After sometime without looking into this problem, I decided to do another try. I do not found a way to do a complex crossgrade of my desktop without massively removing packages. And there are bug and bug that require to edit the config scripts of the packages. So here is my another try to do a crossgrade of my desktop, this time for real.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get autoremove
apt-get clean
dpkg --list > original.dpkg
apt-get --download-only install dpkg:amd64 tar:amd64 apt:amd64 bash:amd64 dash:amd64 init:amd64 mawk:amd64
for pack32 in $(grep i386 original.dpkg   egrep "^ii "   awk ' print $2 ' ) ; do 
  echo $pack32 ; 
  apt-get --download-only install -y --allow-remove-essential $ pack32%:i386 :amd64 ; 
done
cd /var/cache/apt/archives/
dpkg --install libacl1_*amd64.deb libattr1_*_amd64.deb libapt-pkg5.0_*amd64.deb libbz2-1.0_*amd64.deb dpkg_*amd64.deb tar_*amd64.deb apt_*amd64.deb bash_*amd64.deb dash_*amd64.deb 
dpkg --install --skip-same-version *.deb
dpkg --configure --pending
dpkg --install --skip-same-version *.deb
dpkg --remove libcurl4-openssl-dev:i386
dpkg --configure --pending
dpkg --remove libkdesu5 kde-runtime
apt-get --fix-broken install
apt-get install  $(egrep "^ii"  ~/original.dpkg   grep -v ":i386"   grep -v "all"   grep -v "aiccu"   grep -v "acroread"   grep -v "flashplayer-mozilla"   grep -v "flash-player-properties"   awk ' print $2 ')

Reboot. Then the system failed to boot, missing lvm2 package. Boot with a live CD.

sudo -i
mount /dev/sdc2         /mnt
mount /dev/vg100/usr /mnt/usr
mount /dev/vg100/var /mnt/var
mount -o bind /proc    /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /sys     /mnt/sys
mount -o bind /dev/    /mnt/dev
mount -o bind /dev/pts  /mnt/dev/pts
chroot /mnt /bin/su -
apt-get install lvm2
exit
reboot

Still somethings do not work, like command fakeroot.

for pack32 in $(grep i386 original.dpkg    egrep "^ii "   awk ' print $2 ' ) ; do     
  echo $pack32 ;     
  if dpkg --status $pack32   grep -q "Multi-Arch: same" ; then       
    apt-get -y install $ pack32%:i386 :amd64 ;     
  fi ;   
done
for pack32 in $(grep i386 original.dpkg    egrep "^ii "   awk ' print $2 ' ) ; do     
  echo $pack32 ;     
  apt-get -y install $ pack32%:i386 :amd64 ;     
done

Now is time to find what still does not work and how to solve it.

This article is an experiment in progress, please recheck, while I am updating with the new information. I have a very old installation of Debian, possibly since v2, dot not remember, that I have upgraded since then both in software and hardware. Now the hardware is 64bits, runs a kernel of 64bits but the run-time is still 32bits. For 99% of tasks this is very good. Now that I have made many simulations I may have found a solution to do a crossgrade of my desktop. I write here the tentative procedure and I will update with more ideias on the problems that I may found. First you need to install a 64bits kernel and boot with it. See my previous post on how to do it. Second you need to do a bootstrap of crossgrading and the instalation of all the libs as amd64:

 apt-get update
 apt-get upgrade
 apt-get clean
 dpkg --list > original.dpkg
 apt-get --download-only install dpkg:amd64 tar:amd64 apt:amd64 bash:amd64 dash:amd64 init:amd64 mawk:amd64
 cd /var/cache/apt/archives/
 dpkg --install dpkg_*amd64.deb tar_*amd64.deb apt_*amd64.deb bash_*amd64.deb dash_*amd64.deb *.deb
 dpkg --configure --pending
 dpkg -i --skip-same-version dpkg_*_amd64.deb apt_*_amd64.deb bash_*_amd64.deb dash_*_amd64.deb mawk_*_amd64.deb *.deb
 
 for pack32 in $(grep i386 original.dpkg    egrep "^ii "   awk ' print $2 ' ) ; do 
   echo $pack32 ; 
   if dpkg --status $pack32   grep -q "Multi-Arch: same" ; then 
     apt-get --download-only install -y --allow-remove-essential $ pack32%:i386 :amd64 ; 
   fi ; 
 done
 dpkg --install /var/cache/apt/archives/*_amd64.deb
 dpkg --install /var/cache/apt/archives/*_amd64.deb
 dpkg --print-architecture
 dpkg --print-foreign-architectures

But this procedure does not prevent the "apt-get install" to have broken dependencies. So trying to install the core packages and the libraries using "dpkg -i".

