Search Results: "rrs"

It is still 2012 in this part of the world and the world is still intact. Since nothing major happened, I thought of spending the new gifted time to add a long pending item to apt-offline. As shown in the screen shots, apt-offline's GUI now has support to detect and display the downloaded offline bug reports.

This is part of the just released, version 1.3.

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(Apologies for putting this on Planet Debian, but it says the one or other non-English post is okay as long as it s an exception. I feel I need to reach more people with this, but don t feel like translating this into English right now.)
Update: Tanguy asked for a short English summary: it s me ranting against the rioting against muslims and the call for more CCTV surveillance after a possible bomb was found at the train station. In Bonn herrscht immer noch Bombenstimmung , wenn man z.B. auf die Webseite der Lokalzeitung schaut von dem Amoklauf in Connecticut, ber den sich im IRC gewunder wird, ist immer noch nichts zu sehen, daf r wird flei ig wider Islamisten gehetzt. Ich finde das besorgniserregend, mu doch jetzt jeder Angeh rige des Islams f rchten, verfolgt oder benachteiligt zu werden. Das reizt doch erst recht zum Gegenschlag, bei dem dann auch Menschen, die absolut nicht mit der hier vorherrschenden Meinung und Politik bereinstimmen, getroffen werden k nnen. Ich pers nlich habe kein Problem mit Menschen anderen Glaubens oder anderer Weltanschauung, solange wir friedlich miteinander leben k nnen. Ich teile eure Unzufriedenheit mit dem herrschenden Staat, der immer weitergehenden berwachung, Unterdr ckung von Leuten, die nicht dem vorherrschenden Menschenbild entsprechen (egal an welchen Kategori n), und bitte die, die dies lesen, nochmal nachzudenken, bevor sie etwas tun, was hinterher Unschuldige trifft oder gar in friendly fire ausartet. Hat eigentlich wer die in Bad Godesberg ausgegebenen Koran-B cher sich mal angeschaut? Als ich davon las, war ich ja zugegebenerma en neugierig, weil ich vom Koran leider eher wenig kenne, wei aber nicht, wie neutral oder eben nicht die bersetzung gehalten ist. Anhand dessen, was ich bereits mitbekam, sollte das eher friedlicher sein als was durch sp tere Theologen festgelegt wurde wie ja auch zum Beispiel im Christentum, aber ber die Horrorepisoden der christlichen Kirche will ich jetzt auch nicht mich auslassen, in der Hoffnung, da auch diese sich mit den Jahren gebessert hat. (Ist nur halt das Problem mit den Leuten, die die alten Hetzparolen jetzt noch verbreiten. Ist wie im Netz mit den Groupies von Theo de Raadt, die noch asiger zu Leuten sind als er selber.) (Au erdem mu man ja bef rchten, durch Besitz eines Korans schon vorverurteilt zu werden heutzutage *seufz* ich finde das nicht gut!) Update (ich verga ): auch der Ruf nach mehr Video berwachung ist nur Panikmache. Das geht nur zu Lasten des Normalb rgers. Vielleicht lassen sich noch Kleinstdelikte wie Taschendiebstahl damit abschrecken, aber gerade diese Bomben und dergleichen sind doch oft von Leuten, die vor Konsequenzen keine Angst haben, organisiert. Die werden dann maximal M rtyrer. Ich wiederhole nochmal f r die Politiker und die ganz langsamen unter den Lesern: berwachung verhindert keine Straftat.

The summer came finally to an end and (yes in Berlin we still had 20 C end of October), unfortunately, so did GSoC with it. This has been the second time for SHOGUN to be in GSoC. For those unfamiliar with SHOGUN - it is a very versatile machine learning toolbox that enables unified large-scale learning for a broad range of feature types and learning settings, like classification, regression, or explorative data analysis. I again played the role of an org admin and co-mentor this year and would like to take the opportunity to summarize enhancements to the toolbox and my GSoC experience: In contrast to last year, we required code-contributions in the application phase of GSoC already, i.e., a (small) patch was mandatory for your application to be considered. This reduced the number of applications we received: 48 proposals from 38 students instead of 70 proposals from about 60 students last year but also increased the overall quality of the applications. In the end we were very happy to get 8 very talented students and have the opportunity of boosting the project thanks to their hard and awesome work. Thanks to google for sponsoring three more students compared to last GSoC. Still we gave one slot back to the pool for good to the octave project (They used it very wisely and octave will have a just-in-time compiler now, which will benefit us all!). SHOGUN 2.0.0 is the new release of the toolbox including of course all the new features that the students have implemented in their projects. On the one hand, modules that were already in SHOGUN have been extended or improved. For example, Jacob Walker has implemented Gaussian Processes (GPs) improving the usability of SHOGUN for regression problems. A framework for multiclass learning by Chiyuan Zhang including state-of-the-art methods in this area such as Error-Correcting Output Coding (ECOC) and ShareBoost, among others. In addition, Evgeniy Andreev has made very important improvements w.r.t. the accessibility of SHOGUN. Thanks to his work with SWIG director classes, now it is possible to use python for prototyping and make use of that code with the same flexibility as if it had been written in the C++ core of the project. On the other hand, completely new frameworks and other functionalities have been added to the project as well. This is the case of multitask learning and domain adaptation algorithms written by Sergey Lisitsyn and the kernel two-sample or dependence test by Heiko Strathmann. Viktor Gal has introduced latent SVMs to SHOGUN and, finally, two students have worked in the new structured output learning framework. Fernando Iglesias made the design of this framework introducing the structured output machines into SHOGUN while Michal Uricar has implemented several bundle methods to solve the optimization problem of the structured output SVM. It has been very fun and interesting how the work done in different projects has been put together very early, even during the GSoC period. Only to show an example of this dealing with the generic structured output framework and the improvements in the accessibility. It is possible to make use of the SWIG directors to implement the application specific mechanisms of a structured learning problem instance in python and then use the rest of the framework (written in C++) to solve this new problem. Students! You all did a great job and I am more than amazed what you all have achieved. Thank you very much and I hope some of you will stick around. Besides all these improvements it has been particularly challenging for me as org admin to scale the project. While I could still be deeply involved in each and every part of the project last GSoC, this was no longer possible this year. Learning to trust that your mentors are doing the job is something that didn't come easy to me. Having had about monthly all-hands meetings did help and so did monitoring the happiness of the students. I am glad that it all worked out nicely this year too. Again, I would like to mention that SHOGUN improved a lot code-base/code-quality wise. Students gave very constructive feedback about our (lack) of proper Vector/Matrix/String/Sparse Matrix types. We now have all these implemented doing automagic memory garbage collection behind scenes. We have started to transition to use Eigen3 as our matrix library of choice, which made quite a number of algorithms much easier to implement. We generalized the Label framework (CLabels) to be tractable for not just classification and regression but multitask and structured output learning. Finally, we have had quite a number of infrastructure improvements. Thanks to GSoC money we have a dedicated server for running the buildbot/buildslaves and website. The ML Group at TU Berlin does sponsor virtual machines for building SHOGUN on Debian and Cygwin. Viktor Gal stepped up providing buildslaves for Ubuntu and FreeBSD. Gunnar Raetschs group is supporting redhat based build tests. We have Travis CI running testing pull requests for breakage even before merges. Code quality is now monitored utilizing LLVMs scan-build. Bernard Hernandez appeared and wrote a fancy new website for SHOGUN. A more detailed description of the achievements of each of the students follows:

Kernel Two-sample/Dependence test
- Student: Heiko Strathmann
- Mentor: Arthur Gretton, Soeren Sonnenburg
Heiko Strathmann, mentored by Arthur Gretton, worked on a framework for kernel-based statistical hypothesis testing. Statistical tests to determine whether two random variables are are equal/different or are statistically independent are an important tool in data-analysis. However, when data are high-dimensional or in non-numerical form (documents, graphs), classical methods fail. Heiko implemented recently developed kernel-based generalisations of classical tests which overcome these issues by representing distributions in high dimensional so-called reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. By doing so, theoretically any pair samples can be distinguished. Implemented methods include two-sample testing with the Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) and independence testing using the Hilbert Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC). Both methods come in different flavours regarding computational costs and test constructions. For two-sample testing with the MMD, a linear time streaming version is included that can handle arbitrary amounts of data. All methods are integrated into a newly written flexible framework for statistical testing which will be extended in the future. A book-style tutorial with descriptions of algorithms and instructions how to use them is also included.
Implement multitask and domain adaptation algorithms
- Student: Sergey Lisityn
- Mentor: Christian Widmer
Like Heiko, Sergey Lisitsyn did participate in the GSoC programme for the second time. This year he focused on implementing multitask learning algorithms. Multitask learning is a modern approach to machine learning that learns a problem together with other related problems at the same time using a shared representation. This approach often leads to a better model for the main task, because it allows the learner to use the commonality among the tasks. During the summer Sergey has ported a few algorithms from the SLEP and MALSAR libraries with further extensions and improvements. Namely, L12 group tree and L1q group multitask logistic regression and least squares regression, trace-norm multitask logistic regression, clustered multitask logistic regression, basic group and group tree lasso logistic regression. All the implemented algorithms use COFFIN framework for flexible and efficient learning and some of the algorithms were implemented efficiently utilizing the Eigen3 library.
Implementation of / Integration via existing GPL code of latent SVMs.
- Student: Viktor Gal
- Mentor: Alexander Binder
A generic latent SVM and additionally a latent structured output SVM has been implemented. This machine learning algorithm is widely used in computer vision, namely in object detection. Other useful application fields are: motif finding in DNA sequences, noun phrase coreference, i.e. provide a clustering of the nouns such that each cluster refers to a single object. It is based on defining a general latent feature Psi(x,y,h) depending on input variable x, output variable y and latent variable h. Deriving a class from the base class allows the user to implement additional structural knowledge for efficient maximization of the latent variable or alternative ways of computation or on-the-fly loading of latent features Psi as a function of the input, output and latent variables.
Bundle method solver for structured output learning
- Student: Michal Uricar
- Mentor: Vojtech Franc
We have implemented two generic solvers for supervised learning of structured output (SO) classifiers. First, we implemented the current state-of-the-art Bundle Method for Regularized Risk Minimization (BMRM) [Teo et al. 2010]. Second, we implemented a novel variant of the classical Bundle Method (BM) [Lamarechal 1978] which achieves the same precise solution as the BMRM but in time up to an order of magnitude shorter [Uricar et al. 2012]. Among the main practical benefits of the implemented solvers belong their modularity and proven convergence guarantees. For training a particular SO classifier it suffices to provide the solver with a routine evaluating the application specific risk function. This feature is invaluable for designers who can concentrate on tuning the classification model instead of spending time on developing new optimization solvers. The convergence guarantees remove the uncertainty inherent in use of on-line approximate solvers. The implemented solvers have been integrated to the structured output framework of the SHOGUN toolbox and they have been tested on real-life data.
Built generic structured output learning framework
- Student: Fernando Jose Iglesias Garcia
- Mentor: Nico Goernitz
During GSoC 2012 Fernando implemented a generic framework for structured output (SO) problems. Structured output learning deals with problems where the prediction made is represented by an object with complex structure, e.g. a graph, a tree or a sequence. SHOGUN's SO framework is flexible and easy to extend [1]. Fernando implemented a na ve cutting plane algorithm for the SVM approach to SO [2]. In addition, he coded a case of use of the framework for labelled sequence learning, the so-called Hidden Markov SVM. The HM-SVM can be applied to solve problems in different fields such as gene prediction in bioinformatics or speech to text in pattern recognition. [1] Class diagram of the SO framework.
[2] Support Vector Machine Learning for Interdependent and Structured Output Spaces.
Improving accessibility to shogun
- Student: Evgeniy Andreev
- Mentor: Soeren Sonnenburg
During the latest google summer of code Evgeniy has improved the Python modular interface. He has added new SWIG-based feature - director classes, enabling users to extend SHOGUN classes with python code and made SHOGUN python 3 ready. Evgeniy has also added python's protocols for most usable arrays (like vectors, matrices, features) which makes possible to work with Shogun data structures just like with numpy arrays with no copy at all. For example one can now modify SHOGUN's RealFeatures in place or use.
Implement Gaussian Processes and regression techniques
- Student: Jacob Walker
- Mentor: Oliver Stegle
Jacob implemented Gaussian Process Regression in the Shogun Machine Learning Toolbox. He wrote a complete implementation of basic GPR as well as approximation methods such as the FITC (First Independent Training Conditional) method and the Laplacian approximation method. Users can utilize this feature to analyze large scale data in a variety of fields. Scientists can also build on this implementation to conduct research extending the capability and applicability of Gaussian Process Regression.
Build generic multiclass learning framework
- Student: Chiyuan Zhang
- Mentor: Cheng Soon Ong
Chiyuan defined a new multiclass learning framework within SHOGUN. He re-organized previous multiclass learning components and refactored the CMachine hierarchy in SHOGUN. Then he generalized the existing one-vs-one and one-vs-rest multiclass learning scheme to general ECOC encoding and decoding strategies. Beside this, several specific multiclass learning algorithms are added, including ShareBoost with feature selection ability, Conditional Probability Tree with online learning ability, and Relaxed Tree.

