Devices list [16] the OnePlus 6T has 8G of RAM or more but isn t available in Australia and costs more than $400 when imported. The PocoPhone F1 doesn t seem to be available on ebay. The Shift6mq is made by a German company with similar aims to the Fairphone [17], it looks nice but costs E577 which is more than I want to spend and isn t on the officially supported list. Smart Watches The same issues apply to smart watches. AstereoidOS is a free smart phone OS designed for closed hardware [18]. I don t have time to get involved in this sort of thing though, I can t hack on every device I use.
Related posts:
  1. The Australian Open and Android Phones (Seer) On Monday the 25th of January 2010 I visited the...
  2. Dual SIM Phones vs Amaysim vs Contract for Mobile Phones Currently Dick Smith is offering two dual-SIM mobile phones for...
  3. Pixel 6A I have just bought a Pixel 6A [1] for my...

10 March 2024

Vasudev Kamath: Cloning a laptop over NVME TCP

Recently, I got a new laptop and had to set it up so I could start using it. But I wasn't really in the mood to go through the same old steps which I had explained in this post earlier. I was complaining about this to my colleague, and there came the suggestion of why not copy the entire disk to the new laptop. Though it sounded like an interesting idea to me, I had my doubts, so here is what I told him in return.
  1. I don't have the tools to open my old laptop and connect the new disk over USB to my new laptop.
  2. I use full disk encryption, and my old laptop has a 512GB disk, whereas the new laptop has a 1TB NVME, and I'm not so familiar with resizing LUKS.
He promptly suggested both could be done. For step 1, just expose the disk using NVME over TCP and connect it over the network and do a full disk copy, and the rest is pretty simple to achieve. In short, he suggested the following:
  1. Export the disk using nvmet-tcp from the old laptop.
  2. Do a disk copy to the new laptop.
  3. Resize the partition to use the full 1TB.
  4. Resize LUKS.
  5. Finally, resize the BTRFS root disk.
Exporting Disk over NVME TCP The easiest way suggested by my colleague to do this is using systemd-storagetm.service. This service can be invoked by simply booting into storage-target-mode.target by specifying rd.systemd.unit=storage-target-mode.target. But he suggested not to use this as I need to tweak the dracut initrd image to involve network services as well as configuring WiFi from this mode is a painful thing to do. So alternatively, I simply booted both my laptops with GRML rescue CD. And the following step was done to export the NVME disk on my current laptop using the nvmet-tcp module of Linux: 
modprobe nvmet-tcp
cd /sys/kernel/config/nvmet
mkdir ports/0
cd ports/0
echo "ipv4" > addr_adrfam
echo 0.0.0.0 > addr_traaddr
echo 4420 > addr_trsvcid
echo tcp > addr_trtype
cd /sys/kernel/config/nvmet/subsystems
mkdir testnqn
echo 1 >testnqn/allow_any_host
mkdir testnqn/namespaces/1
cd testnqn
# replace the device name with the disk you want to export
echo "/dev/nvme0n1" > namespaces/1/device_path
echo 1 > namespaces/1/enable
ln -s "../../subsystems/testnqn" /sys/kernel/config/nvmet/ports/0/subsystems/testnqn
These steps ensure that the device is now exported using NVME over TCP. The next step is to detect this on the new laptop and connect the device: 
nvme discover -t tcp -a <ip> -s 4420
nvme connectl-all -t tcp -a <> -s 4420
Finally, nvme list shows the device which is connected to the new laptop, and we can proceed with the next step, which is to do the disk copy.
Copying the Disk I simply used the dd command to copy the root disk to my new laptop. Since the new laptop didn't have an Ethernet port, I had to rely only on WiFi, and it took about 7 and a half hours to copy the entire 512GB to the new laptop. The speed at which I was copying was about 18-20MB/s. The other option would have been to create an initial partition and file system and do an rsync of the root disk or use BTRFS itself for file system transfer. 
dd if=/dev/nvme2n1 of=/dev/nvme0n1 status=progress bs=40M
Resizing Partition and LUKS Container The final part was very easy. When I launched parted, it detected that the partition table does not match the disk size and asked if it can fix it, and I said yes. Next, I had to install cloud-guest-utils to get growpart to fix the second partition, and the following command extended the partition to the full 1TB: 
growpart /dev/nvem0n1 p2
Next, I used cryptsetup-resize to increase the LUKS container size. 
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p2 ENC
cryptsetup resize ENC
Finally, I rebooted into the disk, and everything worked fine. After logging into the system, I resized the BTRFS file system. BTRFS requires the system to be mounted for resize, so I could not attempt it in live boot. 
btfs fielsystem resize max /
Conclussion The only benefit of this entire process is that I have a new laptop, but I still feel like I'm using my existing laptop. Typically, setting up a new laptop takes about a week or two to completely get adjusted, but in this case, that entire time is saved. An added benefit is that I learned how to export disks using NVME over TCP, thanks to my colleague. This new knowledge adds to the value of the experience.

