Petter Reinholdtsen: Publish Hargassner wood chip boiler state to MQTT
https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Publish_Hargassner_wood_chip_boiler_state_to_MQTT.html
March 12, 2022, 5:30 AM
Recently I had a look at a
Hargassner
wood
chip boiler, and what kind of free software can be used to monitor
and control it. The boiler can be connected to some cloud service via
what the producer call an Internet Gateway, which seem to be a
computer connecting to the boiler and passing the information gathered
to the cloud. I discovered the boiler controller got an IP address on
the local network and listen on TCP port 23 to provide status
information as a text line of numbers. It also prov...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 1.0.8.2: Hotfix release per CRAN request
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/03/11#rcpp_1.0.8.2
March 12, 2022, 12:00 AM
A new hot-fix release 1.0.8.2 of Rcpp just got to CRAN. It will also be uploaded to Debian shortly, and Windows and macOS binaries will appear at CRAN in the next few days. This release breaks with the six-months cycle started with release 1.0.5 in July 2020 as CRAN desired an update to silence nags from the newest clang version which turned a little loud over a feature deprecated in C++11 (namely std::unary_function() and std::binary_function()). This was easy to replace with std::function() wh...
--------------------
Santiago García Mantiñán: tcpping-nmap a substitute for tcpping based on nmap
http://blog.manty.net/2022/03/tcpping-nmap-substitute-for-tcpping.html
March 11, 2022, 11:20 PM
I was about to setup a tcpping based monitoring on smokeping but then I discovered this was based on tcptraceroute which on Debian comes setuid root and the alternative is to use sudo, so, anyway you put it... this runs with root privileges.I didn't like what I saw, so, I said... couldn't we do this with nmap without needing root?And so I started to write a little script that could mimic what tcpping and tcptraceroute were outputing but using nmap.The result is tcpping-nmap which does this. The ...
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: dtts 0.1.0 on CRAN: New Package
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/03/10#dtts_0.1.0
March 11, 2022, 2:14 AM
Leonardo and I are thrilled to announce the first CRAN release of dtts. The dtts package builds on top of both our nanotime package and the well-loved and widely-used data.table package by Matt, Arun, Jan, and numerous collaborators.
In a very rough nutshell, you can think of dtts as combining both these potent ingredients to produce something not-entirely-unlike the venerable xts package by our friends Jeff and Josh—but using highest-precision nanosecond increments rather than not-quite-micro...
--------------------
Holger Levsen: 20220310-Debian-Reunion-Hamburg-2022
http://layer-acht.org/thinking/blog/20220310-Debian-Reunion-Hamburg-2022/
March 10, 2022, 12:04 PM
Debian Reunion Hamburg 2022 from May 23 to 30
As last year there will be a Debian Reunion Hamburg 2022 event taking place at the same location as previous years, from May 23rd until the 30th.
This is just a preliminary announcement to get the word out, that this event will happen, so you can ponder attending. The wiki page has more information and some fine folks have even already registered!
A few things still need to be sorted out, eg a call for papers and a call for sponsors. If you want t...
--------------------
Michael Ablassmeier: fscom switch shell
https://abbbi.github.io//fscom/
March 10, 2022, 12:00 AM
fs.com s5850 and s8050 series type switches have a secret mode which
lets you enter a regular shell from the switch cli, like so:
hostname # start shell
Password:
The command and password are not documented by the manufacturer,
i wondered wether if its possible to extract that password from
the firmware. After all: its my device, and i want to have access
to all the features!
Download the latest firmware image for those switch types and let binwalk do
its magic:
$ wget https://img-en.fs.com/...
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Jonathan Dowland: Broken webcam aspect ratio
https://jmtd.net/log/webcam_aspect_ratio/
March 9, 2022, 2:21 PM
Sony RX100-III, relegated to a webcam
Sometimes I have remote meetings with Google Meet. Unlike the other
video-conferencing services that I use (Bluejeans, Zoom), my video
was stretched out of proportion under Google Meet with Firefox.
I haven't found out why this was happening, but I did figure out a
work-around.
Thanks to Daniel Silverstone, Rob Kendrick, Gregor Herrmann and Ben Allen for
pointing me in the right direction!
