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maximilian attems
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Wrong moves
A bizarre closed user-tracking schism is rebased from shaky grounds to an unexisting target. It is sad to see this continous decline due to unchallenged decisions.

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New klibc release 2.0.2

The new klibc features fixes for latest 3.6 Linux, dash sync and arm fixes. For details see the longer story on: klibc 2.0.2 release announcement or klibc git repository.

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New klibc release 2.0

The new klibc features prominently the merged stdio branch (causing the version bump). The buffered I/0 allows a faster fstype and thus faster boot. Plus klibc gained the support of several stream I/O functions, for details see the longer story on: klibc 2.0 release announcement or klibc git repository.

The dhcp cmd ipconfig can now generate enough info for a proper lease file too and got fixed concerning the min length of it's replies. Google sponsored the /etc/fstab or cmdline boot mounting in kinit.

2.0 is shipping several arch fixes including i386 signal fixes, m68 support, s390x, sh4 compile fixes. There is still portability work todo: #439181 ia64 shared lib buggy (longdated unresolved ia64 mystery), #634890 amrhf all binaries segfault (maybe signal related), status on parisc is unknown, avr32 patch is untested (might as well just merge) and sh4 SIGILL. We got nice arch testcoverage thanks to mksh testsuite and working mksh klibc support. We are confident of this release on all this archs: alpha, armel, m68k, mips, ppc, ppc64, sparc, s390, s390x and x86. (:

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Gnome shell rocks

The Gnome shell is a great step. Finally the Linux default Desktop is not only useful (as Gnome 2.X used to be), but also stylish and modern. It's a different kind of desktop, which seems to irk desktop habits of some peoples. I'm proud to show it off. This happened for the last time years ago while doing some funny config quirks of fvwm. Gnome 3.x is cool. (: Also the customisability via all the extensions is fun.

What I do miss is the gnome weather (There used to be an incarnation with plenty of geographical sites, which got somehow got axed later.) and more packaged extensions for out of the box deployments (wish #661782).

I seem to be too lunatic to find session settings in "System Settings" for having startup applications run or the used applications reopened (please yes evince show the same pdfs).

The other minor critic is that "System Settings" is quite empty, but has on each system a funny advertisement for "Wacom Tablets". Ah and after a myriad of suspends and network-manager stops/restarts gnome-shell likes to segfault, which is no nuisance as it restarts.

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klibc 1.5.25 release

Mike Waychison from Google sent fancy costum tailored enhancements to kinit. Thanks to new klibc capget and capset support kinit now understands "drop_capabilities=" bootparam. It specifies a list of capability names that will be dropped before switching over to init. dirent.h saw the addition of scandir() and alphasort(). Gentoo devs pushed a klcc enhancement. For details see klibc 1.5.25 release annoucement.

A lot of stuff is in work: current klibc patch queue.

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klibc release 1.5.24

Good pile of fixes made it worth to release current klibc git master. Patches came from Gentoo, Google and Openembedded. For details see klibc 1.5.24 release announcement.
Forgot somehow to announce the previous klibc 1.5.23 dash sync release and containing Ubuntu arm+ppc64 porter fixes.

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klibc 1.5.22 release

This release has several ipconfig (klibc dhclient) enhancements, arm porting fixes and usual cleanups: For details see klibc 1.5.22 release announcements or klibc git.

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initramfs-tools release 0.99 "scarpe rotte e pur bisogna andar"

This new release features /run usage and xz support. For the details see the release announcement of latest initramfs-tools. The upload itself fixes 18 (19) bugs in the Debian BTS and has also a cute lilo support patch hiding under "initramfs-tools: Fix handling of numeric root= arguments to be udev-friendly" coming from Ubuntu. (; Ben Hutchings revamped the bootloader linux-2.6 hooks in order that update-initramfs no longer calls any bootloader by itself. Thank you for all the contributions. The development docs got nicely refreshed too.

