Search Results: "aardvark"

7 October 2022

Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in September 2022

Welcome to the September 2022 report from the Reproducible Builds project! In our reports we try to outline the most important things that we have been up to over the past month. As a quick recap, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, almost all software is distributed to end users as pre-compiled binaries. If you are interested in contributing to the project, please visit our Contribute page on our website.
David A. Wheeler reported to us that the US National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have released a document called Securing the Software Supply Chain: Recommended Practices Guide for Developers (PDF). As David remarked in his post to our mailing list, it expressly recommends having reproducible builds as part of advanced recommended mitigations . The publication of this document has been accompanied by a press release.
Holger Levsen was made aware of a small Microsoft project called oss-reproducible. Part of, OSSGadget, a larger collection of tools for analyzing open source packages , the purpose of oss-reproducible is to:
analyze open source packages for reproducibility. We start with an existing package (for example, the NPM left-pad package, version 1.3.0), and we try to answer the question, Do the package contents authentically reflect the purported source code?
More details can be found in the README.md file within the code repository.
David A. Wheeler also pointed out that there are some potential upcoming changes to the OpenSSF Best Practices badge for open source software in relation to reproducibility. Whilst the badge programme has three certification levels ( passing , silver and gold ), the gold level includes the criterion that The project MUST have a reproducible build . David reported that some projects have argued that this reproducibility criterion should be slightly relaxed as outlined in an issue on the best-practices-badge GitHub project. Essentially, though, the claim is that the reproducibility requirement doesn t make sense for projects that do not release built software, and that timestamp differences by themselves don t necessarily indicate malicious changes. Numerous pragmatic problems around excluding timestamps were raised in the discussion of the issue.
Sonatype, a pioneer of software supply chain management , issued a press release month to report that they had found:
[ ] a massive year-over-year increase in cyberattacks aimed at open source project ecosystems. According to early data from Sonatype s 8th annual State of the Software Supply Chain Report, which will be released in full this October, Sonatype has recorded an average 700% jump in repository attacks over the last three years.
More information is available in the press release.
A number of changes were made to the Reproducible Builds website and documentation this month, including Chris Lamb adding a redirect from /projects/ to /who/ in order to keep old or archived links working [ ], Jelle van der Waa added a Rust programming language example for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH [ ][ ] and Mattia Rizzolo included Protocol Labs amongst our project-level sponsors [ ].

Debian There was a large amount of reproducibility work taking place within Debian this month:
  • The nfft source package was removed from the archive, and now all packages in Debian bookworm now have a corresponding .buildinfo file. This can be confirmed and tracked on the associated page on the tests.reproducible-builds.org site.
  • Vagrant Cascadian announced on our mailing list an informal online sprint to help clear the huge backlog of reproducible builds patches submitted by performing NMU (Non-Maintainer Uploads). The first such sprint took place on September 22nd with the following results:
    • Holger Levsen:
      • Mailed #1010957 in man-db asking for an update and whether to remove the patch tag for now. This was subsequently removed and the maintainer started to address the issue.
      • Uploaded gmp to DELAYED/15, fixing #1009931.
      • Emailed #1017372 in plymouth and asked for the maintainer s opinion on the patch. This resulted in the maintainer improving Vagrant s original patch (and uploading it) as well as filing an issue upstream.
      • Uploaded time to DELAYED/15, fixing #983202.
    • Vagrant Cascadian:
      • Verify and updated patch for mylvmbackup (#782318)
      • Verified/updated patches for libranlip. (#788000, #846975 & #1007137)
      • Uploaded libranlip to DELAYED/10.
      • Verified patch for cclive. (#824501)
      • Uploaded cclive to DELAYED/10.
      • Vagrant was unable to reproduce the underlying issue within #791423 (linuxtv-dvb-apps) and so the bug was marked as done .
      • Researched #794398 (in clhep).
    The plan is to repeat these sprints every two weeks, with the next taking place on Thursday October 6th at 16:00 UTC on the #debian-reproducible IRC channel.
  • Roland Clobus posted his 13th update of the status of reproducible Debian ISO images on our mailing list. During the last month, Roland ensured that the live images are now automatically fed to openQA for automated testing after they have been shown to be reproducible. Additionally Roland asked on the debian-devel mailing list about a way to determine the canonical timestamp of the Debian archive. [ ]
  • Following up on last month s work on reproducible bootstrapping, Holger Levsen filed two bugs against the debootstrap and cdebootstrap utilities. (#1019697 & #1019698)
Lastly, 44 reviews of Debian packages were added, 91 were updated and 17 were removed this month adding to our knowledge about identified issues. A number of issue types have been updated too, including the descriptions of cmake_rpath_contains_build_path [ ], nondeterministic_version_generated_by_python_param [ ] and timestamps_in_documentation_generated_by_org_mode [ ]. Furthermore, two new issue types were created: build_path_used_to_determine_version_or_package_name [ ] and captures_build_path_via_cmake_variables [ ].