Hardware
The lovely Sony RX-100 mk3 that I bought in 2015 has
s...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppRedis 0.2.0: Major Updates
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/03/08#rcppredis_0.2.0
March 9, 2022, 2:09 AM
A new major release of RcppRedis arrived on CRAN today. RcppRedis is one of several packages connecting R to the fabulous Redis in-memory datastructure store (and much more). RcppRedis does not pretend to be feature complete, but it may do some things faster than the other interfaces, and also offers an optional coupling with MessagePack binary (de)serialization via RcppMsgPack. The package has carried production loads for several years now.
This release integrates support for pub/sub, a popular...
--------------------
François Marier: Using a Streamzap remote control with MythTV on Debian Bullseye
https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/using-streamzap-remote-with-mythtv-debian-bullseye/
March 9, 2022, 12:00 AM
After upgrading my MythTV machine to Debian
Bullseye and MythTV
31, my Streamzap remote
control stopped working correctly: the up and down buttons were
working, but the OK button wasn't.
Here's the complete solution that made it work with the built-in kernel
support (i.e. without LIRC).
Button re-mapping
Since some of the buttons were working, but not others, I figured that the
buttons were probably not mapped to the right keys.
Inspired by these old v4l-utils-based
instructions,
I made my o...
--------------------
Ayoyimika Ajibade: Progress Report!! Modifying Expectations... 📝
https://ayoyimika.hashnode.dev/progress-report-modifying-expectations
March 7, 2022, 1:09 PM
Wait! Just like yesterday when I was accepted as an Outreachy intern and the first half of the internship is finished😲. How time flies when you are having a good time🎃
As part of the requirements for the final application during the contribution period for the Outreachy internship, I needed to provide a timeline to achieve our goal on my outreachy task which is transitioning of dependencies in node16 and webpack5. Having consulted my mentors who implied that the packages depending on webp...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: nanotime 0.3.6 on CRAN: Updates
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/03/06#nanotime_0.3.6
March 6, 2022, 8:20 PM
Leonardo and I are pleased to another update to our nanotime package bringing it to version 0.3.6 which landed on CRAN earlier today.
nanotime relies on the RcppCCTZ package (as well as the RcppDate package for additional C++ operations) and offers efficient high(er) resolution time parsing and formatting up to nanosecond resolution, and the bit64 package for the actual integer64 arithmetic. Initially implemented using the S3 system, it has benefitted greatly from a rigorous refactoring by Leona...
--------------------
Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in February 2022
http://blog.alteholz.eu/2022/03/my-debian-activities-in-february-2022/
March 5, 2022, 12:43 PM
FTP master
This month I accepted 484 and rejected 73 packages. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 495.
The overall number of rejected packages was 76, which is about 15% of the uploads to NEW. While most of the maintainers do a great job when creating their debian/copyright, others are a bit lax. Unfortunately those people seem to be more enthusiastic when fighting for changes in NEW processing or even removing NEW.
One argument in discussions about NEW is that the copyright ve...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in February 2022
https://reproducible-builds.org/reports/2022-02/
March 5, 2022, 11:17 AM
Welcome to the February 2022 report from the Reproducible Builds project. In these reports, we try to round-up the important things we and others have been up to over the past month. As ever, if you are interested in contributing to the project, please visit our Contribute page on our website.
Jiawen Xiong, Yong Shi, Boyuan Chen, Filipe R. Cogo and Zhen Ming Jiang have published a new paper titled Towards Build Verifiability for Java-based Systems (PDF). The abstract of the paper contains t...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 207 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-207-released/
March 4, 2022, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 207. This version includes the following changes:
* Fix a gnarly regression when comparing directories against non-directories.
(Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#292)
* Use our assert_diff utility where we can within test_directory.py
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
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Joerg Jaspert: Scan for SSH private keys without passphrase
https://blog.ganneff.de/2022/03/scan-for-ssh-private-keys-without-passphrase.html
March 3, 2022, 8:32 PM
SSH private key scanner (keys without passphrase)
So for policy reasons, customer wanted to ensure that every SSH
private key in use by a human on their systems has a passphrase set.
And asked us to make sure this is the case.
There is no way in SSH to check this during connection, so client side
needs to be looked at. Which means looking at actual files on the
system.