9 March 2024

Iustin Pop: Finally learning some Rust - hello photo-backlog-exporter!

After 4? 5? or so years of wanting to learn Rust, over the past 4 or so months I finally bit the bullet and found the motivation to write some Rust. And the subject. And I was, and still am, thoroughly surprised. It s like someone took Haskell, simplified it to some extents, and wrote a systems language out of it. Writing Rust after Haskell seems easy, and pleasant, and you: On the other hand: However, overall, one can clearly see there s more movement in Rust, and the quality of some parts of the toolchain is better (looking at you, rust-analyzer, compared to HLS). So, with that, I ve just tagged photo-backlog-exporter v0.1.0. It s a port of a Python script that was run as a textfile collector, which meant updates every ~15 minutes, since it was a bit slow to start, which I then rewrote in Go (but I don t like Go the language, plus the GC - if I have to deal with a GC, I d rather write Haskell), then finally rewrote in Rust. What does this do? It exports metrics for Prometheus based on the count, age and distribution of files in a directory. These files being, for me, the pictures I still have to sort, cull and process, because I never have enough free time to clear out the backlog. The script is kind of designed to work together with Corydalis, but since it doesn t care about file content, it can also double (easily) as simple file count/age exporter . And to my surprise, writing in Rust is soo pleasant, that the feature list is greater than the original Python script, and - compared to that untested script - I ve rather easily achieved a very high coverage ratio. Rust has multiple types of tests, and the combination allows getting pretty down to details on testing: I had to combine a (large) number of testing crates to get it expressive enough, but it was worth the effort. The last find from yesterday, assert_cmd, is excellent to describe testing/assertion in Rust itself, rather than via a separate, new DSL, like I was using shelltest for, in Haskell. To some extent, I feel like I found the missing arrow in the quiver. Haskell is good, quite very good for some type of workloads, but of course not all, and Rust complements that very nicely, with lots of overlap (as expected). Python can fill in any quick-and-dirty scripting needed. And I just need to learn more frontend, specifically Typescript (the language, not referring to any specific libraries/frameworks), and I ll be ready for AI to take over coding So, for now, I ll need to split my free time coding between all of the above, and keep exercising my skills. But so glad to have found a good new language!