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klibc 1.5.21 release

This release is "slightly" delayed due to lots of physics calculations for my final PhD year at the TU Vienna with all fixes that piled up since last summer: Support for newer GNU make 3.82, x86_32 signal fun, the self explantory KBUILD_REPRODUCIBLE and various cleanups: For details see klibc 1.5.21 release announcements or klibc git.

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CUPS Printer foo

I seem to have a sweet spot for having troubles with printers in stressy times. For restarting a stopped specific queue under CUPS it is easiest to specify:

 cupsenable <queuename>

The symmetric command for stopping is cupsdisable.

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Release of klibc-1.5.20

This release fixes an important ipconfig regression from Lenny due to a badly tested monster patch 4efbcf90f60. ipconfig should now perform better then ever, thanks to the inflow of fixes since Lenny release. This RC fixes are scheduled for Squeeze and it already landed in Sid.

1.5.19 had no release announcement, but fixed compilation on x86_32, the syscall handling on sh4 (initramfs-tools is said to boot fine with it), valgrind ipconfig warnings and added getrusage() for the mksh port.

Thanks to hpa for giving me the official co-maintenance of klibc. Thanks to all contributors.

P.S.: See klibc git repo.

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Fresh klibc 1.5.18 release

The overdue dash sync from 0.5.3 took a month to be done, but now klibc is shipping newer dash 0.5.6 then actual unstable dash.

Fixes for this release include fstype support for btrfs and ext4 without journal. Moving README's around so that they can be shipped for avid readers: README.ipconfig go :) The goodie from this time is the sh4 build fix form the very active Debian sh4 porters. ipconfig, nfsmount and kinit have now simpler DEBUG build. ipconfig build warnings got shot by a Google patch.

If your patch hasn't made it yet, please ping me for next queue: klibc git repo, Unofficial patch queue.

P.S.: Ubuntu Lucid pushes out klibc 1.5.17 thanks to Colin Watson.

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New klibc release 1.5.17

Not only fixes ipconfig regressions due to fixes in 1.5.16, but ipconfig should no longer discard useful packages. We also fixed a long standing klibc sparc specific socket bug (#444087): sparc lists socket system calls, but does not provide all of them natively. So one is better off on sparc to use sys_socketcall.

Thanks to Jan Hauke Rahm the packaging switched to modern Source Format 3.0 (quilt) with debhelper 7 usage reducing cdbs overhead on build. This is a big switch and makes me very happy.

New addition include a $(make help) target in Makefile to ease klibc build. A small losetup got added to klibc-utils.

i386 and sparc build fine against current linux-libc-dev: klibc-1.5.17 released
P.S.: New outfall seem to include armel and s390 due to libgcc changes.
Update: Seems only a small packaging error due to test target invocation, should be fixed in 1.5.17-3.

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New release klibc 1.5.16 uploaded

The upload reduced RC count by one as klibc builds against recent linux-libc-dev including 2.6.34-rc1. Also libklic-dev uses them directly once installed thanks to a patch from Ben Hutchings. The klibc build saw several fixes from a big and refined Google patch queue.

The klibc-utils mount grew several useful features and ipconfig saw lots of bug fixes (send requested optional hostname, raise field length for rootpath DHCP option, ..): hpa klibc 1.5.16 release announce, Git klibc repo.

Update: According to build log there is still work todo for i386 and sparc. :)

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HTC Magic 90 days Android usage

I love the fact that phones are ready to get a decent OS. I bought the phone for better connectivity and to get GPS goodness. 90 days later seems a good time to review the pros and cons:

Pros:
• The phone sees updates (Android 1.6 has recent 2.6.29 build with much nicer battery status and search box).
• Easy to pick google calender together with useful gmail integration.
• Often use the phone for a quick websearch (cinema programs on the run, news, shop opening times, ..) - to lazy to power up real laptop.
• The touchscreen interface isn't too bad, but missed the nice resize effect seen on other touchscreens OS.
• Connectbot is a half decent ssh client.
• The consumed data is very low - never managed to touch the 1GB download bandwith limit.
• gmaps is fun to look up and helpful in finding directions.
• Last but not least important phone functions as easy dialing and good voice transmission are working.