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get autoremove
apt-get clean
dpkg --list > original.dpkg
apt-get --download-only install dpkg:amd64 tar:amd64 apt:amd64 bash:amd64 dash:amd64 init:amd64 mawk:amd64
for pack32 in $(grep i386 original.dpkg   egrep "^ii "   awk ' print $2 ' ) ; do 
  echo $pack32 ; 
  if dpkg --status $pack32   grep -q "Multi-Arch: same" ; then 
    apt-get --download-only install -y --allow-remove-essential $ pack32%:i386 :amd64 ; 
  fi ; 
done
cd /var/cache/apt/archives/
dpkg --install dpkg_*amd64.deb tar_*amd64.deb apt_*amd64.deb bash_*amd64.deb dash_*amd64.deb *.deb
dpkg --configure --pending
dpkg --install --skip-same-version dpkg_*_amd64.deb apt_*_amd64.deb bash_*_amd64.deb dash_*_amd64.deb mawk_*_amd64.deb *.deb
dpkg --remove libcurl4-openssl-dev
dpkg -i libcurl4-openssl-dev_*_amd64.deb

Remove packages until all there is no brokens packages

dpkg --print-architecture
dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
apt-get --fix-broken --allow-remove-essential install

Still broken, because apt-get removed dpkg So instead of only installing the libs with dpkg -i, I am going to try to install all the packages with dpkg -i:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get autoremove
apt-get clean
dpkg --list > original.dpkg
apt-get --download-only install dpkg:amd64 tar:amd64 apt:amd64 bash:amd64 dash:amd64 init:amd64 mawk:amd64
for pack32 in $(grep i386 original.dpkg   egrep "^ii "   awk ' print $2 ' ) ; do 
  echo $pack32 ; 
  apt-get --download-only install -y --allow-remove-essential $ pack32%:i386 :amd64 ; 
done
cd /var/cache/apt/archives/
dpkg --install dpkg_*amd64.deb tar_*amd64.deb apt_*amd64.deb bash_*amd64.deb dash_*amd64.deb *.deb
dpkg --configure --pending
dpkg --install --skip-same-version dpkg_*_amd64.deb apt_*_amd64.deb bash_*_amd64.deb dash_*_amd64.deb mawk_*_amd64.deb *.deb
dpkg --configure --pending

Remove packages and reinstall selected packages until you fix all off them. Follow the trial for my machine:

dpkg --remove rkhunter
dpkg --remove libmarco-private1:i386 marco mate-control-center mate-desktop-environment-core mate-desktop-environment-core  mate-desktop-environment mate-desktop-environment-core mate-desktop-environment-extras
dpkg --remove libmate-menu2:i386 libmate-window-settings1:i386 mate-panel mate-screensaver python-mate-menu libmate-slab0:i386 mozo mate-menus
dpkg --remove libmate-menu2:i386 mate-panel python-mate-menu mate-applets mate-menus
dpkg -i libmate-menu2_1.16.0-2_amd64.deb
dpkg --remove  gir1.2-ibus-1.0:i386 gnome-shell gnome-shell-extensions gdm3 gnome-session
dpkg --remove  gir1.2-ibus-1.0:i386
dpkg --remove libmateweather1:i386
dpkg -i libmateweather1_1.16.1-2_amd64.deb
apt-get --fix-broken --download-only install
dpkg --skip-same-version --install dpkg_*amd64.deb tar_*amd64.deb apt_*amd64.deb bash_*amd64.deb dash_*amd64.deb *.deb
dpkg --configure --pending
dpkg -i python_2.7.13-2_amd64.deb
dpkg --configure --pending
dpkg -i perl_5.24.1-3+deb9u1_amd64.deb perl-base_5.24.1-3+deb9u1_amd64.deb
dpkg -i exim4-daemon-light_4.89-2+deb9u1_amd64.deb exim4-base_4.89-2+deb9u1_amd64.deb
dpkg -i libuuid-perl_0.27-1_amd64.deb
dpkg --configure --pending
dpkg --install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad_1.10.4-1_amd64.deb libmpeg2encpp-2.1-0_1%3a2.1.0+debian-5_amd64.deb libmplex2-2.1-0_1%3a2.1.0+debian-5_amd64.deb
dpkg --configure --pending
dpkg --audit

Now fixing broken dependencies on apt-get. Found no other way than removing all the broken packages.

dpkg --remove $(apt-get --fix-broken install   cut -f 2 -d ' ' )
apt-get install $(grep -v ":i386" ~/original.dpkg   egrep "^ii"   grep -v "aiccu"   grep -v "acroread"   grep -v "flash-player-properties"   grep -v "flashplayer-mozilla"   egrep -v "tp-flash-marillat"   awk ' print $2 ')

First you need to install a 64bits kernel and boot with it. See my previous post on how to do it. Second you need to do a bootstrap of crossgrading:

 apt-get clean
 apt-get upgrade
 apt-get --download-only install dpkg:amd64 tar:amd64 apt:amd64 bash:amd64 dash:amd64 init:amd64 mawk:amd64
 dpkg --install /var/cache/apt/archives/*_amd64.deb
 dpkg --install /var/cache/apt/archives/*_amd64.deb
 dpkg --print-architecture
 dpkg --print-foreign-architectures

Third, do a crossgrade of the libraries:

 dpkg --list > original.dpkg
 apt-get --fix-broken --allow-remove-essential install
 for pack32 in $(grep :i386 original.dpkg   awk ' print $2 ' ) ; do 
   if dpkg --status $pack32   grep -q "Multi-Arch: same" ; then 
     apt-get install --yes --allow-remove-essential $ pack32%:i386  ; 
   fi ; 
 done

Forth, do a full crossgrade:

 if ! apt-get install --allow-remove-essential $(grep :i386 original.dpkg   awk ' print $2 '   sed -e s/:i386//) ; then
   apt-get --fix-broken --allow-remove-essential install
   apt-get install --allow-remove-essential $(grep :i386 original.dpkg   awk ' print $2 '   sed -e s/:i386//)
 fi

By testing the previous instructions for a full crosgrade I run into trouble. Here is the results of my tests to do a full crossgrade of a minimal installation of Debian inside a VM. First you need to install a 64bits kernel and boot with it. See my previous post on how to do it. Second you need to do a bootstrap of crossgrading:

 apt-get clean
 apt-get upgrade
 apt-get --download-only install dpkg:amd64 tar:amd64 apt:amd64 bash:amd64 dash:amd64 init:amd64
 dpkg --install /var/cache/apt/archives/*_amd64.deb
 dpkg --install /var/cache/apt/archives/*_amd64.deb
 dpkg --print-architecture
 dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
 apt-get --fix-broken --allow-remove-essential install

Third do a full crossgrade:

 apt-get install --allow-remove-essential $(dpkg --list   grep :i386   awk ' print $2 '   sed -e s/:i386// )

This procedure seams to be a little fragile, but worked most of the time for me.

