Day 1: Arrival in Kochi Kochi is a city in the state of Kerala, India. This year s DebConf was to be held in Kochi from 3rd September to 17th of September, which I was planning to attend. My friend Suresh, who was planning to join, told me that 29th August 2023 will be Onam, a major festival of the state of Kerala. So, we planned a Kerala trip before the DebConf. We booked early morning flights for Kochi from Delhi and reached Kochi on 28th August. We had booked a hostel named Zostel in Ernakulam. During check-in, they asked me to fill a form which required signing in using a Google account. I told them I don t have a Google account and I don t want to create one either. The people at the front desk seemed receptive, so I went ahead with telling them the problems of such a sign-in being mandatory for check-in. Anyways, they only took a photo of my passport and let me check-in without a Google account. We stayed in a ten room dormitory, which allowed travellers of any gender. The dormitory room was air-conditioned, spacious, clean and beds were also comfortable. There were two bathrooms in the dormitory and they were clean. Plus, there was a separate dormitory room in the hostel exclusive for females. I noticed that that Zostel was not added in the OpenStreetMap and so, I added it :) . The hostel had a small canteen for tea and snacks, a common sitting area outside the dormitories, which had beds too. There was a separate silent room, suitable for people who want to work.

Dormitory room in Zostel Ernakulam, Kochi.

Beds in Zostel Ernakulam, Kochi.

We had lunch at a nearby restaurant and it was hard to find anything vegetarian for me. I bought some freshly made banana chips from the street and they were tasty. As far as I remember, I had a big glass of pineapple juice for lunch. Then I went to the Broadway market and bought some cardamom and cinnamon for home. I also went to a nearby supermarket and bought Matta brown rice for home. Then, I looked for a courier shop to send the things home but all of them were closed due to Onam festival. After returning to the Zostel, I overslept till 9 PM and in the meanwhile, Suresh planned with Saidut and Shwetank (who met us during our stay in Zostel) to go to a place in Fort Kochi for dinner. I suspected I will be disappointed by lack of vegetarian options as they were planning to have fish. I already had a restaurant in mind - Brindhavan restaurant (suggested by Anupa), which was a pure vegetarian restaurant. To reach there, I got off at Palarivattom metro station and started looking for an auto-rickshaw to get to the restaurant. I didn t get any for more than 5 minutes. Since that restaurant was not added to the OpenStreetMap, I didn t even know how far that was and which direction to go to. Then, I saw a Zomato delivery person on a motorcycle and asked him where the restaurant was. It was already 10 PM and the restaurant closes at 10:30. So, I asked him whether he can drop me off. He agreed and dropped me off at that restaurant. It was 4-5 km from that metro station. I tipped him and expressed my gratefulness for the help. He refused to take the tip, but I insisted and he accepted. I entered the restaurant and it was coming to a close, so many items were not available. I ordered some Kadhai Paneer (only item left) with naan. It tasted fine. Since the next day was Thiruvonam, I asked the restaurant about the Sadya thali menu and prices for the next day. I planned to eat Sadya thali at that restaurant, but my plans got changed later.

Onam sadya menu from Brindhavan restaurant.

Day 2: Onam celebrations Next day, on 29th of August 2023, we had plan to leave for Wayanad. Wayanad is a hill station in Kerala and a famous tourist spot. Praveen suggested to visit Munnar as it is far closer to Kochi than Wayanad (80 km vs 250 km). But I had already visited Munnar in my previous trips, so we chose Wayanad. We had a train late night from Ernakulam Junction (at 23:30 hours) to Kozhikode, which is the nearest railway station from Wayanad. So, we checked out in the morning as we had plans to roam around in Kochi before taking the train. Zostel was celebrating Onam on that day. To opt-in, we had to pay 400 rupees, which included a Sadya Thali and a mundu. Me and Suresh paid the amount and opted in for the celebrations. Sadya thali had Rice, Sambhar, Rasam, Avial, Banana Chips, Pineapple Pachadi, Pappadam, many types of pickels and chutneys, Pal Ada Payasam and Coconut jaggery Pasam. And, there was water too :). Those payasams were really great and I had one more round of them. Later, I had a lot of variety of payasams during the DebConf.

Sadya lined up for serving

Sadya thali served on banana leaf.

So, we hung out in the common room and put our luggage there. We played UNO and had conversations with other travellers in the hostel. I had a fun time there and I still think it is one of the best hostel experiences I had. We made good friends with Saiduth (Telangana) and Shwetank (Uttarakhand). They were already aware about the software like debian, and we had some detailed conversations about the Free Software movement. I remember explaining the difference between the terms Open Source and Free Software . I also told them about the Streetcomplete app, a beginner friendly app to edit OpenStreetMap. We had dinner at a place nearby (named Palaraam), but again, the vegetarian options were very limited! After dinner, we came back to the Zostel and me and Suresh left for Ernakulam Junction to catch our train Maveli Express (16604).

Day 3: Going to Wayanad Maveli Express was scheduled to reach Kozhikode at 03:25 (morning). I had set alarms from 03:00 to 03:30, with the gap of 10 minutes. Every time I woke up, I turned off the alarm. Then I woke up and saw train reaching the Kozhikode station and woke up Suresh for deboarding. But then I noticed that the train is actually leaving the station, not arriving! This means we missed our stop. Now we looked at the next stops and whether we can deboard there. I was very sleepy and wanted to take a retiring room at some station before continuing our journey to Wayanad. The next stop was Quilandi and we checked online that it didn t have a retiring room. So, we skipped this stop. We got off at the next stop named Vadakara and found out no retiring room was available. So, we asked about information regarding bus for Wayanad and they said that there is a bus to Wayanad around 07:00 hours from bus station which was a few kilometres from the railway station. We took a bus for Kalpetta (in Wayanad) at around 07:00. The destination of the buses were written in Malayalam, which we could not read. Once again, the locals helped us to get on to the bus to Kalpetta. Vadakara is not a big city and it can be hard to find people who know good Hindi or English, unlike Kochi. Despite language issues, I had no problem there in navigation, thanks to locals. I mostly spent time sleeping during the bus journey. A few hours later, the bus dropped us at Kalpetta. We had a booking at a hostel in Rippon village. It was 16 km from Kalpetta. On the way, we were treated with beautiful views of nature, which was present everywhere in Wayanad. The place was covered with tea gardens and our eyes were treated with beautiful scenery at every corner.

We were treated with such views during the Wayanad trip.

Rippon village was a very quiet place and I liked the calm atmosphere. This place is blessed by nature and has stunning scenery. I found English was more common than Hindi in Wayanad. Locals were very nice and helped me, even if they didn t know my language.

A road in Rippon.

After catching some sleep at the hostel, I went out in the afternoon. I hitchhiked to reach the main road from the hostel. I bought more spices from a nearby shop and realized that I should have waited for my visit to Wayanad to buy cardamom, which I already bought from Kochi. Then, I was looking for post office to send spices home. The people at the spices shop told me that the nearby Rippon post office was closed by that time, but the post office at Meppadi was open, which was 5 km from there. I went to Meppadi and saw the post office closes at 15:00, but I reached five minutes late. My packing was not very good and they asked me to pack it tighter. There was a shop near the post office and the people there gave me a cardboard and tapes, and helped pack my stuff for the post. By the time I went to the post office again, it was 15:30. But they accepted my parcel for post.

Day 4: Kanthanpara Falls, Zostel Wayanad and Karapuzha Dam Kanthanpara waterfalls were 2 km from the hostel. I hitchhiked to the place from the hostel on a scooty. Entry ticket was worth Rs 40. There were good views inside and nothing much to see except the waterfalls.

Entry to Kanthanpara Falls.