Review: Passion Play, by Sean Stewart

Publisher:	Ace
Copyright:	1992
Printing:	December 1993
ISBN:	0-441-65241-7
Format:	Mass market
Pages:	194

Diane is a shaper: an empath, a sort of telepath, who sees emotions and the actions of others in the form of patterns and stories that she is nearly compelled to follow. She uses that skill as an investigator, a semi-official adjunct to the police who can read crime scenes and motives and hunt down criminals with uncanny ability. That makes her almost socially acceptable, but a shaper is still not something it's safe to be, something best kept hidden. Diane's world is one of theocracy, of dominance by aggressive religion, and even shapers working with the police are not exactly okay. This is Sean Stewart's first novel. He's since gone on to write many other books, one of which I've read and quite enjoyed (Nobody's Son) and another (Galveston) that won several awards, although he's probably most famous for his work on the ilovebees ARG. Passion Play won a minor award itself: the Aurora for the best Canadian SF novel of the year. I found it surprising as a first novel, since it's sharp, focused, and very short. Usually first novels are stuffed to the gills with ideas and plot, as if material had built up for years and exploded in the first book. Passion Play doesn't have that problem; if anything, it errs on the side of telling too little. This is, at its heart, a mystery. A famous actor died in the middle of a play. It was possibly suicide, possibly an accident, and possibly murder; the events of the death are quite ambiguous. But the actor is very important in Redemptionist politics, which warrants an investigation, and then Diane's shaper instincts start finding a pattern and a story in the death. The rest of the cast and crew form the obvious set of suspects, and have the normal mystery novel variety of flaws, foibles, strong personalities, and possible motives. I'm not much of a mystery novel reader, and to be honest I had some trouble tracking all of the characters and remembering Diane's suspicions about each one. But the details of the mystery are less important to this book than Diane herself. Shapers are not exactly stable. The patterns they see are all-consuming, the experience of others' strong emotions acts like a sort of drug, and shapers can burn themselves out. They can fall into a spiral of seeking stronger and stronger emotions until they can't feel anything at all. That's the core conflict of the book: Diane is slowly losing herself. She has a tenuous existence at the outskirts of a society that has inculcated her with an inflexible set of religious beliefs and an uncompromising attitude towards law and justice, but it's not a stable existence, she knows it, and she doesn't know what to do about it. She knows that the pattern of this particular death is deep and powerful, but she can't stay away from it. This is an unusual, and sometimes disturbing, focus for a story. It's risky, unconventional, and doesn't quite work. I think some of the failure is because of first novel problems, but most of it is due to character problems. In the first novel problems category, Passion Play is a bit too choppy and a bit too disjointed. I think Stewart was trying hard to keep the story focused, fast-moving, and tight, but the introduction of the world background is not particularly smooth, and Diane's first-person account of her emotional state is a bit too labored. The plot wants to build in a smooth arc towards its climax, but the writing and scene-setting jerks and jumps instead of flowing. But the larger problem for me is that there aren't enough interesting characters in this book; specifically, there aren't enough to show all sides of Diane's character. Stewart tries, by introducing Jim early in the book to serve essentially as Diane's friend (and she's desperately in need of one), but he's too much of a non-entity. He serves some plot purposes, but he doesn't have a strong enough voice and character to hold his ground against Diane and balance her obsessive internal monologue. And, other than Jim, all the other characters in the book (with the possible exception of the murder victim) are playing bit roles. They're not bad characters, but they don't feel fully real to either Diane or to the reader. It's very easy to put them into boxes that they never break out of. This does support the feeling of narrative inevitability about some parts of the book, but I think it would have been stronger with more conflict, more open challenging of Diane's perspective. I would characterize Passion Play as interesting but flawed, and ultimately a minor work. I'm not sorry I read it, but neither would I have missed much if I'd gone through life without reading it. It has a few interesting ideas, and a bravely unconventional narrative resolution, but it felt choppy and off-balance. Unless you love Stewart's writing and want to read everything he wrote, or unless you (like me) has a quirk about reading all award winners, this is probably best skipped over in favor of Stewart's later work. Rating: 6 out of 10

I recently switched to a ThinkPad W530 laptop. It is a fairly recent machine with the following hardware config:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3720QM CPU @ 2.60GHz
8 GiB RAM
nVIDIA Optimus
Samsung SSD Drive

On the software front, I decided to take my chances. Hence:

BTRFS File System
SystemD Init

The rest is in the video. It is impressive to see how drastically the experience has changed with this combination.

From my limited time spent exploring the machine, all credit goes to the SSD technology.

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Hello World. This is the follow-up to the last 2 updates on the state of apport in Debian.

A lot has changed since the last update on Apport. Currently, in Experimental, we have version 2.6.1-2. With this version, and going forward, there will be no hacks to make it work for Debian. Thanks to Martin Pitt, with his assistance, Apport now has a very basic crashdb in place for Debian. The Debian crashdb provides Apport the interface to interact with the Debian BTS.

This change is already upstream as part of the 2.6.1 release. So for Debian, the packaging is a mere change of the crashdb from 'default' to 'debian'. Being Just Another CrashDB inside Apport, it leverage full support of future Apport releases, fixes and enhancements.

I would like to highlight some points, and some concerns, I have heard in my previous blog posts.

Direct email reports to the developer: This was a concern from the last blog post. There will be no such pop-up anymore. It has been knocked off.
Useless/Incomplete bug reports: With no proper backtrace, it is worried that the bug report will be useless. Apport has intellignece to check if the backtrace is complete. If it is not, it will not report the bug.

Opt-Out: What if the maintainer is not interested in apport reports? The maintainer can ship a blacklist hook into /etc/apport/blacklist.d/. See /etc/apport/blacklist.d/README.blacklist for details.

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This is a follow up to the previous post regarding Reporting bugs with ApportApport, version 2.2.3-2, has been pushed to experimental. There were some nice feedback that led to some more changes that I will talk here.Opt out: As a developer, if you see the volume of reports to be annoying, you have the option to opt out of apport reports. To do this, you should specify the XBS-Apport: No field in your package's control file. When your application crashes, apport first checks for that field in your package's description and acts based on what you chose.Following image is that the user sees for packages where the developer has opted out. opt out

Repetition: Repetition of the same crash could lead to multiple reports on the same buggy behavior. For this, apport, if senses that you have already filed a bug, it provides you with the option to further ignore all crashes for that particular type.Following image should explain it better. ignore report

My initial thought regarding defaults was to make apport a default opt out tool for the entire archive and only file reports for packages where the developer has manually enabled to opt-in for apport reports. But that'd have been very slow in terms of adoption, hence, for now, instead, the version in experimental does it the other way around. It will file bug reports for all packages. If you need to opt out, you will have to add the above expalined control field. That's it for this post. Please provide feedback once you spend some time with apport.PS: Please take conscious steps when filing bug reports with apport. I think it is a great tool. It just needs great users. :-)

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So yet another bug reporting tool. :-)When I prepared Apport for Debian, I wasn't sure how it will look going forward. If you look at the current one lying in experimental, it just detects your crashes and pops up in your systray. It doesn't have the mechanism to interact with BTS.So, like the title of this post says, this is the first worthy feature for Apport in the context of Debian. Apport Detail Report

