Thanks to my employer I had opportunity to spent two days just working on my packages.
I know it s kinda sad that I have to wait for these two special days to do my (volunteer but still) job. Anyway. I was able to dig through all changes in our policy and standards and update some of my packages. Changes include: potrace (1.13-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream version.
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed) Bartosz Fenski Thu, 10 Dec 2015 10:37:54 +0100 ipcalc (0.41-5) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* Updating to the newest standards of basically everything.
Very cool experience
* CGI script is now optional and put into examples (Closes: #763032) Bartosz Fenski Thu, 10 Dec 2015 13:51:12 +0100 dibbler (1.0.1-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream release (Closes: #780232, #795493)
fixes segfaults in TClntCfgMgr::validateConfig (Closes: #732697)
* Includes debugging packages (Closes: #732707)
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed) Bartosz Fenski Thu, 10 Dec 2015 13:33:56 +0100 calcurse (4.0.0-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream version.
* Properly handles apts file with new line sign (Closes: #749282)
* Explicitly uses autotools-dev dependency.
* Bumped Standards-Version. (no changes needed) Bartosz Fenski Mon, 14 Dec 2015 10:55:30 +0100 libstatgrab (0.91-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream version (Closes: #804480)
* ACK NMUs, thanks Manuel!
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed) Bartosz Fenski Mon, 14 Dec 2015 14:27:37 +0100 httpie (0.9.2-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* ACK previous NMU, thanks a lot Vincent!
* Bumped required python-requests version (Closes: #802540) Bartosz Fenski Mon, 14 Dec 2015 15:39:37 +0100 These uploads fixed 7 bugs and 9 lintian warnings/errors. Except that I reviewed mydumper package update and I uploaded it for Mateusz Kijowski who tries to became NM. Thanks Akamai!

Last year I told you that I spent two full-time days working on Debian as a part of initiative sponsored by my current employer. This year I ve devoted these two days again for Debian. Quick summary of what I was able to do during these two days. 11 bugs, 4 lintian errors and 43 warnings were fixed. In addition 3 packages now use new source format (usually that means repackaging software from scratch). 4 uses new copyright format and the newest Standards-Version. 5 packages were updated to the newest upstream version. Changelog entries:
potrace (1.11-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream version.
* Completely repackaged from scratch (funny experience as usual):
- uses new copyright format
- uses debhelper compatibility level 9 w/hardening options
- uses the newest Standards-Version
- fixes 11 lintian warnings and 2 errors
* Fixes typo in manpage. (Closes: #694492) -- Bartosz Fenski Mon, 9 Dec 2013 11:23:32 +0100 makeself (2.2.0-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream release. (Closes: #690105)
- handles df output in more portable way (Closes: #641804)
* Repackaged from scratch.
- uses new packaging format 3.0 (Closes: #670738)
- uses new copyright format
- uses debhelper compatibility level 9
- uses the newest Standards-Version
- fixes 2 lintian errors and 6 warnings -- Bartosz Fenski Mon, 09 Dec 2013 17:32:45 +0100 dibbler (1.0.0~rc1-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream release candidate 1 version (Closes: #686539)
- doesn't drop dhcp session during pppd restarts (Closes: #641237)
- doesn't hang indefinitely on 'stop' (Closes: #675272)
* Calls dh --with autotools_dev to prevent build failures (Closes: 727356)
* Includes Japanese debconf translation (Closes: #718921)
* Updated Standards-Version (no changes needed)
* Uses debhelper compatibility level 9 w/hardening options
* init scripts now source init functions
* Fixes 20 lintian warnings. -- Bartosz Fenski Tue, 10 Dec 2013 10:05:56 +0100 calcurse (3.1.4-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream version.
* ACK previous NMU - thanks!
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed) -- Bartosz Fenski Tue, 10 Dec 2013 12:22:06 +0100 ipcalc (0.41-4) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* Fixes overzealous input checking (Closes: #332468)
* Martin F Krafft removed as co-maintainer (Closes: #719098)
+ package now uses new copyright format
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed) -- Bartosz Fenski Tue, 10 Dec 2013 13:05:15 +0100 msort (8.53-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream release.
* ACK previous NMUs, thanks!
* Switched to new source format.
* Switched to new copyright format.
* Moved patches to new quilt format and described them.
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed)
* Has correct tcl/tk dependencies (Closes: #545135)
* Doesn't segfault with certain input (Closes: #630485) -- Bartosz Fenski Tue, 10 Dec 2013 16:39:44 +0100
Thank you Akamai

