Search Results: "Daniel Leidert"

28 June 2013

Daniel Leidert: Idea: A new toy (ein neues Spielzeug) ... HP Microserver N54L

Ich fertige regelm ig Backups meiner Systeme an. Diese werden auf der Systemplatte meines Notebooks abgelegt und via rsync auf mobilen Speicher dupliziert. Hierzu verwende ich eine USB-Festplatte. Diese enth lt auch Medien-Dateien und wird regelm ig an den Fernseher angeschlossen. Prinzipiell halte ich meine Daten daher f r sicher. Aber vor kurzem stie ich an die Grenzen ihrer Kapazit t. Schon l nger habe ich nach einer Alternative gesucht, nicht zuletzt da heute viel gr ere Festplatten m glich sind und mein Laptop ber einen eSATA-Anschluss verf gt, der schneller als USB2.0 ist. Meine bevorzugte Variante war ein FANTEC DB-ALU3e Geh use mit einer WD Red WD20EFRX 2TB (5400 RPM) Festplatte, die f r den 24/7 Betrieb zertifiziert ist (und zudem ber eine ausgezeichnete Reputation verf gt). Die Kombination lief sehr gut und schnell, sieht edel aus, ben tigt aber eine externe Stromversorgung. Ich kann Sie als Speicherl sung absolut empfehlen. Allerdings hatte ich zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch weitere Anspr che, die mit der o.g. L sung nicht zu befriedigen sind. So trage ich mich bereits l nger mit dem Gedanken an ein RAID-1-NAS. Au erdem spiegelt sich die Beanspruchung meiner Notebook-Festplatte durch das Pakete-Bauen f r Debian im S.M.A.R.T.-Status wieder. Daher wollte ich diese Arbeit an einen robusten lokalen buildd-Boliden abgeben und habe ber den Kauf eines g nstigen Rechners nachgedacht. Ein NAS verbraucht aber deutlich weniger Strom als ein Desktop-Rechner. Also wie l sst sich ein buildd und ein energiesparendes NAS vereinen? Per Zufall stie ich bei einem lokalen H ndler auf den HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L. Das Angebot klang super und so entschied ich mich zum Kauf meines neuen Spielzeuges: ein HP ProLiant MicroServer N54L, der zuk nftig folgende Aufgaben verrichten soll:
Datensicherung
Die Sicherung der Daten erfolgt cron-gesteuert auf den RAID-Verbund in eine gesonderte (verschl sselte) Partition. Der S.M.A.R.T.-Status der Festplatten wird via smartd berwacht. Sollte eine Platte kaputt gehen, bestehen gute Aussichten, die Daten zu retten. Eine zuk nftige Option w re auch noch ein RAID-6 Verbund.
NAS / File-Server
Das Ger t verf gt ber bis zu 6 SATA Anschl sse. Davon werden vier standardm ig via Wechselrahmen belegt. Die mitgelieferte 250GB Festplatte wird vorerst das Betriebssystem aufnehmen und an den drei verbleibenden Anschl ssen werden zun chst drei WD Red WD20EFRX 2TB (5400 RPM) Festplatten als RAID-5-Verbund f r den notwendigen Platz sorgen. Letzterer l sst sich ohne Erweiterung nur via Software-Raid und mdadm realisieren.
buildd
Betriebssystem wird Debian GNU/Linux. Der Hauptspeicher wird auf mindestens 8GB ECC-Ram aufger stet.
HTPC (XBMC)
Der Microserver l sst sich nicht als Massenspeicher an einen Fernseher anschlie en. Daher soll vorr. XBMC in Verbindung mit einem USB3.0 BR/DVD-Player den Server zum Entertainment-Ger t erheben.
Das ganze soll m glichst wenig Strom verbrauchen und leise sein. Zum Anschluss an das lokale Netzwerk habe ich mich f r WLAN entschieden, da kein Gigabit-Ethernet vorhanden ist. Folgende Teile ben tige ich f r "meinen" Server:
Server
HP ProLiant N54L MicroServer mit Turion II Neo 2,2 GHz, 2GB RAM/250GB HDD - ca. 200 EUR (lokal)
Bel ftung / Lautst rke
Scythe Slip Stream Geh usel fter 120mm 800RPM 11dB - ca. 9 EUR (SY1225SL12L)
Scythe Slip Stream Geh usel fter 120mm 500RPM 7,5dB - ca. 8 EUR (SY1225SL12SL)
Netzwerk
TP-Link TL-WN722N(C) 150Mbps USB-Adapter - ca. 15 EUR (TL-WN722N(C))
File-Server
3x WD Red WD20EFRX 2TB 5400 RPM SATA600 f r NAS 24/7 - ca. 95 EUR / St. (WD20EFRX)
buildd
8GB (2x4GB) Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1333 CL9 ECC Modul RAM-Kit - ca. 85 EUR (KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G)
16GB (2x8GB) Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1333 CL9 ECC Modul RAM-Kit - ca. 145 EUR (KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G)
HTPC
Sapphire Radeon HD 5450/6450/6570/6670/7750 PCIe 16x Low-Profile passiv/aktiv - ca. 25..100 EUR (11166-45-20G, 11190-09-20G, 11191-27-20G, 11191-02-20G, 11192-18-20G, 11202-10-20G)
SILVERSTONE PCIe 1x USB3.0 2xInt 2xExt - ca. 21 EUR (SST-EC04-P)
Logitech K400 od. Keysonic ACK-540RF - ca. 40 EUR (920-003100 bzw. ACK-540 RF)
BR/DVD-Player od. Brenner mit USB3.0 Anschluss - 50..100 EUR
LCD-Mod
LDC Display Modul mind. 4x20 - ca. 10 EUR
Interessant ist auch noch die Option einer echten RAID-Karte. Ich stie dabei auf die IBM ServeRAID M1015 (46M0831) und diesen Hinweis. Kauft man stattdessen den "Schl ssel" zur Freischaltung des vollen Funktionsumfanges, dann bezahlt man (lokal) zus tzlich ca. 150 EUR! Aber das nur BTW. N tzliche Links:

Daniel Leidert: Repository key expired VII

The repository-key expiration date has been extended recently. The expiration date of the renewed key has been set to be October 3rd, 2013. You will have to update the key in your apt keyring by either using (e.g.) the pgp.mit.edu keyserver:

apt-key adv --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --refresh-keys E394D996
or a local keyfile in ASCII format at wgdd_archive_key.asc

wget -O - http://debian.wgdd.de/stuff/wgdd_archive_key.asc apt-key add -
or by updating the wgdd-archive-keyring Debian package. Detailed information can also be found here.

Daniel Leidert: Testing SMART status of my Toshiba USB harddrive

I recently bought an external USB harddrive, made by Toshiba. It's the HDDR500E03X model with 500GB space, internal shock sensor and ramp loading technology. Now yesterday I learned, that I can also cover its health status using the smartmontools. The usb* device types did not fit, but the sat did. It is as easy as running:
smartctl -d sat -c /dev/sdb
smartctl -d sat -t long /dev/sdb

Daniel Leidert: Re: Making pbuilder just that little bit faster

It is true that making /var/cache/pbuilder/build a tmpfs makes a noticeable speed difference. But it seems you cannot cache the downloaded debs: ln: creating hard link ...: Invalid cross-device link.

29 December 2009

Daniel Leidert: Re: Making pbuilder just that little bit faster

It is true that making /var/cache/pbuilder/build a tmpfs makes a noticeable speed difference. But it seems you cannot cache the downloaded debs: ln: creating hard link ...: Invalid cross-device link.