Nothing special here. You would have seen a similar window before if you have installed apport. What changes with this release is, that now, when you check the Send an error report to help fix this problem, it will really file a bug report on the BTS.Here's what the emailed bug report will look like:

Package: leafnode
Version: 2.0.0.alpha20090406a-1
=============================
ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Jul  3 00:08:02 2012
Dependencies:
 adduser 3.113+nmu3
 base-passwd 3.5.24
 cron 3.0pl1-123
 debconf 1.5.44
 debianutils 4.3.1
 dpkg 1.16.4.3
 gcc-4.7-base 4.7.1-2
 libbz2-1.0 1.0.6-3
 libc-bin 2.13-33
 libc6 2.13-33
 libclass-isa-perl 0.36-3
 libdb5.1 5.1.29-4
 libfile-copy-recursive-perl 0.38-1
 libgcc1 1:4.7.1-2
 libgdbm3 1.8.3-11
 liblzma5 5.1.1alpha+20120614-1
 libpam-modules 1.1.3-7.1
 libpam-modules-bin 1.1.3-7.1
 libpam-runtime 1.1.3-7.1
 libpam0g 1.1.3-7.1
 libpcre3 1:8.30-5
 libpopt0 1.16-7
 libselinux1 2.1.9-5
 libsemanage-common 2.1.6-6
 libsemanage1 2.1.6-6
 libsepol1 2.1.4-3
 libswitch-perl 2.16-2
 libustr-1.0-1 1.0.4-3
 libwrap0 7.6.q-23
 logrotate 3.8.1-4
 lsb-base 4.1+Debian7 [modified: lib/lsb/init-functions]
 multiarch-support 2.13-33
 netbase 5.0
 openbsd-inetd 0.20091229-2
 passwd 1:4.1.5.1-1
 perl 5.14.2-12
 perl-base 5.14.2-12
 perl-modules 5.14.2-12
 sensible-utils 0.0.7
 tar 1.26-4
 tcpd 7.6.q-23
 update-inetd 4.43
 zlib1g 1:1.2.7.dfsg-13
Disassembly:
 => 0x7f8e69738475 <*__GI_raise+53>:	cmp    $0xfffffffffffff000,%rax
    0x7f8e6973847b <*__GI_raise+59>:	ja     0x7f8e69738492 <*__GI_raise+82>
    0x7f8e6973847d <*__GI_raise+61>:	repz retq 
    0x7f8e6973847f <*__GI_raise+63>:	nop
    0x7f8e69738480 <*__GI_raise+64>:	test   %eax,%eax
    0x7f8e69738482 <*__GI_raise+66>:	jg     0x7f8e69738465 <*__GI_raise+37>
    0x7f8e69738484 <*__GI_raise+68>:	test   $0x7fffffff,%eax
    0x7f8e69738489 <*__GI_raise+73>:	jne    0x7f8e697384a2 <*__GI_raise+98>
    0x7f8e6973848b <*__GI_raise+75>:	mov    %esi,%eax
    0x7f8e6973848d <*__GI_raise+77>:	nopl   (%rax)
    0x7f8e69738490 <*__GI_raise+80>:	jmp    0x7f8e69738465 <*__GI_raise+37>
    0x7f8e69738492 <*__GI_raise+82>:	mov    0x34e97f(%rip),%rdx        # 0x7f8e69a86e18
    0x7f8e69738499 <*__GI_raise+89>:	neg    %eax
    0x7f8e6973849b <*__GI_raise+91>:	mov    %eax,%fs:(%rdx)
    0x7f8e6973849e <*__GI_raise+94>:	or     $0xffffffff,%eax
    0x7f8e697384a1 <*__GI_raise+97>:	retq
DistroRelease: Debian 7.0
ExecutablePath: /usr/sbin/fetchnews
ExecutableTimestamp: 1265584779
Package: leafnode 2.0.0.alpha20090406a-1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCmdline: /usr/sbin/fetchnews
ProcCwd: /
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LC_TIME=en_IN.UTF-8
 LC_MONETARY=en_IN.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LC_ADDRESS=en_IN.UTF-8
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LC_TELEPHONE=en_IN.UTF-8
 LC_NAME=en_IN.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/sh
 LC_MEASUREMENT=en_IN.UTF-8
 LC_NUMERIC=en_IN.UTF-8
 LC_PAPER=en_IN.UTF-8
ProcMaps:
 00400000-00421000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 4464934                            /usr/sbin/fetchnews
 00621000-00622000 rw-p 00021000 08:06 4464934                            /usr/sbin/fetchnews
 00622000-00623000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
 00be4000-00c05000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0                                  [heap]
 7f8e68edc000-7f8e68eef000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1179776                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libresolv-2.13.so
 7f8e68eef000-7f8e690ee000 ---p 00013000 08:06 1179776                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libresolv-2.13.so
 7f8e690ee000-7f8e690ef000 r--p 00012000 08:06 1179776                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libresolv-2.13.so
 7f8e690ef000-7f8e690f0000 rw-p 00013000 08:06 1179776                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libresolv-2.13.so
 7f8e690f0000-7f8e690f2000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
 7f8e690f2000-7f8e690f7000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1180036                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_dns-2.13.so
 7f8e690f7000-7f8e692f6000 ---p 00005000 08:06 1180036                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_dns-2.13.so
 7f8e692f6000-7f8e692f7000 r--p 00004000 08:06 1180036                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_dns-2.13.so
 7f8e692f7000-7f8e692f8000 rw-p 00005000 08:06 1180036                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_dns-2.13.so
 7f8e692f8000-7f8e692fa000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1183392                    /lib/libnss_mdns4_minimal.so.2
 7f8e692fa000-7f8e694f9000 ---p 00002000 08:06 1183392                    /lib/libnss_mdns4_minimal.so.2
 7f8e694f9000-7f8e694fa000 rw-p 00001000 08:06 1183392                    /lib/libnss_mdns4_minimal.so.2
 7f8e694fa000-7f8e69505000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1180055                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_files-2.13.so
 7f8e69505000-7f8e69704000 ---p 0000b000 08:06 1180055                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_files-2.13.so
 7f8e69704000-7f8e69705000 r--p 0000a000 08:06 1180055                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_files-2.13.so
 7f8e69705000-7f8e69706000 rw-p 0000b000 08:06 1180055                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_files-2.13.so
 7f8e69706000-7f8e69883000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1179700                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so
 7f8e69883000-7f8e69a83000 ---p 0017d000 08:06 1179700                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so
 7f8e69a83000-7f8e69a87000 r--p 0017d000 08:06 1179700                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so
 7f8e69a87000-7f8e69a88000 rw-p 00181000 08:06 1179700                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so
 7f8e69a88000-7f8e69a8d000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
 7f8e69a8d000-7f8e69a95000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1180031                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypt-2.13.so
 7f8e69a95000-7f8e69c94000 ---p 00008000 08:06 1180031                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypt-2.13.so
 7f8e69c94000-7f8e69c95000 r--p 00007000 08:06 1180031                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypt-2.13.so
 7f8e69c95000-7f8e69c96000 rw-p 00008000 08:06 1180031                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypt-2.13.so
 7f8e69c96000-7f8e69cc4000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
 7f8e69cc4000-7f8e69cc6000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1180047                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.13.so
 7f8e69cc6000-7f8e69ec6000 ---p 00002000 08:06 1180047                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.13.so
 7f8e69ec6000-7f8e69ec7000 r--p 00002000 08:06 1180047                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.13.so
 7f8e69ec7000-7f8e69ec8000 rw-p 00003000 08:06 1180047                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.13.so
 7f8e69ec8000-7f8e69ed5000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1179893                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpam.so.0.83.0