Kanthanpara Falls.

We had a booking at Zostel Wayanad for this day and so we shifted there. Again, as with their Ernakulam branch, they asked me to fill a form which required signing in using Google, but when I said I don t have a Google account they checked me in without that. There were tea gardens inside the Zostel boundaries and the property was beautiful.

A view of Zostel Wayanad.

A map of Wayanad showing tourist places.

A view from inside the Zostel Wayanad property.

Later in the evening, I went to Karapuzha Dam. I witnessed a beautiful sunset during the journey. Karapuzha dam had many activites, like ziplining, and was nice to roam around. Chembra Peak is near to the Zostel Wayanad. So, I was planning to trek to the heart shaped lake. It was suggested by Praveen and looking online, this trek seemed worth doing. There was an issue however. The charges for trek were Rs 1770 for upto five people. So, if I go alone I will have to spend Rs 1770 for the trek. If I go with another person, we split Rs 1770 into two, and so on. The optimal way to do it is to go in a group of five (you included :D). I asked front desk at Zostel if they can connect me with people going to Chembra peak the next day, and they told me about a group of four people planning to go to Chembra peak the next day. I got lucky! All four of them were from Kerala and worked in Qatar.

Day 5: Chembra peak trek The date was 1st September 2023. I woke up early (05:30 in the morning) for the Chembra peak trek. I had bought hiking shoes especially for trekking, which turned out to be a very good idea. The ticket counter opens at 07:00. The group of four with which I planned to trek met me around 06:00 in the Zostel. We went to the ticket counter around 06:30. We had breakfast at shops selling Maggi noodles and bread omlette near the ticket counter. It was a hot day and the trek was difficult for an inexperienced person like me. The scenery was green and beautiful throughout.

Terrain during trekking towards the Chembra peak.

Heart-shaped lake at the Chembra peak.

Me at the heart-shaped lake.

Views from the top of the Chembra peak.

View of another peak from the heart-shaped lake.

While returning from the trek, I found out a shop selling bamboo rice, which I bought and will make bamboo rice payasam out of it at home (I have some coconut milk from Kerala too ;)). We returned to Zostel in the afternoon. I had muscle pain after the trek and it has still not completely disappeared. At night, we took a bus from Kalpetta to Kozhikode in order to return to Kochi.

Day 6: Return to Kochi At midnight of 2nd of September, we reached Kozhikode bus stand. Then we roamed around for something to eat. I didn t find anything vegetarian to eat. No surprises there! Then we went to Kozhikode railway station and looked for retiring rooms, but no luck there. We waited at the station and took the next train to Kochi at 03:30 and reached Ernakulam Junction at 07:30 (half hours before train s scheduled time!). From there, we went to Zostel Fort Kochi and stayed one night there and checked out next morning.

Day 7: Roaming around in Fort Kochi On 3rd of September, we roamed around in Fort Kochi. We visited the usual places - St Francis Church, Dutch Palace, Jew Town, Pardesi Synagogue. I also visited some homestays and the owners were very happy to show their place even when I made it clear that I was not looking for a stay. In the evening, we went to Kakkanad to attend DebConf. The story continues in my DebConf23 blog post.

KDE neon

• KMymoney 5.1: Fixed issue where hitting calculator button did nothing. It now launches a kcalc snap.
• Blinken 23.08.1
• Artikulate 23.08.1: This is now shipped with courses from https://invent.kde.org/education/artikulate-data
• Bomber 23.08.1
• Bovo 23.08.1
• Alligator 23.08.1: Added missing qml dependencies.
• Angelfish 23.08.1: Added missing qml dependencies.
• Arianna 23.08.1

Official logo of DebConf23

Introduction DebConf23, the 24th annual Debian Conference, was held in India in the city of Kochi, Kerala from the 3rd to the 17th of September, 2023. Ever since I got to know about it (which was more than an year ago), I was excited to attend DebConf in my home country. This was my second DebConf, as I attended one last year in Kosovo. I was very happy that I didn t need to apply for a visa to attend. I got full bursary to attend the event (thanks a lot to Debian for that!) which is always helpful in covering the expenses, especially if the venue is a five star hotel :) For the conference, I submitted two talks. One was suggested by Sahil on Debian packaging for beginners, while the other was suggested by Praveen who opined that a talk covering broader topics about freedom in self-hosting services will be better, when I started discussing about submitting a talk about prav app project. So I submitted one on Debian packaging for beginners and the other on ideas on sustainable solutions for self-hosting. My friend Suresh - who is enthusiastic about Debian and free software - wanted to attend the DebConf as well. When the registration started, I reminded him about applying. We landed in Kochi on the 28th of August 2023 during the festival of Onam. We celebrated Onam in Kochi, had a trip to Wayanad, and returned to Kochi. On the evening of the 3rd of September, we reached the venue - Four Points Hotel by Sheraton, at Infopark Kochi, Ernakulam, Kerala, India.

Suresh and me celebrating Onam in Kochi.

Hotel overview The hotel had 14 floors, and featured a swimming pool and gym (these were included in our package). The hotel gave us elevator access for only our floor, along with public spaces like the reception, gym, swimming pool, and dining areas. The temperature inside the hotel was pretty cold and I had to buy a jacket to survive. Perhaps the hotel was in cahoots with winterwear companies? :)

Four Points Hotel by Sheraton was the venue of DebConf23. Photo credits: Bilal

Photo of the pool. Photo credits: Andreas Tille.

View from the hotel window.

Meals On the first day, Suresh and I had dinner at the eatery on the third floor. At the entrance, a member of the hotel staff asked us about how many people we wanted a table for. I told her that it s just the two of us at the moment, but (as we are attending a conference) we might be joined by others. Regardless, they gave us a table for just two. Within a few minutes, we were joined by Alper from Turkey and urbec from Germany. So we shifted to a larger table but then we were joined by even more people, so we were busy adding more chairs to our table. urbec had already been in Kerala for the past 5-6 days and was, on one hand, very happy already with the quality and taste of bananas in Kerala and on the other, rather afraid of the spicy food :) Two days later, the lunch and dinner were shifted to the All Spice Restaurant on the 14th floor, but the breakfast was still served at the eatery. Since the eatery (on the 3rd floor) had greater variety of food than the other venue, this move made breakfast the best meal for me and many others. Many attendees from outside India were not accustomed to the spicy food. It is difficult for locals to help them, because what we consider mild can be spicy for others. It is not easy to satisfy everyone at the dining table, but I think the organizing team did a very good job in the food department. (That said, it didn t matter for me after a point, and you will know why.) The pappadam were really good, and I liked the rice labelled Kerala rice . I actually brought that exact rice and pappadam home during my last trip to Kochi and everyone at my home liked it too (thanks to Abhijit PA). I also wished to eat all types of payasams from Kerala and this really happened (thanks to Sruthi who designed the menu). Every meal had a different variety of payasam and it was awesome, although I didn t like some of them, mostly because they were very sweet. Meals were later shifted to the ground floor (taking away the best breakfast option which was the eatery).

This place served as lunch and dinner place and later as hacklab during debconf. Photo credits: Bilal

The excellent Swag Bag The DebConf registration desk was at the second floor. We were given a very nice swag bag. They were available in multiple colors - grey, green, blue, red - and included an umbrella, a steel mug, a multiboot USB drive by Mostly Harmless, a thermal flask, a mug by Canonical, a paper coaster, and stickers. It rained almost every day in Kochi during our stay, so handing out an umbrella to every attendee was a good idea.

