If you read Planet Debian often, you ve probably noticed a trend of Free Software activity reports at the beginning of the month. First, those reports seemed a bit unamusing and lengthy, but since I take the time to read them I ve learnt a lot of things, and now I m amazed at the amount of work that people are doing for Free Software. Indeed, I knew already that many people are doing lots of work. But reading those reports gives you an actual view of how much it is. Then, I decided that I should do the same and write some kind of report since I became a Debian Developer in July. I think it s a nice way to share your work with others and maybe inspire them as it happened to me. So I asked some of the people that have been inspiring me how do they do it. I mean, I was curious to know how they keep track of the work they do and how long it takes to write their reports. It seems that it takes quite some time, it s mostly manual work and usually starts by the end of the month, reviewing their contributions in mailing lists, bug trackers, e-mail folders, etc. Here I am now, writing my first report about my Free Software activities since July and until September 2017. I hope you like it:

• Filed bug #867068 in nm.debian.org: Cannot claim account after former SSO alioth cert expired.
• Replied a request in private mail for becoming the maintainer for the Monero Wallet, that I declined suggesting to file an RFP.
• Attended DebConf17 DebCamp but I missed most of Open Day and the rest of the Debian conference in Montreal.
• Rebuilt libdbd-oracle-perl after being removed from testing to enable the transition to perl 5.26.
• Filed bug #870872 in tracker.debian.org: Server Error (500) when using a new SSO cert.
• Filed bug #870876 in tracker.debian.org: make subscription easier to upstreams with many packages.
• Filed bug #871767 in lintian: [checks/cruft] use substr instead of substring in example.
• Filed bug #871769 in reportbug: man page mentions -a instead of -A.
• Suggested to remove libmail-sender-perl in bug #790727, since it s been deprecated upstream.
• Mentioned -n option for dpt-takeover in how to adopt pkg-perl manual.
• Fixed a broken link to HCL in https://wiki.debian.org/Hardware.
• Adopted libapache-admin-config-perl into pkg-perl team, upgraded to 0.95-1 and closed bug #615457.
• Fixed bug #875835 in libflickr-api-perl: don t add quote marks in SYNOPSIS.
• Removed 50 inactive accounts from pkg-perl team in alioth as part of our annual membership ping.

Happy hacking!

During evaluating Jessie, I found 'apt' command and noticed it was pretty good for novice-usual users.

Usage: apt [options] command
CLI for apt.
Basic commands: 
 list - list packages based on package names
 search - search in package descriptions
 show - show package details
 update - update list of available packages
 install - install packages
 remove  - remove packages
 upgrade - upgrade the system by installing/upgrading packages
 full-upgrade - upgrade the system by removing/installing/upgrading packages
 edit-sources - edit the source information file

'apt list' is like a combination of 'dpkg -l' + 'apt-cache pkgnames'. 'apt search' is a bit slower than 'apt-cache search' but provides with useful information. 'apt show' formats bytesizes and hides some (for experts) fields. install/remove/upgrade/full-upgrade are mostly same as apt-get. 'apt edit-sources' opens a editor and checks the integrity. So, I'd like to recommend 'apt' command to Debian users. Well, why did I write this entry...? ;) I found a mistranslation I had made in ja.po of apt. Because it is critical mistranslation (Japanese users will confuse by it), I want to fix it strongly. Dear apt deity maintainers, could you consider to update apt for Jessie? (#772678. FYI there are other translation updates also: #772913, #771982, and #771967)

If the bug title of #668001 was not "debootstrap: cant install systemd instead of sysvinit", but was like "debootstrap ignores everything from the first pipe character to the end of Depends/Pre-Depends line.", it would be treated more carefully ;) My patch posting #20 aims to fix it. Well, I wish this bug will be solved on jessie+1 or backports.

After a long silence, I updated the bpo Debian-installer for Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.4, Squeeze. You know, you can take it from http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/.