Cons:
• The worst omission is a decent pdf reader. No way to read latest papers on arXiv.org.
• The next big missing thing that worked since years with mobile phones is bluetooth file sending and receiving out of the box.
• A more minor bugger - but still quite annoying: contacts sent to you as vCard don't get easily imported in contacts.
• The camera from the HTC magic is not really pleasant.

Of course Android still seems like an alien sandboxed Linux, but I must say that the average usage capability of the mobile phone is very nicely enhanced.

P.S. Using allmost daily also Google Talk, Ultimate Stopwatch & Timer, Finance, GPS Status and the ultra cool Google Sky Map.

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git: Throw away first X commits of a repository

Today got asked by a colleague, who wanted to throw away the early history of his repo. git allows you easily to rewrite the history start with:

echo $FIRST_SHA >> .git/info/graft
git filter-branch -f

Then with interactive git rebase you can rewrite this important initial commit. Of course you have to define $FIRST_SHA and your repo shouldn't be dirty.

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Open Source Graphic Drivers - oops less often

If you haven't read yet: Linux Graphics, a Tale of Three Drivers. The hard data is based on reports thanks to kerneloops.org. It matches quite evenly our bug experience on the Debian Linux images. As already stated "Open Source Graphic Drivers - They don't kill kittens". The unnamed company claims no need for open drivers.

Hardware vendors need not to forget that they don't get revenues from the drivers side. The conclusion is to buy hardware, where the vendor cares about Linux support. That means documents the hardware and enhances current free xorg with all needed goodies of enhanced power support and last but not least 3D acceleration support.

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"Open Source Graphic Drivers - They don't kill kittens"

People don't seem to get that once you load a 1MB binary blob into your kernel you are no longer running a free operating system. There is no way to fix it. No way to see what is going wrong.

Fedora 9 is shipping the latest xorg Release. It features major improvements for the Intel and Radeon drivers. The well known randr features got pushed even more. Plus gaining better 2D and 3D effects and important power saving improvements. Thanks to all the xorg hackers!

Big blame on a unnamed company that can't keep up with latest Linux (Xen gained paravirt_ops support in 2.6.24 - oh yeah but we are still on 2.6.18 state). To truly support Linux you'd have to first release your specs and then help existing xorg hackers. Even Via seem to have got the message lately after years of no transparence.

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happy git usage

Apparently Scott James Remnant in his article on version control systems confuses arch and git. One can only speculate that his short git usage stems from the pre 1.0 days, where you had to use higher level tools (called porcelain) to happily work on git. A funny anecdote is that Scott back in his dpkg hacking year promoted arch heavily.

Ubuntu^Wbzr propaganda spreads speed gains as big bonus of the last major releases. In order to be able to do that you have to start with a terrible baseline. Testing bzr on middle sized repos is no fun at all. The bzr pain inside launchpad must be beyond imagination.

Nowadays it is much easier to hack on mdadm than on lvm2. The reason is that later project uses rusty cvs. With git it is really easy to contribute back. Either you mail the patches or publish your repository. git will help you along on each way.

The other very big bonus of git is the big community around git. It is a community excited around building and delivering the best version control system. The git development does regular surveys on git usages and incorporates back the wishlists.

The most "funny" way to use git is to run it as cvsserver. You may believe me or not i have seen git cvsserver emulation usage in the wild.

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YAPC::Europe 2007
The current Perl confernce in Vienna seems to get the biggest YAPC::Europe ever, see q&d YAPC first day notes.

