Search Results: "Kumar Appaiah"

23 August 2016

Reproducible builds folks: Reproducible Builds: week 69 in Stretch cycle

What happened in the Reproducible Builds effort between Sunday August 14 and Saturday August 20 2016: Fasten your seatbelts Important note: we enabled build path variation for unstable now, so your package(s) might become unreproducible, while previously it was said to be reproducible given a specific build path it probably still is reproducible but read on for the details below in the tests.reproducible-builds.org section! As said many times: this is still research and we are working to make it reality. Media coverage Daniel Stender blogged about python packaging and explained some caveats regarding reproducible builds. Toolchain developments Thomas Schmitt uploaded xorriso which now obeys SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. As stated in its man pages: 
ENVIRONMENT
[...]
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH  belongs to the specs of reproducible-builds.org.  It
is supposed to be either undefined or to contain a decimal number which
tells the seconds since january 1st 1970. If it contains a number, then
it is used as time value to set the  default  of  --modification-date=,
--gpt_disk_guid,  and  --set_all_file_dates.  Startup files and program
options can override the effect of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.
Packages reviewed and fixed, and bugs filed The following packages have become reproducible after being fixed: The following updated packages appear to be reproducible now, for reasons we were not able to figure out. (Relevant changelogs did not mention reproducible builds.) The following 2 packages were not changed, but have become reproducible due to changes in their build-dependencies: tagsoup tclx8.4. Some uploads have addressed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them: Patches submitted that have not made their way to the archive yet: Bug tracker house keeping: Reviews of unreproducible packages 55 package reviews have been added, 161 have been updated and 136 have been removed in this week, adding to our knowledge about identified issues. 2 issue types have been updated: Weekly QA work FTBFS bugs have been reported by: diffoscope development Chris Lamb, Holger Levsen and Mattia Rizzolo worked on diffoscope this week. Improvements were made to SquashFS and JSON comparison, the https://try.diffoscope.org/ web service, documentation, packaging, and general code quality. diffoscope 57, 58, and 59 were uploaded to unstable by Chris Lamb. Versions 57 and 58 were both broken, so Holger set up a job on jenkins.debian.net to test diffoscope on each git commit. He also wrote a CONTRIBUTING document to help prevent this from happening in future. From these efforts, we were also able to learn that diffoscope is now reproducible even when built across multiple architectures: 
< h01ger>   https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/rb-pkg/unstable/amd64/diffoscope.html shows these packages were built on amd64:
< h01ger>    bd21db708fe91c01ba1c9cb35b9d41a7c9b0db2b 62288 diffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>    366200bf2841136a4c8f8c30bdc87057d59a4cdd 20146 trydiffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>   and on i386:
< h01ger>    bd21db708fe91c01ba1c9cb35b9d41a7c9b0db2b 62288 diffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>    366200bf2841136a4c8f8c30bdc87057d59a4cdd 20146 trydiffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>   and on armhf:
< h01ger>    bd21db708fe91c01ba1c9cb35b9d41a7c9b0db2b 62288 diffoscope_59_all.deb
< h01ger>    366200bf2841136a4c8f8c30bdc87057d59a4cdd 20146 trydiffoscope_59_all.deb
And those also match the binaries uploaded by Chris in his diffoscope 59 binary upload to ftp.debian.org, yay! Eating our own dogfood and enjoying it! tests.reproducible-builds.org Debian related: The last change probably will have an impact you will see: your package might become unreproducible in unstable and this will be shown on tracker.debian.org, while it will still be reproducible in testing. We've done this, because we think reproducible builds are possible with arbitrary build paths. But: we don't think those are a realistic goal for stretch, where we still recommend to use .buildinfo to record the build patch and then do rebuilds using that path. We are doing this, because besides doing theoretical groundwork we also have a practical goal: enable users to independently verify builds. And if they only can do this with a fixed path, so be it. For now :) To be clear: for Stretch we recommend that reproducible builds are done in the same build path as the "original" build. Finally, and just for our future references, when we enabled build path variation on Saturday, August 20th 2016, the numbers for unstable were:
suite all reproducible unreproducible ftbfs depwait not for this arch blacklisted
unstable/amd64 24693 21794 (88.2%) 1753 (7.1%) 972 (3.9%) 65 (0.2%) 95 (0.3%) 10 (0.0%)
unstable/i386 24693 21182 (85.7%) 2349 (9.5%) 972 (3.9%) 76 (0.3%) 103 (0.4%) 10 (0.0%)
unstable/armhf 24693 20889 (84.6%) 2050 (8.3%) 1126 (4.5%) 199 (0.8%) 296 (1.1%) 129 (0.5%)
Misc. Ximin Luo updated our git setup scripts to make it easier for people to write proper descriptions for our repositories. This week's edition was written by Ximin Luo and Holger Levsen and reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible Builds folks on IRC.