I have a very old installation of 32bits Debian running in new hardware. Until now running a 64bits kernel was enough to use efficiently more than 4GiB of RAM. The only problem I found was the proprietary drivers from AMD/ATI and NVIDIA, that did not like this mixed environment and some problems with openafs, easilly solved with the help of the package maintainers of openafs. Crossgrading the Qemu/KVM to 64 bits did not pose a problem, so I have been running 64bits VMs for some time. But now the nouveau driver do not work with my new display adapter and I need to run tools from OpsCode not available as 32bits. So is time to do a CrossGrade. Finding some problems I can not recommend it to the inexperienced people. Is time investigate the issues and report bugreports to Debian were appropriate. If you run 32bits Debian installation you can easily install a 64bits kernel . The procedure is simple and well tested.

dpkg --add-architecture amd64
apt-get update
apt-get install linux-image-amd64:amd64

And reboot to test the new kernel. You can expect here more articles about crossgrading.

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Ulrike Uhlig (ulrike)
• Hanno Wagner (wagner)
• Jose M Calhariz (calharis)
• Bastien Roucari s (rouca)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Dara Adib
• F lix Sipma
• Kunal Mehta
• Valentin Vidic
• Adrian Alves
• William Blough
• Jan Luca Naumann
• Mohanasundaram Devarajulu
• Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana
• Vincent Prat

Congratulations!

Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world (previously):

• Made a large number of improvements to travis.debian.net, my hosted service for projects that host their Debian packaging on GitHub to use the Travis CI continuous integration platform to test builds on every code change:
  • Enabled the use of Git submodules. Thanks to @unera & @hosiet. (#30)
  • Managed a contribution from @xhaakon to allow adding an extra repository for custom dependencies. (#17)
  • Fixed an issue where builds did not work under Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu Trusty due to a call to dpkg-buildpackage --show-field. (#28)
  • Fixed an issue where TRAVIS_DEBIAN_EXTRA_REPOSITORY was accidentally required. (#27)
  • Made a number of miscellaneous cosmetic improvements. (f7e5b080 & 037de91cc, etc.)
• Submitted a pull request to Alabaster, the default theme for the Python Sphinx documentation system, to ensure that "extra navigation links" are rendered reproducibly. (#90)
• Improved my Chrome extension for the FastMail web interface:
  • Managed a pull request from @jlerner to add an optional confirmation dialogue before sending any message. (#10)
  • Added an optional Ctrl+Enter alias for Alt+Enter to limit searches to the current folder; the latter shortcut is already mapped by my window manager. (d691b07)
  • Various cosmetic changes to the options page. (7b95e887 & 833ff0fe)
• Submitted two pull requests to mypy, an experimental static type checker for Python:
  • Ensure that the output of --usage is reproducible. (#2234)
  • Update the --usage output to match the now-reproducible output. (#2235)
• Updated django-slack, my library to easily post messages to the Slack group-messaging utility:
  • Merged a feature from @lvpython to add an option to post the message as the authenticated user rather than the specified one. (#59)
  • Merged a documentation update from @ataylor32 regarding the new method of generating access tokens. (#58)
• Made a number of cosmetic improvements to AptFs, my FUSE-based filesystem that provides a view on unpacked Debian source packages as regular folders.
• Updated the SSL certificate for try.diffoscope.org, a hosted version of the diffoscope in-depth and content-aware diff utility. Continued thanks to Bytemark for sponsoring the hardware.

---

Because of the upgrade of perl, amanda is currently broken on testing and unstable on Debian. The problem is known and I am working with my sponsor to create new packages to solve the problem. Please hang a little more.

What happened in the Reproducible Builds effort between Sunday August 28 and Saturday September 3 2016: Media coverage Antonio Terceiro blogged about testing build reprodubility with debrepro . GSoC and Outreachy updates The next round is being planned now: see their page with a timeline and participating organizations listing. Maybe you want to participate this time? Then please reach out to us as soon as possible! Packages reviewed and fixed, and bugs filed The following packages have addressed reproducibility issues in other packages:

• ruby-ronn/0.7.3-5 by Antonio Terceiro, original patch by Chris Lamb.

The following updated packages have become reproducible in our current test setup after being fixed:

• check-all-the-things/2016.09.03 by Paul Wise, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• e2fsprogs/1.43.2-2 by Theodore Y. Ts'o.
• gnupg1/1.4.21-1 by Daniel Kahn Gillmor, #834755 by Chris Lamb.
• gnupg2/2.1.15-2 by Daniel Kahn Gillmor.
• inform6-compiler/6.33-2 by Ben Finney.
• libhat-trie/0.0~git25f9e946-2 by Sascha Steinbiss.
• mrd6/0.9.6-13 by Thomas Preud'homme, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• safecat/1.13-3 by Teemu Hukkanen, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• shibboleth-sp2/2.6.0+dfsg1-1 by Ferenc W gner.
• sweethome3d-furniture-editor/1.15-2 by Markus Koschany, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• traceroute/1:2.1.0-2 by Laszlo Boszormenyi, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• wise/2.4.1-19 by Sascha Steinbiss.
• xmltooling/1.6.0-2 by Ferenc W gner.