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Huawei E220 HSDPA usb modem

The usb modem works out of the box with current Linux 2.6.23-rc2 (why would you use older ;-).

usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 8
usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
option 2-2:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
usb 2-2: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
option 2-2:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
usb 2-2: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1

[Dialer drei]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
SetVolume = 0
Dial Command = ATDT
Init1 = ATZ
;Init2 = AT+CPIN=1234
Init3 = ATE1V1&D2&C1S0=0+IFC=2,2
Init4 = AT+IPR=115200
Init5 = ATE1
Phone = *99#
Stupid Mode = 1
Init8 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","drei.at","0.0.0.0",0,0
Dial Attempts = 2
Username = xx
Password = xx

Current mood very happy. :) Aboves means connectivity almost everywhere in Austria due to A1 network fallback.

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Fun with Legend Annotations in Graphs

E\sT\N \f{Symbol}t\0 f

E_T \tau f

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Happy switch from bzr to git
The cardinal reason for the switch is collaboration: git scales. During my bzr usage time of the last year i observed the following shortcomings of bzr:

Latest initramfs-tools repo is available at:
git clone git://git.debian.org/git/kernel/initramfs-tools.git

Thanks to tailor it is now possible to move from different version control systems. For git as target repository it is recommended to use latest upstream either directly via darcs or at least install the unstable version. The etch version throws strange python backtraces.

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ext[23] online resizing
The e2fsprogs package in Etch features the ext[23] resize2fs, see it in action on a mounted /usr partition:

nancy:/root# egrep usr /proc/mounts 
/dev/mapper/nancy_vg1-usr /usr ext3 rw,noatime,nodiratime,data=ordered 0 0

nancy:/root# lvextend -L+700M /dev/nancy_vg1/usr       
Extending logical volume usr to 4.68 GB
Logical volume usr successfully resized

nancy:/root# resize2fs /dev/nancy_vg1/usr 
resize2fs 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
Filesystem at /dev/nancy_vg1/usr is mounted on /usr; on-line resizing required
old desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 1
Performing an on-line resize of /dev/nancy_vg1/usr to 1227776 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/nancy_vg1/usr is now 1227776 blocks long.

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network state monitoring
If something wierd is going with your network card and other methods fail to pinpoint (aka strace doesn't follow netlink) use as root (you'll get a nice log to stdout):

ip monitor all

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Set your email per git repo
Previously used export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="bla@foo.org", but belows is much nicer as it can be set per repository.

git repo-config  user.email bla@foo.org

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Git server setup
On Debian take care to install git-core and optionally gitweb for the web interface.

 grep git /etc/inetd.conf
# git server
git     stream  tcp     nowait  root /usr/bin/git-daemon git-daemon --inetd --syslog --export-all --base-path=/var/cache/git

 grep git /etc/services
git             9418/tcp                        # git

 cat /etc/gitweb.conf
# path to git projects (.git)
$projectroot = "/var/cache/git/"

# directory to use for temp files
$git_temp = "/tmp";

# target of the home link on top of all pages
$home_link = $my_uri;

# html text to include at home page
$home_text = "/var/cache/git/indextext.html";

# file with project list; by default, simply scan the projectroot dir.
$projects_list = '/etc/gitweb.lst';

 egrep git /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ssl
 ScriptAlias /git /usr/lib/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi

mattems%2Fklibc%2F.git maximilian+attems

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git cheat sheet
Using git involves a decentral development even if central server is supported. Git is amazingly fast and scales very well. Some of the following commands may help to get used to it.

# clone the last revision localy
git clone /path/.git

# clone repo from remote pc                         
git clone git+ssh://user@host/path/.git

# create your own branch
git branch <username>

# set your email and name which will show up in the commits
git repo-config user.email "user@host.org"
git repo-config user.name "firstname name"

# show latest changes
git log
git log <file>
git show
git show <commitid>

# check which branch currently is active                                        
git branch

# create and use a test branch
git checkout -b test

<hackcodehackcompilehackcompile>

# commit either all or some parts related to the files
# please don't forget to add an meningfull desc
# the first line is the subject, all below the body
git commit -a
git commit file