 7f8e69ed5000-7f8e6a0d4000 ---p 0000d000 08:06 1179893                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpam.so.0.83.0
 7f8e6a0d4000-7f8e6a0d5000 r--p 0000c000 08:06 1179893                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpam.so.0.83.0
 7f8e6a0d5000-7f8e6a0d6000 rw-p 0000d000 08:06 1179893                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpam.so.0.83.0
 7f8e6a0d6000-7f8e6a112000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1182916                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3.13.1
 7f8e6a112000-7f8e6a312000 ---p 0003c000 08:06 1182916                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3.13.1
 7f8e6a312000-7f8e6a313000 rw-p 0003c000 08:06 1182916                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3.13.1
 7f8e6a313000-7f8e6a333000 r-xp 00000000 08:06 1180134                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.13.so
 7f8e6a503000-7f8e6a507000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
 7f8e6a530000-7f8e6a532000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
 7f8e6a532000-7f8e6a533000 r--p 0001f000 08:06 1180134                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.13.so
 7f8e6a533000-7f8e6a534000 rw-p 00020000 08:06 1180134                    /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.13.so
 7f8e6a534000-7f8e6a535000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 
 7fffbc06e000-7fffbc08f000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0                          [stack]
 7fffbc1ff000-7fffbc200000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0                          [vdso]
 ffffffffff600000-ffffffffff601000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0                  [vsyscall]
ProcStatus:
 Name:	fetchnews
 State:	S (sleeping)
 Tgid:	6872
 Pid:	6872
 PPid:	6871
 TracerPid:	0
 Uid:	9	9	9	9
 Gid:	9	9	9	9
 FDSize:	64
 Groups:	9 
 VmPeak:	   21440 kB
 VmSize:	   21276 kB
 VmLck:	       0 kB
 VmPin:	       0 kB
 VmHWM:	     984 kB
 VmRSS:	     984 kB
 VmData:	     380 kB
 VmStk:	     136 kB
 VmExe:	     132 kB
 VmLib:	    2132 kB
 VmPTE:	      64 kB
 VmSwap:	       0 kB
 Threads:	1
 SigQ:	0/23227
 SigPnd:	0000000000000000
 ShdPnd:	0000000000000000
 SigBlk:	0000000000000000
 SigIgn:	0000000000000000
 SigCgt:	0000000000000000
 CapInh:	0000000000000000
 CapPrm:	0000000000000000
 CapEff:	0000000000000000
 CapBnd:	ffffffffffffffff
 Cpus_allowed:	f
 Cpus_allowed_list:	0-3
 Mems_allowed:	00000000,00000001
 Mems_allowed_list:	0
 voluntary_ctxt_switches:	6
 nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches:	1
Registers:
 rax            0x0	0
 rbx            0x0	0
 rcx            0xffffffffffffffff	-1
 rdx            0x6	6
 rsi            0x1ad8	6872
 rdi            0x1ad8	6872
 rbp            0x0	0x0
 rsp            0x7fffbc08d4f8	0x7fffbc08d4f8
 r8             0x7f8e6a504700	140249645729536
 r9             0x6d6f642064656966	7885631562835126630
 r10            0x8	8
 r11            0x246	582
 r12            0x0	0
 r13            0x7fffbc08d920	140736348084512
 r14            0x0	0
 r15            0x0	0
 rip            0x7f8e69738475	0x7f8e69738475 <*__GI_raise+53>
 eflags         0x246	[ PF ZF IF ]
 cs             0x33	51
 ss             0x2b	43
 ds             0x0	0
 es             0x0	0
 fs             0x0	0
 gs             0x0	0
Signal: 6
SourcePackage: leafnode
Stacktrace:
 #0  0x00007f8e69738475 in *__GI_raise (sig=<optimized out>) at ../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:64
         pid = <optimized out>
         selftid = <optimized out>
 #1  0x00007f8e6973b6f0 in *__GI_abort () at abort.c:92
         act =  __sigaction_handler =  sa_handler = 0x7f8e69850d3d, sa_sigaction = 0x7f8e69850d3d , sa_mask =  __val =  140736348083740, 140249634747968, 0, 0, 140736348084512, 140249631083424, 140249645738440, 0, 4294967295, 206158430232, 1, 6427272, 0, 0, 0, 0 , sa_flags = 1781664242, sa_restorer = 0x1 
         sigs =  __val =  32, 0 <repeats 15 times> 
 #2  0x0000000000416292 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #3  0x0000000000411c80 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #4  0x0000000000406952 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #5  0x00007f8e69724ead in __libc_start_main (main=<optimized out>, argc=<optimized out>, ubp_av=<optimized out>, init=<optimized out>, fini=<optimized out>, rtld_fini=<optimized out>, stack_end=0x7fffbc08d918) at libc-start.c:228
         result = <optimized out>
         unwind_buf =  cancel_jmp_buf =  jmp_buf =  0, 498162418289285118, 4206480, 140736348084512, 0, 0, -498021567843461122, -435434157313288194 , mask_was_saved = 0 , priv =  pad =  0x0, 0x0, 0x418360, 0x7fffbc08d928 , data =  prev = 0x0, cleanup = 0x0, canceltype = 4293472 
         not_first_call = <optimized out>
 #6  0x0000000000402fb9 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #7  0x00007fffbc08d918 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #8  0x000000000000001c in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #9  0x0000000000000001 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #10 0x00007fffbc08ee96 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #11 0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
StacktraceTop:
 ?? ()
 ?? ()
 ?? ()
 __libc_start_main (main=<optimized out>, argc=<optimized out>, ubp_av=<optimized out>, init=<optimized out>, fini=<optimized out>, rtld_fini=<optimized out>, stack_end=0x7fffbc08d918) at libc-start.c:228
 ?? ()
ThreadStacktrace:
 .
 Thread 1 (LWP 6872):
 #0  0x00007f8e69738475 in *__GI_raise (sig=<optimized out>) at ../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:64
         pid = <optimized out>
         selftid = <optimized out>
 #1  0x00007f8e6973b6f0 in *__GI_abort () at abort.c:92
         act =  __sigaction_handler =  sa_handler = 0x7f8e69850d3d, sa_sigaction = 0x7f8e69850d3d , sa_mask =  __val =  140736348083740, 140249634747968, 0, 0, 140736348084512, 140249631083424, 140249645738440, 0, 4294967295, 206158430232, 1, 6427272, 0, 0, 0, 0 , sa_flags = 1781664242, sa_restorer = 0x1 
         sigs =  __val =  32, 0 <repeats 15 times> 
 #2  0x0000000000416292 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #3  0x0000000000411c80 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #4  0x0000000000406952 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #5  0x00007f8e69724ead in __libc_start_main (main=<optimized out>, argc=<optimized out>, ubp_av=<optimized out>, init=<optimized out>, fini=<optimized out>, rtld_fini=<optimized out>, stack_end=0x7fffbc08d918) at libc-start.c:228
         result = <optimized out>
         unwind_buf =  cancel_jmp_buf =  jmp_buf =  0, 498162418289285118, 4206480, 140736348084512, 0, 0, -498021567843461122, -435434157313288194 , mask_was_saved = 0 , priv =  pad =  0x0, 0x0, 0x418360, 0x7fffbc08d928 , data =  prev = 0x0, cleanup = 0x0, canceltype = 4293472 
         not_first_call = <optimized out>
 #6  0x0000000000402fb9 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #7  0x00007fffbc08d918 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #8  0x000000000000001c in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #9  0x0000000000000001 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #10 0x00007fffbc08ee96 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
 #11 0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
 No symbol table info available.
Title: fetchnews crashed with SIGABRT in __libc_start_main()
Uname: Linux 3.4-trunk-amd64 x86_64
UserGroups:

The first 2 lines should be enough for the BTS server to file the bug report to the correct package and against the correct version.If you paid attention in the screen shot and the email report, you will notice that the email report does not include the CoreDump section. This was knocked off intentionally as we currently might not need it. If there is a need, the data is always available on the user's apport database, and the dev/user and seek it on a need basis. But in case, if a day comes when we really want it, that too is possible. The same email report will have the CoreDump seciton with a section like the following:

CoreDump: base64

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 7xNNReLV6SpPH/NUzH0OWZNHkPAVYPl+Npo9GEaua1GDtfIF2ni7wz+5QP5fOOOIXxxTJYjWPgP/bfLQHSLRkUd3hTgv749PWm7FP7r0FcDP15U/cmO9fL4jLFNgzkaiBr4zwWL//QaYtey3vH/NtBrxEbbBHFJk6bOTuFt4v9cmwj4N/vn4ODg4ODg4ODg4OD4/wE3aZ7/G/H8n60B2aDfFmVs9kOf/5vJ325CV2n+HSgol59tKvYiasZmxRzNJCeIhG0q7gY1Y4OCA1UlsKl4b5hRxWxhu2Vdmq0Dp6vYi8UxS5SgCmdEuBiEi4F

Now, Is this going to be useful? Will we get flooded with bug reports?

Usefulness: I think this will uncover many bugs that might be getting unnoticed today. Take this example itself. This bug was detect against the leafnode package's fetchnews binary. That binary does a quiet job in the background, fetching news. I never was aware that it had been crashing. As a system-wide monitoring tool, apport was able to detect, trap and inform the user of the crash. So I think this will be useful and improve the overall quality.

Abuse/Flood: This is something I can't predict. Perhaps it will bring in challenges if people just blindly click on the Send Report button. One option can be to have the "Send Report" checkbox unchecked by default. That'll hopefully lower down the possibilities.

What do you think? Let me know your comments.

This change will soon be pushed to apport in experimental. Hopefully this weekend.

I want to wrap up this post with a Thank You note to Martin Pitt and his team who created Apport, and with such simplicity. It took me 30 lines of code to adapt it to Debian. My intent with Apport is to keep the changes to the minimum so that we can always leverage new features and fixes that Apport brings in. So, as far as I'll try, there will be no drift from its original shape.

Categories:

Keywords:

Laptop Mode Tools, version 1.61, has been released and will land up soon for Debian. This is the version that would be targetting Wheezy.
This release includes many bug fixes and should make power savings much better on your machines.

This is mainly a bug fix release. Some parallel module execution approach has been used which could show runtime improvements.

Changelog:

1.61 - Thu May 17 17:44:26 IST 2012
* Handle devices with persistent device naming. This fixes the issues where
you don't have a disk referenced by a block name, the commit= value was
completely skipped
* Fix issue where hdparm skips SSDs for power management
* Add parallel execution for the modules. In theory this should speeden up the
execution. See git commit log comments for details
* Add support for non-deafult customized settings
* calculate design_capacity_warning on machines/arches where it is not readily
available

We have switched the SCM to git. The current code repository is
available at [1] along with the changelog.

The tarball is available here [2].
The md5 checksum for the tarball is 6685af5dbb34c3d51ca27933b58f484e

[1] https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-tools
[2]http://samwel.tk/laptop_mode/tools/downloads/laptop-mode-tools_1.61.tar.gz

Categories:

Keywords:

Now these are the kind of moves that needs to happen more often. Whether this will cause a negative impact on the overall market, and the further invention of drugs (including patent control), but the affordability of the medicatoin to an average citizen is a great move.The typical Chemotherapy can be on an average of 22 times. When summed up with the dosage (somewhere around 250 mg IIRC), the cost comes to approx: (22/4) * 15000 = 82k, which now, will be affordable at 27k.I guess the price slash is only for India and am not sure what the impact to the global market will look like.Quoting the article: http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/cipla-drug-price-cut-not-to-hurt-revenue-much-say-analysts_700380.html

Cipla cut price of its kidney cancer drug Sorafenib, which is sold under brand name Nexavar by multi-national Bayer to Rs 6,840 for a month's supply, from around Rs 28,000 earlier. Its lung cancer drug Gestinib, which is sold under brand name Iressa by AstraZeneca will cost Rs 4,250, versus Rs 10,200 earlier, and price of Temozolamide used to treat brain tumour, has been reduced by Rs 15,000 to Rs 5,000.
India's Patent Office recently issued a compulsory licence allowing Natco to make a generic copy of Sorafenib, on the payment of a royalty to Bayer, which sells the drug at around Rs 2 lakh.
Domestic sales account for 46-47% of Cipla's total sales and of that the cancer drugs portfolio is a very small portion, so these price cuts are unlikely to have any major impact on its revenue, Hitesh Mahida of Fortune Equity Brokers told moneycontrol.com
"Cipla's idea seems to be to create disruption in the market, increase its market share..." the analyst says.
Swiss pharma major Roche had earlier this year signed a manufacturing deal with India's Emcure Pharma so that its anti-cancer drugs Herceptin and MabThera could be made in India at affordable prices. Analysts say Cipla's move to slash prices could in future deter some MNCs from launching their drugs in India at all, but some may also look at doing deals like the one struck by Roche.
Meanwhile, shares of pharma major Cipla surged over 3% on Friday after brokerage CLSA upgraded the stock to "outperform" from "underperform," saying, Cipla would be strongest beneficiaries of a weakening rupee.
The rupee has been sliding sharply against the US dollar in recent days and hit over four month low of around Rs 53.78 earlier in trade.
"We expect improving margins over the coming quarters on back of a weak rupee and a low base. We expect strong operating profit growth over coming quarters led by margin expansion and high margin product supplies," CLSA's Hemant Bakhru said.
The US Food and Drugs Administration has approved Meda's drug Dymista for allergic rhinitis and the product is widely expected to reach USD 300-500 million in annual sales over the coming years. The analyst says Cipla being a partner, will benefit through product supplies over a longer term.
"Apart from approval (outside North America) related milestone payment (US$5m), we expect gradual increase in Cipla s sales from product related supplies to Meda. Assuming Cipla supplies product at 10-15% of sales, it could earn US$50-75m at peak sales," Bakhru said.
Additionally, a low base in domestic formulations could result in reasonable India growth, he adds.
Cipla shares were up 2.8% at Rs 326.60 on NSE in noon trade.