• bases on Debian 6.0.4 Squeeze with firmwares
• uses Linux kernel 3.2.4 (linux-image-3.2.0-0.bpo.1 3.2.4-1~bpo60+1)
• includes fixed DHCP client for buggy MacOS X DHCP server
• supports WiFi WPA
• includes backported finish-install to fix wrong /etc/inittab on some environments.

This summer my beloved thinkpad x301 died in a cloud of smoke. It was exactly 3 years and 20 days old while my warranty was valid only for 3 years. Now, don't tell me this is a coincidence. Anyway. After about 5 months, I finally managed to convince my employer to get me a new thinkpad, the x220. My specs includes a 128G SSD , 4G of RAM, 2.4Gz processor, camera and fingerprint reader. It's a pity that the x300 series is not in production anymore. They were light, with a solid battery and a large screen. The X1 just don't cut it. Even though it can be consider the successor of the x300, its battery life is just not enough for my needs. On the other hand, the x220 is a very nice machine : the screen is a bit smaller then the X300, but it is light, with a very powerful processor, good battery and it feels very solid. In my opinion lenovo should have packed the new hw of the x220 in the chassis of the x300, maybe with small compromise on the battery life (I got the big battery and I can squeeze almost 7 hs with a single charge) but clearly this was not a good business choice... Installing debian on this laptop is not immediate because none of the official debian installers are shipped with a recent kernel (as in 3.x series). Since with the official debian installer I cannot have neither the driver for the Ethernet card or the driver for the wirelles card, I opted to use a custom installer built by kmuto (http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/ ) . Using this installer the ethernet card is recognized immediately and it's easy to proceed with the installation as usual. Another option would have been to add the binary blog for the wireless chip, but apparently the deb installer supports only WEP auth, while all my access point are WPA. I didn't spend too much time on the wireless setup, so it might well be that is indeed possible to install using a WPA access point. Last time I installed a laptop, I used the automatic partition option to have lvm on top of a lucks encrypted partition, only to discover later that the default dimensions of the partitions were a bit too small for me. For example, by default the boot partition is only 256Mb. This is plenty if you want to have only one kernel image installed at each given time, but if you want more then one kernel, memtest and for example a grml rescue iso, it's easy to run out of space. So I proceed to manually partition the disc creating a boot partition of 512M, and using the rest as a luks encrypted device with lvm on top and 3 logical volumes : sys (15G), swap (4G) and home (the rest). For my daily use having 15G on my laptop for /usr, /var, etc should more the enough... Next step was to install the system. Since in recent times I got extremely pissed off with gnome 3, I've decided to dump it completely and go back to awesome. But since awesome all by itself is a bit sad, I paired it up with xfce. Everything works, except the automount, and I'm still trying to figure out how to make it work. Apparently is a consolkit problem... I'll write another post about the xfce4 + awsome setup soon... Today I've also started playing with the finger print reader. It seems working, but I haven't managed yet to use it in conjunction with pam for authentication ... more to come. And... On last closing remark : during the last 5 months I've used a dell latitude e6410 ... Gosh. I feel I'm on anther planet. The keyboard of a thinkpad give you pleasure, not pain, from 2 to 4G of RAM is a big jump and from a conventional HD to a SSD ... well... it seems I'm flyinggggg :) I've the impression my productivity just went up 50% !!! If you work with your laptop everyday get a good laptop. It is well worth the investment ...

Today I released bpo Debian-Installer with using Linux kernel 2.6.39. You know, you can download it.

• uses Linux kernel 2.6.39 (bpo.2)
• updates disk controller drivers such as hpsa. (by updating kernel-wedge)
• updates firmware packages (such as bnx2x)

Enjoy!