Picture of the awesome swag bag given at DebConf23. Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi

A gift for Nattie During breakfast one day, Nattie (Belgium) expressed the desire to buy a coffee filter. The next time I went to the market, I bought a coffee filter for her as a gift. She seemed happy with the gift and was flattered to receive a gift from a young man :)

Being a mentor There were many newbies who were eager to learn and contribute to Debian. So, I mentored whoever came to me and was interested in learning. I conducted a packaging workshop in the bootcamp, but could only cover how to set up the Debian Unstable environment, and had to leave out how to package (but I covered that in my talk). Carlos (Brazil) gave a keysigning session in the bootcamp. Praveen was also mentoring in the bootcamp. I helped people understand why we sign GPG keys and how to sign them. I planned to take a workshop on it but cancelled it later.

My talk My Debian packaging talk was on the 10th of September, 2023. I had not prepared slides for my Debian packaging talk in advance - I thought that I could do it during the trip, but I didn t get the time so I prepared them on the day before the talk. Since it was mostly a tutorial, the slides did not need much preparation. My thanks to Suresh, who helped me with the slides and made it possible to complete them in such a short time frame. My talk was well-received by the audience, going by their comments. I am glad that I could give an interesting presentation.

My presentation photo. Photo credits: Valessio

Visiting a saree shop After my talk, Suresh, Alper, and I went with Anisa and Kristi - who are both from Albania, and have a never-ending fascination for Indian culture :) - to buy them sarees. We took autos to Kakkanad market and found a shop with a great variety of sarees. I was slightly familiar with the area around the hotel, as I had been there for a week. Indian women usually don t try on sarees while buying - they just select the design. But Anisa wanted to put one on and take a few photos as well. The shop staff did not have a trial saree for this purpose, so they took a saree from a mannequin. It took about an hour for the lady at the shop to help Anisa put on that saree but you could tell that she was in heaven wearing that saree, and she bought it immediately :) Alper also bought a saree to take back to Turkey for his mother. Me and Suresh wanted to buy a kurta which would go well with the mundu we already had, but we could not find anything to our liking.

Selfie with Anisa and Kristi. Photo credits: Anisa.

Cheese and Wine Party On the 11th of September we had the Cheese and Wine Party, a tradition of every DebConf. I brought Kaju Samosa and Nankhatai from home. Many attendees expressed their appreciation for the samosas. During the party, I was with Abhas and had a lot of fun. Abhas brought packets of paan and served them at the Cheese and Wine Party. We discussed interesting things and ate burgers. But due to the restrictive alcohol laws in the state, it was less fun compared to the previous DebConfs - you could only drink alcohol served by the hotel in public places. If you bought your own alcohol, you could only drink in private places (such as in your room, or a friend s room), but not in public places.

Me helping with the Cheese and Wine Party.

Party at my room Last year, Joenio (Brazilian) brought pastis from France which I liked. He brought the same alocholic drink this year too. So I invited him to my room after the Cheese and Wine party to have pastis. My idea was to have them with my roommate Suresh and Joenio. But then we permitted Joenio to bring as many people as he wanted and he ended up bringing some ten people. Suddenly, the room was crowded. I was having good time at the party, serving them the snacks given to me by Abhas. The news of an alcohol party at my room spread like wildfire. Soon there were so many people that the AC became ineffective and I found myself sweating. I left the room and roamed around in the hotel for some fresh air. I came back after about 1.5 hours - for most part, I was sitting at the ground floor with TK Saurabh. And then I met Abraham near the gym (which was my last meeting with him). I came back to my room at around 2:30 AM. Nobody seemed to have realized that I was gone. They were thanking me for hosting such a good party. A lot of people left at that point and the remaining people were playing songs and dancing (everyone was dancing all along!). I had no energy left to dance and to join them. They left around 03:00 AM. But I am glad that people enjoyed partying in my room.

This picture was taken when there were few people in my room for the party.

Sadhya Thali On the 12th of September, we had a sadhya thali for lunch. It is a vegetarian thali served on a banana leaf on the eve of Thiruvonam. It wasn t Thiruvonam on this day, but we got a special and filling lunch. The rasam and payasam were especially yummy.

Sadhya Thali: A vegetarian meal served on banana leaf. Payasam and rasam were especially yummy! Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi.

Sadhya thali being served at debconf23. Photo credits: Bilal

Day trip On the 13th of September, we had a daytrip. I chose the daytrip houseboat in Allepey. Suresh chose the same, and we registered for it as soon as it was open. This was the most sought-after daytrip by the DebConf attendees - around 80 people registered for it. Our bus was set to leave at 9 AM on the 13th of September. Me and Suresh woke up at 8:40 and hurried to get to the bus in time. It took two hours to reach the venue where we get the houseboat. The houseboat experience was good. The trip featured some good scenery. I got to experience the renowned Kerala backwaters. We were served food on the boat. We also stopped at a place and had coconut water. By evening, we came back to the place where we had boarded the boat.

Group photo of our daytrip. Photo credits: Radhika Jhalani

A good friend lost When we came back from the daytrip, we received news that Abhraham Raji was involved in a fatal accident during a kayaking trip. Abraham Raji was a very good friend of mine. In my Albania-Kosovo-Dubai trip last year, he was my roommate at our Tirana apartment. I roamed around in Dubai with him, and we had many discussions during DebConf22 Kosovo. He was the one who took the photo of me on my homepage. I also met him in MiniDebConf22 Palakkad and MiniDebConf23 Tamil Nadu, and went to his flat in Kochi this year in June. We had many projects in common. He was a Free Software activist and was the designer of the DebConf23 logo, in addition to those for other Debian events in India.

A selfie in memory of Abraham.

We were all fairly shocked by the news. I was devastated. Food lost its taste, and it became difficult to sleep. That night, Anisa and Kristi cheered me up and gave me company. Thanks a lot to them. The next day, Joenio also tried to console me. I thank him for doing a great job. I thank everyone who helped me in coping with the difficult situation. On the next day (the 14th of September), the Debian project leader Jonathan Carter addressed and announced the news officially. THe Debian project also mentioned it on their website. Abraham was supposed to give a talk, but following the incident, all talks were cancelled for the day. The conference dinner was also cancelled. As I write, 9 days have passed since his death, but even now I cannot come to terms with it.

Visiting Abraham s house On the 15th of September, the conference ran two buses from the hotel to Abraham s house in Kottayam (2 hours ride). I hopped in the first bus and my mood was not very good. Evangelos (Germany) was sitting opposite me, and he began conversing with me. The distraction helped and I was back to normal for a while. Thanks to Evangelos as he supported me a lot on that trip. He was also very impressed by my use of the StreetComplete app which I was using to edit OpenStreetMap. In two hours, we reached Abraham s house. I couldn t control myself and burst into tears. I went to see the body. I met his family (mother, father and sister), but I had nothing to say and I felt helpless. Owing to the loss of sleep and appetite over the past few days, I had no energy, and didn t think it was good idea for me to stay there. I went back by taking the bus after one hour and had lunch at the hotel. I withdrew my talk scheduled for the 16th of September.

A Japanese gift I got a nice Japanese gift from Niibe Yutaka (Japan) - a folder to keep papers which had ancient Japanese manga characters. He said he felt guilty as he swapped his talk with me and so it got rescheduled from 12th September to 16 September which I withdrew later.

Thanks to Niibe Yutaka (the person towards your right hand) from Japan (FSIJ), who gave me a wonderful Japanese gift during debconf23: A folder to keep pages with ancient Japanese manga characters printed on it. I realized I immediately needed that :)

This is the Japanese gift I received.

Group photo On the 16th of September, we had a group photo. I am glad that this year I was more clear in this picture than in DebConf22.

Click to enlarge

Volunteer work and talks attended I attended the training session for the video team and worked as a camera operator. The Bits from DPL was nice. I enjoyed Abhas presentation on home automation. He basically demonstrated how he liberated Internet-enabled home devices. I also liked Kristi s presentation on ways to engage with the GNOME community.