8 March 2024

Valhalla's Things: Denim Waistcoat

Posted on March 8, 2024
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing, FreeSoftWear
A woman wearing a single breasted waistcoat with double darts at the waist, two pocket flaps at the waist and one on the left upper breast. It has four jeans buttons. I had finished sewing my jeans, I had a scant 50 cm of elastic denim left. Unrelated to that, I had just finished drafting a vest with Valentina, after the Cutters Practical Guide to the Cutting of Ladies Garments. A new pattern requires a (wearable) mockup. 50 cm of leftover fabric require a quick project. The decision didn t take a lot of time. As a mockup, I kept things easy: single layer with no lining, some edges finished with a topstitched hem and some with bias tape, and plain tape on the fronts, to give more support to the buttons and buttonholes. I did add pockets: not real welt ones (too much effort on denim), but simple slits covered by flaps. a rectangle of pocketing fabric on the wrong side of a denim
piece; there is a slit in the middle that has been finished with topstitching.
To do them I marked the slits, then I cut two rectangles of pocketing fabric that should have been as wide as the slit + 1.5 cm (width of the pocket) + 3 cm (allowances) and twice the sum of as tall as I wanted the pocket to be plus 1 cm (space above the slit) + 1.5 cm (allowances). Then I put the rectangle on the right side of the denim, aligned so that the top edge was 2.5 cm above the slit, sewed 2 mm from the slit, cut, turned the pocketing to the wrong side, pressed and topstitched 2 mm from the fold to finish the slit. a piece of pocketing fabric folded in half and sewn on all 3
other sides; it does not lay flat on the right side of the fabric because the finished slit (hidden in the picture) is pulling it.
Then I turned the pocketing back to the right side, folded it in half, sewed the side and top seams with a small allowance, pressed and turned it again to the wrong side, where I sewed the seams again to make a french seam. And finally, a simple rectangular denim flap was topstitched to the front, covering the slits. I wasn t as precise as I should have been and the pockets aren t exactly the right size, but they will do to see if I got the positions right (I think that the breast one should be a cm or so lower, the waist ones are fine), and of course they are tiny, but that s to be expected from a waistcoat. The back of the waistcoat, The other thing that wasn t exactly as expected is the back: the pattern splits the bottom part of the back to give it sufficient spring over the hips . The book is probably published in 1892, but I had already found when drafting the foundation skirt that its idea of hips includes a bit of structure. The enough steel to carry a book or a cup of tea kind of structure. I should have expected a lot of spring, and indeed that s what I got. To fit the bottom part of the back on the limited amount of fabric I had to piece it, and I suspect that the flat felled seam in the center is helping it sticking out; I don t think it s exactly bad, but it is a peculiar look. Also, I had to cut the back on the fold, rather than having a seam in the middle and the grain on a different angle. Anyway, my next waistcoat project is going to have a linen-cotton lining and silk fashion fabric, and I d say that the pattern is good enough that I can do a few small fixes and cut it directly in the lining, using it as a second mockup. As for the wrinkles, there is quite a bit, but it looks something that will be solved by a bit of lightweight boning in the side seams and in the front; it will be seen in the second mockup and the finished waistcoat. As for this one, it s definitely going to get some wear as is, in casual contexts. Except. Well, it s a denim waistcoat, right? With a very different cut from the get a denim jacket and rip out the sleeves , but still a denim waistcoat, right? The kind that you cover in patches, right? Outline of a sewing machine with teeth and crossed bones below it, and the text home sewing is killing fashion / and it's illegal And I may have screenprinted a home sewing is killing fashion patch some time ago, using the SVG from wikimedia commons / the Home Taping is Killing Music page. And. Maybe I ll wait until I have finished the real waistcoat. But I suspect that one, and other sewing / costuming patches may happen in the future. No regrets, as the words on my seam ripper pin say, right? :D

7 March 2024

Valhalla's Things: Jeans, step two. And three. And four.