Categories:

Keywords:

In the 3.x days of KDE, there were some wonderful applications. One of them I still admire, is kscope. Recently, I stumbled upon this blog entry and thought of sharing my living with kscope.The move from KDE 3 to KDE 4 was a big one. During that move, the kscope author decided to port kscope to a Qt only application. That is what we have as the latest kscope, 1.9x version. But, on personal taste, it is not as good as the 1.6x series.With no viable replacement to my knowledge, making use of kscope 1.6x on Debian (and Ubuntu) was the choice. Thanks to the way it is all packaged by the KDE, it is easy.Kscope depends on 2 packages for its functionlity: kdelibs4c2a and kate. kdelibs4c2a is unsupported, but for the dire needs, you live with it. The library can be easily pulled from the snapshot website, or just get the package from the old distribution URLs. The same goes for kate and kscope (1.6x)Install the kdelibs4c2a package.

16:55:27 rrs@champaran:~$ apt-cache policy kdelibs4c2a
kdelibs4c2a:
Installed: 4:3.5.10.dfsg.1-5
Candidate: 4:3.5.10.dfsg.1-5
Version table:
*** 4:3.5.10.dfsg.1-5 0
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

You can't do the same with kate because the same package name is carried forward. Simply unpack the old kate deb package and copy the following libraries to /usr/local/:

libkateinterfaces.so.0@ libkateutils.so.0@
libkateinterfaces.so.0.0.0 libkateutils.so.0.0.0

Since the kscope package has a dependency defined on the kate pacakge, use equivs to create a dummy package to satisfy kscope.

With that, it is all done. Just make sure to put your kscope, kate and kdelibs4c2a packages on hold.

For the eyes:

Many of the SAN components in Debian have me involved. So I think out to give an update on what the state of SAN would be in Debian Wheezy. Open-iSCSI: Just uploaded a newer version to experimental which eventually will crawl into testing. It should fix all release goals for Wheezy. Please give it a good testiscsitarget: Same goes here. This one is already in testing. Please test. It has some bugs reported, all in needinfo, as they haven't been easily reproducible or reported complete.multipath-tools: It is in pretty good shape. Some minor bugs. But still, please test. :-)Open-FCoE: Being dependent on hardware, for which I couldn't manage resource commitment, this one is literally untested. It lies in testing, untested.LIO Target: The newest target implementation for Linux. It is also available in testing, has had some minor bugs reported by users, and fixed. If you use, or anticipate to use it in the Wheezy life cycle, now is the time to test.

apport just cleared the new queue and is now available in experimental. For those who do not know what apport is:

Debugging program crashes without any automated tools has been pretty time consuming and hard for both developers and users. Many program crashes remain unreported or unfixed because:
Many crashes are not easily reproducible.
End users do not know how to prepare a report that is really useful for developers, like building a package with debug symbols, operating gdb, etc.
A considerable part of bug triage is spent with collecting relevant information about the crash itself, package versions, hardware architecture, operating system version, etc.
There is no easy frontend which allow users to submit detailed problem reports.
Existing solutions like bug-buddy or krash are specific to a particular desktop environment, are nontrivial to adapt to the needs of a distribution developer, do not work for crashes of background servers (like a database or an email server), and do not integrate well with existing debug packages that a distribution might provide.
Apport is a system which
intercepts crashes right when they happen the first time,
gathers potentially useful information about the crash and the OS environment,
can be automatically invoked for unhandled exceptions in other programming languages (e. g. in Ubuntu this is done for Python),
can be automatically invoked for other problems that can be automatically detected (e. g. Ubuntu automatically detects and reports package installation/upgrade failures from update-manager),
presents a UI that informs the user about the crash and instructs them on how to proceed,
and is able to file non-crash bug reports about software, so that developers still get information about package versions, OS version etc.

At this moment, it is quite broken. The crashes are not intercepted by update-notifier on my box. With it now in experimental, my intent is to slowly integrate it well with all dependent tools for Debian. It won't be ready for the Wheezy release, but hopefully for the one after that.On the Ubuntu side, Canonical hosts a retracing service that takes user reported core dumps and generates a usable backtrace. For Debian, my plan is to have a chroot kind interface, where in the user could opt-in to download all debug packages to generate a valid backtrace. This could go as the debian backend for apport in the future. On the bug reporting side, afaik, we do not have a web interface to lodge bugs. To report bugs (minus the core dumps), we will want a backend to submit it over email. The current apport report gathering tool is pretty good (if compared to other tools like reportbug), so here the low hanging fruit would be to just take the report and feed in email to our BTS server. For the eyes: Apport on Debian

I recently purchased a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB hard drive. It is a 2.5" compact disk that you connect over USB. It draws its power from the USB controller. My previous Extern HDDs were all 2.5" laptop drives, for which I bought a USB enclosure. Those devices always worked perfect, as in:

They were automatically detected
Partitions/File Systems understood
Desktop systems would prompt for actions

The typical kernel messages I got for these devices were:

[56063.268107] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device number 13 using ehci_hcd

[56063.401635] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=14cd, idProduct=6116

[56063.401645] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=3, SerialNumber=2

[56063.401652] usb 1-1: Product: USB 2.0 SATA BRIDGE

[56063.401658] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Super Top

[56063.401663] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: M6116018VF16

[56063.402857] scsi8 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0

[56064.400896] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access WDC WD50 00BEVT-24A0RT0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0

[56064.401576] sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

[56064.402102] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773168 512-byte logical blocks: (500 GB/465 GiB)

[56064.402615] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off

[56064.402618] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00

[56064.403101] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present

[56064.403105] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

[56064.404861] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present

[56064.404864] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

[56064.419657] sdb: sdb1

[56064.421850] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present

[56064.421854] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

[56064.421857] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

But for my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex HDD, things were different. The kernel would detect but then it would not mount. The error reported is that the device is busy. My FreeAgent's kernel messages look similar to what the regular one has:

[ 168.520140] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd

[ 168.657424] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bc2, idProduct=5021

[ 168.657433] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3

[ 168.657439] usb 1-1: Product: FreeAgent GoFlex

[ 168.657444] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Seagate

[ 168.657449] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: NA0C1BML

[ 168.659079] scsi5 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0

[ 169.657136] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 0148 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4

[ 169.708786] sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0

[ 169.709079] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] 1953525167 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)

[ 169.709954] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off

[ 169.709963] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 1c 00 00 00

[ 169.710567] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

[ 169.759942] sdc: sdc1

[ 169.762050] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk

As the Device Mapper Multipath Debian Maintainer, I have multipath-tools installed on my laptop. Turns out, for some reason, the device is consumer by the device mapper multipath stack.