Bits from the DPL. Photo credits: Bilal

Kristi on GNOME community. Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi.

Abhas' talk on home automation. Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi.

I also attended lightning talks on the last day. Badri, Wouter, and I gave a demo on how to register on the Prav app. Prav got a fair share of advertising during the last few days.

I was roaming around with a QR code on my T-shirt for downloading Prav.

The night of the 17th of September Suresh left the hotel and Badri joined me in my room. Thanks to the efforts of Abhijit PA, Kiran, and Ananthu, I wore a mundu.

Me in mundu. Picture credits: Abhijith PA

I then joined Kalyani, Mangesh, Ruchika, Anisa, Ananthu and Kiran. We took pictures and this marked the last night of DebConf23.

Departure day The 18th of September was the day of departure. Badri slept in my room and left early morning (06:30 AM). I dropped him off at the hotel gate. The breakfast was at the eatery (3rd floor) again, and it was good. Sahil, Saswata, Nilesh, and I hung out on the ground floor.

From left: Nilesh, Saswata, me, Sahil. Photo credits: Sahil.

I had an 8 PM flight from Kochi to Delhi, for which I took a cab with Rhonda (Austria), Michael (Nigeria) and Yash (India). We were joined by other DebConf23 attendees at the Kochi airport, where we took another selfie.

Ruchika (taking the selfie) and from left to right: Yash, Joost (Netherlands), me, Rhonda

Joost and I were on the same flight, and we sat next to each other. He then took a connecting flight from Delhi to Netherlands, while I went with Yash to the New Delhi Railway Station, where we took our respective trains. I reached home on the morning of the 19th of September, 2023.

Joost and me going to Delhi. Photo credits: Ravi.

Big thanks to the organizers DebConf23 was hard to organize - strict alcohol laws, weird hotel rules, death of a close friend (almost a family member), and a scary notice by the immigration bureau. The people from the team are my close friends and I am proud of them for organizing such a good event. None of this would have been possible without the organizers who put more than a year-long voluntary effort to produce this. In the meanwhile, many of them had organized local events in the time leading up to DebConf. Kudos to them. The organizers also tried their best to get clearance for countries not approved by the ministry. I am also sad that people from China, Kosovo, and Iran could not join. In particular, I feel bad for people from Kosovo who wanted to attend but could not (as India does not consider their passport to be a valid travel document), considering how we Indians were so well-received in their country last year.

Note about myself I am writing this on the 22nd of September, 2023. It took me three days to put up this post - this was one of the tragic and hard posts for me to write. I have literally forced myself to write this. I have still not recovered from the loss of my friend. Thanks a lot to all those who helped me. PS: Credits to contrapunctus for making grammar, phrasing, and capitalization changes.

• Lokalize: Dictionaries are now available via the hunspell content snap! To enable:

• Ktorrent: First time release on both amd64 and arm64! Closes bug 412734
• Kdenlive: Glaximate animations are now available! Closes bug 459338

Kdenlive with Glaximate animations!

• Okular
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• Krdc: Now on arm64!
• Kdiamond: Now with sound!

• Kalzium: Molecular editor now works!
• Artikulate: Now works on arm64 ( eg. Rasberry Pi )
• Dragon: Now works on arm64
• Minuet: Now works on arm64

• Picmi
• Kturtle
• Ksudoku
• Konquest

Detecting manual packages On a cleanly filed workstation, it looks like this:

root@emma:/home/anarcat/bin# ./puppet-package-check -v
listing puppet packages...
listing apt packages...
loading apt cache...
0 unmanaged packages found

A messy workstation will look like this:

root@curie:/home/anarcat/bin# ./puppet-package-check -v
listing puppet packages...
listing apt packages...
loading apt cache...
288 unmanaged packages found
apparmor-utils beignet-opencl-icd bridge-utils clustershell cups-pk-helper davfs2 dconf-cli dconf-editor dconf-gsettings-backend ddccontrol ddrescueview debmake debootstrap decopy dict-devil dict-freedict-eng-fra dict-freedict-eng-spa dict-freedict-fra-eng dict-freedict-spa-eng diffoscope dnsdiag dropbear-initramfs ebtables efibootmgr elpa-lua-mode entr eog evince figlet file file-roller fio flac flex font-manager fonts-cantarell fonts-inconsolata fonts-ipafont-gothic fonts-ipafont-mincho fonts-liberation fonts-monoid fonts-monoid-tight fonts-noto fonts-powerline fonts-symbola freeipmi freetype2-demos ftp fwupd-amd64-signed gallery-dl gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf gcolor3 gcp gdisk gdm3 gdu gedit gedit-plugins gettext-base git-debrebase gnome-boxes gnote gnupg2 golang-any golang-docker-credential-helpers golang-golang-x-tools grub-efi-amd64-signed gsettings-desktop-schemas gsfonts gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio gtypist gvfs-backends hackrf hashcat html2text httpie httping hugo humanfriendly iamerican-huge ibus ibus-gtk3 ibus-libpinyin ibus-pinyin im-config imediff img2pdf imv initramfs-tools input-utils installation-birthday internetarchive ipmitool iptables iptraf-ng jackd2 jupyter jupyter-nbextension-jupyter-js-widgets jupyter-qtconsole k3b kbtin kdialog keditbookmarks keepassxc kexec-tools keyboard-configuration kfind konsole krb5-locales kwin-x11 leiningen lightdm lintian linux-image-amd64 linux-perf lmodern lsb-base lvm2 lynx lz4json magic-wormhole mailscripts mailutils manuskript mat2 mate-notification-daemon mate-themes mime-support mktorrent mp3splt mpdris2 msitools mtp-tools mtree-netbsd mupdf nautilus nautilus-sendto ncal nd ndisc6 neomutt net-tools nethogs nghttp2-client nocache npm2deb ntfs-3g ntpdate nvme-cli nwipe obs-studio okular-extra-backends openstack-clients openstack-pkg-tools paprefs pass-extension-audit pcmanfm pdf-presenter-console pdf2svg percol pipenv playerctl plymouth plymouth-themes popularity-contest progress prometheus-node-exporter psensor pubpaste pulseaudio python3-ldap qjackctl qpdfview qrencode r-cran-ggplot2 r-cran-reshape2 rake restic rhash rpl rpm2cpio rs ruby ruby-dev ruby-feedparser ruby-magic ruby-mocha ruby-ronn rygel-playbin rygel-tracker s-tui sanoid saytime scrcpy scrcpy-server screenfetch scrot sdate sddm seahorse shim-signed sigil smartmontools smem smplayer sng sound-juicer sound-theme-freedesktop spectre-meltdown-checker sq ssh-audit sshuttle stress-ng strongswan strongswan-swanctl syncthing system-config-printer system-config-printer-common system-config-printer-udev systemd-bootchart systemd-container tardiff task-desktop task-english task-ssh-server tasksel tellico texinfo texlive-fonts-extra texlive-lang-cyrillic texlive-lang-french texlive-lang-german texlive-lang-italian texlive-xetex tftp-hpa thunar-archive-plugin tidy tikzit tint2 tintin++ tipa tpm2-tools traceroute tree trocla ucf udisks2 unifont unrar-free upower usbguard uuid-runtime vagrant-cachier vagrant-libvirt virt-manager vmtouch vorbis-tools w3m wamerican wamerican-huge wfrench whipper whohas wireshark xapian-tools xclip xdg-user-dirs-gtk xlax xmlto xsensors xserver-xorg xsltproc xxd xz-utils yubioath-desktop zathura zathura-pdf-poppler zenity zfs-dkms zfs-initramfs zfsutils-linux zip zlib1g zlib1g-dev
157 old: apparmor-utils clustershell davfs2 dconf-cli dconf-editor ddccontrol ddrescueview decopy dnsdiag ebtables efibootmgr elpa-lua-mode entr figlet file-roller fio flac flex font-manager freetype2-demos ftp gallery-dl gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf gcolor3 gcp gdu gedit git-debrebase gnote golang-docker-credential-helpers golang-golang-x-tools gtypist hackrf hashcat html2text httpie httping hugo humanfriendly iamerican-huge ibus ibus-pinyin imediff input-utils internetarchive ipmitool iptraf-ng jackd2 jupyter-qtconsole k3b kbtin kdialog keditbookmarks keepassxc kexec-tools kfind konsole leiningen lightdm lynx lz4json magic-wormhole manuskript mat2 mate-notification-daemon mktorrent mp3splt msitools mtp-tools mtree-netbsd nautilus nautilus-sendto nd ndisc6 neomutt net-tools nethogs nghttp2-client nocache ntpdate nwipe obs-studio openstack-pkg-tools paprefs pass-extension-audit pcmanfm pdf-presenter-console pdf2svg percol pipenv playerctl qjackctl qpdfview qrencode r-cran-ggplot2 r-cran-reshape2 rake restic rhash rpl rpm2cpio rs ruby-feedparser ruby-magic ruby-mocha ruby-ronn s-tui saytime scrcpy screenfetch scrot sdate seahorse shim-signed sigil smem smplayer sng sound-juicer spectre-meltdown-checker sq ssh-audit sshuttle stress-ng system-config-printer system-config-printer-common tardiff tasksel tellico texlive-lang-cyrillic texlive-lang-french tftp-hpa tikzit tint2 tintin++ tpm2-tools traceroute tree unrar-free vagrant-cachier vagrant-libvirt vmtouch vorbis-tools w3m wamerican wamerican-huge wfrench whipper whohas xdg-user-dirs-gtk xlax xmlto xsensors xxd yubioath-desktop zenity zip
131 new: beignet-opencl-icd bridge-utils cups-pk-helper dconf-gsettings-backend debmake debootstrap dict-devil dict-freedict-eng-fra dict-freedict-eng-spa dict-freedict-fra-eng dict-freedict-spa-eng diffoscope dropbear-initramfs eog evince file fonts-cantarell fonts-inconsolata fonts-ipafont-gothic fonts-ipafont-mincho fonts-liberation fonts-monoid fonts-monoid-tight fonts-noto fonts-powerline fonts-symbola freeipmi fwupd-amd64-signed gdisk gdm3 gedit-plugins gettext-base gnome-boxes gnupg2 golang-any grub-efi-amd64-signed gsettings-desktop-schemas gsfonts gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio gvfs-backends ibus-gtk3 ibus-libpinyin im-config img2pdf imv initramfs-tools installation-birthday iptables jupyter jupyter-nbextension-jupyter-js-widgets keyboard-configuration krb5-locales kwin-x11 lintian linux-image-amd64 linux-perf lmodern lsb-base lvm2 mailscripts mailutils mate-themes mime-support mpdris2 mupdf ncal npm2deb ntfs-3g nvme-cli okular-extra-backends openstack-clients plymouth plymouth-themes popularity-contest progress prometheus-node-exporter psensor pubpaste pulseaudio python3-ldap ruby ruby-dev rygel-playbin rygel-tracker sanoid scrcpy-server sddm smartmontools sound-theme-freedesktop strongswan strongswan-swanctl syncthing system-config-printer-udev systemd-bootchart systemd-container task-desktop task-english task-ssh-server texinfo texlive-fonts-extra texlive-lang-german texlive-lang-italian texlive-xetex thunar-archive-plugin tidy tipa trocla ucf udisks2 unifont upower usbguard uuid-runtime virt-manager wireshark xapian-tools xclip xserver-xorg xsltproc xz-utils zathura zathura-pdf-poppler zfs-dkms zfs-initramfs zfsutils-linux zlib1g zlib1g-dev

Yuck! That's a lot of shit to go through. Notice how the packages get sorted between "old" and "new" packages. This is because popcon is used as a tool to mark which packages are "old". If you have unmanaged packages, the "old" ones are likely things that you can uninstall, for example. If you don't have popcon installed, you'll also get this warning:

popcon stats not available: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/log/popularity-contest'

The error can otherwise be safely ignored, but you won't get "help" prioritizing the packages to add to your manifests. Note that the tool ignores packages that were "marked" (see apt-mark(8)) as automatically installed. This implies that you might have to do a little bit of cleanup the first time you run this, as Debian doesn't necessarily mark all of those packages correctly on first install. For example, here's how it looks like on a clean install, after Puppet ran:

root@angela:/home/anarcat# ./bin/puppet-package-check -v
listing puppet packages...
listing apt packages...
loading apt cache...
127 unmanaged packages found
ca-certificates console-setup cryptsetup-initramfs dbus file gcc-12-base gettext-base grub-common grub-efi-amd64 i3lock initramfs-tools iw keyboard-configuration krb5-locales laptop-detect libacl1 libapparmor1 libapt-pkg6.0 libargon2-1 libattr1 libaudit-common libaudit1 libblkid1 libbpf0 libbsd0 libbz2-1.0 libc6 libcap-ng0 libcap2 libcap2-bin libcom-err2 libcrypt1 libcryptsetup12 libdb5.3 libdebconfclient0 libdevmapper1.02.1 libedit2 libelf1 libext2fs2 libfdisk1 libffi8 libgcc-s1 libgcrypt20 libgmp10 libgnutls30 libgpg-error0 libgssapi-krb5-2 libhogweed6 libidn2-0 libip4tc2 libiw30 libjansson4 libjson-c5 libk5crypto3 libkeyutils1 libkmod2 libkrb5-3 libkrb5support0 liblocale-gettext-perl liblockfile-bin liblz4-1 liblzma5 libmd0 libmnl0 libmount1 libncurses6 libncursesw6 libnettle8 libnewt0.52 libnftables1 libnftnl11 libnl-3-200 libnl-genl-3-200 libnl-route-3-200 libnss-systemd libp11-kit0 libpam-systemd libpam0g libpcre2-8-0 libpcre3 libpcsclite1 libpopt0 libprocps8 libreadline8 libselinux1 libsemanage-common libsemanage2 libsepol2 libslang2 libsmartcols1 libss2 libssl1.1 libssl3 libstdc++6 libsystemd-shared libsystemd0 libtasn1-6 libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtext-wrapi18n-perl libtinfo6 libtirpc-common libtirpc3 libudev1 libunistring2 libuuid1 libxtables12 libxxhash0 libzstd1 linux-image-amd64 logsave lsb-base lvm2 media-types mlocate ncurses-term pass-extension-otp puppet python3-reportbug shim-signed tasksel ucf usr-is-merged util-linux-extra wpasupplicant xorg zlib1g
popcon stats not available: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/log/popularity-contest'

Normally, there should be unmanaged packages here. But because of the way Debian is installed, a lot of libraries and some core packages are marked as manually installed, and are of course not managed through Puppet. There are two solutions to this problem:

• really manage everything in Puppet (argh)
• mark packages as automatically installed

I typically chose the second path and mark a ton of stuff as automatic. Then either they will be auto-removed, or will stop being listed. In the above scenario, one could mark all libraries as automatically installed with:

apt-mark auto $(./bin/puppet-package-check   grep -o 'lib[^ ]*')

... but if you trust that most of that stuff is actually garbage that you don't really want installed anyways, you could just mark it all as automatically installed:

apt-mark auto $(./bin/puppet-package-check)

In my case, that ended up keeping basically all libraries (because of course they're installed for some reason) and auto-removing this:

dh-dkms discover-data dkms libdiscover2 libjsoncpp25 libssl1.1 linux-headers-amd64 mlocate pass-extension-otp pass-otp plocate x11-apps x11-session-utils xinit xorg

You'll notice xorg in there: yep, that's bad. Not what I wanted. But for some reason, on other workstations, I did not actually have xorg installed. Turns out having xserver-xorg is enough, and that one has dependencies. So now I guess I just learned to stop worrying and live without X(org).