9 August 2016

Reproducible builds folks: Reproducible builds: week 67 in Stretch cycle

What happened in the Reproducible Builds effort between Sunday July 31 and Saturday August 6 2016: Toolchain development and fixes Packages fixed and bugs filed The following 24 packages have become reproducible - in our current test setup - due to changes in their build-dependencies: alglib aspcud boomaga fcl flute haskell-hopenpgp indigo italc kst ktexteditor libgroove libjson-rpc-cpp libqes luminance-hdr openscenegraph palabos petri-foo pgagent sisl srm-ifce vera++ visp x42-plugins zbackup The following packages have become reproducible after being fixed: The following newly-uploaded packages appear to be reproducible now, for reasons we were not able to figure out. (Relevant changelogs did not mention reproducible builds.) Some uploads have addressed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them: Patches submitted that have not made their way to the archive yet: Package reviews and QA These are reviews of reproduciblity issues of Debian packages. 276 package reviews have been added, 172 have been updated and 44 have been removed in this week. 7 FTBFS bugs have been reported by Chris Lamb. Reproducibility tools Test infrastructure For testing the impact of allowing variations of the buildpath (which up until now we required to be identical for reproducible rebuilds), Reiner Herrmann contribed a patch which enabled build path variations on testing/i386. This is possible now since dpkg 1.18.10 enables the --fixdebugpath build flag feature by default, which should result in reproducible builds (for C code) even with varying paths. So far we haven't had many results due to disturbances in our build network in the last days, but it seems this would mean roughly between 5-15% additional unreproducible packages - compared to what we see now. We'll keep you updated on the numbers (and problems with compilers and common frameworks) as we find them. lynxis continued work to test LEDE and OpenWrt on two different hosts, to include date variation in the tests. Mattia and Holger worked on the (mass) deployment scripts, so that the - for space reasons - only jenkins.debian.net GIT clone resides in ~jenkins-adm/ and not anymore in Holger's homedir, so that soon Mattia (and possibly others!) will be able to fully maintain this setup, while Holger is doing siesta. Miscellaneous Chris, dkg, h01ger and Ximin attended a Core Infrastricture Initiative summit meeting in New York City, to discuss and promote this Reproducible Builds project. The CII was set up in the wake of the Heartbleed SSL vulnerability to support software projects that are critical to the functioning of the internet. This week's edition was written by Ximin Luo and Holger Levsen and reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible Builds folks on IRC.

3 October 2012

Kumar Appaiah: A backup workflow with bup

It's important to back things up. You should also make your life easier by using some good software. I use obnam for some backups, but I wanted to try out bup for a new backup workflow I needed. I will describe the workflow here.The situation: I have a laptop with things to be backed up. I also have a Raspberry Pi which I use as a network attached storage (it has a 1 TB external drive attached to it) and runs Raspbian Wheezy on it. Naturally, you can do this on any NAS running some GNU/Linux variant. In addition, I also have an external portable USB hard disk where another backup copy will be stored. How do I automate this?Here is how I went about this process. First, for the Raspberry Pi:
  1. First, identify the directory or directories to be backed up. To keep this simple, the directory I am backing up is /home/kumar/Work.
  2. On the Raspberry Pi, install bup. If you want to build it from the git clone, you would need python-dev, and pandoc for the documentation. 
    sudo aptitude install pandoc python-dev
git clone git://github.com/apenwarr/bup.git
cd bup;make;sudo make install
  3. Initialize the backup directory on the Raspberry Pi: 
    BUP_DIR=/home/kumar/BACKUPS bup init