Turns out there are multiple formats for the private keys - and I
really do not want to implement something able to deal with...
--------------------
Jonathan McDowell: Neat uses for a backlit keyboard
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2022/03/backlit-keyboard-uses.html
March 3, 2022, 6:32 PM
I bought myself a new keyboard last November, a Logitech G213. True keyboard fans will tell me it’s not a real mechanical keyboard, but it was a lot cheaper and met my requirements of having some backlighting and a few media keys (really all I use are the volume control keys). Oh, and being a proper UK layout.
While the G213 isn’t fully independent RGB per key it does have a set of zones that can be controlled. Also this has been reverse engineered, so there are tools to do this under Linux...
--------------------
Enrico Zini: Migrating from procmail to sieve
http://www.enricozini.org/blog/2022/debian/migrating-from-procmail-to-sieve
March 3, 2022, 2:03 PM
Anarcat's "procmail considered harmful" post
convinced me to get my act together and finally migrate my venerable procmail based setup to sieve.
My setup was nontrivial, so I migrated with an intermediate step in which sieve
scripts would by default pipe everything to procmail, which allowed me to
slowly move rules from procmailrc to sieve until nothing remained in
procmailrc.
Here's what I did.
Literature review
https://brokkr.net/2019/10/31/lets-do-dovecot-slowly-and-properly-part-3-lmtp/
has ...
--------------------
Jamie McClelland: LVM Cache Surprises
https://current.workingdirectory.net/posts/2022/lvm-cache/
March 3, 2022, 12:27 PM
By far the biggest LVM Cache surprise is just how well it works.
Between 2010 and 2020, my single, biggest and most consistent headache managing
servers at May First has been disk i/o. We run a
number of physical hosts with encrypted disks, with each providing a dozen or
so sundry KVM guests. And they consume a lot of disk i/o.
This problem kept me awake at night and made me want to put my head on the
table and cry during the day as I monitored the output of vmstat 1 and
watched each disk i/o de...
--------------------
John Goerzen: Tools for Communicating Offline and in Difficult Circumstances
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10356-tools-for-communicating-offline-and-in-difficult-circumstances
March 3, 2022, 2:49 AM
Note: this post is also available on my website, where it will be updated periodically.
When things are difficult – maybe there’s been a disaster, or an invasion (this page is being written in 2022 just after Russia invaded Ukraine), or maybe you’re just backpacking off the grid – there are tools that can help you keep in touch, or move your data around. This page aims to survey some of them, roughly in order from easiest to more complex.
Simple radios
Handheld radios shouldn’t be for...
--------------------
Ian Jackson: 3D printed hard case for Fairphone 4
https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/11376.html
March 3, 2022, 12:11 AM
About 4 years ago, I posted about making a 3D printed case for my then-new phone. The FP2 was already a few years old when I got one and by now, some spares are unavailable - which is a problem, because I'm terribly hard on hardware. Indeed, that's why I need a very sturdy case for my phone - a case which can be ablative when necessary.
With the arrival of my new Fairphone 4, I've updated my case design. Sadly the FP4 doesn't have a notification LED - I guess we're supposed to be glued to t...
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Antoine Beaupré: procmail considered harmful
https://anarc.at/blog/2022-03-02-procmail-considered-harmful/
March 2, 2022, 6:16 PM
TL;DR: procmail is a security liability and has been abandoned
upstream for the last two decades. If you are still using it, you
should probably drop everything and at least remove its SUID
flag. There are plenty of alternatives to chose from, and conversion
is a one-time, acceptable trade-off.
Procmail is unmaintained
procmail is unmaintained. The "Final release", according to
Wikipedia, dates back to September 10, 2001 (3.22). That release
was shipped in Debian since then, all the way back f...
--------------------
Petter Reinholdtsen: Run your industrial metal working machine using Debian?
https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Run_your_industrial_metal_working_machine_using_Debian_.html
March 2, 2022, 5:40 PM
After many months of hard work by the good people involved in
LinuxCNC, the
system was accepted Sunday
into Debian.
Once it was available from Debian, I was surprised to discover from
its
popularity-contest numbers that people have been reporting its use
since 2012. Its project site might
be a good place to check out, but sadly is not working when visiting
via Tor.