Optimizing large package installs But that, of course, is not all. Why make things simple when you can have an unreadable title that is trying to be both syntactically correct and click-baity enough to flatter my vain ego? Right. One of the challenges in bootstrapping Puppet with large package lists is that it's slow. Puppet lists packages as individual resources and will basically run apt install $PKG on every package in the manifest, one at a time. While the overhead of apt is generally small, when you add things like apt-listbugs, apt-listchanges, needrestart, triggers and so on, it can take forever setting up a new host. So for initial installs, it can actually makes sense to skip the queue and just install everything in one big batch. And because the above tool inspects the packages installed by Puppet, you can run it against a catalog and have a full lists of all the packages Puppet would install, even before I even had Puppet running. So when reinstalling my laptop, I basically did this:

apt install puppet-agent/experimental
puppet agent --test --noop
apt install $(./puppet-package-check --debug \
    2>&1   grep ^puppet\ packages 
      sed 's/puppet packages://;s/ /\n/g'
      grep -v -e onionshare -e golint -e git-sizer -e github-backup -e hledger -e xsane -e audacity -e chirp -e elpa-flycheck -e elpa-lsp-ui -e yubikey-manager -e git-annex -e hopenpgp-tools -e puppet
) puppet-agent/experimental

That massive grep was because there are currently a lot of packages missing from bookworm. Those are all packages that I have in my catalog but that still haven't made it to bookworm. Sad, I know. I eventually worked around that by adding bullseye sources so that the Puppet manifest actually ran. The point here is that this improves the Puppet run time a lot. All packages get installed at once, and you get a nice progress bar. Then you actually run Puppet to deploy configurations and all the other goodies:

puppet agent --test

I wish I could tell you how much faster that ran. I don't know, and I will not go through a full reinstall just to please your curiosity. The only hard number I have is that it installed 444 packages (which exploded in 10,191 packages with dependencies) in a mere 10 minutes. That might also be with the packages already downloaded. In any case, I have that gut feeling it's faster, so you'll have to just trust my gut. It is, after all, much more important than you might think.

Similar work The blueprint system is something similar to this:

It figures out what you ve done manually, stores it locally in a Git repository, generates code that s able to recreate your efforts, and helps you deploy those changes to production

That tool has unfortunately been abandoned for a decade at this point. Also note that the AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant and AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant are relevant here. If it is set to true (the default), a package will not be removed if it is (respectively) a Recommends or Suggests of another package (as opposed to the normal Depends). In other words, if you want to also auto-remove packages that are only Suggests, you would, for example, add this to apt.conf:

AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant false;

Paul Wise has tried to make the Debian installer and debootstrap properly mark packages as automatically installed in the past, but his bug reports were rejected. The other suggestions in this section are also from Paul, thanks!

Focus This month I didn't have any particular focus. I just worked on issues in my info bubble.

Changes

• git-remote-hg: fix imports, install, test dep/python/umask usage, tmp dir handling and result expectation
• flower: bump, drop dependencies
• duck: phrases indicating deprecated projects
• debbugs: fix default user for usertags
• Debian BTS usertags: move some tags to correct user
• Debian QA services: usertags: fix shell usage (1 2 3 4), add removal support
• Debian website: document usertags for multiple users, document more testing contributions
• Debian BTS: triage bugs for reintroduced packages
• Debian screenshots: deleted simplyhtml (manual page), charactermanaj (macOS)
• Debian wiki pages: accessibility-devel, AppStream/Guidelines, DebianKernel/UserspaceTools, DebianRepository/Format, DebianTaiwan/ocf.tw/TrustedOrganizationCriteria, Derivatives/Census/Ubuntu, DesktopDefaultSettings, DeveloperNews, Hardening/RepoAndImages, InstallingDebianOn/SeeedStudio (OdysseyBlueJ4105), LVM, Mobile, Packaging/Intro, PerlFAQ, peylight, Proposals/EssentialOnDiet, RaspberryPi, ReproducibleInstalls/LiveImages, SaneOverNetwork, Teams (Apache, Debbugs/ArchitectureTags, DebianPerlGroup, DPL/HowTo/DelegationUpdates, ListMaster (FAQ, ListArchiveSpam, Usertags), Outreach, ReleaseTeam (PointReleaseCheckList, ReleaseCheckList/BullseyeCheckList), Treasurer/Organizations, Webmaster/Submissions), UltimateDebianDatabase/udd.debian.org, USB/GadgetSetup, WakeOnLan
• FOSSjobs wiki pages: Resources

Issues

• Proprietary image in librecaptcha
• Crashes in librecaptcha
• AppArmor denials in torbrowser-launcher
• Incorrect name in src:ppmd
• Outdated links in gssproxy, isenkram-cli
• Inconsistency in reportbug
• New versions of samba, mmv, sharness
• Typos in chroma
• Code copies in flower
• Latency in librecaptcha
• Animation freeze in librecaptcha
• New maintainer needed for git-remote-hg

Debugging

• libpst: failing to extract headers
• marco: breaks xfreerdp fullscreen toggle

Review

• Spam: reported 1 Debian bug reports and 139 Debian mailing list posts
• Patches: reviewed patches for libpst, check-all-the-things, foxtrotgps, hexahop
• Debian wiki: RecentChanges for the month
• Debian BTS usertags: changes for the month
• Debian screenshots:
  • approved ansiweather audiofile-tools backup-manager compton conky-std debian-edu-artwork debian-edu-install dragonfly-reverb duff freedombox gliv gocr-tk grub-theme-starfield localepurge okular-extra-backends pdf-presenter-console sed simplyhtml speedtest-cli sqlitebrowser vobcopy xsel
  • rejected browser-plugin-gnash (random photo), pcb-lesstif (copied from elsewhere), jc (macOS)

Administration

• Debian packages: migrate flower git repo from alioth-archive to salsa
• Debian: restart bacula-director after PostgreSQL restart
• Debian wiki: block spammer, clean up spam, approve accounts

Communication

• Initiate discussions about moving SDL_Pango to libsdl-org
• Respond to queries from Debian users and contributors on the mailing lists and IRC

Sponsors The librecaptcha/libpst/flower/marco work was sponsored by my employers. All other work was done on a volunteer basis.

Focus This month I didn't have any particular focus. I just worked on issues in my info bubble.