Other distributions In openSUSE, Bernhard M. Wiedemann published his usual openSUSE monthly report.

diffoscope diffoscope is our in-depth and content-aware diff utility. Not only can it locate and diagnose reproducibility issues, it can provide human-readable diffs from many kinds of binary formats. This month, Chris Lamb prepared and uploaded versions 222 and 223 to Debian, as well as made the following changes:
  • The cbfstools utility is now provided in Debian via the coreboot-utils package so we can enable that functionality within Debian. [ ]
  • Looked into Mach-O support.
  • Fixed the try.diffoscope.org service by addressing a compatibility issue between glibc/seccomp that was preventing the Docker-contained diffoscope instance from spawning any external processes whatsoever [ ]. I also updated the requirements.txt file, as some of the specified packages were no longer available [ ][ ].
In addition Jelle van der Waa added support for file version 5.43 [ ] and Mattia Rizzolo updated the packaging:
  • Also include coreboot-utils in the Build-Depends and Test-Depends fields so that it is available for tests. [ ]
  • Use pep517 and pip to load the requirements. [ ]
  • Remove packages in Breaks/Replaces that have been obsoleted since the release of Debian bullseye. [ ]

Reprotest reprotest is our end-user tool to build the same source code twice in widely and deliberate different environments, and checking whether the binaries produced by the builds have any differences. This month, reprotest version 0.7.22 was uploaded to Debian unstable by Holger Levsen, which included the following changes by Philip Hands:
  • Actually ensure that the setarch(8) utility can actually execute before including an architecture to test. [ ]
  • Include all files matching *.*deb in the default artifact_pattern in order to archive all results of the build. [ ]
  • Emit an error when building the Debian package if the Debian packaging version does not patch the Python version of reprotest. [ ]
  • Remove an unneeded invocation of the head(1) utility. [ ]

Upstream patches The Reproducible Builds project detects, dissects and attempts to fix as many currently-unreproducible packages as possible. We endeavour to send all of our patches upstream where appropriate. This month, we wrote a large number of such patches, including:

Testing framework The Reproducible Builds project runs a significant testing framework at tests.reproducible-builds.org in order to check packages and other artifacts for reproducibility. This month, however, the following changes were made:
  • Holger Levsen:
    • Add a job to build reprotest from Git [ ] and use the correct Git branch when building it [ ].
  • Mattia Rizzolo:
    • Enable syncing of results from building live Debian ISO images. [ ]
    • Use scp -p in order to preserve modification times when syncing live ISO images. [ ]
    • Apply the shellcheck shell script analysis tool. [ ]
    • In a build node wrapper script, remove some debugging code which was messing up calling scp(1) correctly [ ] and consquently add support to use both scp -p and regular scp [ ].
  • Roland Clobus:
    • Track and handle the case where the Debian archive gets updated between two live image builds. [ ]
    • Remove a call to sudo(1) as it is not (or no longer) required to delete old live-build results. [ ]

Contact As ever, if you are interested in contributing to the Reproducible Builds project, please visit our Contribute page on our website. However, you can get in touch with us via:

5 October 2017

Ross Gammon: My FOSS activities for August & September 2017

I am writing this from my hotel room in Bologna, Italy before going out for a pizza. After a successful Factory Acceptance Test today, I might also allow myself to celebrate with a beer. But anyway, here is what I have been up to in the FLOSS world for the last month and a bit. Debian
  • Uploaded gramps (4.2.6) to stretch-backports & jessie-backports-sloppy.
  • Started working on the latest release of node-tmp. It needs further work due to new documentation being included etc.
  • Started working on packaging the latest goocanvas-2.0 package. Everything is ready except for producing some autopkgtests.
  • Moved node-coffeeify experimental to unstable.
  • Updated the Multimedia Blends Tasks with all the latest ITPs etc.
  • Reviewed doris for Antonio Valentino, and sponsored it for him.
  • Reviewed pyresample for Antonio Valentino, and sponsored it for him.
  • Reviewed a new parlatype package for Gabor Karsay, and sponsored it for him.
Ubuntu
  • Successfully did my first merge using git-ubuntu for the Qjackctl package. Thanks to Nish for patiently answering my questions, reviewing my work, and sponsoring the upload.
  • Refreshed the gramps backport request to 4.2.6. Still no willing sponsor.
  • Tested Len s rewrite of ubuntustudio-controls, adding a CPU governor option in particular. There are a couple of minor things to tidy up, but we have probably missed the chance to get it finalised for Artful.
  • Tested the First Beta release of Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Artful and wrote the release notes. Also drafted my first release announcement on the Ubunti Studio website which Eylul reviewed and published.
  • Refreshed the ubuntustudio-meta package and requested sponsorship. This was done by Steve Langasek. Thanks Steve.
  • Tested the Final Beta release of Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Artful and wrote the release notes.
  • Started working on a new Carla package, starting from where V ctor Cuadrado Juan left it (ITP in Debian).

13 July 2017

Lucy Wayland: Basic Chilli Template

Amounts are to taste:
[Stage one]
Chopped red onion
Chopped garlic
Chopped fresh ginger
Chopped big red chillies (mild)
Chopped birds eye chillies (red or green, quite hot)
Chopped scotch bonnets (hot)
[Fry onion in some olive oil. When getting translucent, and rest of ingredients. May need to add some more oil. When the garlic is browning. On to stage two.]
[Stage two]
Some tins of chopped tomato
Some tomato puree
Some basil
Some thyme
Bay leaf optional
Some sliced mushroom
Some chopped capsicum pepper
Some kidney beans
Other beans optional (butter beans are nice)
Lentils optional (Pro tip: if adding lentils to adding lentils, especially red lentils, I recommend adding some garam masala as well. Lifts the flavour.)
Veggie mince optional
Pearled barley very optional
Stock (some reclaimed from swilling water around tom tims)
Water to keep topping up with if it get too sticky or dry
Dash of red wine optional
Worcester sauce optional
Any other flavouring you feel like optional (I quite often add random herbs or spices
[[Secret ingredient: a spoonful of Marmite]]
[Cook everything up together, but wait until there is enough fluid before you add the dry/sticky ingredients in.]
[Serve with carb of choice. I currently fond of using Ryvita as dipper instead of tortilla chips.]
[Also serve with a a cooler such as natural yogurt, soured cream or something else. You want more than one type of chilli in there to broaden the flavour. I use all three, plus occasionally others as well. If you are feeling masochistic you can go hotter than scotch bonnets, but I although you may get something of the same heat, I think you lose something in the flavour. BTW if you get the chance, of all the tortilla chips, I think blue corn ones are the best. Only seem to find them in health food shops. There you go. It s a Zen recipe, which is why I couldn t give you a link. You just do it until it looks right, feels right, tastes right. And with practice you get it better and better.

1 January 2017

Lucy Wayland: The Red Shoes

Just been watching the video for Kate Bush The Red Shoes (I have actually seen the 1948 film). I came to a strange realisation. Activism, especially LGBTQ activism, is like the Red Shoes. When you put them on, you dance their dance, and you can never take them off. I wonder how many other people have had this happen to them, and understand.