20:12:58 rrs@champaran:~$ ls /dev/mapper/

1Seagate@ 1Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex N 1Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Np1 control LocalDisk-ROOT@ LocalDisk-SWAP@

Also the block device ID listing is enumerated as type SCSI.

19:56:44 rrs@champaran:~$ ls /dev/disk/by-id/

ata-HITACHI_HTS723216L9SA60_091220FC1220NCJASEVG@ scsi-SATA_HITACHI_HTS7232091220FC1220NCJASEVG@

ata-HITACHI_HTS723216L9SA60_091220FC1220NCJASEVG-part1@ scsi-SATA_HITACHI_HTS7232091220FC1220NCJASEVG-part1@

ata-HITACHI_HTS723216L9SA60_091220FC1220NCJASEVG-part2@ scsi-SATA_HITACHI_HTS7232091220FC1220NCJASEVG-part2@

ata-HITACHI_HTS723216L9SA60_091220FC1220NCJASEVG-part3@ scsi-SATA_HITACHI_HTS7232091220FC1220NCJASEVG-part3@

ata-HL-DT-ST_DVDRAM_GU10N_M189CNI1127@ scsi-SSeagate_FreeAgent_GoFle_NA0C1BML@

ata-ST1000LM010-9YH146_W1000ZD8@ usb-WDC_WD12_00BEVE-11UYT0_ST_Killer-0:0@

dm-name-1Seagate@ usb-WDC_WD12_00BEVE-11UYT0_ST_Killer-0:0-part1@

dm-name-LocalDisk-ROOT@ wwn-0x5000c5003d19c8c2@

dm-name-LocalDisk-SWAP@ wwn-0x5000cca586e112bc@

dm-uuid-LVM-buywwzKkpfKG2RegankA2nPkmFBBPFe3D5DepV8w8nLrHfoAjIIQVnakOQJZEqJX@ wwn-0x5000cca586e112bc-part1@

dm-uuid-LVM-buywwzKkpfKG2RegankA2nPkmFBBPFe3k9aJfc9B7wRmVIwfoagffHUZjuN6c4cM@ wwn-0x5000cca586e112bc-part2@

dm-uuid-mpath-1Seagate@ wwn-0x5000cca586e112bc-part3@

raid-1Seagate@

But I'm not sure why the same doesn't happend for my external laptop drive. It gets properly tagged as device type USB. So Laptop or Server, if you have a FreeAgent that you want to connect to your machine, and see the device busy error when accessing the device['s] directly, do the following:First, the ID of the device.

20:17:43 rrs@champaran:~$ /lib/udev/scsi_id --whitelisted --page=0x83 --device=/dev/sdc

1Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex N

Add the ID to /etc/multipath.conf under blacklist section

blacklist

wwid "1Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex*"

wwid "1Seagate FA GoFlex Desk*"

# devnode "^(ram raw loop fd md dm- sr scd st)[0-9]*"

# devnode "^hd[a-z][[0-9]*]"

# device

# vendor DEC.*

# product MSA[15]00

Run mulitpath -F to flush the unused maps. Run multipath -v3 to ensure that now the device is blacklisted.

Nov 03 20:19:02 sdc: (Seagate:FreeAgent GoFlex) wwid blacklisted

The front cause for the mis-behavior is:

# Coalesce multipath devices before multipathd is running (initramfs, early

# boot)

ACTION=="add change", SUBSYSTEM=="block", RUN+="/sbin/multipath -v0 /dev/$name"

But something else, maybe the default blacklist table, needs the actual fix.

OpenXenManager cleared the NEW queue and is now available in the archive. What it is:read more

Hello World,

I am very pleased to announce the release of Laptop Mode Tools, version 1.60.
This release includes lots of bug fixes and should make power savings much better on your machines.

The battery polling daemon now, more reliably, gets triggered and killed based on power states.

So this is the 2nd time I ran into a problem like this again. My FAT32 file system on the external USB HDD, all of a sudden, started reporting:

00:47:32 rrs@champaran:/tmp$ sudo dosfsck /dev/sdb1

dosfsck 3.0.9, 31 Jan 2010, FAT32, LFN

Logical sector size is zero.

I had been taking a lot of care to ensure that I don't run into situation like this. No body likes losing data. The good part is that I've been lucky enough that, even without backups (now who's gonna backup a backup disk), I have recovered all my data. All thanks to Christophe GRENIER for Testdisk.read more

Wrestling (WWE) is entertaining. The way the ww[ef] superstars (Especially the ones like Undertaker, Triple H) are presented is fun to watch. Or the kind of high flying maveuveurs the wwf superstars are able to perform, it really is super cool. The only catch is - it is not a sport. The feuds are all pre-defined to juicen things up.I recently came to know of UFC. I hope some day they start airing it in my part of the world. I'm still getting acquianted to MMA, but it really is an awesome sport. This is one forum which does show size does not matter. Was watching Royce Gracie's matches from UFC 4. Awesome matches clearly showing the skill with which one can beat any size or power. The final was in between a pro-jiu jitsu vs pro-wrestler. Gracie won it but was given a tough fight by the wrestler.That brings me to EA Sports MMA.

I have been thinking of this topic for some time. I am a happy owner of the old Phat PS3 Model. At one time, I use to do a fair amount of gaming on my computers. So when Sony marketed the PlayStation 3 product, it was cool to see a machine that did:

Gaming
Movies, Music, Pictures
Blu-Ray
Ran Linux

I convinced myself to buy a PlayStation 3, that I'd use it for playing with Linux apart from gaming. The regular gaming did not excite any more, perhaps it had to do with the limitation of time. On running Debian on it, was when I realized that the Linux support was merely a joke. The Linux support included running a Linux distribution in a VM with not much access to the full hardware resources. Not a Great Experienceread more

With the final package, fcoe-utils, clearing the NEW packages queue, the Open-FCoE project's Fibre Channel over Ethernet stack is now in the Debian archive. I had anticipated to have access to FCoE hardware by the time the packaging would complete but that didn't work out. It has been delayed, hence the packages are in experimental. If you have access to FCoE hardware, please test and provide your feedback.

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