# merge your test branch once your happy back to your branch
git checkout username
git pull . test

# undo all local modification as they b0rk
git checkout -f

# push your changes to the repo all can have access to
git push git+ssh://user@host/path/.git branch

# eventually delete the test branch
git branch -D test

# tag the current revision
git revert <commit-id>

# change commit message to last edit
# (yes that's the only one you can change others are protected)
git commit --amend

# delete last commit
git reset HEAD^

# cherry-pick a change from one local branch to another local branch.
git checkout <first local branch>
git log path/to/changed/file
git checkout <second local branch>
git cherry-pick <sha1 refspec from the previous 'git log' output>

# merging others changes
git fetch git+ssh//user@host/path/.git mater:incoming
git log mater..incoming
git checkout mater
git pull . bob-incoming

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Ethtool - query or set your ethernet
Curious about which NIC hides in your box, use those commands, replace $iface with ethX:

$ sudo ethtool -i $iface
driver: tg3
version: 3.47
firmware-version: 
bus-info: 0000:40:00.0

$ sudo ethtool -S $iface

$ sudo ethtool -t $iface
The test extra info:
nvram test     (online)          0
link test      (online)          0
register test  (offline)         0
memory test    (offline)         0
loopback test  (offline)         0
interrupt test (offline)         0

sudo ethtool -s $iface speed 10

insmod 8139too media=0x01

ethtool -K $iface tx off

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LUKS crypto partition
LUKS is the Linux Unified Key setup. It is much easier to handle than previous cryptsetup. LUKS uses dm-crypt. Encrypt the partition with luks, you may want to run a bad block check before and overwrite it with random data. Out of simplicity this is skipped. Initialize the LUKS partition.

 cryptsetup  luksFormat /dev/sda2

 WARNING!
 ========
 This will overwrite data on /dev/sda2 irrevocably.

 Are you sure? (Type uppercase yes): YES
 Enter LUKS passphrase: 
 Verify passphrase: 
 Command successful.

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda2 sda2
Enter LUKS passphrase: 
key slot 0 unlocked.
Command successful.

mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/sda2

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boot from usb disc
Take care to backup any data before formating your device. Copy your root. Change your current root device to the usb device. Of course your kernel or better your distro initramfs should have support for booting from usb disc.

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
find / -xdev | cpio -pm /mnt
echo "(hd1)   /dev/sdb" >> /mnt/boot/grub/device.map
perl -pi -e s/sda1/sdb1/ /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst
perl -pi -e s/sda1/sdb1/ /mnt/etc/fstab
grub-install --install-dir /mnt /dev/sdb

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install grub
In bad situations grub-install has weired failures. It is quite handy to specify everythink on the grub cli (change sda to your block device):

grub> device (hd0) /dev/sda 
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)

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Allow other users access to your INBOX
cyrus is best administered with cyradm(1):

cyradm
connect hostname_server
sam user.my_username other_user read
lam user.my_username

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ipw2200 mode monitor
2.6.15-rcX have merged the newer driver but yet the monitor mode fails:

iwconfig eth1 mode monitor
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; Invalid argument.

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simple ccache usage
Debian makes ccache usage simple. Add to your .bashrc or .zshrc:

PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:$PATH

watch ccache -s

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Request-Tracker per commands steuern
Herrlich läßt sich rt via shell interface bedienen:

sudo apt-get install rt3.4-clients libterm-readkey-perl
export RTUSER=user
export RTSERVER=https://hostname/
rt ls "Priority > 5 and Status='new'"
rt create -t ticket
rt edit ticket/XXX
rt reply ticket/XXX
rt comment ticket/XXX
rt logout

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Backup a partition with partimage.
On the server side (g sets the loglevel to verbose, remove it once everything works - don't expect meaningfull messages ;-).

partimaged -D -g 10  -d /var/lib/partimaged

partimage -f0 -z0 -s hostname.org save /dev/sda2 image_filename

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Quick implementation guide of a local Debian repository
When you wish to serve local meta-packets or local backported packets to your Debian boxes you soon wish to have your own Debian archive. The 2 lines below are a quickie above the dir of your deb packages, where you rsynced them:

dpkg-scanpackages sarge override | gzip > sarge/Packages.gz
dpkg-scansources sarge | gzip > sarge/Sources.gz

Anyway with the time that gets pretty boring and you may already have tasted the sweeet dupload utility, which places build deb packages at their right place. Archives reindexing and optional removing of old packages happening in the background.