But what is LinuxCNC, you are probably wondering? Perhaps a
Wikipedia quote is in place?
"LinuxCNC is a software system for num...
--------------------
Ben Hutchings: Debian LTS work, February 2022
https://www.decadent.org.uk/ben/blog/debian-lts-work-february-2022.html
March 2, 2022, 3:04 PM
In February I was assigned 16 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS
initiative and carried over 8 hours from January. I worked 16
hours, and will carry over the remaining time to March.
I spent most of my time triaging security issues for Linux, working
out which of them were fixed upstream and which actually applied to
the versions provided in Debian 9 "stretch". I also rebased the
Linux 4.9 (linux) package on the latest stable update, but did not
make an upload this month....
--------------------
Keith Packard: picolibc-testing
http://keithp.com/blogs/picolibc-testing/
March 2, 2022, 7:28 AM
Testing Picolibc with the glibc tests
Picolibc has a bunch of built-in tests, but more testing is always
better, right? I decided to see how hard it would be to run some of
the tests provided in the GNU C Library (glibc).
Parallel meson build files
Similar to how Picolibc uses meson build files to avoid modifying the
newlib autotools infrastructure, I decided to take the glibc code and
write meson build rules that would compile the tests against Picolibc
header files and link against Picolibc...
--------------------
François Marier: Ways to refer to locahost in Chromium
https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/ways-to-refer-to-localhost-chromium/
March 2, 2022, 2:45 AM
The filter rules preventing websites from portscanning the local
machine have recently
been tightened in Brave. It turns out there are a surprising number of ways
to refer to the local machine in Chromium.
localhost and friends
127.0.0.1 is the first address that comes to mind when thinking of the
local machine. localhost is typically aliased to that address (via
/etc/hosts), though that convention is not mandatory. The IPv6 equivalent
is [::1].
http://localhost/
http://foo.localhost/
http:/...
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Utkarsh Gupta: FOSS Activites in February 2022
https://utkarsh2102.com/posts/foss-in-feb-22/
March 1, 2022, 5:41 AM
Here’s my (twenty-ninth) monthly but brief update about the activities I’ve done in the F/L/OSS world.
Debian
This was my 38th month of actively contributing to Debian.
I became a DM in late March 2019 and a DD on Christmas ‘19! o/
I had been sick this month, so most of the time I spent away from system, recovering, et al,
and also went through the huge backlog that I had, which is starting to get smaller. :D
Anyway, I did the following stuff in Debian:
Uploads and bug fixes:
at (3.4....
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Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities February 2022
http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2022/03/01/floss-activities/
March 1, 2022, 4:16 AM
Focus
This month I didn't have any particular focus.
I just worked on issues in my info bubble.
Changes
gensim:
use datapath consistently,
enable a test,
rm cruft
git-remote-hg:
option to test installed code, fix shebang handling, check for Python/Mercurial
mpv-mpris:
add
CPPFLAGS,
smoke tests
purple-discord:
fix dead store,
fix crash
zxing-cpp:
drop code copy,
fix
crash,
spelling
iotop:
URL cleanup,
hide SWAPIN/IO when data collection is disabled,
promote
iotop-c,
distro packages
duck:
indi...
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Russell Coker: SAGE (ITPA) Spam
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/03/01/sage-itpa-spam/
March 1, 2022, 4:11 AM
In 2008 I joined SAGE (the System Administrators’ Guild of Australia). It was a professional society for people doing sysadmin work (running computer servers). I quit when I found that the level of clue was lower than hoped and that members used the code of ethics as nothing but a way to score points in online debates. After quitting SAGE kept emailing me and wouldn’t respect my request to be removed from all lists so I had to block their mail server.
SAGE has in recent times changed it’s ...
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Junichi Uekawa: The World is changing.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2022-Mar-1.html.en#2022-Mar-1-08:45:37
February 28, 2022, 11:45 PM
The World is changing. People are not satisfied with COVID-19.
--------------------
Daniel Silverstone: Subplot and FOSDEM 2022 talk
http://blog.digital-scurf.org/posts/2022-fosdem/
February 26, 2022, 10:22 PM
As many of you may be aware, I work with Lars Wirzenius on a project
we call Subplot which is a tool for writing documentation which helps
all stakeholders involved with a proejct to understand how the project meets
its requirements.