Changes

• samba: copy heimdal patch
• nsnstrace: doc fixes (1 2)
• devscripts: fix debbisect scripts path
• apt-listchanges: add bug script to report config
• Debian BTS usertags: fixes for ocaml, release, per-arch users
• Debian QA services: add CC option to usertags fixes, autofix ocaml usertags
• Debian welcome mail: clarify debian-private, fix URL, mention goodies
• Debian screenshots: deleted packeth (macOS), pamtester (manual page)
• Debian package uploads: pytest-rerunfailures, apt-listchanges, python-scrapy (and deps), foxtrotgps
• Debian wiki pages: AndroidTools, Brave, BSP, DebianDay (2021), DebianDeveloper, DebianEdu/Documentation/ITIL/AllInOne, DebianHistory, DebianHosting, DebianIndia, DebianKernel/UserspaceTools, DebianRepository/Setup, DebianWannaBuildInfrastructure, DebianWannaBuildInfrastructureOnOneServer, Derivatives/Census (Derivatives/CensusTemplate, BunsenLabs, Devuan, SerbianLinux, Ubuntu, Wazo), Firmware (1 2 3) (List, Open), FreedomBox/Features, Hardware/Database, InstallingDebianOn (LG/X130, Turris/Omnia), JetBrains (1 2), Keysigning/Need, LDAP/MigrationTools, LocalGroups/MeetingMinutes, LTS (Contact, Development), Mobile (1 2), NewInBullseye, PDF, Ports/ia64, PortTemplate, PressCoverage (2021), qa.debian.org/HowToHelpWithFixingWatchFiles, ReleaseParty (Bullseye), Samba (DcWithLdapBackend, ServerSimple (1 2)), SecureBoot, Sprints, Teams (Publicity/otherSN, ReleaseTeam/ReleaseCheckList (BullseyeCheckList (1 2 3))), UsrMerge, VMware (1 2), Year
• FOSSjobs wiki pages: Resources
• Wikipedia: Message-ID

Issues

• Missing dependencies in loggedfs, libvirt
• Porting needed in loggedfs
• Build failures in ddccontrol (1 2), python-scrapy
• Conffile removal needed in artikulate, thinkfan
• Features in gallery-dl, smartmontools (1, 2), how-can-i-help, lintian (1 2), samba, debiman
• New upstream location for p910nd
• New upstream release for asciidoc
• Memory leak in nsntrace
• Homepage update for smartmontools
• Apparmor denials in apparmor, torbrowser-launcher
• https needed in kiwix
• Warnings in seahorse, iamerican, ibritish, umtp-responder, memlockd
• Wayland issues in nethack-qt
• Unnecessary deps in python-testfixtures
• Missing patch in dnssec-trigger
• Off-putting description in python3-pylev
• Regression in evolution
• Removal needed for ddccontrol on ARM
• Verbosity in Debian testing migration
• Moving info needed for a Debian derivatives guidelines translation

Review

• Spam: reported 1 Debian bug reports and 151 Debian mailing list posts
• Patches: nsntrace, foxtrotgps
• Debian packages: sponsored debdelta NMU, gtranscribe/iotop-c new releases
• Debian wiki: RecentChanges for the month
• Debian screenshots:
  • approved ack acm advancecomp alien-arena auto-multiple-choice bspwm darkradiant derivations fonts-radisnoir free42-nologo galois glogg gsequencer hamster-time-tracker ksystemlog mkvtoolnix ninka os-prober packeth pamtester pcmanfm qdacco refind rofi solaar ssh-audit tint2 tuptime xfce4 xfce4-taskmanager
  • rejected budgie-core (logo), checkinstall (screenshots code bug), angband (random Android app), python (duplicate), php-curl (random web page), command-not-found (not a bug reporting site)
  • approved deletion of thinkfan (daemon without a UI)
  • rejected deletion of knavalbattle (non-English screenshots are kept unless there is a replacement), vrms (nonsensical), apache2 (not a bug reporting site), acm/pev/auto-multiple-choice (screenshots are versioned, old ones are retained), konsole (screenshots serves Ubuntu users too, screenshots are versioned), hashcat/onboard/jack-keyboard/budgie-keyboard-autoswitch-applet/pcmanx-gtk2/akregator (spam)
• FOSSjobs: reviewed posts

Administration

• Debian ports: fix header on incoming.ports.d.o/buildd
• Debian wiki: unblock IP addresses, approve accounts

Communication

• Initiate discussions about aptly, Linux USB gadgets maintenance
• Respond to queries from Debian users and contributors on the mailing lists and IRC
• Invite organisations to post on FOSSjobs

Sponsors The samba work, apt-listchanges work, pytest-rerunfailures upload, python-testfixtures/python-scrapy bugs and python-scrapy related backports were sponsored by my employer. All other work was done on a volunteer basis.

Converting a PDF to DjVu The best solution I found makes use of a different file format: .djvu Such files are not PDFs, but can still be opened in Evince and Okular, as well as in the dedicated DjVuLibre application. As an example, I was unable to print page 11 of this paper. Using pdfinfo, I found that it is in PDF 1.5 format and so the transparency effects could be the cause of the out-of-memory printer error. Here's how I converted it to a high-quality DjVu file I could print without problems using Evince:

pdf2djvu -d 1200 2002.04049.pdf > 2002.04049-1200dpi.djvu

Converting a PDF to PDF 1.3 I also tried the DjVu trick on a different unprintable PDF, but it failed to print, even after lowering the resolution to 600dpi:

pdf2djvu -d 600 dow-faq_v1.1.pdf > dow-faq_v1.1-600dpi.djvu

In this case, I used a different technique and simply converted the PDF to version 1.3 (from version 1.6 according to pdfinfo):

ps2pdf13 -r1200x1200 dow-faq_v1.1.pdf dow-faq_v1.1-1200dpi.pdf

This eliminates the problematic transparency and rasterizes the elements that version 1.3 doesn't support.

deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/other-deps/Debian_Unstable/ ./
deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/frameworks/Debian_Unstable/ ./
deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/plasma/Debian_Unstable/ ./
deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/apps/Debian_Unstable/ ./
deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/other/Debian_Unstable/ ./

deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/other-deps/Debian_Testing/ ./
deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/frameworks/Debian_Testing/ ./
deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/plasma/Debian_Testing/ ./
deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/apps/Debian_Testing/ ./
deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-kde:/other/Debian_Testing/ ./

• other-deps mostly backports from experimental that are necessary for building KDE Apps 20.04
• frameworks the KDE frameworks, currently version 5.69
• plasma the Plasma packages, currently 5.18.4.1
• apps the KDE Apps, currently 20.04
• other other apps that need rebuild, currently only digikam (but that in the latest beta3 released a few days ago)

• No work. ELTS has few sponsors right now and few vulnerabilities to fix, hence why I could not work on it this month. I gave back my hours at the end of the month.

• lua-cgi: global triage: CVE-2014-10399,CVE-2014-10400/lua-cgi not-affected, CVE-2014-2875/lua-cgi referenced in BTS
• libpcap: global triage: request CVE-2018-16301 rejection as upstream failed to; got MITRE to reject (not "dispute") a CVE for the first time!
• nfs-utils: suites harmonization: CVE-2019-3689: ping upstream again, locate upstream'd commit, reference it at BTS and MITRE; close MR which had been ignored and now redone following said referencing
• slurm-llnl: re-add; create CVE-2019-12838 reproducer, test abhijith's pending upload; reference patches; witness regression in CVE-2019-19728, get denied access to upstream bug, triage as ignored (minor issue + regression); security upload DLA 2143-1
• xerces-c: global triage progress: investigate ABI-(in)compatibility of hle's patch direction; initiate discussion at upstream and RedHat; mark postponed
• nethack: jessie triage fix: mark end-of-life
• tor: global triage fix: CVE-2020-10592,CVE-2020-10593: fix upstream BTS links, fix DSA reference
• php7.3: embedded copies: removed from unstable (replaced with php7.4); checked whether libonig is still bundled (no, now properly unbundled at upstream level); jessie still not-affected
• okular: CVE-2020-9359: reference PoC, security upload DLA 2159-1