With Steve's kind help, I got a place to put my backport debian-installer images at Debian official CD host cdimage.debian.org. Although http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/ remains as the site of primary information, you can download or rsync every files from http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/backports/ directly also. Please DO NOT fill any bugs about these images to Debian BTS. They are unofficial, even are provided by Debian official host ;-P

For several years, Kenshi Muto has been doing some awesome work on updated/backported Debian CDs, producing CDs with support for newer hardware and newer features. I've used them myself in the past to help get awkward machines working, and I know they are a great resource for lots of other Debian users. We've discussed things in the last few weeks, and agreed that it would be useful to host his images on cdimage.debian.org. The best place to look now is http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/backports/. These are unofficial images, so please don't report bugs in the Debian BTS for them.

I updated the bpo Debian-installer for Debian GNU/Linux 6.0, Squeeze. You can download it from the place.

• is based on Debian 6.0.2.1 with firmwares
• uses Linux kernel 2.6.38 (bpo.2)
• includes modified DHCP client for buggy MacOS X DHCP server
• supports i386 architecture

Enjoy!

This is first release of backported Debian-installer for Debian GNU/Linux 6.0, Squeeze. You can download it from the place.

• Debian 6.0.1 based
• Kernel 2.6.38 (bpo.2)

Update #1: I updated images, as revision 0614. It is based on Debian 6.0.1 + firmware netinst. So, you don't need to make a memory stick to insert additional firmwares. Plus, this image includes new DHCP client which is fixed an interacting problem with some DHCP servers. Notice: This ISO image doesn't include non-free firmware. You can take it from Debian official page (please see Debian squeeze installation information and look Section 2.2, Installation Guide). WPA support isn't implemented yet. Enjoy!

• Kenshi Muto has released custom debian-installer images for Lenny with Linux kernel 2.6.32. The images are available only for i386 and amd64.
• The GPG key signing coordination pages are now hosted in the Debian Wiki. Read first the coordination page before register your key signing request.
  If you registered to offer keysigning to others, take a moment to check if your data is up-to-date.
• If you are a user of debian-ports.org, there is a new archive signing key.
• For Python developers, the latest upload of http://packages.debian.org/sid/python-stdeb 0.5, includes pypi-install for installing packages from the Python Package Index . Read more in this email from debian-python.
• Upcoming Bug Squashing Parties: Tokyo, New York city and M nchengladbach (Gemany).

I happily release lenny-custom-1230. Have a nice new year day.

• Debian 5.0.3
• Linux kernel 2.6.32
• ext4 support
• firmware support

In March 2009 I contacted Adobe about the self-contradictory nature of the license for the Adobe Glyph List For New Fonts (AGLFN) data. I did so because one of the upstreams I am involved in (fonttools) embeds a copy of aglfn.txt and I noticed the license was a bit strange. An Adobe employee by the name of David Lemon replied to say that the license would become less free than it was. I then asked him to consider using a free software license for both the Adobe CMap and AGLFN data. We discussed the benefits and drawbacks of doing this for both Adobe and the free software community. David was initially skeptical about the balance between benefits and drawbacks for Adobe and I was feeling pessimistic about the situation. The conversation ended and several months passed, with me sending the occasional ping and David being busy. Then in June he told me a new license was coming in a month. So I sent another ping on September 20th to find out what the status of that was. A couple of days later I received a mail saying that the Adobe CMap data has now been released under the BSD license and that the Adobe AGLFN data will soon follow! Please note that while this means that modifications are technically allowed, they are still strongly discouraged for compatibility reasons. Adobe has assigned an emailable maintainer (currently Ken Lunde) for these files so there is no reason that modifications should not be done upstream. You can also edit the wiki to document things or post in the forum. If you happen to meet David, Ken or Dave McAllister (who manages the Open@Adobe program) somewhere, please thank them and offer beverages. So, what does this mean for free software projects? Debian CJK users will be able to read many more PDFs with CJK characters without using any non-free packages once the new CMap files reach main. I will need to package the new AGLFN data for Debian. I will need to remove the embedded AGLFN from fonttools upstream and adapt it to use the packaged one if available or suggest the user download it if not. GNU Classpath and the other software projects using AGLFN data might like to do the same. I may consider writing a library for loading the AGLFN data, mainly as an exercise in learning how to write a good library though. Oh, and perhaps I can convince (Kenshi MUTO) my minimal level of involvement in this is worth a beer if I ever meet him

Debconf9 is coming. I'll be there and will have a short trip to Coruna to visit my friend and to Madrid to visit some museums, before Debconf.