At the start of February we had FOSDEM which was once again online, and
I decided to give a talk in the Safety and open source devroom to
introduce the concepts of safety argumentation and to bring some attention
to how I feel that Subplot could be used in that are...
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Russ Allbery: INN 2.6.5
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/journal/2022-02/001.html
February 26, 2022, 5:36 AM
This is a bit of a sneak preview announcement since I'm waiting for the
ISC mirror to update before sending the official announcement to the
normal channels, but INN 2.6.5 has been released. (The release was
finalized a few days ago, and I'm a bit behind in posting it.)
This is a bug fix and minor feature release over INN 2.6.4, and the
upgrade should be painless. You can download the new release from
ftp.isc.org (once it updates) or
my personal INN pages. The latter also has
links to the ...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: It was twenty years ago today …
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/02/25#twenty_years_ago_cran
February 25, 2022, 11:30 PM
… that I made my first upload to CRAN as demonstrated by the very bottom of the ChangeLog file of the RQuantLib package:
2002-02-25 Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>
* Initial 0.1.0 release
And quite a few more uploads followed since.
(Also see the earlier twenty years ago … post about my initial contributions to the Debian R package I had by then adopted too.)
If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub.
This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel ori...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 206 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-206-released/
February 25, 2022, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 206. This version includes the following changes:
* Also allow "Unicode text, UTF-8 text" as well as "UTF-8 Unicode text" to
match for .buildinfo files too.
* Add a test for recent file(1) issue regarding .changes files.
(Re: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#291)
* Drop "_PATH" suffix from some module-level globals that are not paths.
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
--------------------
Charles Plessy: New media types in 2022
http://charles.plessy.org/Debian/debi%C3%A2neries/media-types-2022/
February 24, 2022, 12:32 PM
At the beginning of this year I updated a hundred of media
types associated with file name
extensions in the file called /etc/mime.types, distributed by the
media-types package. Most
changes
are additions originating from recent submissions to the
IANA. Amon the themes that
caught my attention, there are telecommunications, computer security,
commerce, healthcare and industrial automation. The vast majority of the
update come from western provenance. Did the rest of the World decide to
move ah...
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Ian Jackson: Rooting an Eos Fairphone 4
https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/11154.html
February 23, 2022, 11:44 PM
Last week I received (finally) my Fairphone 4, supplied with a de-googled operating system, which I had ordered from the E Foundation’s shop in December. (I’m am very hard on hardware and my venerable Fairphone 2 is really on its last legs.)
I expect to have full control over the software on any computing device I own which is as complicated, capable, and therefore, hazardous, as a mobile phone. Unfortunately the Eos image (they prefer to spell it “/e/ os”, srsly!) doesn’t come with a ...
--------------------
Joey Hess: announcing zephyr-copilot
http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/announcing_zephyr-copilot/
February 23, 2022, 7:55 PM
I recently learned about the Zephyr Project
which is a rather neat embedded OS for devices too small to run Linux.
This led me to wondering if I could adapt arduino-copilot to target
Zephyr, and so be able to program any of the 350+ boards it supports using
Haskell.
At the same time I had an opportunity to give a talk at the Houston
Functional Programmers group. On February 1st I decided to
give
that talk, about arduino-copilot.
That left 2 weeks to buy some hardware supported by Zephyr and p...
--------------------
Jonathan McDowell: Upgrading my home internet; a story of yak shaving
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2022/02/yak-shaving-internet.html
February 23, 2022, 7:14 PM
This has ended up longer than I expected. I’ll write up posts about some of the individual steps with some more details at some point, but this is an overview of the yak shaving I engaged in. The TL;DR is:
I wanted to upgrade my internet connection, but:
My router wasn’t fast enough, so:
I bought a new one and:
Proceeded to help work on mainline Linux support, and:
Did some tweaking of my Debian setup to allow for a squashfs root, and:
Upgraded it to Debian 11 (bullseye) in the...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: Elder Race
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-76871-3.html
February 23, 2022, 4:34 AM
Review: Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Publisher:
Tordotcom


Copyright:
November 2021


ISBN:
1-250-76871-3


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
199

(It's a shame that a lot of people will be reading this novella on a
black-and-white ebook reader, since
the Emmanuel Shiu cover is absolutely spectacular. There's a larger
image without the words at the bottom of that article.)