7 December 2009

Daniel Leidert: Testing SMART status of my USB harddrive

I recently bought an external USB harddrive, made by Toshiba. It s the HDDR500E03X model with 500GB space, internal shock sensor and ramp loading technology. Now yesterday I learned, that I can also cover its health status using the smartmontools. The usb* device types did not fit, but the sat type worked. It is as easy as running:
smartctl -d sat -c /dev/sdb
smartctl -d sat -t long /dev/sdb

26 November 2009

Daniel Leidert: Toshiba Tecra A10 (PTSB5E) - Part III

Connecting a NOKIA 6310i mobile phone via serial DLR-3P cable and the serial connector of the laptop (for Bluetooth see part II): After installation of the gnokii package(s) the the configuration file says:
model = 6510
connection = dlr3p
Then gnokii reports:
$ gnokii --identify
GNOKII Version 0.6.28
IMEI         : XXXX
Manufacturer : Nokia
Modell       : 6310i
Product name : NPL-1
Revision     : V 5.22

Daniel Leidert: Toshiba Tecra A10 (PTSB5E) - Part II

So I got a little bit further with my little toy. Bluetooth Bluetooth works. The packages gnome-bluetooth and bluez are installed and the kernel module bluetooth is loaded. hciconfig reports this:
# hciconfig
hci0:	Type: USB
	BD Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8
	UP RUNNING PSCAN
	RX bytes:11354 acl:105 sco:0 events:286 errors:0
	TX bytes:4012 acl:99 sco:0 commands:66 errors:0
I tried to connect to a SAMSUNG and a NOKIA mobile phone. After enabling visibility of the phone the bluetooth-applet (gnome-bluetooth) showed the device. However I got an error saying The name org.openobex was not provided by any .service files when trying to access the mobile device. This was solved by installing obexd-server obex-data-server. Then I was able to access the phone contents via Bluetooth. Virtualization I recently tried to debug the mopac7 build error. I installed the qemu(-qemu-kvm) emulator. Loading of the kvm_intel module failed with kvm: disabled by bios . But this was easy to solve by enabling the Intel virtualization technology in the BIOS: push and hold the ESC key during startup until the laptop tells you to press the F1 key. Then enable the related BIOS option and done.

7 November 2009

Daniel Leidert: Good bye Warren,

A tragic loss has hit the open source software community. Warren Lyford DeLano, among other things, open source advocate, scientist and the author of the famous PyMOL molecular visualization system, suddenly passed away at the age of 37. I remember you as a genial, pleasent intelligent guy and software author. It has been a pleasure to work with you. Good bye.

3 November 2009

Daniel Leidert: Toshiba Tecra A10 (PTSB5E) - Part I

I recently got a Toshiba Tecra A10-1HU laptop. This is a series describing my experiences with this hardware using Debian Sid. This one comes without any operating system. So I got a recent testing-netinstall CD-image and ran the installer procedure (in expert mode). Everything went fine and I ended with a shiny Squeeze and kernel 2.6.30. Because I use Sid as my usual system, my first action was a dist-upgrade to Sid. This is what lspci -nn tells:
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
00:03.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset MEI Controller [8086:2a44] (rev 07)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10f5] (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:2942] (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 [8086:2944] (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller [8086:2917] (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller [8086:2929] (rev 03)
01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100 [8086:4232]
05:0b.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II [1180:0476] (rev ba)
05:0b.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller [1180:0832] (rev 04)
05:0b.2 SD Host controller [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter [1180:0822] (rev 21)
05:0b.3 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller [1180:0843] (rev ff)
05:0b.4 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter [1180:0592] (rev 11)
05:0b.5 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller [1180:0852] (rev 11)
Things that worked out-of-the-box: Display/Graphics (Intel GMA 4500M HD) The integrated graphics chipset, an Intel GMA 4500M HD, works with the xserver-xorg-video-intel package and the default X.org configuration. No custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf is necessary. The (IMHO non-reflecting?) display runs at 1280 800 at 60 Hz. Cable network device The integrated Intel 82567LM Gigabit Network device works with the e1000e kernel module. No customization was necessary. Touchpad/Trackpoint The notebook comes with the so called Toshiba Dual Pointing Device a touchpad (+2 buttons) and a trackpoint (+2 buttons). Both worked without customization. Energy savings/Suspend/Resume apmd and acpid handle this. No problems yet. Suspend/Resume works. I did not yet test (and I m not sure if I should) hibernate and uswsusp. Webcam The webcam is a CNA7157 model or at least detected as such. The video4linux modules handle it and the cheese application produces pictures. Volume-control wheel It works. Module and package information will follow as soon as I figure them out. Things that needed customization WLAN (Intel WiFi Link 5100) The notebook comes with an Intel WiFi Link 5100 device. It does not work out-of-the-box. Following this article, I ve installed the firmware-iwlwifi package and loaded the iwlagn module. Sound (Intel) For the sound device to work the snd_hda_intel module is necessary. Further the following lines must be added to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
# not sure about the first line, start adding the second only
options snd-cmipci mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388
options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=toshiba position_fix=1
Unsure/Not yet working Temperature sensor After installing the sensors-applet I got two identical temperature displays. I m not sure what they show. Anybody an idea how to examine this? Modem The notebook comes with an internal modem device:
00:03.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset MEI Controller [8086:2a44] (rev 07)
From what I read I need hsfmodem or the sl-modem packages. Unfortunately the latest version is not available for amd64 from the archive, although it seems to have been built. Untested I did not yet test Summit This what lspci -k -nn tells about the used kernel modules:
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0004]
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0004]
00:03.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset MEI Controller [8086:2a44] (rev 07)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10f5] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: e1000e
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 03)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:2942] (rev 03)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 [8086:2944] (rev 03)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller [8086:2917] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller [8086:2929] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: ahci
01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100 [8086:4232]
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1201]
	Kernel driver in use: iwlagn
05:0b.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II [1180:0476] (rev ba)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: yenta_cardbus
05:0b.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller [1180:0832] (rev 04)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci
05:0b.2 SD Host controller [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter [1180:0822] (rev 21)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
	Kernel driver in use: sdhci-pci
05:0b.3 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller [1180:0843] (rev ff)
	Kernel driver in use: ricoh-mmc
05:0b.4 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter [1180:0592] (rev 11)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
05:0b.5 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller [1180:0852] (rev 11)
	Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]