The following updated packages appear to be reproducible now, for reasons we were not able to figure out yet. (Relevant changelogs did not mention reproducible builds.)

• comitup/0.5-1 by David Steele.
• dita-ot/1.5.3-2 by Mathieu Malaterre.
• dput/0.10.2 by Ben Finney.
• gnome-settings-daemon/3.21.90-2 by Michael Biebl.
• libkf5kipi/4:16.08.0-1 by Pino Toscano.
• libmpc/2:0.1~r475-2 by James Cowgill.
• taurus/4.0.1+dfsg-1 by Picca Fr d ric-Emmanuel.
• tcpwatch-httpproxy/1.3.1-2 by Toni Mueller.

The following 4 packages were not changed, but have become reproducible due to changes in their build-dependencies:

• djangorestframework
• roarplaylistd
• zope-maildrophost
• zope-replacesupport

Some uploads have addressed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• amanda/1:3.3.9-1 by Jose M Calhariz.
• dispcalgui/3.1.6.0-2 by Christian Marillat, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• fastqtl/2.184+dfsg-4 by Dylan A ssi.
• grass/7.0.5~rc1-1~exp1 by Bas Couwenberg.
• kdevplatform/5.0-1 by Pino Toscano, original patch by Scarlett Clark.
• leveldb/1.19-1 by Alessio Treglia.
• libdevel-cover-perl/1.23-2 by gregor herrmann, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• linux/4.7.2-1 by Ben Hutchings, #830268 by Reiner Herrmann.
• lmms/1.1.3-4 by Javier Serrano.
• mayavi2/4.4.3-2.2 by Anton Gladky.
• opensaml2/2.6.0-2 by Ferenc W gner.
• perl/5.22.2-4 by Dominic Hargreaves, original patch and original patch by Chris Lamb.
• radare2/0.10.5+dfsg-1 by Sebastian Reichel, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• splint/3.1.2.dfsg1-3 by Rapha l Hertzog, original patch by Chris Lamb.

Patches submitted that have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #835673 filed against dacs by Chris Lamb.
• #835805 filed against dh-python by Chris Lamb.
• #835985 filed against nmh by Chris Lamb.
• #836609 filed against nostalgy by Chris Lamb.
• #835807 filed against pygtksourceview by Chris Lamb.
• #836004 filed against python-gflags by Chris Lamb.
• #835816 filed against rt-extension-customfieldsonupdate by Chris Lamb.
• #835834 filed against ruby-compass by Chris Lamb.
• #836605 filed against torque by Chris Lamb.
• #833176 filed against trafficserver by Reiner Herrmann.

Reviews of unreproducible packages 706 package reviews have been added, 22 have been updated and 16 have been removed in this week, adding to our knowledge about identified issues. 5 issue types have been added:

• timestamps_in_documentation_generated_by_ocamldoc
• timestamp_in_enc_files_added_by_texlive_fontinst
• cython_captures_build_path
• timestamps_in_perllocal_pod_manpages_generated_by_perl_extutils_mm_unix
• uname_output_in_python_debugging_symbols_caused_by_sysconfig_getplatform

1 issue type has been updated:

• timestamp_in_enc_files_added_by_texlive_fontinst

Weekly QA work FTBFS bugs have been reported by:

• Chris Lamb (8)
• Lucas Nussbaum (3)

diffoscope development diffoscope development on the next version (60) continued in git, taking in contributions from:

• Mattia Rizzolo:
  • Better and more thorough testing
  • Improvements to packaging
  • Improvements to the ppu comparator

strip-nondeterminism development Mattia Rizzolo uploaded strip-nondeterminism 0.023-2~bpo8+1 to jessie-backports. A new version of strip-nondeterminism 0.024-1 was uploaded to unstable by Chris Lamb. It included contributions from:

• Chris Lamb:
  • Improve code quality of zip, jar, ar, png processors
• AYANOKOUZI, Ryuunosuke:
  • Preserve file attribute information of target file (#836075)

Holger added jobs on jenkins.debian.net to run testsuites on every commit. There is one job for the master branch and one for the other branches. disorderfs development Holger added jobs on jenkins.debian.net to run testsuites on every commit. There is one job for the master branch and one for the other branches. tests.reproducible-builds.org Debian: We now vary the GECOS records of the two build users. Thanks to Paul Wise for providing the patch. Misc. This week's edition was written by Ximin Luo, Holger Levsen & Chris Lamb and reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible Builds folks on IRC.

In this blog post I will cover what versions of software at is used by the leading Linux Distributions as reported by LWN.

• Andoid - Unknown
• Debian - 3.1.20
• Fedora - 3.1.20
• OpenSUSE - 3.1.15
• Red Hat Enterprise - Unknown
• Slackware - 3.1.19
• SUSE - 3.1.8
• Ubuntu - 3.1.18

Also

• Arch - 3.1.16
• Gentoo - 3.1.20
• Mageia - 3.1.16

Currently some distributions are lagging on the use of the latest at software.