When reports arrive at the court about demons deep in the f...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: Children of Earth and Sky
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-698-18327-4.html
February 22, 2022, 4:51 AM
Review: Children of Earth and Sky, by Guy Gavriel Kay

Publisher:
New American Library


Copyright:
2016


ISBN:
0-698-18327-4


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
572

Nine hundred years have passed since the events of
Lord of Emperors. Twenty-five years
ago, Sarantium, queen of cities, fell to the Osmanlis, who have renamed it
Asharias in honor of their Asherite faith. The repercussions are still
echoing through the western world, as the O...
--------------------
Raphaël Hertzog: Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, January 2022
https://raphaelhertzog.com/2022/02/21/freexians-report-about-debian-long-term-support-january-2022/
February 21, 2022, 2:21 PM
Every month we review the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering. Please find the report for January below.
Debian project funding
In January we saw a new funded project proposed. The project is meant to bring in a number of changes to the Tryton modules and packages in Debian. Tryton, a full featured, entirely open source business software platform, is supported by its own foundation. You can track the current status of all our funded projects at its dedicated web page.Folks cont...
--------------------
Shirish Agarwal: The King of Torts – John Grisham
https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2022/02/19/the-king-of-torts-john-grisham/
February 19, 2022, 6:44 AM
John Grisham The King of Torts
Lots of things have been happening and I have been unable to be on top of things. There are so many things that happen and keep on happening and a lot of it is just not in control. For those who are watching Brexit, India is going through the same/similar phenomena just without Brexit. I would not like to delve much into Indian happenings as there is no sweet story to tell.
Mum is in hospital (diabetic foot) so a lot of time to read books. So I have been mak...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 205 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-205-released/
February 19, 2022, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 205. This version includes the following changes:
* Fix a file(1)-related regression where .changes files that contained
non-ASCII text were not identified as being .changes files, resulting in
seemingly arbitrary packages on tests.reproducible-builds.org and elswhere
not comparing the package at all. The non-ASCII parts could have been in
the Maintainer or in the upload changelog, so we were effectivel...
--------------------
Colin Watson: Launchpad now supports SSH Ed25519 keys and RSA SHA-2 signatures
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~cjwatson/blog/lp-new-ssh-features.html
February 18, 2022, 1:49 PM
As of 2022-02-16, Launchpad supports a couple of features on its SSH
endpoints (git.launchpad.net, bazaar.launchpad.net, ppa.launchpad.net,
and upload.ubuntu.com) that it previously didn’t: Ed25519 public
keys (a well-regarded format,
supported by OpenSSH since 6.5 in 2014) and signatures with existing RSA
public keys using SHA-2 rather than
SHA-1 (supported by OpenSSH since
7.2 in 2016).
I’m hesitant to call these features “new”, since they’ve been around for a
long time elsewhere, a...
--------------------
Abiola Ajadi: Modifying expectations!
https://ajadi-abiola.github.io/blog/Modifying-expectation
February 17, 2022, 12:00 AM
Hi everyone!
In today’s blog post I will be talking about the progress i have made , the hurdles I encountered and how my current progress differs from my original expectations.
I applied to Debian community with a particular timeline and expected it to go that way, but after starting out i realized i had alot to learn in Ruby and the codebase.
So far i have worked on issues i am proud of and when i use Debci i see some of the changes i added for example the self-service form remembering va...
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Joerg Jaspert: Funny CPU usage - rewrite it in rust
https://blog.ganneff.de/2022/02/funny-cpu-usage-rewrite-in-rust.html
February 16, 2022, 8:23 PM
Munin plugin and it’s CPU usage (and a rewrite in rust)
With my last blog on the Munin plugins CPU usage I complained about Oracle
Linux doing something really weird, driving up CPU usage when running
a fairly simple Shell script with a loop in.
Turns out, I was wrong. It is not OL7 that makes this problem show
up. It appears to be something from the Oracle “Enterprise” Database
installed on the system, that makes it go this crazy. I’ve now had
this show up on RedHat7 systems too, and ...