Posted on March 7, 2024
Tags: madeof:atoms, FreeSoftWear
A woman wearing a regular pair of slim-cut black denim jeans. I was working on what looked like a good pattern for a pair of jeans-shaped trousers, and I knew I wasn t happy with 200-ish g/m cotton-linen for general use outside of deep summer, but I didn t have a source for proper denim either (I had been low-key looking for it for a long time). Then one day I looked at an article I had saved about fabric shops that sell technical fabric and while window-shopping on one I found that they had a decent selection of denim in a decent weight. I decided it was a sign, and decided to buy the two heaviest denim they had: a 100% cotton, 355 g/m one and a 97% cotton, 3% elastane at 385 g/m 1; the latter was a bit of compromise as I shouldn t really be buying fabric adulterated with the Scourge of Humanity, but it was heavier than the plain one, and I may be having a thing for tightly fitting jeans, so this may be one of the very few woven fabric where I m not morally opposed to its existence. And, I d like to add, I resisted buying any of the very nice wools they also seem to carry, other than just a couple of samples. Since the shop only sold in 1 meter increments, and I needed about 1.5 meters for each pair of jeans, I decided to buy 3 meters per type, and have enough to make a total of four pair of jeans. A bit more than I strictly needed, maybe, but I was completely out of wearable day-to-day trousers. a cardboard box with neatly folded black denim, covered in semi-transparent plastic. The shop sent everything very quickly, the courier took their time (oh, well) but eventually delivered my fabric on a sunny enough day that I could wash it and start as soon as possible on the first pair. The pattern I did in linen was a bit too fitting, but I was afraid I had widened it a bit too much, so I did the first pair in the 100% cotton denim. Sewing them took me about a week of early mornings and late afternoons, excluding the weekend, and my worries proved false: they were mostly just fine. The only bit that could have been a bit better is the waistband, which is a tiny bit too wide on the back: it s designed to be so for comfort, but the next time I should pull the elastic a bit more, so that it stays closer to the body. The same from the back, showing the applied pockets with a sewn logo. I wore those jeans daily for the rest of the week, and confirmed that they were indeed comfortable and the pattern was ok, so on the next Monday I started to cut the elastic denim. I decided to cut and sew two pairs, assembly-line style, using the shaped waistband for one of them and the straight one for the other one. I started working on them on a Monday, and on that week I had a couple of days when I just couldn t, plus I completely skipped sewing on the weekend, but on Tuesday the next week one pair was ready and could be worn, and the other one only needed small finishes. A woman wearing another pair of jeans; the waistband here is shaped to fit rather than having elastic. And I have to say, I m really, really happy with the ones with a shaped waistband in elastic denim, as they fit even better than the ones with a straight waistband gathered with elastic. Cutting it requires more fabric, but I think it s definitely worth it. But it will be a problem for a later time: right now three pairs of jeans are a good number to keep in rotation, and I hope I won t have to sew jeans for myself for quite some time. A plastic bag with mid-sized offcuts of denim; there is a 30 cm ruler on top that is just wider than the bag I think that the leftovers of plain denim will be used for a skirt or something else, and as for the leftovers of elastic denim, well, there aren t a lot left, but what else I did with them is the topic for another post. Thanks to the fact that they are all slightly different, I ve started to keep track of the times when I wash each pair, and hopefully I will be able to see whether the elastic denim is significantly less durable than the regular, or the added weight compensates for it somewhat. I m not sure I ll manage to remember about saving the data until they get worn, but if I do it will be interesting to know. Oh, and I say I ve finished working on jeans and everything, but I still haven t sewn the belt loops to the third pair. And I m currently wearing them. It s a sewist tradition, or something. :D
  1. The links are to the shop for Italy; you can copy the Codice prodotto and look for it on one of the shop version for other countries (where they apply the right vat etc., but sadly they don t allow to mix and match those settings and the language).

4 March 2024

Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana: Bits from FOSDEM 2023 and 2024

Link para vers o em portugu s

Intro Since 2019, I have traveled to Brussels at the beginning of the year to join FOSDEM, considered the largest and most important Free Software event in Europe. The 2024 edition was the fourth in-person edition in a row that I joined (2021 and 2022 did not happen due to COVID-19) and always with the financial help of Debian, which kindly paid my flight tickets after receiving my request asking for help to travel and approved by the Debian leader. In 2020 I wrote several posts with a very complete report of the days I spent in Brussels. But in 2023 I didn t write anything, and becayse last year and this year I coordinated a room dedicated to translations of Free Software and Open Source projects, I m going to take the opportunity to write about these two years and how it was my experience. After my first trip to FOSDEM, I started to think that I could join in a more active way than just a regular attendee, so I had the desire to propose a talk to one of the rooms. But then I thought that instead of proposing a tal, I could organize a room for talks :-) and with the topic translations which is something that I m very interested in, because it s been a few years since I ve been helping to translate the Debian for Portuguese.

Joining FOSDEM 2023 In the second half of 2022 I did some research and saw that there had never been a room dedicated to translations, so when the FOSDEM organization opened the call to receive room proposals (called DevRoom) for the 2023 edition, I sent a proposal to a translation room and it was accepted! After the room was confirmed, the next step was for me, as room coordinator, to publicize the call for talk proposals. I spent a few weeks hoping to find out if I would receive a good number of proposals or if it would be a failure. But to my happiness, I received eight proposals and I had to select six to schedule the room programming schedule due to time constraints . FOSDEM 2023 took place from February 4th to 5th and the translation devroom was scheduled on the second day in the afternoon. Fosdem 2023 The talks held in the room were these below, and in each of them you can watch the recording video. And on the first day of FOSDEM I was at the Debian stand selling the t-shirts that I had taken from Brazil. People from France were also there selling other products and it was cool to interact with people who visited the booth to buy and/or talk about Debian.
Fosdem 2023