    BACKUPS is the place where bup is asked to store the backups (much like it's analogue of .git). You can store all your backups within this directory, and you can still classify backup sets within this directory with different names (much like git branches).
  4. On the local machine, initialize the backup directory. 
    bup index -uv /home/kumar/Work
  5. Back it up. This will take time the first time, if the Work directory has several contents within it. 
    bup save -r kumar@<raspberry_pi_ip_address>:BACKUPS -n workbackup /home/kumar/Work
    workbackup is the name of the backup set. This can be paperbackup or databackup or notesbackup so that several classes can be backed up within the BACKUPS directory.
  6. Now, you have backed things up. Make changes in the Work directory. For instance, add/edit/remove/move some files.
  7. Rerun the index and save commands from steps 4 and 5 above. Enjoy the speedup and ability to rewind to the previous state.
  8. Test restoration of ONE directory of backup (just to save time) on Pi itself directly on the Pi: 
    bup -d /home/kumar/BACKUPS/ restore -C /tmp/ /workbackup/latest/home/kumar/Work/offset-coupling-params
    Then scp it back if you need it.
  9. Alternative: Use fuse. On the Pi: 
    sudo aptitude install python-fuse
sudo adduser kumar fuse
mkdir Mount
bup -d /home/kumar/BACKUPS fuse Mount
Then cd into Mount and cp/scp the correct files wherever.
fusermount -u Mount
  10. Once happy, write the bup index/bup save commands into a script and run it periodically to back up (check this at the end of the post). Have fun.
Next, to prepare the external hard disk, I went with the old-style autofs automounting solution:
  1. To automount the disk, in /etc/auto.master, add 
    /auto			/etc/auto.misc	--timeout=60
  2. In /etc/auto.misc add: 
    backupdrive	-fstype=btrfs	:UUID="7927a7ab-8c3f-4198-bd73-d3cc519a9ac3"
    fstype may need changing for your file system, and UUID can be found using blkid on the exact partition of the hard disk you wish to back up to.
  3. Initialize the backup directory: 
    sudo mkdir /auto/backupdrive/BACKUPS
sudo chown kumar.kumar /auto/backupdrive/BACKUPS
bup -d /auto/backupdrive/BACKUPS/ init
  4. Index and back up: 
    bup -d /auto/backupdrive/BACKUPS/ index -uv /home/kumar/Work
bup -d /auto/backupdrive/BACKUPS/ save -n workbackup /home/kumar/Work
  5. Make changes in the Work directory. Add/edit/remove/move files.
  6. Rerun index and save commands from step 5. Enjoy the speed.
  7. Test restoration of ONE directory of backup from removable disk:
    bup -d /auto/backupdrive/BACKUPS/ restore -C /tmp/ /workbackup/latest/home/kumar/Work/offset-coupling-params
  8. Once happy, write the bup index/bup save commands into a script and run it periodically to back up. Have fun.
Finally, a quick script to automate all of the above.
#!/bin/sh
bup index -u /home/kumar/Work
bup save -r kumar@<raspberry_pi_ip_address>:BACKUPS -n workbackup /home/kumar/Work
if ls /auto/backupdrive/ 2> /dev/null;then
    echo Backing up to the removable disk...
    bup -d /auto/backupdrive/BACKUPS/ index -u /home/kumar/Work
    bup -d /auto/backupdrive/BACKUPS/ save -n workbackup /home/kumar/Work
    echo Backed up to the removable disk! Yay!
else
    echo WARNING: Not backing up to the removable disk
fi
What this script does it, it backs up to the NAS, and then checks if the external disk is connected. If the disk is mounted, then it backs up to that disk as well. It might be a good idea to cron or anacron this script, or have someone remind you to run this periodically. The only limitation I have is that you can't use bup restore to restore from a remote repository yet, but that isn't a huge issue for me now. In addition, metadata is not stored by the bup save/restore commands. You would have to use split and join with tar to get that. However, bup is fast moving, so I'd expect these features soon. Till then, this workflow works all right for data only backups.Although this is just a mental dump of the procedure I made for myself, suggestions for improvement are welcome. Thanks.