12 November 2016

Lucy Wayland: Diversity and Inclusion, Debian Redux

So, today at Cambridge MiniDebConf, I was scheduled to do a Birds of a Feather (BoF) about Diversity and Inclusion within Debian. I was expecting a handful of people in the breakout room. Instead it was a full blown workshop in the lecture theatre with me nominally facilitating. It went far, far better than I hoped (although a couple of other and myself people had to wrench us back on topic a few times).
There were lots of good ideas, and productive friendly debate (although we were pretty much all coming from the same ball park). There are three points I have taken away from it (others may have different views):
  1. We are damned good at Inclusion, but have a long way to go on the Diversity (which is a problem of the entire tech sector).
  2. Debian is a social project as well as a technical one our immediately accessible documentation does not reflect this.
  3. We are currently too reactive and passive when it comes to social issues and getting people involved. It is essential that we become more proactive.
Combined with the recent Diversity drive from Debconf 2016, I really believe we can do this. Thank-you all you who attended, contributed, and approached me afterwards. Edit: Video here Debian Diversity and Inclusion Workshop Edit Edit: video link fixed.

3 October 2016

Lucy Wayland: Diversity and Inclusion

So this morning, along with a few other members of staff, I was filmed for a Diversity and Inclusion video for Ada Lovelace Day at work. Very positive experience, and I was wearing my rainbow chain mail necklace made by the wonderful Rosemary Warner, and a safety pin, which I had to explain the meaning of to the two peeps doing the filming. We all of us read the same script, and they are going to paste it together with each of us saying one sentence at a time. The script was not just about gender, it also mentioned age, skills, sexual orientation and physical ability among other things (I cannot remember the entire list). I was very happy and proud to take part.

28 March 2016

Lucy Wayland: Stuffed Butternut Squash

This is a fusion recipe from a rather bland just stuff it with ricotta recipe I saw, David Scott s The Peniless Vegetarian , and my own mutations on those themes. I can t give you exact quantities, just make a little more than you will make the hollowed mound (grin), and the rest will make an excellent pasta sauce. Ingredients For an average sized butternut squash, you will need:
1 onion (I prefer red)
3 cloves of garlic
1 capsicum pepper (I prefer green, my ex- preferred red)
Some red lentils
Optional green or brown lentils for texture and flavour. I used some puy
The lentil quantity is hard to estimate, but I ratio 4 red to 1 optional.
Roughly one handful of chopped mushrooms i.e. when chopped, it is one handful
1 tin tinned tomatoes
Some tomato puree
A generous amout of garam masala garam masala is what brings out the flavout in lentils
Some paprike
Optional chilli if using chilli, I recommend fresh of course.
Optional Balsamic vinegar
Optional Marmite Preperation of the Squash
1. Cut the butternut squash in half, length ways. This is very hard, you will need a good large knife, and may require you jumping up and down into the air. This is the second most hard of the procedure. 2. For each half, scoop out the seeds, and pare back the bowl till it is no longer overly fibrous. Discard this, or find a use for the seeds. 3. For each half, scoop a channel of the softer flesh up from the baisin up near the top. This has to be done by feel, is hard and thankless work. Also experimentation required. Reserve this flesh. Preperation of the Filling This is just basically a nice lentil sauce that can be used with pasta, rice, toast etc. Important: this is not a stir fry, but a largish, heavy bottom pan is recommended. 1. Finely peel then chopp the onions and the garlic. Chopp the chillis if used (I am a chilli gal). Please observe Chilli Protocol[0] 2. Wash and chop the pepper and mushrooms. Not finely diced, but not crudite-sized slices. Remember that peppers shrivel down a little, mushrooms a lot. 3. Start frying the onions for a while in some oil (I prefer olive, but others are acceptible), until they just about to go translucent. Then add the garlic and optional chillis until the garlic is just cooking nicely. 4. Add the spices, turn over until all the containts of the pan are covered, and cook for another 30 seconds or so. Then add the tinned tomato, and then add half a can of cold water water which rinsed the tin out with. Stir this around, and make sure it is now at just at a simmer or pre-simmer. 5. Add the lentils. You want 0.5-1 cm of water above the lentils when you have added and stirred. Let these cook and expand for about 5 mins, stirring all the while, all the lentils will stick to the bottom. 6. Add the pepper, mushroom, reserved squash flesh, and optional dash of balsamic vinegar, and half a tea spoon of marmite. Cook and stir until the pepper goes soft. This is the hard part. Add boiling water if really too thick, or some tomato puree if too thin. There is no hard science to this, you want at the end of 10 minutes or so something resembling the thickness in texture of a stiff bolognaise sauce. Assembly
1. Have a baking tray. Whether you prefer to grease, line with foil, or line with baking parchment is up to you. I prefer baking parchment. 2. Stuff those two halves of butternut squash with that sauce you made. It should make a mound of about 1cm about the level. If you feel extravagent, and are not vegan, sprinkle a little grated cheese on top. 3. Place in a pre-heated oven of 200oC. Cooking time should be about 20 mins, but larger ones take longer. The acid test is to briefly take them out, and prod the lower side with a fork. It should go through the skin with little resistance. When ready, serve. It s really a dish in itself, but some people might like a bit of salad, or maybe a light green risotto.