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Robert McQueen: Forward the Foundation
https://ramcq.net/2022/02/16/forward-the-foundation/
February 16, 2022, 2:48 PM
Earlier this week, Neil McGovern announced that he is due to be stepping down as the Executive Director as the GNOME Foundation later this year. As the President of the board and Neil’s effective manager together with the Executive Committee, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on his achievements in the past 5 years and explain a little about what the next steps would be.
Since joining in 2017, Neil has overseen a productive period of growth and maturity for the Foundation, increasing our...
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Norbert Preining: NVEnc for Arch Linux
https://www.preining.info/blog/2022/02/nvenc-for-arch-linux/
February 15, 2022, 2:33 AM
I have been using NVEnc – a NVIDIA hardware based encoder – for quite some time now. Mostly because I was pointed to it by FastFlix, one of the best video en/recoding frontend programs out there. Having switched to Arch Linux lately, I realized there is no package of it – perfect time to start contributing and preparing an AUR package for it.
Since it is my first package I made for Arch, it took me a bit of reading through the excellent wiki of Arch, and comparing a few other PKGBUILD fil...
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Neil McGovern: Handing over
https://blog.halon.org.uk/2022/02/handing-over/
February 14, 2022, 2:30 PM
In 2017, I was attending FOSDEM when GNOME announced that I was to become the new Executive Director of the Foundation. Now, nearly 5 years later, I’ve decided the timing is right for me to step back and for GNOME to start looking for its next leader. I’ve been working closely with Rob and the rest of the board to ensure that there’s an extended and smooth transition, and that GNOME can continue to go from strength to strength.
GNOME has changed a lot in the last 5 years, and a lot has ...
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Petter Reinholdtsen: Updated vlc bittorrent plugin in Debian (version 2.14)
https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_14_.html
February 14, 2022, 7:00 AM
I am very happy to report that a new version of the
VLC
bittorrent plugin was just uploaded into debian. The changes
since last time is mostly code clean in the download code. The package
is currently in Debian unstable, but should be available in Debian
testing son. To test it, simply install it like this:
apt install vlc-plugin-bittorrent
After it is installed, you can try to use it to play a file
downloaded live via bittorrent like this:
vlc https://archive.org/download/Glass_201703/Gla...
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Gunnar Wolf: Got to boot a RPi Zero 2 W with Debian
https://gwolf.org/2022/02/got-to-boot-a-rpi-zero-2-w-with-debian.html
February 13, 2022, 6:45 AM
About a month ago, I got tired of waiting for the newest member of
the Raspberry product
lineup
to be sold in Mexico, and I bought it from a Chinese reseller through
a big online shopping platform. I paid quite a bit of premium (~US$85
instead of the advertised US$15), and got it delivered ten days
later…
Anyway, it’s known this machine does not yet boot mainline Linux. The
vast majority of ARM systems require the bootloader to load a Device
Tree file, presenting the hardware characterist...
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Ritesh Raj Sarraf: apt-offline 1.8.4
https://www.researchut.com/blog/apt_offline_184/
February 12, 2022, 3:17 PM
apt-offline 1.8.4
apt-offline version 1.8.4 has been released.
This release includes many bug fixes but the important ones are:
Better GPG signature handling
Support for verifying InRelease files
Changelog
apt-offline (1.8.4-1) unstable; urgency=medium
[ Debian Janitor ]
* Update standards version to 4.5.0, no changes needed.
[ Paul Wise ]
* Clarify file type in unknown file message
* Fix typos
* Remove trailing whitespace
* Update LICENSE file to match official GNU version
*...
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Ingo Juergensmann: Old Buildd.Net Database
https://blog.windfluechter.net/2022/02/11/old-buildd-net-database/
February 11, 2022, 6:05 PM
Since March/April 2000 I was deeply involved in Debian m68k and operated multiple m68k autobuilder for over a decade. In fact my Amiga 3000 named “arrakis” was the second buildd for m68k in addition to the Debian owned Amiga 3000UX named “kullervo”.
Back in that time there was some small website running on Kullervo to display some information about the Debian autobuilder. After some time we (as m68k porters) moved that webpage away from Kullervo to my root server. Step by step this s...