• Tokyo-Madrid round-trip ticket (Thai airline): Reserved
• Debconf attendance fee: Paid
• Madrid-Coruna round-trip ticket (Iberia air): Reserved
• Hotel at Coruna: Not yet
• Hostel at Madrid: Reserved
• Madrid Atocha->Caceres train Talgo (23 July): Reserved
• Caceres->Madrid (29 July evening): Not yet.

Anyway, see you at Debconf9! :)

Hideki Yamane and Nobuhiro Iwamatsu talked about Debian Project last Friday at GREE was one of famous SNS providers in Japan. GREE uses Debian GNU/Linux on large scale for its services. Hideki, is active Debian Maintainer, talked that using Debian was pretty easy and welcomed every contributors. He also described how Debian Project was managing release, QA, and buildd for a large audience. Nobuhiro, just passed NM tests and is awaiting final DAM's check, spoke about NM process with his personal experience. He is one of Linux kernel upstream developers and has good knowledges about embedded system programmings and device drivers. I hope he passes DAM's check early to improve Debian more. I met and talked with some people who were interesting in Debian after the meeting. Yes, I enjoyed that time.

I updated Web service 'Debian HCL - Debian GNU/Linux device driver check & report page' is an easy tool to check and see the support status of your hardware on GNU/Linux, with many improved features. Integrating the check page and submitted reports is convenience. The vendor tree view will make easier to find models what you'd like to see. Although Searching isn't implemented yet, I think new URL structure is friendly to search engine crawlers. I'll put Google search form on the page after Google crawls. Handling your submission is semi-automatic periodically. So please don't submit again and again even it won't be shown soon. :) This service is localized in English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Spanish-Argentina, Italian, Polish, German, and Portguese at this time, by using your Web browser language information. Because I introduced the GNU gettext system for internationalizing, it's easy to translate and update the translations. You can take template.pot file and translate in your language. If you'd like to translate in your language, please tell me. Have a fun!

I have gotten quite some response to my blog post about the hardware test proposal thingy from Bdale. It would seem I haven't been entirely clear Someone referred me to a page by Kenshi Muto that parses 'lspci' output into a hardware compatibility list. This doesn't help. It ignores x.org stuff (which is important, too) and the page itself clearly says that it cannot guarantee whether a piece of hardware will actually work. For clarity: when I said 'Apparently all the other vendors have it, too', I really meant 'Apparently all the other GNU/Linux vendors have it, too'. People have suggested some cooperation between kernel/xorg upstream, other vendors, and perhaps something like freedesktop.org; and while that may be a good idea in and of itself, in the end Debian will have to provide something which it will call 'official' and which will tell a vendor whether or not Debian is supported on their hardware. This thing may not be fully automated or polished; it may need interactivity; but it must be something which will give a result that a product manager may want to lose some sleep over if it's not good enough. Holger also suggested we try implementing this with Debian Live, rather than debian-installer. This may be a good suggestion; a debian-live image will have a full Debian system available rather than the somewhat limited d-i environment, so writing a test should be easier. Also, I don't even want to think how testing X.org drivers would work out from within d-i. So what's left is a way to figure out how to do such a live system. I'll be posting some suggestion to the debian-devel mailinglist 'soon'.

Someone commented rightfully that I should explain how I got debian installed on the DG33TL.

There are 4 problems:

1. The standard kernel hangs at boot. This is because of a mmconfig related problem. To fix this use "pci=nommconf" as kernel boot option which will ignore the mmconfig information but still enable acpi so you still have a SMP machine.
   