16 September 2012

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2012/37

I didn't get very far this week with my RCBW efforts, but luckily we have BSPs going on :) Here's my short list:

9 June 2012

Christian Perrier: 9 languages to be deactivated in Debian Installer

Re-publishing this today, as a number was wrong in previous post. Thanks also to Kumar Appaiah who, even though he's not a Tamil native speaker (he's the Hindi translator) fixed the few strings in Tamil that theoretically made it unsuitable for being in wheezy's installer. At this very moment, it means that I would deactivate 9 languages: Update: Kumard Appaih *is* a Tamil native speaker. Sorry for the misunderstanding!

8 June 2012

Christian Perrier: 9 languages to be deactivated in Debian Installer

Re-publishing this today, as a number was wrong in previous post. Thanks also to Kumar Appaiah who, even though he's not a Tamil native speaker (he's the Hindi translator) fixed the few strings in Tamil that theoretically made it unsuitable for being in wheezy's installer. At this very moment, it means that I would deactivate 9 languages:

15 June 2011

Christian Perrier: So, what happened with Kikithon?

I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but now I'll try to summarize the story of a great surprise and a big moment for me. All this started when my wife Elizabeth and my son Jean-Baptiste wanted to do something special for my 50th birthday. So, it indeed all started months ago, probably early March or something (I don't yet have all the details). Jean-Baptiste described this well on the web site, so I won't go again into details, but basically, this was about getting birthday wishes from my "free software family" in, as you might guess, as many languages as possible. Elizabeth brought the original idea and JB helped her by setting up the website and collecting e-mail addresses of people I usually work with: he grabbed addresses from PO files on Debian website, plus some in his own set of GPG signatures and here we go. And then he started poking dozens of you folks in order to get your wishes for this birthday. Gradually, contributions accumulated on the website, with many challenges for them: be sure to get as many people as possible, poking and re-poking all those FLOSS people who keep forgetting things... It seems that poking people is something that's probably in the Perrier's genes! And they were doing all this without me noticing. As usually in Debian, releasing on time is a no-no. So, it quickly turned out that having everything ready by April 2nd wouldn't be possible. So, their new goal was offering this to me on Pentecost Sunday, which was yesterday. And...here comes the gift. Aha, this looks like a photo album. Could it be a "50 years of Christian" album? But, EH, why is that pic of me, with the red Debconf5 tee-shirt (that features a world map) and a "bubulle" sign, in front of the book? But, EH EH EH, what the .... are doing these word by H0lger, then Fil, then Joey doing on the following pages? And only then, OMG, I discover the real gift they prepared. 106, often bilingual, wishes from 110 people (some were couples!). 18 postcards (one made of wood). 45 languages. One postcard with wishes from nearly every distro representatives at LinuxTag 2011. Dozens of photos from my friends all around the world. All this in a wonderful album. I can't tell what I said. Anyway, JB was shooting a video, so...we'll see. OK, I didn't cry...but it wasn't that far and emotion was really really intense. Guys, ladies, gentlemen, friends....it took me a while to realize what you contributed to. It took me the entire afternoon to realize the investment put by Elizabeth and JB (and JB's sisters support) into this. Yes, as many of you wrote, I have an awesome family and they really know how to share their love. I also have an awesome virtual family all around the world. Your words are wholeheartedly appreciated and some were indeed much much much appreciated. Of course, I'll have the book in Banja Luka so that you can see the result. I know (because JB and Elizabeth told me) that many of you were really awaiting to see how it would be received (yes, that includes you, in Germany, who I visited in early May!!!). Again, thank you so much for this incredible gift. Thank you Holger Levsen, Phil Hands, Joey Hess, Lior Kaplan, Martin Michlmayr, Alberto Gonzalez Iniesta, Kenshi "best friend" Muto, Praveen Arimbrathodiyil, Felipe Augusto van de Wiel, Ana Carolina Comandulli (5 postcards!), Stefano Zacchiroli (1st contribution received by JB, of course), Gunnar Wolf, Enriiiiiico Zini, Clytie Siddall, Frans Pop (by way of Clytie), Tenzin Dendup, Otavio Salvador, Neil McGovern, Konstantinos Margaritis, Luk Claes, Jonas Smedegaard, Pema Geyleg, Meike "sp tzle queen" Reichle, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Torsten Werner, "nette BSD" folks, CentOS Ralph and Brian, Fedora people, SUSE's Jan, Ubuntu's Lucia Tamara, Skolelinux' Paul, Rapha l Hertzog, Lars Wirzenius, Andrew McMillan (revenge in September!), Yasa Giridhar Appaji Nag (now I know my name in Telugu), Amaya Rodrigo, St phane Glondu, Martin Krafft, Jon "maddog" Hall (and God save the queen), Eddy Petri or, Daniel Nylander, Aiet Kolkhi, Andreas "die Katze geht in die K che, wunderbar" Tille, Paul "lets bend the elbow" Wise, Jordi "half-marathon in Banja Luka" Mallach, Steve "as ever-young as I am" Langasek, Obey Arthur Liu, YAMANE Hideki, Jaldhar H. Vyas, Vikram Vincent, Margarita "Bronx cross-country queen" Manterola, Patty Langasek, Aigars Mahinovs (finding a pic *with* you on it is tricky!), Thepittak Karoonboonyanan, Javier "nobody expects the Spanish inquisition" Fern ndez-Sanguino, Varun Hiremath, Moray Allan, David Moreno Garza, Ralf "marathon-man" Treinen, Arief S Fitrianto, Penny Leach, Adam D. Barrat, Wolfgang Martin Borgert, Christine "the mentee overtakes the mentor" Spang, Arjuna Rao Chevala, Gerfried "my best contradictor" Fuchs, Stefano Canepa, Samuel Thibault, Eloy "first samba maintainer" Par s, Josip Rodin, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Steve McIntyre, Guntupalli Karunakar, Jano Gulja , Karolina Kali , Ben Hutchings, Matej Kova i , Khoem Sokhem, Lisandro "I have the longest name in this list" Dami n Nicanor P rez-Meyer, Amanpreet Singh Alam, H ctor Or n, Hans Nordhaugn, Ivan Mas r, Dr. Tirumurti Vasudevan, John "yes, Kansas is as flat as you can imagine" Goerzen, Jean-Baptiste "Piwet" Perrier, Elizabeth "I love you" Perrier, Peter Eisentraut, Jesus "enemy by nature" Climent, Peter Palfrader, Vasudev Kamath, Miroslav "Chicky" Ku e, Mart n Ferrari, Ollivier Robert, Jure uhalev, Yunqiang Su, Jonathan McDowell, Sampada Nakhare, Nayan Nakhare, Dirk "rendez-vous for Chicago marathon" Eddelbuettel, Elian Myftiu, Tim Retout, Giuseppe Sacco, Changwoo Ryu, Pedro Ribeoro, Miguel "oh no, not him again" Figueiredo, Ana Guerrero, Aur lien Jarno, Kumar Appaiah, Arangel Angov, Faidon Liambotis, Mehdi Dogguy, Andrew Lee, Russ Allbery, Bj rn Steensrud, Mathieu Parent, Davide Viti, Steinar H. Gunderson, Kurt Gramlich, Vanja Cvelbar, Adam Conrad, Armi Be irovi , Nattie Mayer-Hutchings, Joerg "dis shuld be REJECTed" Jaspert and Luca Capello. Let's say it gain:

13 June 2011

Christian Perrier: So, what happened with Kikithon?