I bought a new laptop E200HA, because my previous was a MacBook and It broke after a fall into the ground. I let it boot first in Win10 to check if everything was OK and because I could not found the way to enter in the UEFI/BIOS. It is F2 and is edge triggered. It boots fast into Win10, but I got the feeling of being a little slow. No worries because I it bought for running Debian and because of the autonomy of the battery, 14hours playing music according to Asus. A little research if the new laptop could run Linux almost return no hits, but one very valuable link on how to setup the Wifi. So I got the feeling that I needed a Debian stretch CD for installation. So I download the first installation DVD from here. Run a trial of the DVD image using kvm

kvm -m 2047 -cdrom debian-stretch-DI-alpha7-amd64-DVD-1.iso

Found that the installer DVD now have the functionality of Live CD. This will be useful. Copy the image to a USB stick using dd command. I turned on the E200HA, entered into the UEFI/BIOS by pressing and releasing the F2 key. Turned off the secure boot and select USB storage for boot. The E200HA happily boot the Linux and I select the rescue mode. Using another USB stick of 32GB that was formatted in xfs, because of the lower slack for storing the inodes than ext3/4. In this USB stick I put a raw image of the internal storage of the E200HA, preserving this way the Win10. Another reboot, this time for installation of Debian stretch. It detected the lack of firmware files, for the WiFi adaptor. This link come very handy. The instructions are for an older Linux kernel. So I recommend doing something similar to the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/ajaybhatia/Qualcomm-Atheros-QCA9377-Wifi-Linux
cd Qualcomm-Atheros-QCA9377-Wifi-Linux/firmware-only
tar cvf QCA9377.tar QCA9377

Copy the tar file to a a second USB stick and connect it to the other USB port. This tar is not the files the Debian installer are expecting, so you need to change to the second console "Alt-F2", press enter to activate a shell, and do the following commands:

cd /lib/firmware
mkdir ath10k
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
cd ath10k
tar xf /mnt/QCA9377.tar

Return to the first console "Alt-F1" and continue with the installation. The list of missing firmware files is reduced and the WiFi can work. I had problems with the WiFI, but was because a neighbor router was on the same channel, since I changed the channel of my router the WiFi is working as a charm. The following links maybe useful in the future or as a reference: kvalo/ath10k-firmware kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git

From the Debian BUG system I incorporated 3 fixes. One of them is experimental. It fixes a broken code but may have side effects. Please test it.

• New release 3.1.20:

   * Add option b to getopt, (Closes: #812972).
   * Comment a possible broken code, (Closes: #818508).
   * Add a fflush to catch more errors during writes, (Closes: #801186).

You may download from here at_3.1.20.orig.tar.gz.

What happened in the Reproducible Builds effort between April 24th and 30th 2016. Media coverage Reproducible builds were mentioned explicitly in two talks at the Mini-DebConf in Vienna:

• Martin Michlmayr had a talk in which he presented an overview about innovations and changes in Debian in the last years. Martin expressed his disappointment that there was no talk from us in Vienna (we'll fix this at DebConf16 in Cape Town) and described the reproducible builds work as "a real innovation". His talk is very much worth seeing, whatever your current perspective, it might change your view on Debian.
• Ben Hutchings explains how Secure Boot will use signed kernels via separate signature packages and how this was designed with reproducible builds in mind.

Aspiration together with the OTF CommunityLab released their report about the Reproducible Builds summit in December 2015 in Athens. Toolchain fixes Now that the GCC development window has been opened again, the SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH patch by Dhole and Matthias Klose to address the issue timestamps_from_cpp_macros (__DATE__ / __TIME__) has been applied upstream and will be released with GCC 7. Following that Matthias Klose also has uploaded gcc-5/5.3.1-17 and gcc-6/6.1.1-1 to unstable with a backport of that SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH patch. Emmanuel Bourg uploaded maven/3.3.9-4, which uses SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH for the maven.build.timestamp. (SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH specification) Other upstream changes Alexis Bienven e submitted a patch to Sphinx which extends SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH support for copyright years in generated documentation. Packages fixed The following 12 packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: hhvm jcsp libfann libflexdock-java libjcommon-java libswingx1-java mobile-atlas-creator not-yet-commons-ssl plexus-utils squareness svnclientadapter The following packages have became reproducible after being fixed:

• anope/2.0.3-2 by Dominic Hargreaves, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.
• apparmor-profiles-extra/1.7 by intrigeri, patch by Felix Geyer.
• basket/2.10~beta+git20160425.b77687f-1 by Luigi Toscano, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.
• bind-dyndb-ldap/8.0-2 by Timo Aaltonen.
• bliss/0.73-1 by Jerome Benoit.
• gap-alnuth/3.0.0-3 by Bill Allombert.
• gap-radiroot/2.7-2 by Bill Allombert.
• genometools/1.5.8+ds-3 by Sascha Steinbiss.
• gprbuild/2015-3 by Nicolas Boulenguez.
• gtkhash/0.7.0-3 by M nica Ram rez Arceda.
• josm/0.0.svn10161+dfsg-1 by Bas Couwenberg.
• libjgoodies-animation-java/1.4.3-1 by Markus Koschany.
• ltrsift/1.0.2-7 by Sascha Steinbiss.
• mutt/1.6.0-1 by Matteo F. Vescovi, original patch by Daniel Shahaf.
• netsniff-ng/0.6.1-1 by Kartik Mistry, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• netrw/1.3.2-3 by Giovanni Mascellani.
• openthesaurus/20160424-3 by Rene Engelhard, original patch by Dhole.
• php-pear/1:1.10.1+submodules+notgz-8 by Mathieu Parent.
• samba/2:4.4.2+dfsg-2 by Jelmer Vernoo .
• swift/2.7.0-3 by Ond ej Nov .
• tp-smapi/0.42-1 by Evgeni Golov, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• vifm/0.8.1a-0.1 by Ond ej Nov .
• xfonts-mplus/1:2.2.4-2 by Hideki Yamane, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• xpa/2.1.17-2 by Ole Streicher, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.