Fosdem 2023
Photos

Joining FOSDEM 2024 The 2023 result motivated me to propose the translation devroom again when the FOSDEM 2024 organization opened the call for rooms . I was waiting to find out if the FOSDEM organization would accept a room on this topic for the second year in a row and to my delight, my proposal was accepted again :-) This time I received 11 proposals! And again due to time constraints, I had to select six to schedule the room schedule grid. FOSDEM 2024 took place from February 3rd to 4th and the translation devroom was scheduled for the second day again, but this time in the morning. The talks held in the room were these below, and in each of them you can watch the recording video. This time I didn t help at the Debian stand because I couldn t bring t-shirts to sell from Brazil. So I just stopped by and talked to some people who were there like some DDs. But I volunteered for a few hours to operate the streaming camera in one of the main rooms.
Fosdem 2024

Fosdem 2024
Photos

Conclusion The topics of the talks in these two years were quite diverse, and all the lectures were really very good. In the 12 talks we can see how translations happen in some projects such as KDE, PostgreSQL, Debian and Mattermost. We had the presentation of tools such as LibreTranslate, Weblate, scripts, AI, data model. And also reports on the work carried out by communities in Africa, China and Indonesia. The rooms were full for some talks, a little more empty for others, but I was very satisfied with the final result of these two years. I leave my special thanks to Jonathan Carter, Debian Leader who approved my flight tickets requests so that I could join FOSDEM 2023 and 2024. This help was essential to make my trip to Brussels because flight tickets are not cheap at all. I would also like to thank my wife Jandira, who has been my travel partner :-) Bruxelas As there has been an increase in the number of proposals received, I believe that interest in the translations devroom is growing. So I intend to send the devroom proposal to FOSDEM 2025, and if it is accepted, wait for the future Debian Leader to approve helping me with the flight tickets again. We ll see.

Colin Watson: Free software activity in January/February 2024

Two months into my new gig and it s going great! Tracking my time has taken a bit of getting used to, but having something that amounts to a queryable database of everything I ve done has also allowed some helpful introspection. Freexian sponsors up to 20% of my time on Debian tasks of my choice. In fact I ve been spending the bulk of my time on debusine which is itself intended to accelerate work on Debian, but more details on that later. While I contribute to Freexian s summaries now, I ve also decided to start writing monthly posts about my free software activity as many others do, to get into some more detail. January 2024 February 2024

1 March 2024

Ravi Dwivedi: Fixing Mobile Data issue on Lineage OS

I have used Lineage OS on a couple of phones, but I noticed that internet using my mobile data was not working well on it. I am not sure why. This was the case in Xiaomi MI A2 and OnePlus 9 Pro phones. One day I met contrapunctus and they looked at their phone settings and used the same in mine and it worked. So, I am going to write here what worked for me. The trick is to add an access point. Go to Settings -> Network Settings -> Your SIM settings -> Access Point Names -> Click on + symbol. In the Name section, you can write anything, I wrote test. And in the APN section write www, then save. Below is a screenshot demonstrating the settings you have to change.
APN settings screenshot. Notice the circled entries.
This APN will show in the list of APNs and you need to select this one. After this, my mobile data started working well and I started getting speeds according to my data plan. This is what worked for me in Lineage OS. Hopefully, it was of help to you :D I will meet you in the next post.

26 February 2024

Adnan Hodzic: App architecture with reliability in mind: From Kubernetes to Serverless with GCP Cloud Build & Cloud Run

The blog post you re reading is hosted on a private Kubernetes cluster that runs inside my home. Another workload that s running on same cluster is... The post App architecture with reliability in mind: From Kubernetes to Serverless with GCP Cloud Build & Cloud Run appeared first on FoolControl: Phear the penguin.

25 February 2024

Jacob Adams: AAC and Debian

Currently, in a default installation of Debian with the GNOME desktop, Bluetooth headphones that require the AAC codec1 cannot be used. As the Debian wiki outlines, using the AAC codec over Bluetooth, while technically supported by PipeWire, is explicitly disabled in Debian at this time. This is because the fdk-aac library needed to enable this support is currently in the non-free component of the repository, meaning that PipeWire, which is in the main component, cannot depend on it.