I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but now I'll try to summarize the story of a great surprise and a big moment for me. All this started when my wife Elizabeth and my son Jean-Baptiste wanted to do something special for my 50th birthday. So, it indeed all started months ago, probably early March or something (I don't yet have all the details). Jean-Baptiste described this well on the web site, so I won't go again into details, but basically, this was about getting birthday wishes from my "free software family" in, as you might guess, as many languages as possible. Elizabeth brought the original idea and JB helped her by setting up the website and collecting e-mail addresses of people I usually work with: he grabbed addresses from PO files on Debian website, plus some in his own set of GPG signatures and here we go. And then he started poking dozens of you folks in order to get your wishes for this birthday. Gradually, contributions accumulated on the website, with many challenges for them: be sure to get as many people as possible, poking and re-poking all those FLOSS people who keep forgetting things... It seems that poking people is something that's probably in the Perrier's genes! And they were doing all this without me noticing. As usually in Debian, releasing on time is a no-no. So, it quickly turned out that having everything ready by April 2nd wouldn't be possible. So, their new goal was offering this to me on Pentecost Sunday, which was yesterday. And...here comes the gift. Aha, this looks like a photo album. Could it be a "50 years of Christian" album? But, EH, why is that pic of me, with the red Debconf5 tee-shirt (that features a world map) and a "bubulle" sign, in front of the book? But, EH EH EH, what the .... are doing these word by H0lger, then Fil, then Joey doing on the following pages? And only then, OMG, I discover the real gift they prepared. 106, often bilingual, wishes from 110 people (some were couples!). 18 postcards (one made of wood). 45 languages. One postcard with wishes from nearly every distro representatives at LinuxTag 2011. Dozens of photos from my friends all around the world. All this in a wonderful album. I can't tell what I said. Anyway, JB was shooting a video, so...we'll see. OK, I didn't cry...but it wasn't that far and emotion was really really intense. Guys, ladies, gentlemen, friends....it took me a while to realize what you contributed to. It took me the entire afternoon to realize the investment put by Elizabeth and JB (and JB's sisters support) into this. Yes, as many of you wrote, I have an awesome family and they really know how to share their love. I also have an awesome virtual family all around the world. Your words are wholeheartedly appreciated and some were indeed much much much appreciated. Of course, I'll have the book in Banja Luka so that you can see the result. I know (because JB and Elizabeth told me) that many of you were really awaiting to see how it would be received (yes, that includes you, in Germany, who I visited in early May!!!). Again, thank you so much for this incredible gift. Thank you Holger Levsen, Phil Hands, Joey Hess, Lior Kaplan, Martin Michlmayr, Alberto Gonzalez Iniesta, Kenshi "best friend" Muto, Praveen Arimbrathodiyil, Felipe Augusto van de Wiel, Ana Carolina Comandulli (5 postcards!), Stefano Zacchiroli (1st contribution received by JB, of course), Gunnar Wolf, Enriiiiiico Zini, Clytie Siddall, Frans Pop (by way of Clytie), Tenzin Dendup, Otavio Salvador, Neil McGovern, Konstantinos Margaritis, Luk Claes, Jonas Smedegaard, Pema Geyleg, Meike "sp tzle queen" Reichle, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Torsten Werner, "nette BSD" folks, CentOS Ralph and Brian, Fedora people, SUSE's Jan, Ubuntu's Lucia Tamara, Skolelinux' Paul, Rapha l Hertzog, Lars Wirzenius, Andrew McMillan (revenge in September!), Yasa Giridhar Appaji Nag (now I know my name in Telugu), Amaya Rodrigo, St phane Glondu, Martin Krafft, Jon "maddog" Hall (and God save the queen), Eddy Petri or, Daniel Nylander, Aiet Kolkhi, Andreas "die Katze geht in die K che, wunderbar" Tille, Paul "lets bend the elbow" Wise, Jordi "half-marathon in Banja Luka" Mallach, Steve "as ever-young as I am" Langasek, Obey Arthur Liu, YAMANE Hideki, Jaldhar H. Vyas, Vikram Vincent, Margarita "Bronx cross-country queen" Manterola, Patty Langasek, Aigars Mahinovs (finding a pic *with* you on it is tricky!), Thepittak Karoonboonyanan, Javier "nobody expects the Spanish inquisition" Fern ndez-Sanguino, Varun Hiremath, Moray Allan, David Moreno Garza, Ralf "marathon-man" Treinen, Arief S Fitrianto, Penny Leach, Adam D. Barrat, Wolfgang Martin Borgert, Christine "the mentee overtakes the mentor" Spang, Arjuna Rao Chevala, Gerfried "my best contradictor" Fuchs, Stefano Canepa, Samuel Thibault, Eloy "first samba maintainer" Par s, Josip Rodin, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Steve McIntyre, Guntupalli Karunakar, Jano Gulja , Karolina Kali , Ben Hutchings, Matej Kova i , Khoem Sokhem, Lisandro "I have the longest name in this list" Dami n Nicanor P rez-Meyer, Amanpreet Singh Alam, H ctor Or n, Hans Nordhaugn, Ivan Mas r, Dr. Tirumurti Vasudevan, John "yes, Kansas is as flat as you can imagine" Goerzen, Jean-Baptiste "Piwet" Perrier, Elizabeth "I love you" Perrier, Peter Eisentraut, Jesus "enemy by nature" Climent, Peter Palfrader, Vasudev Kamath, Miroslav "Chicky" Ku e, Mart n Ferrari, Ollivier Robert, Jure uhalev, Yunqiang Su, Jonathan McDowell, Sampada Nakhare, Nayan Nakhare, Dirk "rendez-vous for Chicago marathon" Eddelbuettel, Elian Myftiu, Tim Retout, Giuseppe Sacco, Changwoo Ryu, Pedro Ribeoro, Miguel "oh no, not him again" Figueiredo, Ana Guerrero, Aur lien Jarno, Kumar Appaiah, Arangel Angov, Faidon Liambotis, Mehdi Dogguy, Andrew Lee, Russ Allbery, Bj rn Steensrud, Mathieu Parent, Davide Viti, Steinar H. Gunderson, Kurt Gramlich, Vanja Cvelbar, Adam Conrad, Armi Be irovi , Nattie Mayer-Hutchings, Joerg "dis shuld be REJECTed" Jaspert and Luca Capello. Let's say it gain:

23 March 2011

Kumar Appaiah: Review of "Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook"