2. The CD/DVD chipset is not yet supported. It is a "Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Unknown device 6101" which not even 2.6.23.9 seems to want to talk to. To solve this I booted from CD, but then continued to install from a USB stick.
3. The standard kernel uses the experimental firewire driver, which gives me an oops. The older firewire driver works perfectly.
   
4. The ethernet card is not recognised. It is a "Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Unknown device 294c" which works with the 7.6.12-NAPI version e1000 driver.

So to install I used the CD image from Kenshi Muto to install. Afterwards the standard kernel needs the newer e1000 driver. At the moment I'm running 2.6.23.9.

Kenshi sent the following GPG-signed message to the Debian CUPS mailing list today:

Hi folks, As you know, there are many bugs about CUPS including Release-critical and I haven't an enough time to fix them. My primary motivation was to internationalize/localize it. Now it is already implemented by upstream. Unfortunately CUPS is too complex for me to maintain. I haven't a time to track bugs, I haven't an enough knowledge about Postscript or printer specific codes, and I haven't any testbed of user's printers. If you'd like to become primary CUPS maintainer instead of me, I pass a baton happily :) Of course I'll support you such as uploading. Thanks,

Interested parties should contact kmuto directly to manifest their intention.

I am deeply missing a real wiki.debian.org/Hardware page. The current one is a joke. It would be nice to have something in the style of the Gentoo hardware page with nice pages which show what works and what doesn't.

I know about the Debian GNU/Linux device driver check page which is a good start, but:

• in most places (installation reports in and out of Debian) you will not see lspci -n output
• there is more to it than lspci (think lsusb, think stuff behind new/strange/uncommon buses - like the sound chips on some Apple ppc based machines)
• you need a running linux system (a live CD can be used for the test), but:
• Debian's live CD is in its infancy (I know, Knoppix should do fine)
• most live CD-s are i386 only (it doesn't matter that much, since amd64 machine should work with i386 live CDs)
  
• most places where you can buy hardware from:
• either they don't have the hardware in stock,
• either want an answer immediately,
• or they don't allow you to access the machine
• (I think) the database is outdated and people are not adding stuff to it
  
• there is no way to make a search based on the product name of the whole system and/or the component

Current situation (bad stuff)

wiki.debian.org/Hardware is a joke. For example, I was expecting to see a Network compatibility list, but instead I see some useless info.

What annoys me the most in this matter are dead links or links to dead/inactive projects.

Information is scattered all over the place (redirects and directories can help), is mixed/ungroupped, or is outdated.

Current situation (good stuff)

The information partly exists. Probably, in time, the wiki will be cleaned up, but until then you have to dig for the information.

There are plenty of sites and pages with information, but, still, you need to weed out the old/irrelevant stuff.

What to do about it

Before you say anything, no, there is no need for yet another Linux compatibility list project.

Ideas:

• contribute to the wiki
• add a wiki page for every machine you installed under Hardware/Compatibility/ Laptop,Desktop,Misc /$PRODUCTNAME (would it make sense to have it under Hardware/Compatibility/ Laptop,Desktop,Misc /$PRODUCTNAME/$DIST ?); link your page to the installation-report (you did fill an installation report for every installation you did, didn't you?)
  
• reorganize pages with directories (as proposed above)
  
• remove dead llinks
• add redirects for pages that just say "See foo"
  
• unify pages that contain almost the same information
  
• automatically make a wiki page for each (successful and unsuccessful) Debian installation-report based on the machine type (would need some logic to weed out the home made systems) - but only select the success/fail rate based on strictly hardware issues
• help Kenshi with his efforts for better hardware support

Update: Justin told me about the Ubuntu Laptop Testing Team project which is kind of nice. There is also a scraper script which was supposed to help making queries like "info about laptop X" and "which laptops have these features", but that script didn't work for me.