Some uploads have fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• camitk/4.0.0~beta-1 by Emmanuel Promayon, original patch by Maria Valentina Marin.
• elastix/4.8-8 by Gert Wollny.
• freefem++/3.46+dfsg1-1 by Dimitrios Eftaxiopoulos, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.
• grib-api/1.15.0-1 by Alastair McKinstry, original patch by Santiago Vila.
• isorelax/20041111-9 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• libical/2.0.0-0.1 by Andreas Henriksson, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• sawfish/1:1.11.90-1 by Jose M Calhariz, original patch by Alexis Bienven e.
• singular/4.0.3-p1+ds-1 by Jerome Benoit.
• syslinux/3:6.03+dfsg-12 by Mattia Rizzolo, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• transdecoder/2.0.1+dfsg-3 by Michael R. Crusoe, original patch by Dhole.

Patches submitted that have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #822566 against stk by Alexis Bienven e: sort lists of object files for reproducible linking order.
• #822948 against shotwell by Alexis Bienven e: normalize tarball permissions and use locale/timezone-independent modification time.
• #822963 against htop by Alexis Bienven e: use SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH for embedded copyright year, which has before already been applied in git and upstream.

Package reviews 95 reviews have been added, 15 have been updated and 129 have been removed in this week. 22 FTBFS bugs have been reported by Chris Lamb and Martin Michlmayr. diffoscope development

• diffoscope 52~bpo8+1 has been uploaded to jessie-backports by Mattia Rizzolo, where it is currently waiting for NEW-approval.
• Support for the deb(5) format (uncompressed data.tar/control.tar, control.tar.xz) (Closes: #818414) has been completed by Reiner Herrmann in git.

strip-nondeterminism development

• Support for EPUB documents has been added (to the development version in git) by Holger Levsen, to address the timestamps_in_epub issue.

tests.reproducible-builds.org

• To monitor the uptodateness of diffoscope everywhere, tests checking this on FreeBSD, NetBSD & MacPorts were added. Tests on other distributions will be added once the relevant bugs in whohas are fixed in jessie. (h01ger)

Misc. Amongst the 29 interns who will work on Debian through GSoC and Outreachy there are four who will be contributing to Reproducible Builds for Debian and Free Software. We are very glad to welcome ceridwen, Satyam Zode, Scarlett Clark and Valerie Young and look forward to working together with them the coming months (and maybe beyond)! This week's edition was written by Reiner Herrmann and Holger Levsen and reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible builds folks on IRC.

Thanks to Wenzong Fan, now the configure flag --without-selinux works properly. So here is a new release at 3.1.19. Please test it.

I found a bug in amanda-3.3.8 that was quickly fixed by upstream. Please upgrade to this version. The updates will go to collab-maint.The debs files for jessie are here: amanda-common_3.3.8-1_cal1_i386.deb amanda-server_3.3.8-1_cal1_i386.deb amanda-client_3.3.8-1_cal1_i386.deb Here comes the changelog:

amanda (1:3.3.8-1~cal1) unstable; urgency=low
  * New Upstream version
    * Changes for 3.3.8
      * s3 devices
          New NEARLINE S3-STORAGE-CLASS for Google storage.
          New AWS4 STORAGE-API
      * amcryptsimple
          Works with newer gpg2.
      * amgtar
          Default SPARSE value is NO if tar < 1.28.
          Because a bug in tar with some filesystem.
      * amstar
          support include in backup mode.
      * ampgsql
          Add FULL-WAL property.
      * Many bugs fix.
    * Changes for 3.3.7p1
      * Fix build in 3.3.7
    * Changes for 3.3.7
      * amvault
          new --no-interactivity argument.
          new --src-labelstr argument.
      * amdump
          compute crc32 of the streams and write them to the debug files.
      * chg-robot
          Add a BROKEN-DRIVE-LOADED-SLOT property.
      * Many bugs fix.
  * Refreshed patches.
  * Dropped patches that were applied by the upstream: fix-misc-typos,
    automake-add-missing, fix-amcheck-M.patch,
    fix-device-src_rait-device.c, fix-amreport-perl_Amanda_Report_human.pm
  * Change the email of the maintainer.
  * "wrap-and-sort -at" all control files.
  * swig is a new build depend.
  * Bump standard version to 3.9.6, no changes needed.
  * Replace deprecated dependency perl5 by perl, (Closes: #808209), thank
    you Gregor Herrmann for the NMU.
  * New patch fix-amgtar-exclude to fix amgtar when the exclude file don't
    exist.
 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose@calhariz.com>  Thu, 11 Feb 2016 17:52:08 +0000

It's that time of the year where I go to FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting). The keynotes and the maintracks are very good, with good presentations and contents. It's very dificult to choose what talks to see, what talks to see later in video and what talks to loose. What I leave here is my selection of talks. This selection is representative of my tastes, not of the quality of the presentations. I will give links for material that is available now. I will do periodic updates when the new material is available: video or slides.