I have been reading Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook by Sarath Lakshman, published by Packt, for a while. While most people I know learn shell scripts themselves, I was looking to refresh my concepts a little as well as have a reference lying around on the table for fast access. Since I was asked to review it for someone else, I thought I might as well post the review here.First of all, let me remark by saying that shell scripting is something learned more on a need basis than as a tool to solve the main problem. People would seldom write shell scripts as standalone programs (exceptions exist). However, what makes shell scripting invaluable to know is the fact that knowing some tricks can save several minutes, or hours, of work by automating and simplifying certain tasks, generally (but not restricted to) file management and data processing. Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook does go quite far in pursuing this goal, and is appropriate for both beginners who are looking to gain dexterity in shell scripting, as well as intermediate users who wish to polish their skills. The book also can double up as a quick reference, though I would argue that the "Advanced Bash Scripting Guide" would suit that more.At the outset, the author clarifies that the focus will be on Bash. This, people may or may not like, but the fact that bash has become ubiquitous in terms of the available shells on Unix-like systems today, starting out with bash is not a bad thing to do. Besides, learning other shell scripting languages while knowing bash isn't too hard, since the paradigm remains the same.Let's go through the books from the aspects I found most relevant.OrganizationThe book is organized into chapters based more on utility than scripting concepts themselves, although the language aspects are brought onto the reader gradually. For instance, the examples in the first chapter focus more on the basic data elements (variables, arrays, functions etc.) as well as operators (for numbers, files etc.), and all the examples demonstrate simple usage of these concepts, and he further chapters build upon these in a gradual manner.At the same time, if the reader has some familiarity with shell scripting and needs to only refresh or learn a certain concept, he/she needs to just read the relevant chapter. It is not too difficult to grasp the examples of the later chapters, provided some basic shell knowledge is assumed.Content and PresentationA positive trait in the presentation of this book is that it is all based on practical everyday examples which, with minor adaptation, can be used by many for their own daily tasks. For instance, there are several examples which describe searching for and processing files, which, I'd imagine, many users would want to do on a regular basis. Thus, providing realistic examples allows the book to double its utility. The language and approach used is simple and conversational, and the presentation is very clear, with each idea being described as a problem statement followed by a "How to do it" section with the actual code, and ending with a discussion of the nitty-gritties of the code. It is easy to go for a quick scan for those in a hurry, while those who with to read in more detail will not be disappointed either.The book also covers a wide array of applications. For instance, there are examples on automating fetching web pages and processing them, demonstrations of parsing and simplifying and even some queries around databases wrapped around in shell. It also spans to utilities and tasks connected to statistics, backups, compression, version control and many more.Breadth and DepthThe book goes into a fair amount of detail in terms of describing the shell scripting concept under consideration. The examples used go into a fair amount of detail in order to describe to the user all the aspects involved in the method or command being used. The concepts described are fairly complete, and would be sufficient for the reader to use immediately or with just a little bit of fine tuning. In terms of breadth, the book covers most of the features of shell scripting while also describing the various facilities the shell provides access to in a Unix-like environment. Thus, the book does not disappoint in this front either.In summary...In summary, probably the only thing I'd have liked to see more of is some emphasis on how to write more efficient shell scripts. Granted, most of the shell scripts described in the book are very simple and succinct, but a some words on how loops can be made better, or how to spot situations where pipes are not needed to solve a problem etc. might have been a nice addition. Some explanation of differences with dash, tcsh, zsh etc. might also have been nice, since a lot of users have different default shells. But all this isn't going to prevent me from giving this book a high rating, since it delivers quite well on the promises it makes at the beginning.This is definitely a good book to have near your desk, and kudos to the author for having taken the effort to put it together. I would highly recommend it to the beginner and occasional shell user for a thorough read, and to an intermediate to have on his/her desk for borrowing the cool scripting ideas and applications the author has written in this book.

3 March 2011

Kumar Appaiah: A new book on shell scripting

Over the next month or so, I've decided to read an interesting book which covers one of my favourite topics, shell scripting. The book is Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook. It has been quite a while since I have actually read a book on a programming topic (other than K&R or the like), but I guess it does feel "complete" to gain knowledge from a book and feel as though we have gained at least some mastery over the topic!Updates on this will follow.

10 December 2010

Kumar Appaiah: Further update on DuckDuckGo Debian goodies

As a follow up to my previous post on the same topic, now DuckDuckGo supports what I wanted:Someone rightly pointed out in my last post that anyone can have these customizations in any good browser. That is correct, but often, I use a browser in a machine where my custom quick-searches are not available, but a quick access to my search engine is. In such situations, I find this useful. I thought some others might like it too. :-)

3 December 2010

Kumar Appaiah: Debian Goodies in DuckDuckGo

So, DuckDuckgo now has !bang search goodness for Debian packages (!dpackages) and Debian BTS (!dbugs). The BTS search actually launches the "search", while I'd have preferred just http://bugs.debian.org/%s, so that !dbugs src:python-numpy would just take me directly to the numpy bug page, but it's a start. The search engine creator is very receptive to comments, though, and I am sure you can reason with him if you feel most people would find it useful if it is changed to something else; I wasn't sure what the best course of action was, so I haven't talked to him yet.Here is the full list of !bang searches in DuckDuckGo, and a submission form to request for new ones. Enjoy!