11 November 2015

Lucy Wayland: Differences bring us together

On the 13th of May this year, I legally became Lucy Wayland. I d been living as a woman full time a couple of months before that, but that is when two dear friends witnessed my name change. I am going to post about the whole experience when it is finally into the completion zone. However, this last weekend just gone, I was helping out with the Cambridge (UK) MiniDebConf. I was mostly gophering and front-desk-helpering, with side orders of beverages, so I missed most of the talks. Which is not the point. I met nearly everybody at the conference. Many of them knew me as Jon, a goateed man. I was there as Lucy, a woman. And nobody batted an eyelid. The only time I had to produce my Deed Poll out was for keysigning, as I still do not have photo ID with my new name on. I proffered it along with my passport, so there was no embarrassment. I know other people within Debian have gone through the same process. However, I just have to say how wonderful it is, to be accepted just that way. And hence the title of my article. Our differences bring us together. So many different people from so many different cultures came together, wanted to create, and my change of gender was just irrelevant. And that s how it should be.

9 November 2014

Enrico Zini: fun-and-sanity

Fun and Sanity in Debian A friend of mine recently asked: "is there anything happening in Debian besides systemd?" Of course there is. He asked it 2 days after the freeze, which happened in time, and with an amazingly low RC bug count. The most visible thing right now seems to be this endless init system argument, but there are fun and sane things in Debian. Many of them. I think someone should put the spotlight on them, and here's my attempt. Yesterday I set up a gobby document asking "What is now happening in Debian that is exciting, fun and sane?", and passed the link around the Cambridge Miniconf and some IRC channels. Here are a few quotations that I collected:
The armhf and arm64 ports have for me been wonderful and exciting, and were a great time for me to start getting involved. (Jon "Aardvark" Ward) We have a way of tracking random contributors, and as far as I know no other project has anything like it. (Enrico Zini) codesearch.debian.net is an incredibly important resource, not just for us but for the free software community at large. (Ben Hutchings) sources.debian.net is a very useful resource with lots of interested contributors, it received 10 OPW applicants (Stefano Zacchiroli) It has never been easier to work on new infrastructure project thanks to the awesome work of the DSA team. We have dozens of contribution opportunities outside of just plain packaging. (Rapha l Hertzog) The work on reproducible builds has achieved excellent results with 61.3% of packages being reproducible. (Paul Wise) Porting arm64 has been (peversely) great fun. It's remarkably morish and I like nothing more than a tedious argument with autoconf macros. Working with lots of enthusiastic people from other teams, helping getting the port set up and build has been great - thank you everybody. (Wookey)
And here are random exciting things that were listed:

6 November 2012

Russ Allbery: Review: Cerebus

Review: Cerebus, by Dave Sim
Series: Cerebus #1
Publisher: Aardvark-Vanaheim
Copyright: August 1987
Printing: July 2003
ISBN: 0-919359-08-6
Format: Graphic novel
Pages: 546
Cerebus is something of a legend in comics. Begun in December of 1977 by Dave Sim, it was one of the first entirely independent, self-published comics in a field dominated by the large work-for-hire companies like Marvel and DC. It ran for 300 issues and nearly 27 years and became one of the most influential independent comic books of all time, in part due to Sim's outspoken views in favor of creator rights and his regular use of the editorial pages in Cerebus issues to air those views. This collection (the first "phonebook") collects issues 1 through 25, with one of the amazing wrap-around covers that makes all of the phonebooks so beautiful (possibly partly by later Cerebus collaborator Gerhard, although if so it's uncredited so far as I can tell). Cerebus reliably has some of the best black-and-white art you will ever see in comics. There is some debate over where to start with Cerebus, and a faction that, for good reasons, argues for starting with the second phonebook (High Society). While these first twenty-five issues do introduce the reader to a bunch of important characters (Elrod, Lord Julius, Jaka, Artemis Roach, and Suenteus Po, for example), all those characters are later reintroduced and nothing that happens here is hugely vital for the overall story. It's also quite rough, starting as Conan parody with almost no depth. The first half or so of this collection features lots of short stories with little or no broader significance, and the early ones are about little other than Cerebus's skills and fighting abilities. That said, when reading the series, I like to start at the beginning. It is nice to follow the characters from their moment of first introduction, and it's delightful to watch Sim's ability grow (surprisingly quickly) through the first few issues. Cerebus #1 is bad: crude, simplistic artwork, almost nothing in the way of a story, and lots of purple narration. But flipping forward even to Cerebus #6 (the first appearance of Jaka), one sees a remarkable difference. By Cerebus #7, Cerebus looks like himself, the plot is getting more complex, and Sim is clearly hitting his stride. And, by the end of this collection, the art has moved from crude past competent and into truly beautiful in places. It's one of the few black-and-white comics where I never miss color. The detailed line work is more enjoyable than I think any coloring could be. The strength of Cerebus as an ongoing character slowly emerges from behind the parody. What I like the most about Cerebus is that he's neither a predestined victor (apart from the early issues that follow the Conan model most closely) nor a pure loner who stands apart from the world. He gets embroiled in political affairs, but almost always for his own reasons (primarily wealth). He has his own moral code, but it's fluid and situational; it's the realistic muddle of impulse and vague principle that most of us fall back on in our everyday life, which is remarkably unlike the typical moral code in comics (or even fiction in general). And while he is in one sense better and more powerful than anyone else in the story, that doesn't mean Cerebus gets what he wants. Most stories here end up going rather poorly for him, forcing daring escapes or frustrating cutting of losses. Sim quickly finds a voice for Cerebus that's irascible, wise, practical, and a bit world-weary, as well as remarkably unflappable. He's one of the best protagonists in comics, and that's already clear by the end of this collection. Parody is the focus of these first issues, which is a mixed bag. The early issues are fairly weak sword-and-sorcery parody (particularly Red Sonja, primarily a vehicle for some tired sexist jokes) and worth reading only for the development in Sim's art style and the growth of Cerebus as a unique voice. Sim gets away from straight parody for the middle of the collection, but then makes an unfortunate return for the final few issues, featuring parodies of Man-Thing and X-Men that I thought were more forced than funny. You have to have some tolerance for this, and (similar to early Pratchett) a lot of it isn't as funny as the author seems to think it is. That said, three of Sim's most brilliant ongoing characters are parodies, just ones that are mixed and inserted into the "wrong" genres in ways that bring them alive. Elrod of Melvinbone, a parody of Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone who speaks exactly like Foghorn Leghorn, should not work and yet does. He's the source of the funniest moments in this collection. His persistant treatment of Cerebus as a kid in a bunny suit shouldn't be as funny as it is, but it reliably makes me laugh each time I re-read this collection. Lord Julius is a straight insertion of Groucho Marx who really comes into his own in the next collection, High Society, but some of the hilarious High Society moments are foreshadowed here. And Artemis Roach, who starts as a parody of Batman and will later parody a huge variety of comic book characters, provides several delightful moments with Cerebus as straight man. I'm not much of a fan of parody, but I still think Cerebus is genuinely funny. High Society is definitely better, but I think one would miss some great bits by skipping over the first collection. Much of what makes it work is the character of Cerebus, who is in turn a wonderful straight man for Sim's wilder characters and an endless source of sharp one-liners. It's easy to really care about and root for Cerebus, even when he's being manipulative and amoral, because he's so straightforward and forthright about it. The world Sim puts him into is full of chaos, ridiculousness, and unfairness, and Cerebus is the sort of character to put his head down, make a few sarcastic comments, and then get on with it. It's fun to watch. One final note: I've always thought the "phonebook" collections were one of Sim's best ideas. Unlike nearly all comic book collections, a Cerebus phonebook provides enough material to be satisfying and has always felt like a good value for the money. I wish more comic book publishers would learn from Sim's example and produce larger collections that aren't hardcover deluxe editions (although Sim has an admitted advantage from not having to reproduce color). Followed by High Society. Rating: 7 out of 10