My current employer as a benefit offers two days of paid volunteer time every calendar year. In September I decided to devote this time for Debian project. It wasn t easy to convince HR and my manager (hi Gloria ) that such activity can be considered as volunteering but I eventually did it! So last Thursday and Friday were days I could spent working on my packages and other stuff related to Debian Let s talk about effects. 5 packages updated, 16 bugs closed, more than 50 lintian warnings/errors solved. Here goes changelogs from updated packages:
calcurse (3.1.2-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* Package made from scratch (this was funny experience):
- uses new quilt source format
- uses new copyright format
- uses debhelper compatibility level 9 w/hardening options
- uses the newest Standards-Version
* New upstream version:
- supports UTF8 (Closes: #558671)
- hopefully fixes problem with accented characters (Closes: #466010) -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:51:08 +0100 httpie (0.3.1-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* Includes manual page (Closes: #673067)
Courtesy of Khalid El Fathi <khalid>. Thanks!
* New upstream version. (Closes: #693810)
- handles binary transfers properly (Closes: #689974) -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:27:59 +0100 skipfish (2.10b-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream version.
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed).
* Various path fixes because of upstream changes.
* Added new libpcre3-dev build dependency.
* Totally rewritten copyright file to comply with new copyright standard. -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:59:36 +010 ipcalc (0.41-3) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* ACK previous NMU, thanks Christopher!
* Documents some missing features in the manpage (Closes: #588143)
Thanks Tanguy Ortolo <tanguy>!
* Fixes other minor problems in manpage (Closes: #688148)
* Description now says it's tool IPv4 only (Closes: #628955)
* Fixes lack of </table> tag when printing supernets (Closes: #600251)
* The following changes are courtesy of Jari Aalto <jari.aalto>:
- Remove deprecated dpatch and upgrade to packaging format "3.0 quilt".
- Update to Standards-Version to 3.9.3 and debhelper to 9.
- Add build-arch and build-indep targets; use dh_prep in rules file.
- Patch 03: update with "quilt refresh" to make it apply cleanly.
Thanks to these changes (Closes: #670737) -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 12:30:11 +0100 netw-ib-ox-ag (5.39.0-1) unstable; urgency=low * The Akamai Technologies paid volunteer days release.
* New upstream version.
* Uses Homepage header. (Closes: #615219, #615294, #615321, #615436, #645522)
* Bumped Standards-Version (no changes needed).
* Switch to dpkg-source 3.0 (quilt) format)
* Fixes FTBFS on s390x and sparc64 (Closes: #639493)
* Fixes 29 (sic!) lintian warnings/errors thus many small changes
in packaging scripts. -- Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:38:29 +0200
Despite this I did something else. I sent end of the world joke-mail to debian-mentors mailing list stating (ignore the fact that my own server marked me as spammer; fixed already ;P) that I m going to review and try to upload every package that will be send to me during end-of-the-world day.
That action was quite successful although no package has been uploaded yet. I reviewed 4 of them and two more are yet to come. So it looks that these two days sponsored by Akamai motivated me enough to spent few more days or even months and help other people to contribute to Debian. Thank you Akamai!