How to Fix it Yourself If what you, like me, need is simply for Bluetooth Audio to work with AAC in Debian s default desktop environment2, then you ll need to rebuild the pipewire package to include the AAC codec. While the current version in Debian main has been built with AAC deliberately disabled, it is trivial to enable if you can install a version of the fdk-aac library. I preface this with the usual caveats when it comes to patent and licensing controversies. I am not a lawyer, building this package and/or using it could get you into legal trouble. These instructions have only been tested on an up-to-date copy of Debian 12.
  1. Install pipewire s build dependencies 
    sudo apt install build-essential devscripts
sudo apt build-dep pipewire
  2. Install libfdk-aac-dev 
    sudo apt install libfdk-aac-dev
    If the above doesn t work you ll likely need to enable non-free and try again 
    sudo sed -i 's/main/main non-free/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update
    Alternatively, if you wish to ensure you are maximally license-compliant and patent un-infringing3, you can instead build fdk-aac-free which includes only those components of AAC that are known to be patent-free3. This is what should eventually end up in Debian to resolve this problem (see below). 
    sudo apt install git-buildpackage
mkdir fdk-aac-source
cd fdk-aac-source
git clone https://salsa.debian.org/multimedia-team/fdk-aac
cd fdk-aac
gbp buildpackage
sudo dpkg -i ../libfdk-aac2_*deb ../libfdk-aac-dev_*deb
  3. Get the pipewire source code 
    mkdir pipewire-source
cd pipewire-source
apt source pipewire
    This will create a bunch of files within the pipewire-source directory, but you ll only need the pipewire-<version> folder, this contains all the files you ll need to build the package, with all the debian-specific patches already applied. Note that you don t want to run the apt source command as root, as it will then create files that your regular user cannot edit.
  4. Fix the dependencies and build options To fix up the build scripts to use the fdk-aac library, you need to save the following as pipewire-source/aac.patch 
    --- debian/control.orig
+++ debian/control
@@ -40,8 +40,8 @@
             modemmanager-dev,
             pkg-config,
             python3-docutils,
-               systemd [linux-any]
-Build-Conflicts: libfdk-aac-dev
+               systemd [linux-any],
+               libfdk-aac-dev
 Standards-Version: 4.6.2
 Vcs-Browser: https://salsa.debian.org/utopia-team/pipewire
 Vcs-Git: https://salsa.debian.org/utopia-team/pipewire.git
--- debian/rules.orig
+++ debian/rules
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
 		-Dauto_features=enabled \
 		-Davahi=enabled \
 		-Dbluez5-backend-native-mm=enabled \
-		-Dbluez5-codec-aac=disabled \
+		-Dbluez5-codec-aac=enabled \
 		-Dbluez5-codec-aptx=enabled \
 		-Dbluez5-codec-lc3=enabled \
 		-Dbluez5-codec-lc3plus=disabled \
    Then you ll need to run patch from within the pipewire-<version> folder created by apt source: 
    patch -p0 < ../aac.patch
  5. Build pipewire 
    cd pipewire-*
debuild
    Note that you will likely see an error from debsign at the end of this process, this is harmless, you simply don t have a GPG key set up to sign your newly-built package4. Packages don t need to be signed to be installed, and debsign uses a somewhat non-standard signing process that dpkg does not check anyway.
  1. Install libspa-0.2-bluetooth 
    sudo dpkg -i libspa-0.2-bluetooth_*.deb
  2. Restart PipeWire and/or Reboot 
    sudo reboot
    Theoretically there s a set of services to restart here that would get pipewire to pick up the new library, probably just pipewire itself. But it s just as easy to restart and ensure everything is using the correct library.

Why This is a slightly unusual situation, as the fdk-aac library is licensed under what even the GNU project acknowledges is a free software license. However, this license explicitly informs the user that they need to acquire a patent license to use this software5:
3. NO PATENT LICENSE NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED LICENSES TO ANY PATENT CLAIMS, including without limitation the patents of Fraunhofer, ARE GRANTED BY THIS SOFTWARE LICENSE. Fraunhofer provides no warranty of patent non-infringement with respect to this software. You may use this FDK AAC Codec software or modifications thereto only for purposes that are authorized by appropriate patent licenses.
To quote the GNU project:
Because of this, and because the license author is a known patent aggressor, we encourage you to be careful about using or redistributing software under this license: you should first consider whether the licensor might aim to lure you into patent infringement.
AAC is covered by a number of patents, which expire at some point in the 2030s6. As such the current version of the library is potentially legally dubious to ship with any other software, as it could be considered patent-infringing3.