• Welcome to FOSDEM 2016

• systemd and Where We Want to Take the Basic Linux Userspace in 2016

• Ian Murdock - In Memoriam

• Putting 8 Million People on the Map

• Closing FOSDEM 2016

• Re-thinking Linux Distributions

• Beyond reproducible builds

• What Do Code Reviews at Microsoft and in Open Source Projects Have in Common?

• Rearchitecting Linux I/O towards Petascale Storage

• Digital Hardware Design: Why is it still so hard?

• Libreboot - free your BIOS today!

• How to design a Linux kernel API

• Scaling and Securing LibreOffice Online

• How containers work in Linux

• Micro-datacenter with Raspberry Pi and Kubernetes

• Live Migration of Virtual Machines From the Bottom Up

• Interesting Things You Can Do With ZFS

• ElectroBSD - Getting a reproducible BSD out of the door

• Reproducible builds in FreeBSD packages

• An introduction to LXD

• Filesystem defragmentation strategies

• CGroups: resources management inside and outside of a container

• Powering Twitter's infrastructure with containers

• Make backups and versions available easy.

While I sort out a sponsor, my sponsor is very busy, here is a preview of the new packages. So anyone can install and test them on jessie. The source of the packages is in collab-maint.The debs files for jessie are here: amanda-common_3.3.8-1_cal0_i386.deb amanda-server_3.3.8-1_cal0_i386.deb amanda-client_3.3.8-1_cal0_i386.deb Here comes the changelog:

amanda (1:3.3.8-1~cal0) unstable; urgency=low
  * New Upstream version
    * Changes for 3.3.8
      * s3 devices
          New NEARLINE S3-STORAGE-CLASS for Google storage.
          New AWS4 STORAGE-API
      * amcryptsimple
          Works with newer gpg2.
      * amgtar
          Default SPARSE value is NO if tar < 1.28.
          Because a bug in tar with some filesystem.
      * amstar
          support include in backup mode.
      * ampgsql
          Add FULL-WAL property.
      * Many bugs fix.
    * Changes for 3.3.7p1
      * Fix build in 3.3.7
    * Changes for 3.3.7
      * amvault
          new --no-interactivity argument.
          new --src-labelstr argument.
      * amdump
          compute crc32 of the streams and write them to the debug files.
      * chg-robot
          Add a BROKEN-DRIVE-LOADED-SLOT property.
      * Many bugs fix.
  * Refreshed patches.
  * Dropped patches that were applied by the upstream: fix-misc-typos,
    automake-add-missing, fix-amcheck-M.patch,
    fix-device-src_rait-device.c, fix-amreport-perl_Amanda_Report_human.pm
  * Change the email of the maintainer.
  * "wrap-and-sort -at" all control files.
  * swig is a new build depend.
  * Bump standard version to 3.9.6, no changes needed.
  * Replace deprecated dependency perl5 by perl, (Closes: #808209), thank
    you Gregor Herrmann for the NMU.
 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose@calhariz.com>  Tue, 02 Feb 2016 19:56:12 +0000

What happened in the reproducible builds effort between December 20th to December 26th: Toolchain fixes Mattia Rizzolo rebased our experimental versions of debhelper (twice!) and dpkg on top of the latest releases. Reiner Herrmann submited a patch for mozilla-devscripts to sort the file list in generated preferences.js files. To be able to lift the restriction that packages must be built in the same path, translation support for the __FILE__ C pre-processor macro would also be required. Joerg Sonnenberger submitted a patch back in 2010 that would still be useful today. Chris Lamb started work on providing a deterministic mode for debootstrap. Packages fixed The following packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: bouncycastle, cairo-dock-plug-ins, darktable, gshare, libgpod, pafy, ruby-redis-namespace, ruby-rouge, sparkleshare. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• a7xpg/0.11.dfsg1-9 uploaded by Markus Koschany, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• at/3.1.18-1 uploaded by Laurent Bigonville, original patch by Reiner Herrmann, merged by Jose M Calhariz.
• bibtool/2.61+ds-2 by Jerome Benoit.
• bup/0.27-2 uploaded by Robert Edmonds, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• deja-dup/34.1-1 uploaded by Laurent Bigonville, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• gauche-gl/0.6-1 by NIIBE Yutaka.
• ifupdown/0.8 uploaded by Guus Sliepen, original patch by Lunar.
• jing-trang/20131210+dfsg+1-4 by Samuel Thibault.
• libp11/0.3.0-2 by Eric Dorland.
• pdns/4.0.0~alpha1-1 by Christian Hofstaedtler.
• pdns-recursor/4.0.0~alpha1-1 by Christian Hofstaedtler.
• qupzilla/1.8.9~dfsg1-1 uploaded by Georges Khaznadar, fixed upstream.
• ros-genpy/0.5.7-4 uploaded by Jochen Sprickerhof, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• signify/1.14-3 by Mattia Rizzolo, obsoleting patches submitted by Chris Lamb and akira.
• sleepyhead/0.9.8-2 by Sergio Durigan Junior.
• texi2html/1.82+dfsg1-5 by Mattia Rizzolo, previous patch by Juan Picca.
• titanion/0.3.dfsg1-6 by Markus Koschany, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• tj3/3.5.0-3 uploaded by Vincent Bernat, original patch by Vincent Bernat.
• vcsh/1.20151229-1 by Richard Hartmann.
• waitress/0.8.10-1 uploaded by Andrew Shadura, original patch by Juan Picca.
• xtel/3.3.0-19 by Samuel Thibault.