• data/dla-needed.txt: tidy/refresh pending packages status
• LTS/Development: DLA regression numbering when a past DLA affects a different package
• LTS/FAQ: document past LTS releases archive location following a user request; trickier than expected, 3 contributors required to find the answer
• Question aggressive package claims; little feedback
• embedded-copies: libvncserver: reference various state of embedded copies in italc/ssvnc/tightvnc/veyon/vncsnapshot; builds on initial research from sunweaver
• Attempt to progress on libvncserver embedded copies triaging; technical topic not anwered, organizational topic ignored
• phppgadmin: provide feedback on CVE-2019-10784
• Answer general workflow question about vulnerability severity
• Answer GPAC CVE information request from a PhD student at CEA, following my large security update

Changes

• gplenforced.org: mention copyleft.org, FSF and gpl-violations.org
• https-everywhere: fix & merge Debian updates
• Spelling:
  • iotop: alignement
  • codespell: pacakge, intregral, droppend, enforcmement, bood, everythin, temporarly, claaes, depricated, pluign(s), paramater(s), minimun, differrent, dekstop, impresive, mangementt, pusehd, pres, embdedded, captable, verifty(ing), alignement
  • lintian: droppend, enforcmement, bood, everythin, temporarly, claaes, pluign(s), differrent, debiab, dekstop, impresive, mangementt, pusehd, pres, embdedded, captable, verifty(ing), alignement
• Debian wiki: AutomateBackports, binNMU, CopyrightReview (Tools), CristianGreco, DebianArt (RequestArtwork), DebianGeoMirror, DebianLocations, DebianLogo, DebianSecurity/AdvisoryCreation/SecFull, Derivatives/Census (Armbian, Matriux), Exploits, gsoc, GSoC, LTS/Team, Mentors/Review (1, 2), PaulWise/InterestingSoftware, PlanetDebian, qa.debian.org, Services/MentorsDebianNet, Statistics, Teams/Publicity (Identica, micronews, Release), Teams/Webmaster (TODO), Year
• DebConf wiki: Timeline (DebConf16, DebConf17)
• Wikipedia: BugSat_1, Message-ID, PaulWise
• Debian website: Unix line endings, merged release team patches for stretch/buster, update links to removed pages (1 2 3 4)
• Debian QA: clang build logs (merged PTS patch, re-enabled & fixed in tracker)
• Debian security tracker: CVE updates (1, 2), update mirror, fix domain typo, avoid hard-coding years
• Debian nagios: update mirror-isc.d.o upstream
• Debian DNS: fix snapshot backup issue
• Debian package uploads: nvme-cli 1.0-3~bpo8+1, libesedb 20170121-2~bpo8+1

Issues

• Release-critical bugs in needrestart-session, dnssec-trigger
• Fix exit status in ipmievd
• TLS for links in bugs.debian.org emails, planet.gnome.org
• Password length in AbiSource Bugzilla
• Disabling ReportPage in apt-cacher-ng: wrong comment and breaks the cron job
• Features in adequate and git/github (light-weight pull requests)

Review

• Spam: reported 5 Debian bug reports and 158 Debian mailing list posts
• Debian wiki: RecentChanges for the month
• Debian packages: reviewed and sponsored gtranscribe 0.7.1-2
• Debian screenshots:
  • approved fbreader unity openlp wadc bosixnet-webui (2) ardour arc-theme terminix kget okular sl synergy musique screenfetch mercurial-crecord git-crecord libglpk-java rolo streamtuner2 muon limesuite endless-sky spectrwm
  • approved deletion of sshpass (website screenshot)
  • rejected reaver/pixiewps/golang (just a picture of the help output), git (Android browser screenshot with rude confused title), marble (not a screenshot), libcanberra0-dbg (no screenshot present)

Administration

• Debian: do the samhain dance, ask for new local contacts at one site, ask local admins to reset one machine, powercycle 2 dead machines, redirect 1 user to the support channels, redirect 1 user to a service admin, redirect 1 spam reporter to the right mechanisms, investigate mail logs for a missing bug report, ping bugs-search.d.o service admin about moving off glinka and remove data, poke cdimage-search.d.o service admin about moving off glinka, update a cron job on denis.d.o for the rename of letsencrypt.sh to dehydrated, debug planet.d.o issue and remove stray cron job lock file, check if ftp is used on a couple of security.d.o mirrors, discuss storage upgrade for LeaseWeb for snapshot.d.o/deriv.d.n/etc, investigate SSD SMART error and ignore the unknown attribute, ask 9 users to restart their processes, investigate apt-get update failure in nagios, swapoff/swapon a swap file to drain it, restart/disable some failed services, help restore the backup server, debug stretch /dev/log issue,
• Debian QA: deploy merged PTS/tracker patches,
• Debian wiki: answer 1 IP-blocked VPN user, pinged 1 user on IRC about their bouncing mail, disabled 4 accounts due to bouncing mail, redirect 1 person to documentation/lists, whitelist 5 email addresses, forward 1 password reset token, killed 1 spammer account, reverted 1 spammer edit,
• Debian mentors: security upgrades, check which email a user signed up with
• Openmoko: security upgrades, daemon restarts, reboot

Debian derivatives

• Turned off the census cron job because it ran out of disk space
• Update Armbian sources.list
• Ping siduction folks about updating their sources.list
• Start a discussion about DebConf17
• Notify the derivatives based on jessie or older that stretch is frozen
• Invite Rebellin Linux (again)

Sponsors The libesedb Debian backport was sponsored by my employer. All other work was done on a volunteer basis.

• Josu Ortega (josue)
• Mathias Behrle (mbehrle)
• Sascha Steinbiss (satta)
• Lucas Kanashiro (kanashiro)
• Vasudev Sathish Kamath (vasudev)
• Dima Kogan (dkogan)
• Rafael Laboissi re (rafael)
• David Kalnischkies (donkult)
• Marcin Kulisz (kula)
• David Steele (steele
• Herbert Parentes Fortes Neto (hpfn)
• Ond ej Nov (onovy)
• Donald Norwood (donald)
• Neutron Soutmun (neutrons)
• Steve Kemp (skx)

• Sean Whitton
• Tiago Ilieve
• Jean Baptiste Favre
• Adrian Vondendriesch
• Alkis Georgopoulos
• Michael Hudson-Doyle
• Roger Shimizu
• SZ Lin
• Leo Singer
• Peter Colberg

• Added Python 3 support to django-template-tests, a tool to perform simple static analysis on Django templates. (#1)
• Corrected my Chrome extension for the FastMail web interface to not disable the CTRL+Enter keyboard shortcut when authoring emails. (#3)
• Corrected a subtle bug in my django-staticfiles-dotd "staticfiles" library where the Content-Length HTTP header was calculated incorrectly in the presence of Unicode characters resulting in truncated output. (#2)
• Various fixes to django-slack, a library to easily post messages to the Slack group-messaging utility from projects using the Django web development framework:
  • Don't require an explicit backend import when using the Celery task queue backend. (#41)
  • Actually generate and send messages asynchronously when using the Celery backend. (#44)
• Fixed an issue with my local-debian-mirror tool where the option to disable DEP-11 mirroring wasn't working. (#1)
• Fixed an issue in django-hipchat, a library to easily post messages to the Hipchat group-messaging utility from projects using the Django web development framework where the templates were not includes when installing via PyPI. (#1)
• Created a quick-and-dirty tool to scrape a Squarespace blog and convert it to a PDF so I can read them on my Kindle e-reader. (tree)
• Updated django-keyerror a library to post exceptions to the KeyError.com error tracking service to silence an AttributeError exception in some error-reporting edge-cases. (commit)
• Suggested an improvement to the documentation for the upcoming Twitter Bootstrap version for the deprecated .hidden and .show CSS classes. (#19789)
• Submitted a documentation update to the Ansible sever configuration tool's ufw firewall module. (commit)
• I also blogged about parsing Jenkins CI output to determine job success or failure.

$ kdebugdialog
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.

$ kdebugdialog
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.