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Holger Levsen: 20220211-inbox-zero-in-2022-and-beyond
http://layer-acht.org/thinking/blog/20220211-inbox-zero-in-2022-and-beyond/
February 11, 2022, 1:34 PM
Back to the old and new normal: inbox zero
So, a long time ago, on the last two days of January 2020 I had reached zero unread mails
in my inbox and all mailing lists and then... some stuff kept me distracted for a (too) long time...
And then two weeks ago on the 29th of January 2022, I've reached inbox zero again,
and again on the 30th and then I had a hardware issue and couldn't really use my computer
for two days (one day trying to fix, the other copying data around...) and thus
only on Feb...
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Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 204 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-204-released/
February 11, 2022, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 204. This version includes the following changes:
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Don't run the binwalk comparator tests as root (or fakeroot) as the
latest version of binwalk has some security protection against doing
precisely this.
* If we fail to scan a file using binwalk, return 'False' from
BinwalkFile.recognizes rather than raise a traceback.
* If we fail to import the Python "binwalk" module, don't accidentally ...
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Patryk Cisek: Automating Let's Encrypt certificates with Gandi LiveDNS
https://prezu.ca/post/2022-02-10-certbot-gandi/
February 10, 2022, 10:43 PM
As a Debian Developer I have a discount on using Gandi and I’ve been using it for quite a long time and have been very happy with it. I’ve been using it for registering domains. For example this blog’s domain is managed by my Gandi account.
Using publicly registered domain in private-only setup In addition to using this DNS registrar for public stuff, like a blog, one can also use it for a domain accessible only within a private network....
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Russell Coker: Mouse and Teflon
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/02/10/mouse-teflon/
February 10, 2022, 7:28 AM
I had a problem with my mouse. The slippery plastic bits on the bottom weren’t glued on well and came off, which then gave more friction when moving on the desk. After asking advice on a mailing list the best suggestion was Teflon sticky tape. I bought a few meters of such tape (a lifetime supply for mouse repair) and used an 8cm strip on each side of the bottom of my mouse which made it slippery enough.
Ebay seems like a good place to buy that, most of the offers are well below $20 for a reel...
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Steinar H. Gunderson: Faster man-db
http://blog.sesse.net/blog/tech/2022-02-10-00-33_faster_man_db.html
February 9, 2022, 11:33 PM
Since Colin isn't blogging about it, I guess the honor falls to me :-)
As of a few days ago, the man-db version in Debian unstable (2.10.0)
is a lot faster in rebuilding its index (used for whatis/apropos).
Earlier versions would use as much as a few minutes in the dpkg trigger;
now it's about 40 times as fast, and rarely takes more than a few seconds
even for large upgrades. (We've discussed putting it in the background,
but it's really not that annoying anymore.)
The code is basically all Co...
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Jonathan Dowland: One, by Be
https://jmtd.net/log/One,_by_Be/
February 9, 2022, 8:29 PM
The sublime One, by Be is a pastoral, English summer time instrumental improvisation around field recordings and the theme of the honey bee. A lovely piece to accompany deep thinking. I’m reminded of Virginia Astley. Be are associated with Caught by the River, a collective who explore ways of setpping out of daily digital live and embrace, nature, walks, calm, etc....
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Kentaro Hayashi: Writing Debian New Contributor Guide
https://kenhys.hatenablog.jp/entry/2022/02/09/191755
February 9, 2022, 10:17 AM
Recently, I've wrote Debian New Cotributor Guide in Japanese.
Here is the photo of on-demand printed version.
Debian New Contributor Guide
This book (JIS-B5 128p) was published for online event - Techbookfest 12th.
It covers how to package a new software in Debian.
techbookfest.org
Mostly PDF format is preferred, and a few printed versions were distributed....
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Norbert Preining: KDE/Plasma 5.24 for Debian
https://www.preining.info/blog/2022/02/kde-plasma-5-24-for-debian/
February 9, 2022, 8:09 AM
Yesterday, KDE released version 5.24 of the Plasma desktop with the usual long list of updates and improvements. This release will be considered a LTS release. And Plasma 5.24 is now available for all Debian releases. (And don’t forget KDE Gears/Apps 21.12!)
As usual, I am providing packages via my OBS builds. If you have used my packages till now, then you only need to change the plasma5XX line to read plasma524. To give full details, I repeat (and update) instructions for all here: First of...
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