25 August 2010

Kumar Appaiah: Browsing with Elinks and using hooks

Even in the modern times of AJAX, Web 2+ and what not, Elinks is one of my favourite browsers, at least for browsing some sites. The reasons are simple: it cuts the unnecessary distractions, and allows you to digest text based information rather quickly. In addition, since it doesn't display any images or flashy elements like Flash, pages load lightning fast even on poor connections, making it an excellent option.Unfortunately, some sites don't really work very well with Elinks, and for those, I do one of two things. For the ones which are really complex, such as secure login sites with too much AJAX, I just resort to one of the "standard" graphical browsers. For some others, I try to work around the problem using Elinks' rich scripting interface available in many programming languages including Perl and Ruby. I chose Lua, since it seemed simple enough to learn. I wanted to share with you some of the simple workarounds I implemented for some sites I visit often.The first quirk is with the Debian BTS, whose CSS isn't properly interpreted by Elinks (see 593804 and 593840 for details). The short story: the BTS renders like this:So, I grabbed the CSS, and made some small changes (described in the above mentioned bug reports), and got a new CSS file. I put it in /home/kumar/Kumar/bugs.css, and added the following to my ~/.elinks/hooks.lua:
-- Use an alternate CSS for the Debian BTS to work around some quirks
function debian_bts_format_html_hook (html)
   return string.gsub(html, "/css/bugs.css", 'file:///home/kumar/Kumar/bugs.css')
end
function pre_format_html_hook (url, html)
   if sstrfind (url, "bugs.debian.org") then
      return blonnet_format_html_hook(html)
   end
   return nil
end
and with it, the BTS renders like this:Much more readable!The second simple example, for which I won't include images, is the Mobile Twitter interface. The mobile Twitter interface is very convenient and functional in Elinks; however, by default, the text font seems to be a light grey, which is not discernible in the bright background. A default user.css file would be a possible solution, but I have not decided whether to go for it just yet. So, for the Twitter site, I add a function like this:
-- Make the status messages black on Mobile Twitter
function mobile_twitter_format_hook(html)
   return string.gsub(html, ".status.- ", '.status  word-wrap: break-word; color : #000; ')
end
And alter the actual hook function to:
function pre_format_html_hook (url, html)
   if sstrfind (url, "bugs.debian.org") then
      return debian_bts_format_html_hook(html)
   elseif sstrfind (url, "mobile.twitter.com") then
      return mobile_twitter_format_hook(html)
   end
   return nil
end
Finally, a more complicated example. I like reading the Indian business newspaper the Hindu Business Line. However, if you try browsing to the site with Elinks, you'll notice that, barring the top hyperlinks in each sectcion, the links on the left are not "linked" at all.In addition, there are some other irritants which are easy to remove, such as the navigation bar on the top, and the text colour being too light for my taste etc. So, I write the following Lua blurb. Why I write this is left for the interested readers to figure out, though it shouldn't be surprising if you open the page. The workaround for the missing links is interesting, though; it is because the website authors have put a hyperlink (<a>) tag before a list item (<li>) tag, and Elinks seems to not like that too much. So, I just swap the two around, and Elinks is happy.
-- Reformat the Business Line website
function blonnet_format_html_hook (html)
   html = string.gsub(html, "<body ", '<body text="#000000"') -- I like the text in black on the white background
   html = string.gsub(html, "<[Ff][Oo][Nn][Tt] class=leftnavi color=brown>.-</[Ff][Oo][Nn][Tt]>", '') -- An ugly hack to remove the navigation bar
   html = string.gsub(html, "<TD align=left vAlign=top width=\"500\"><IMG.-</FONT><BR>", '', 1) -- Remove description
   html = string.gsub(html, "<A class=groupnavi href=\"http://epaper.thehindubusinessline.com/\">.-</FONT><BR>", '', 1) -- Remove other group links
   html = string.gsub(html, "(<[Aa] class=navi.-)<li>(.-</[Aa]>)", "<li>%1%2</li>") -- Fix the erroneous section sidebar
   return html
end
function pre_format_html_hook (url, html)
   if sstrfind (url, "blonnet.com") or sstrfind(url, "thehindubusinessline.com") then
      return blonnet_format_html_hook(html)
   elseif sstrfind (url, "bugs.debian.org") then
      return debian_bts_format_html_hook(html)
   elseif sstrfind (url, "mobile.twitter.com") then
      return mobile_twitter_format_hook(html)
   end
   return nil
end
And here's the old and new rendering:

8 August 2010

Kumar Appaiah: Debconf10 and New York Visit

So, I have finally visited my first Debconf, and it was a phenomenal experience. To meet persons who have guided you, persons work with, and persons you respect face-to-face and have conversations with them about several topics ranging from their vision for Debian to their views on topics totally unrelated to software is something truly great. I am now convinced that events like this, which provide the right environment to socialize and discuss various issues concerning Debian, will go a long way into getting several aspects of the project moving along in the right directions, as well as create awareness to the outside world about what the project is about and how it benefits users.In terms of discussions, the Debian Science track was a nice way to see how contributors are putting Debian to good use for scientific research, and it was a nice opportunity to list out the things to be done to fill in the gaps and take Debian as a science platform forward. The Debian Python BoF was also a good place to meet many contributors face-to-face, and learn more about the technical concerns which people have in regard to the future of Python in Debian.While I didn't hack much during the conference, Christian's presence made me finish the Hindi translation of the Debian Installer. We can now shift focus to other aspects, such as getting packages in order for a short freeze-to-release cycle.Columbia University provides for a very nice venue, with easy access while maintaining a quaint environment within itself. Since this is my second visit to New York City, I had an idea of the common tourist locations, so I did not go around much during the conference. However, since I have a buffer day, I might try my hand at some photography around the place.Have a safe trip home, and a wonderful time ahead! I leave you with a photo I took when I went with a friend across the Brooklyn Bridge after Debconf.Downtown Manhattan Panorama - from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, Brooklyn, NY

11 April 2010

Kumar Appaiah: I'm going to Debconf 10

So, I will be at DebConf10 from 4th August onwards. The prime purpose of my visit is to meet all Debian developers, so I don't think the delayed attendance should matter much.Customary banner: I'm going to DebConf10!See you all there!Tags: debconf, debconf10, debian