Fedora s solution Since 2017, Fedora has included a modified version of the library as fdk-aac-free, see the announcement and the bugzilla bug requesting review. This version of the library includes only the AAC LC profile, which is believed to be entirely patent-free3. Based on this, there is an open bug report in Debian requesting that the fdk-aac package be moved to the main component and that the pipwire package be updated to build against it.

The Debian NEW queue To resolve these bugs, a version of fdk-aac-free has been uploaded to Debian by Jeremy Bicha. However, to make it into Debian proper, it must first pass through the ftpmaster s NEW queue. The current version of fdk-aac-free has been in the NEW queue since July 2023. Based on conversations in some of the bugs above, it s been there since at least 20227. I hope this helps anyone stuck with AAC to get their hardware working for them while we wait for the package to eventually make it through the NEW queue. Discuss on Hacker News
  1. Such as, for example, any Apple AirPods, which only support AAC AFAICT.
  2. Which, as of Debian 12 is GNOME 3 under Wayland with PipeWire.
  3. I m not a lawyer, I don t know what kinds of infringement might or might not be possible here, do your own research, etc. 2 3 4
  4. And if you DO have a key setup with debsign you almost certainly don t need these instructions.
  5. This was originally phrased as explicitly does not grant any patent rights. It was pointed out on Hacker News that this is not exactly what it says, as it also includes a specific note that you ll need to acquire your own patent license. I ve now quoted the relevant section of the license for clarity.
  6. Wikipedia claims the base patents expire in 2031, with the extensions expiring in 2038, but its source for these claims is some guy s spreadsheet in a forum. The same discussion also brings up Wikipedia s claim and casts some doubt on it, so I m not entirely sure what s correct here, but I didn t feel like doing a patent deep-dive today. If someone can provide a clear answer that would be much appreciated.
  7. According to Jeremy B cha: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1021370#17