Can t believe its almost 7 years since my first sponsored upload of Dibbler to Debian archive. I did it cause upstream promised to maintain it and fix any bugs submitted by Debian users. Unfortunately after 3-4 years he stopped to do it. Well since I was the sponsor of it, then I should feel responsible for these packages after him. It s quite hard to do it, cause I m not using these packages at all Anyway, I finally found some time and reviewed them. It wasn t easy cause in the meantime whole build process totally changed. To whom it may concern: Dibbler is an IPv6 DHCP client, relay and server. I ve just uploaded the newest upstream version. Changelog follows: dibbler (0.8.1-1) unstable; urgency=low * ACK previous NMUes thanks!
* New upstream version (Closes: #629685)
uses correct example adsress pool in examples (Closes: #544323)
corrects scope of stateless in manpage (Closes: #615165)
* Fix pending l10n issues. Debconf translations:
Danish courtesy of Joe Hansen (Closes: #597767)
Dutch courtesy of Jeroen Schot (Closes: #632628)
* Fixes handling of children processes using resolvconf (Closes: #627317)
* Doesn t conflict with other resolver configuration daemons (Closes: #627786)
* Correctly handles multiselect values from debconf (Closes: #629681)
* Debianized almost from scratch, uses new source format.
* New Standards-Version (no changes needed). Bartosz Fenski <fenio> Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:37:13 +0100 Yep, it fixes 8 bugs, and brings the newest upstream version with huge number of new features to Debian. Enjoy!

I ve just uploaded new version of sshfs package. Here goes changelog: sshfs-fuse (2.3-1) unstable; urgency=low * New upstream version. (Closes: #636357)
- documents special handling of IPv6 addresses (Closes: #572222)
- corrects arguments handling (Closes: #535333, #535343, #571152)
* ACK NMU from 2.2-1.1 version, thanks Robert.
* Fixes typo in short description of -dbg package (Closes: #514261)
* Depends on fuse instead of fuse-utils (Closes: #629327)
* Clarify that owner/group options have to be numbers (Closes: #497368)
* Repackaged from scratch, uses DEP-5 copyrights, new debhelper,
quilt format, new policy standards. Bartosz Fenski <fenio@debian.org> Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:01:04 +0000 Enjoy, it fixes 8 bugs

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous! You drink everyone under the table.

That'll be about World Cup 2006 in Germany.
Poland has Germany, Equador and Costa Rica in its group. It's always hard to play with an organizer of cup, but maybe we can at least draw with them. Rest of teams seem to be within our range, but at previous cup we disregarded potentially weak teams and didn't promote to second round ;)
Good luck to every competitor!

I've just uploaded sponsored package libpam-encfs. With it it's possible to have encrypted home directory, which will be mounted during login.

I'm working on new fuse (filesystem in userspace) packages and I really wonder if I should simplify their postinstallation procedure as it was mentioned in #337572. That would make my life much easier, cause there's quite many bugreports against undefined behaviour of post-debconf tasks, which are pretty hard to track for me. In fact I suppose that most users simply accept default answers so asking them about anything seems to be overhead.
Let's assume I will remove these superflous questions... now the problem is that if someone answered for them in some previous installation then I could leave unneded group and some config files on their systems. On the other head removing this group could even lead to nonworking system because of one of these bugs: #307624, 307627, 306281.
I'm quite confused what to do now. Both solutions have some advantages and disadvantages. First one at least could lead to less bugs in the future. Hints welcome.

Can't believe I have to write script to be able to mute/unmute with aumix. It's strange cause there is MUTE option in interactive mode, so I don't know why there is no such option in command line.

Speaking about text-mode mp3 player. I'm using moc (available in archive) and its main advantage over orpheus is that it is NOT a frontend, so it can easily rewind/forward songs. Try it ;)

Wheeee!
I hope ftp-master is going to accept these packages soon. Thanks to everyone involved in preparing new version of Eclipse for Debian!