30 November 2008

Riku Voipio: pimp my x40

After a brief look at the market, I decided to keep using my sturdy X40. Looking at what could be done to improve the 4 years old workhorse, three things came to mind:

* new battery (old one dies in 45min, new one lasts easily 5+h)
* replace the hard drive (preemptively before it breaks)
* more ram (from 512MB -> 1.5G)



The only one worth detailing is the hard drive upgrade, since I decided to go SSD. less moving parts, less heat, less power consumption. I followed the Thinkwiki CompactFlash boot howto. This basically involves getting a CF-IDE adapter (from ebay, around $5) and any CF card. The first CF-IDE adapter $2.99, but it didn't work. After some research it was concluded that the SMT soldering was bad. The second adapter bought worked fine, and as a bonus the dimensions match the X40 HD perfecty:

In order to minimize writing to flash:

* Make sure root filesystem is mounted noatime,nodiratime (see /etc/fstab)
* make /tmp a tmpfs partition
* disable swap
* more tips can been seen at Linux on Flash guide

Generally I'm very happy with the results of the upgrade. X40 is now most of the time completly silent, without the spinning and clicking HD. Fan turns on less often than previously. The cheapo compactflash is fast enough on reading, and the REALLY slow write speed is usually not a problem thanks to the loads of RAM. Ofcourse, the exception is when a application uses fsync() ... which leads to.

FIREFOX SUCKS GOAT BALLS WHEN RAN FROM A SLOW SSD

Seriously. It's like watching snail cross a tarpit. That's what happens when you fsync() a 30MB places.sqlite on a 6MB/s write speed flash media every fucking time a page has finished loading (and seeming every now and then too). Now here's a really simple workaround: make ~/.mozilla tmpfs and rsync it to/from a backup dir every time you log in/out.

* /etc/fstab: tmpfs /home/user/.mozilla tmpfs size=100m,user 0 0
* and two helper scripts:

aardvark:~$ cat bin/mozilla-mount
#!/bin/sh
mount /home/$USER/.mozilla
rsync -av /home/$USER/.mozilla-safe/ /home/$USER/.mozilla/
aardvark:~$ cat bin/mozilla-umount
#!/bin/sh
rsync -av /home/$USER/.mozilla/ /home/$USER/.mozilla-safe/
umount /home/$USER/.mozilla


It does what mozilla should be doing in the first place - write to temporary files when running and on exit synchronize to the real database and fsync(). With this hack, suddenly the web browser UI doesn't freeze every time a page has finished loading.

You'll also want to disable the urlclassifier anti-forgery tool, which can grow to a over 50MB sqlite database which also gets fsynced all the time...