17 September 2009

Daniel Leidert: Green IT - a GSoC topic?

I m back from the conference at Berlin Faktor X - Tag der nat rlichen Ressourcen , a side-conference of the World Resources Forum 2009 in Davos. It was pretty interesting, although the topic is not new. If you don t know it: We are running out of (several) resources. The main topics going through the media are often energy and oil . Well, several metals will become much more problematic much more earlier! So, what is the aim: material-, product- and production-efficiency and recycling/upcycling(/downcycling). One of the topics mentioned at the conference was the IT industry. One of the keywords is green IT - more efficiency through IT, more efficiency by more efficient hardware, better recycling of hardware, . Another point was more efficiency by more efficient software . One of the questions mentioned was how much resources costs a click at google . I think, one can adapt this question to almost every software. We have several software, which is widely used. I ll just mention the apache web-server. Would t it be good to know, that this widely used software won t waste CPU cycles for nothing? So what about a GSoC project checking such often/widely used software for efficiency (besides checking for buffer or heap overflows or NULL pointer dereferences)? Can anybody imagine such a project? What is your opinion?

15 September 2009

Daniel Leidert: Writing manual pages in GROFF (1)

I always wanted to write a short howto for Debian package maintainers, how to write a manual page in GROFF. This is useful for short documents (for longer documents, docbook/docbook-xsl can be a good choice). I already have written some parts. However, here is the first part of hints. More might follow later. The delimiter in the NAME section The name section is (probably) the only place, where exactly one hypen-minus \- must appear. The hyphen-minus is the delimiter between the command name and one-line description.
.SH NAME
foo-bar \- foos the template foo-what-bar
Typical mistakes regarding paragraphs Using a .PP macro directly following a .SH or .SS macro is useless. This macro should be used between paragraphs:
.SH OPTIONS
The program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with
two dashes ( \-').
.PP
A summary of options is included below.
Options/File descriptions To describe options or files it s usually useful to make use of the .TP macro.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-f, \-\-force
Force the execution of the specified command.
.SH FILES
.TP
.I ~/.foobar
Per user configuration file.
To create more than one intended paragraph the .IP macro can be used.
.TP
.B \-f, \-\-force
Force the execution of the specified command.
.IP
This option has no effect in conjunction with \fB\-\-foo\fP.
Avoid hyphenation in URLs/URIs/paths Usually we don t want URLs or URIs to be hyphenated. This can be done using the \% sequence. Typical examples:
A short tutorial is available online at \fI\%http://foo.tld/some/path/here/manual.html\fP.
On a Debian system the complete text of the GNU General Public License
version 2 can be found in the file \fI\%/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL\-2\fP.
Referencing persons and their mail address The common markup is to write the person name in bold letters and the mail address in roman letters is put into angle brackets. It s usually a good idea to mark where the mail address starts and ends. We can use the \& sequence as shown in the following example:
\fBDaniel Leidert\fP <\&daniel.leidert@wgdd.de\&>