I've finally bought notebook. It's Compaq Presario V2000, Pentium 1,66GHz Centrino, 512MB of RAM and 80GB disk. The most funny thing is that I couldn't install sarge on it. Running installation with 2.4 kernel caused oops of kernel, while running it with 2.6 worked quite well but ethernet card didn't work, although it was detected nicely.
Anyway I started from woody, then sarge and now I've got sid on it. Everything seems to work nice (I didn't try suspend-to-something yet, but it's not so important for me). I had to use hotplug for my Intel 2200BG wireless card. The only thing which makes me scared is:

(root@lapik)~#lsmod   wc -l
109
(root@lapik)~#

I've never had so many modules and it's mainly because hotplug tries to detect everything on startup. Do we have some hotplug replacement? Something which could be used only for loading firmware to wireless card.
Sound card works with i810_audio modules, so I suppose that's not alsa, but oss. Couldn't figure out yet what's wrong with alsa modules.
Anyway I'm quite happy the way Linux works on my new toy ;)

I didn't want to migrate to 2.6.x kernels, since I really don't like its current development approach, but unfortunately I had to, because my usb cable for mobile phone works only with this branch.
So from now I'm not-so-happy 2.6 user ;)
At least now I can exchange data with phone, so Debian logo is now on the screen.

I've just uploaded Warzone 2100 packages to my people.debian.org account.
If you liked Starcraft or Total Annihilation games, give Warzone a try.
Beware that these are preliminary packages and they aren't policy compliant yet, there are some problems described in ITP, but they work fine for me.
Any feedback is welcome.

This time it's free of ads for everyone (no need to register).
It's still free as in beer, but on some slow machines launching Firefox could take ages, so it's pretty good alternative.

I doubt it... how often did you swear at guys that designed something?
Sometime I think that the guy that invented something extremely stupid and uncomfortable should be convicted to use it during rest of his life.
How long did he think before he figured out that the best place for headphones jack in my laptop would be front side of it? Now plugging there anything is very, very, very awkward and I really don't like wires around my navel using laptop while laying in bed.
Well... maybe it's some marketing hack, cause now I wonder about buying usb/pcmcia sound card ;)

When I bought notebook I had to find out some use for previous box. It was great opportunity to test etch installer (and my Polish translation at the same time) so I did it several times using miscellaneous settings. Eventually it was time to find out some real use for this box. I decided to try out some non-Linux port of Debian. The most stable and actively developed seemed to be kFreeBSD.
I installed it about month ago. I must admit it works great despite some initial stability problems related to buggy mount, quickly workarounded with help from people from #gnu-kbsd channel. (thanks!)
I use it mainly as a backup machine and small www server, but since it handles it without a hitch I'm probably going to make it also print and Samba server.
I was sceptical to GNU userland used with non-Linux kernels, but admittedly we're getting closer and closer to the day when switching between kernels would be piece of cake ;)

(fenio@kfbsd)~#uptime
 15:36:57 up 21 days,  6:23,  1 user,  load average: 0.23, 0.08, 0.04
(fenio@kfbsd)~#

As you can see it works. It lays in one of my wardrobe, without the case and unplugged from any external devices. I couldn't remove graphic card due to some weird BIOS limits, so it has some PCI card worth less than the beer I'm drinking now ;)
Here's its photo. Sorry for quality, but I don't have any camera around, so it's made with my cellphone.

If someone wondered if non-Linux Debian ports are worth try, then I have to say YES, THEY ARE!
Using this opportunity I would like to thank everyone involved in their development. Keep up the good work!
Now it's time to give a try to Debian GNU/Hurd... have to start gathering the hardware for that ;)

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous! You drink everyone under the table.

Did anybody try to use ipw2200 driver included in recent kernels?
I found out that most recent version of kernel includes this driver so I decided to switch from self-compiled 2.6.14.4 and ipw2200-source package for module to new version of kernel and driver compiled in it.
Unfortunatelly such compiled kernel can't find firmware either in /usr/local/lib/firmware nor /lib/firmware, although according to /lib/udev/hotplug.functions these directories are checked and firmware seems to be ok cause works fine with 2.6.14.4.
Is it at all possible to use this driver compiled in kernel (not as a module)?