20 February 2024

Niels Thykier: Language Server (LSP) support for debian/control

About a month ago, Otto Kek l inen asked for editor extensions for debian related files on the debian-devel mailing list. In that thread, I concluded that what we were missing was a "Language Server" (LSP) for our packaging files. Last week, I started a prototype for such a LSP for the debian/control file as a starting point based on the pygls library. The initial prototype worked and I could do very basic diagnostics plus completion suggestion for field names.
Current features I got 4 basic features implemented, though I have only been able to test two of them in emacs.
  • Diagnostics or linting of basic issues.
  • Completion suggestions for all known field names that I could think of and values for some fields.
  • Folding ranges (untested). This feature enables the editor to "fold" multiple lines. It is often used with multi-line comments and that is the feature currently supported.
  • On save, trim trailing whitespace at the end of lines (untested). Might not be registered correctly on the server end.
Despite its very limited feature set, I feel editing debian/control in emacs is now a much more pleasant experience. Coming back to the features that Otto requested, the above covers a grand total of zero. Sorry, Otto. It is not you, it is me.
Completion suggestions For completion, all known fields are completed. Place the cursor at the start of the line or in a partially written out field name and trigger the completion in your editor. In my case, I can type R-R-R and trigger the completion and the editor will automatically replace it with Rules-Requires-Root as the only applicable match. Your milage may vary since I delegate most of the filtering to the editor, meaning the editor has the final say about whether your input matches anything. The only filtering done on the server side is that the server prunes out fields already used in the paragraph, so you are not presented with the option to repeat an already used field, which would be an error. Admittedly, not an error the language server detects at the moment, but other tools will. When completing field, if the field only has one non-default value such as Essential which can be either no (the default, but you should not use it) or yes, then the completion suggestion will complete the field along with its value. This is mostly only applicable for "yes/no" fields such as Essential and Protected. But it does also trigger for Package-Type at the moment. As for completing values, here the language server can complete the value for simple fields such as "yes/no" fields, Multi-Arch, Package-Type and Priority. I intend to add support for Section as well - maybe also Architecture.
Diagnostics On the diagnostic front, I have added multiple diagnostics:
  • An error marker for syntax errors.
  • An error marker for missing a mandatory field like Package or Architecture. This also includes Standards-Version, which is admittedly mandatory by policy rather than tooling falling part.
  • An error marker for adding Multi-Arch: same to an Architecture: all package.
  • Error marker for providing an unknown value to a field with a set of known values. As an example, writing foo in Multi-Arch would trigger this one.
  • Warning marker for using deprecated fields such as DM-Upload-Allowed, or when setting a field to its default value for fields like Essential. The latter rule only applies to selected fields and notably Multi-Arch: no does not trigger a warning.
  • Info level marker if a field like Priority duplicates the value of the Source paragraph.
Notable omission at this time:
  • No errors are raised if a field does not have a value.
  • No errors are raised if a field is duplicated inside a paragraph.
  • No errors are used if a field is used in the wrong paragraph.
  • No spellchecking of the Description field.
  • No understanding that Foo and X[CBS]-Foo are related. As an example, XC-Package-Type is completely ignored despite being the old name for Package-Type.
  • Quick fixes to solve these problems... :)
Trying it out If you want to try, it is sadly a bit more involved due to things not being uploaded or merged yet. Also, be advised that I will regularly rebase my git branches as I revise the code. The setup:
  • Build and install the deb of the main branch of pygls from https://salsa.debian.org/debian/pygls The package is in NEW and hopefully this step will soon just be a regular apt install.
  • Build and install the deb of the rts-locatable branch of my python-debian fork from https://salsa.debian.org/nthykier/python-debian There is a draft MR of it as well on the main repo.
  • Build and install the deb of the lsp-support branch of debputy from https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debputy
  • Configure your editor to run debputy lsp debian/control as the language server for debian/control. This is depends on your editor. I figured out how to do it for emacs (see below). I also found a guide for neovim at https://neovim.io/doc/user/lsp. Note that debputy can be run from any directory here. The debian/control is a reference to the file format and not a concrete file in this case.
Obviously, the setup should get easier over time. The first three bullet points should eventually get resolved by merges and upload meaning you end up with an apt install command instead of them. For the editor part, I would obviously love it if we can add snippets for editors to make the automatically pick up the language server when the relevant file is installed.
Using the debputy LSP in emacs The guide I found so far relies on eglot. The guide below assumes you have the elpa-dpkg-dev-el package installed for the debian-control-mode. Though it should be a trivially matter to replace debian-control-mode with a different mode if you use a different mode for your debian/control file. In your emacs init file (such as ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el), you add the follow blob. 
(with-eval-after-load 'eglot
    (add-to-list 'eglot-server-programs
        '(debian-control-mode . ("debputy" "lsp" "debian/control"))))
Once you open the debian/control file in emacs, you can type M-x eglot to activate the language server. Not sure why that manual step is needed and if someone knows how to automate it such that eglot activates automatically on opening debian/control, please let me know. For testing completions, I often have to manually activate them (with C-M-i or M-x complete-symbol). Though, it is a bit unclear to me whether this is an emacs setting that I have not toggled or something I need to do on the language server side.
From here As next steps, I will probably look into fixing some of the "known missing" items under diagnostics. The quick fix would be a considerable improvement to assisting users. In the not so distant future, I will probably start to look at supporting other files such as debian/changelog or look into supporting configuration, so I can cover formatting features like wrap-and-sort. I am also very much open to how we can provide integrations for this feature into editors by default. I will probably create a separate binary package for specifically this feature that pulls all relevant dependencies that would be able to provide editor integrations as well.

Jonathan Dowland: Propaganda A Secret Wish

How can I not have done one of these for Propaganda already?
Propaganda: A Secret Wish, and 12"s of Duel and p:Machinery
Propaganda/A Secret Wish is criminally underrated. There seem to be a zillion variants of each track, which keeps completionists busy. Of the variants of Jewel/Duel/etc., I'm fond of the 03:10, almost instrumental mix of Jewel; preferring the lyrics to be exclusive to the more radio friendly Duel (04:42); I don't need them conflating (Jewel 06:21); but there are further depths I've yet to explore (Do Well cassette mix, the 20:07 The First Cut / Duel / Jewel (Cut Rough)/ Wonder / Bejewelled mega-mix...) I recently watched The Fall of the House of Usher which I think has Poe lodged in my brain, which is how this album popped back into my conciousness this morning, with the opening lines of Dream within a Dream. But are they Goth?

Next.

Previous.