First set up an unprivileged user with an accessible public_html (you may want to restrict it to your own net). Disallow any password access. Use public_key from your local network. Afterwards you install mini-dinstall. Read /usr/share/doc/mini-dinstall/README. It explains the following steps:
Copy the mini-dinstall.conf from the mini-dinstall example dir to ~/.mini-dinstall.conf. After configuring to your local need add some distribution at the end of the file. Once configured start it as user with "mini-dinstall". mini-dinstall 0.6.21 version doesn't support distribution aliases so one has to add the "sarge", "etch" or "sid" symlinks.

No you can add some sections to your dupload.conf file for further convinience, like the one below (just copied the sarge section, but the rest is not hard to guess):

package config;
$cfg{'iw-sarge'}{'fqdn'}='assi';
$cfg{'iw-sarge'}{'method'}='scpb';
$cfg{'iw-sarge'}{'login'}='iw-deb';
$cfg{'iw-sarge'}{'incoming'}='~/public_html/debian/sarge/';
$cfg{'iw-sarge'}{'mailtx'}='bla@foo.org';
$cfg{'iw-sarge'}{'preupload'}{'deb'}='chmod 0644 %1';
$cfg{'iw-sarge'}{'preupload'}{'changes'}='chmod 0644 %1';
$cfg{'iw-sarge'}{'preupload'}{'file'}='chmod 0644 %1';
1;

dupload -to iw-sarge buchta_0.0.2_i386.changes

mini-dinstall allows to sign your archive files. Add the correct sources.list to your clients and be happy. :)

mini-dinstall has some downsides: It uses per default a flat archive structure and has not yet intelligence to really setup an proper archive. So it's a quick solution for a small range of packages. The Debian Bug Tracking system has a patch which should improve that handling, but it didn't get applied over the years. Also the usage of Dnotify instead of the newer Inotify shows it's age. The next step will probably feature dak, which has an Postgresql backend and is not so quick on setup, but is used for the Debian archives.

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Debian chroot
Below is a quick recipe on how to build the first steps of an sbuild chroot:

apt-get install sbuild
/usr/share/sbuild/buildd.chroot sarge /srv/ai/aipc50/sbuild/sarge/ http://http.at.debian.org/debian
/usr/share/sbuild/add_sbuild_user /srv/ai/aipc50/sbuild/sarge/ stable attems
/usr/share/sbuild/chrapt /srv/ai/aipc50/sbuild/sarge/ apt-get update
/usr/share/sbuild/chrapt /srv/ai/aipc50/sbuild/sarge/ apt-get upgrade
/usr/share/sbuild/chrapt /srv/ai/aipc50/sbuild/sarge/ apt-get install sudo fakeroot ssmtp

mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/p_brane-sid
mount /dev/mapper/p_brane-sid
/usr/share/sbuild/buildd.chroot sid /srv/ai/aipc50/sbuild/sid/ http://http.at.debian.org/debian
mount -a
/usr/share/sbuild/add_sbuild_user /srv/ai/aipc50/sbuild/sid/ unstable  attems

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Java deb
The java package adds plugin symlinks for the existing browsers.
Download self extracting binary JRE 5.0 Sun Java

apt-get install java-package
TMPDIR=~/tmp fakeroot make-jpkg  jre-1_5_0_04-linux-i586.bin
sudo dpkg -i sun-j2re1.5_1.5.0+update04_i386.deb

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