10 April 2009

Daniel Leidert: Abit AirPace, ath5k and eduroam

I tried to connect my university workstation to the wireless eduroam network on the campus. The workstation was delivered with an Abit AirPace wlan card (probably an Atheros 5006 chipset). The first thing necessary was the ath5k kernel module (my first shot using ndiswrapper didn t work). Both Debian lenny and Ubuntu intrepid-updates provide it. Now there are generally 3 ways to connect to the AP. All making use of wpasupplicant. Further the certificate (may differ for the universities) is necessary. /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf This is described at the sites of my university. It s written in German, but it should still be easy to understand. Let s just mention the snippet for /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf:
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=0
eapol_version=2
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1
network= 
	ssid="eduroam"
	key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
	proto=RSN
	pairwise=CCMP
	group=TKIP
	eap=TTLS
	anonymous_identity="anonymous@tu-dresden.de"
	identity="****@tu-dresden.de 
	password= **** 
	ca_cert= /etc/wpa_supplicant/TUD-CACert.pem 
	phase2= auth=PAP 
 
Instead of the script suggested at the site above, you can also use this snippet in /etc/network/interfaces:
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
	wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
/etc/network/interfaces It is also possible to put the values directly into /etc/network/interfaces:
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
	wpa-ssid eduroam
	wpa-proto RSN
	wpa-group CCMP TKIP
	wpa-pairwise CCMP TKIP
	wpa-key-mgmt WPA-EAP
	wpa-eap TTLS
	wpa-ca-cert /etc/wpa_supplicant/TUD-CACert.pem
	wpa-phase2 "auth=PAP"
	wpa-anonymous-identity anonymous@tu-dresden.de
	wpa-identity ****@tu-dresden.de
	wpa-password ****
network-manager Here is a screenshot of the authentication dialog. So now everybody at the University of Dresden wanting to use eduroam should hopefully be able to configure this connection on his Debian/Ubuntu system.

Daniel Leidert: (WW) AllowEmtpyInput is on, devices using drivers kbd or mouse will be disabled.

Maybe you will observe a changed mouse and keyboard behaviour after updating X.org recently in Debian Sid. Then you will probably discover the warning mentioned in the title in your X.org server log /var/log/Xorg.0.log. The very short and dirty solution to get things working for the moment is to put this into your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Section "ServerLayout"
    Option "AutoAddDevices" "off"
EndSection
See the first entry in /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg/NEWS.Debian.gz and follow the mentioned links for more information. However, the above solution should only be a temporary workaround: Try to migrate things (I will post changes for my system asap).

30 March 2009

Daniel Leidert: Network doesn t come up after update to udev 0.140

The recent update to udev 0.140 lead to a system without network access to me. The error messages were:
Running 0dns-down to make sure resolv.conf is ok...done.
Setting up networking....
Configuring network interfaces...
ioctl[SIOCGIFFLAGS]: No such device
Could not get interface  ath0  flags
ioctl[SIOCSIWPMKSA]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWMODE]: No such device
Could not configure driver to use managed mode
ioctl[SIOCGIWRANGE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCGIFINDEX]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWAP]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCGIFFLAGS]: No such device
wpa_supplicant: /sbin/wpa_supplicant daemon failed to start
/etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant exited with return code 1
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
ath0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
SIOCSIFNETMASK: No such device
SIOCSIFBRDADDR: No such device
ath0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
ath0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Failed to bring up ath0.
done.
It seems, the update added rules to /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules by increasing the device number and applying the last applicable NAME directive instead of the first one. This lead to the following file here:
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS address =="XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:a7", ATTRS type =="1", NAME="ath0"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS address =="XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:18", NAME="eth0"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS address =="XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX", NAME="eth1"
# PCI device 0x10ec:0x8139 (8139too)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR address =="XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:18", ATTR type =="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth2"
# PCI device 0x168c:0x0013 (ath_pci)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR address =="XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:a7", ATTR type =="1", KERNEL=="ath*", NAME="ath1"
So the devices created were eth2 and ath1 but /etc/network/interfaces contained entries for eth0 and ath0. So fixed /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and rebooted. <rant>Is it really necessary to break network access with an update???</rant> Update I forgot this one: #521521.