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• kmod/22-1 uploaded by Marco d'Itri, original patch by Lunar.
• libgcrypt20/1.6.4-4 by Andreas Metzler.
• loadlin/1.6f-4 uploaded by Samuel Thibault, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• pathological/1.1.3-13 uploaded by Markus Koschany, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• yacas/1.3.6-1) uploaded by Muammar El Khatib, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.

Patches submitted which have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #808459 on pywavelets by Chris Lamb: add support for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH in the documentation generator.
• #808652 on nexuiz-data by Reiner Herrmann: sorts with the locale set to C.
• #808667 on libmouse-perl by Reiner Herrmann: sorts the list of filenames to be embedded.
• #808679 on libcorelinux by Reiner Herrmann: sort the list of files in the generated Makefile.
• #808711 on ca-certificates by Reiner Herrmann: sort the list of certificates before it is embedded.

reproducible.debian.net Statistics for package sets are now visible for the armhf architecture. (h01ger) The second build now has a longer timeout (18 hours) than the first build (12 hours). This should prevent wasting resources when a machine is loaded. (h01ger) Builds of Arch Linux packages are now done using a tmpfs. (h01ger) 200 GiB have been added to jenkins.debian.net (thanks to ProfitBricks!) to make room for new jobs. The current count is at 962 and growing! diffoscope development Aside from some minor bugs that have been fixed, a one-line change made huge memory (and time) savings as the output of transformation tool is now streamed line by line instead of loaded entirely in memory at once. disorderfs development Andrew Ayer released disorderfs version 0.4.2-1 on December 22th. It fixes a memory corruption error when processing command line arguments that could cause command line options to be ignored. Documentation update Many small improvements for the documentation on reproducible-builds.org sent by Georg Koppen were merged. Package reviews 666 (!) reviews have been removed, 189 added and 162 updated in the previous week. 151 new fail to build from source reports have been made by Chris West, Chris Lamb, Mattia Rizzolo, and Niko Tyni. New issues identified: unsorted_filelist_in_xul_ext_preferences, nondeterminstic_output_generated_by_moarvm. Misc. Steven Chamberlain drew our attention to one analysis of the Juniper ScreenOS Authentication Backdoor: Whilst this may have been added in source code, it was well-disguised in the disassembly and just 7 instructions long. I thought this was a good example of the current state-of-the-art, and why we'd like our binaries and eventually, installer and VM images reproducible IMHO. Joanna Rutkowska has mentioned possible ways for Qubes to become reproducible on their development mailing-list.

Since the last version 0.0.9 on Debian, I have made some changes until version 0.0.14. The version 0.0.15 is only to include a fix for the new findutils. I thank you to Andreas Metzler for the fix and the prompt NMU. The files are here, take notice about the replaced ~ in the original by _: switchconf_0.0.15.orig.tar.xz switchconf_0.0.15-1_wip1.debian.tar.xz switchconf_0.0.15-1_wip1_all.deb If you need the dsc file, just ask me. Here comes the changelog since 0.0.9, without the lastest NMU:

switchconf (0.0.15-1~wip1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
  * New upstream version:
    * Replace 'find -perm +1' by 'find -perm /1', thank you Andreas
      Metzler for the patch and the NMU.
  * Add systemd service file, thank you Felipe Sateler for reviewing it.
  * Bump standards-version to 3.9.6, no changes needed.
  * New maintainer email address.
 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose@calhariz.com>  Tue, 29 Dec 2015 19:59:07 +0000
switchconf (0.0.14-1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
  * Force the use of bash, instead of a POSIX shell.
 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 24 Aug 2014 04:37:04 +0100
switchconf (0.0.13-2) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
  * Add Homepage field pointing to alioth page of the project
 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 02 Mar 2014 18:01:07 +0000
switchconf (0.0.13-1) wheezy; urgency=low
  * New upstream version:
    * Distribution tar is now compressed by xz
  * Change to source format 3.0 (quilt)
 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 02 Mar 2014 15:56:31 +0000
switchconf (0.0.12-1) wheezy; urgency=low
  * Fixed some typos on switchconf
 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 02 Mar 2014 15:39:09 +0000
switchconf (0.0.11-1) wheezy; urgency=low
  * New upstream version:
    * Makefile: add target dist-exp to build distribution files.
    * Add flag -f with the path to the configuration file.
  * Update debian/rules to version 0.24.
  * Update debian/control with new name and email address of Maintainer.
  * Update copyright.
 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 16 Feb 2014 18:04:22 +0000
switchconf (0.0.10-1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
  * New upstream version:
    * Fix return code on error.
    * Use syslog system to report errors.
 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Thu, 16 Jan 2014 20:23:46 +0000

Currently, as of today, amanda on sid is not installable because of a dependency on perl5 instead of perl. While I sort out a sponsor, my sponsor is very busy, here is a preview of the new packages. So anyone can install and test them and work around bug #808209. The source of the packages is in collab-maint. The debs files are here:

• amanda-common_3.3.7p1-1_cal0_amd64.deb
• amanda-common_3.3.7p1-1_cal0_i386.deb
• amanda-client_3.3.7p1-1_cal0_amd64.deb
• amanda-client_3.3.7p1-1_cal0_i386.deb
• amanda-server_3.3.7p1-1_cal0_amd64.deb
• amanda-server_3.3.7p1-1_cal0_i386.deb