28 March 2010

Clint Adams: DPL Campaign Questions 010

Hector Oron:
Secondly, I was wondering how Debian could make it easier for people to contribute than other (derivatives and non-derivatives) distributions. I came up with a really nice draft howto[1] which I would like to bring up to your attention, so the basic question would be what do you think you could do to make contributions paths easier (take in account not all teams, groups follow such community guidelines)
Human beings are not computers, so I find that applying HOWTOs to them to be misguided at best. As for enforcing a set of arbitrary community guidelines, I would not do that. Frank Lin PIAT:
planet.d.o has became one of the most visible media for Debian, if not the most visible one. Do you think it is a good thing?
I consider it neutral. If people start thinking of blogs or microblogging as important though, I think we might have a problem. I am in favor of our informal policy to never post anything important on blogs unless it is merely a copy of something communicated properly on an official channel. This includes anything that would go into our packages. Consequently I do not think it a valuable goal to respect copyright law by enforcing DFSG-free licenses on blogs, whether they are aggregated or not. Kumar Appaiah:
One of the questions which I've not yet seen exactly in the discussions is on the transparency in the maintenance of non-core but "important" packages, such as python, wherein the maintenance of the package and policy (till a short while ago) has been, poor at best, and we've had near zero communication from the maintainer(s) for over a year. This has led some parts of the "community" (Debian Python, in this case) to knock the doors of the tech-ctte[1] (recommended reading, unless you have done so already).
I think that is a failure of the entire community that the situation has even come to this point. In other analogous situations, the package would have been hijacked by now and the situation resolved. I think it would be appropriate for the DPL either to step in and mediate situations like this before they get anywhere near the tech-ctte, or to delegate someone to do the same. I think it would be equally appropriate for the people involved to resolve this themselves. Of course all of this should be open.

7 January 2010

Kumar Appaiah: Brief updates and some advice

So, while Richard is busy doing research and arranging or facilitating several Debian workshops, here I am, gulping down Idlis and Dosas by the dozen. It's been a fun visit, and I got to visit several places in my native state, but since my visit to Mumbai is rather short, I won't be able to say hello to several friends this time (Sorry Kartik). Maybe this would happen only when I am back in India on a permanent basis; let's see...Here are some general guidelines for travelers which I'd like to share:It's been a really fun trip, and I am sure I'll enjoy the rest of the trip, till I get back to my old routine and resume work.Finally, in keeping with the spirit of a blog I try to understand (albeit, in vain, I must accept), I duplicate the concept of a post from that blog, here is an up-to-date list of airports in which I have sat, but never left except by way of airplane:More updates later. Bye for now.

14 December 2009

Kumar Appaiah: For Hindi Debian users

(English translation below. Indian Debian community, please spread the word!) ! , , KDE, GNOME . . (Debian Installer) Lenny , . , , . , , , . ! ; . : akumar@ . ( ) ;-) !TranslationFellow Debian users (who know Hindi)! Maybe you aren't aware yet, but several parts of Debian have been localized and are available in several Indian languages, and KDE and GNOME and several programs are available natively in those languages. This has been possible only due to dedicated volunteers spending time in translating the programs. I have been translating the strings in the Debian Installer to Hindi, since Lenny, and will continue with the translations. But like others, I am short on both time, and my knowledge of technical Hindi words and phrases is limited. So, I'd request fellow users to chip in with some translations to the Debian Installer strings, if they have the time. That way, not only will you earn fame and glory, you'll also earn the gratitude of the Hindi Debian user community.You don't need to be an expert in the language and grammar to help out with the translations. All you need is some working Hindi knowledge and a bit of time.For more information, email me at akumar followed by debian.orgThank you!

10 December 2009

Kumar Appaiah: Weird weather

Am I the only one who finds this sort of weather variation weird?(Source: NOAA)

19 November 2009

Josselin Mouette: Why python2.6 is still not in unstable

Getting python2.6 as the default ASAP is currently the #1 priority for the Python modules team. I also consider it very important and tried to help with it, but it is starting to get depressing. The plan is to fix all packages in unstable to be compatible with python2.6 first. This would be easy if there hadn t been a very badly planned change in the installation paths that came together. Because of it, quite a number of packages have to be fixed. Two months ago, I filed a lot of bugs in that order. I missed a number of issues, but overall, almost all packages have been fixed, thanks to Kumar Appaiah, Bastian Venthur and everyone else who sent patches and NMUs. One of the biggest issues, though, comes from python-central. Since it doesn t handle some of the new paths that were introduced (which is somehow ironic, since the python-central maintainer, Matthias Klose, is also the python maintainer who did this change), a large number of packages FTBFS when built against python2.6. In Ubuntu, it turned out to be a giant mess, most packages using python-central needing changes, and we wanted to avoid that. This is why Piotr O arowski sent a NMU for python-central that fixes these issues for good. Guess what happened? Matthias Klose uploaded a new version that does not include the python2.6 fixes, completely discarding the work that has been done. And of course, making the upload of python2.6 to unstable, which was ready to be done in a few days, impossible. I think it s fine if Ubuntu maintainers don t have the time to handle their packages in Debian. But it is clearly not acceptable to hold back development in Debian, nor to treat it as a garbage dumpster where you can send all the crappy software solutions that were badly designed in Ubuntu to duplicate them in Debian. This is what Matthias has been doing for several years. For how long are we going to tolerate such behavior? For how long will we leave such a critical package in the hands of a single person with no interest in Debian?

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