5 March 2009

Daniel Leidert: Debian/Ubuntu packages of bluefish-unstable for amd64

Debian- and Ubuntu-packages of bluefish-unstable - the development series of bluefish - for the amd64 architecture are now available.

16 February 2009

Daniel Leidert: Update to Lenny

Now that Lenny has been released I ve updated some machines and found just one flaw. There is a cvsd installation, which has been extended with an OpenSSH server. After the upgrade the server refused the connection. Enabling debugging output showed:
sshd[...]: fatal: ssh_selinux_getctxbyname: ssh_selinux_getctxbyname: security_getenforce() failed
in the log. Searching the web a bit revealed, that the CHROOT now needs a mounted /proc. Done and everything works :)

16 May 2008

Daniel Leidert: /usr/lib/python2.3 garbage

Yesterday I stumbled about files and dead symlinks left in /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/ on my Sid box. These files/symlinks seem to have been shipped/created(?) by:
python-ldap python-cairo python-crypto kiki python-foomatic python-mysqldb
python-logilab-common python-egenix-mxtools python-numarray python-pygresql
python-imaging-sane python-imaging python-xml python-reportlab
Deleting /usr/lib/python2.3 (dpkg -S didn’t show any package relationship nor did I find something in /var/lib/dpkg/info/) and reinstalling the above mentioned packages did not recreate the files/symlinks. So it seems the directory can be safely removed. Maybe I missed some announcement or one (or more) packages need to be fixed. No time to examine it atm. Update This is known as Debian bug #409390. Thanks to Josselin Mouette for the information.

13 May 2008

Daniel Leidert: [DSA 1571-1] New openssl packages fix predictable random number generator

Ok, shit sometimes also happens to Debian users. Now I read a lot of FUD, flames, arrogant claims and much more bad things, including blaming of downstream in general. Well, Debian maintainers are NOT upstream authors. Maintainers often care about a lot more than just 1 package. Now I wonder if one can really expect, that maintainers know the source code of their packages as good as upstream authors do? Is this, what the user or the Debian project expects from a package maintainer? I agree, that this would be the ideal situation. But how realistic is it, if one maintains 10, 20 or more packages? Normally users report us issues. We take a look at the source, try to catch the issue, track it down and fix it. And IMHO in almost all cases this is enough and it lets us handle several packages. And maybe this is also, what happened here. The maintainer got a report, tracked it down and tried to fix it. It seems, he posted it to the openssl-dev list, which is to my reading considered for such questions, and got a positive response. And with fixing it, he made a horrible mistake. But apparently it also seems, that the question had been discussed earlier more than just once (I wish, the OpenSSL guys would have created the FAQ entry earlier). I don’t want to blame the maintainer for doing this mistake. We are humans. But do we need another instance, that (periodically) checks (probably only Debian-specific) patches/changes to security relevent software or do we need different requirements for maintainers of such software [1] or should we simply archive this under “Shit sometimes happens … even to Debian users”? [1] Consider gnupg which is currently almost unmaintained. It also has Debian specific patches applied and I wonder, which skills the new maintainer should or must(?) have (IIRC this question was raised in the linked threads too)?

29 April 2008

Daniel Leidert: Sorry

I’m sorry for any inconvenience you had yesterday or today trying to access my web services. But I had to perform some long standing maintenance tasks. The service is now running again. If you still observe problems, please don’t hesitate to tell me.

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