Bits from Debian: New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2022)
https://bits.debian.org/2023/01/new-developers-2022-12.html
January 24, 2023, 3:00 PM
The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:
Dennis Braun (snd)
Raúl Benencia (rul)
The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:
Gioele Barabucci
Agathe Porte
Braulio Henrique Marques Souto
Matthias Geiger
Alper Nebi Yasak
Fabian Grünbichler
Lance Lin
Congratulations!...
--------------------
Kentaro Hayashi: Porterboxes and alternatives
https://kenhys.hatenablog.jp/entry/2023/01/24/202912
January 24, 2023, 11:29 AM
As you know, Debian projects and sponsor provides so-called "porterbox", but it does not cover all architectures.
There are some alternatives to fix architecture-specific bugs.
For the record, let's pick it up them. [1][2][3]
porterbox
deb-o-matic
qemu
amd64
adayevskaya.d.o
debomatic-amd64.d.n
DQIB ready
arm64
amdahl.d.o
debomatic-arm64.d.n
DQIB ready
armel
amdahl.d.o abel.d.o
debomatic-armel.d.n
NG
armhf
amdahl.d.o abel.d.o harris.d.o
debomatic-armhf.d.n
DQIB ready
i386
exodar...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Build security with the assumption it will be used against your friends
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/65272.html
January 23, 2023, 10:44 AM
Working in information security means building controls, developing technologies that ensure that sensitive material can only be accessed by people that you trust. It also means categorising people into "trustworthy" and "untrustworthy", and trying to come up with a reasonable way to apply that such that people can do their jobs without all your secrets being available to just anyone in the company who wants to sell them to a competitor. It means ensuring that accounts who you consider to be thr...
--------------------
Petter Reinholdtsen: Opensnitch, the application level interactive firewall, heading into the Debian archive
https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Opensnitch__the_application_level_interactive_firewall__heading_into_the_Debian_archive.html
January 22, 2023, 10:55 PM
While reading a
blog
post claiming MacOS X recently started scanning local files and
reporting information about them to Apple, even on a machine where
all such callback features had been disabled, I came across a
description of the Little Snitch application for MacOS X. It seemed
like a very nice tool to have in the tool box, and I decided to see if
something similar was available for Linux.
It did not took long to find
the OpenSnitch
package, which has been in development since 2017, and now...
--------------------
Jonathan Dowland: Barbie crowns
https://jmtd.net/log/barbie_crown/
January 22, 2023, 9:14 PM
My daughters have had great fun designing and printing crowns for their
Barbies. We've been through several design iterations, and several colour
choices. Not all Barbies have the same head circumference. Real crowns probably
don't have a perfectly circular internal shape.
They changed their minds on the green crown soon after it finished, but we
managed to find a grateful recipient.
crown v1.scad (1.4k)...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 1.0.10 on CRAN: Regular Update
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/01/22#rcpp_1.0.10
January 22, 2023, 3:51 PM
The Rcpp team is thrilled to announce the newest release 1.0.10 of
the Rcpp package which is hitting CRAN now and will go to Debian shortly. Windows and macOS
builds should appear at CRAN in the next few days, as will builds in
different Linux distribution and of course at r2u. The release was
prepared a few days ago, but given the widespread use at CRAN it took a
few days to be processed. As always, our sincere thanks to the CRAN
maintainers Uwe Ligges and Kurt Hornik. This release continues wi...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: BH 1.81.0-1 oon CRAN: New Upstream, New Library, sprintf Change
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/01/22#bh_1.81.0-1
January 22, 2023, 3:14 PM
Boost is a very large and
comprehensive set of (peer-reviewed) libraries for the C++ programming
language, containing well over one hundred individual libraries. The BH package provides a
sizeable subset of header-only libraries for (easier, no linking
required) use by R. It is fairly widely used: the (partial) CRAN mirror
logs (aggregated from the cloud mirrors) show over 32.6 million package
downloads.
Version 1.81.0 of Boost was released in December following the
regular Boost release schedul...
--------------------
Simon Josefsson: Understanding Trisquel
https://blog.josefsson.org/2023/01/22/understanding-trisquel/
January 22, 2023, 11:10 AM
Ever wondered how Trisquel and Ubuntu differs and what’s behind the curtain from a developer perspective? I have. Sharing what I’ve learnt will allow you to increase knowledge and trust in Trisquel too.
Trisquel GNU/Linux logo
The scripts to convert an Ubuntu archive into a Trisquel archive are available in the ubuntu-purge repository. The easy to read purge-focal script lists the packages to remove from Ubuntu 20.04 Focal when it is imported into Trisquel 10.0 Nabia. The purge-jam...
--------------------
Junichi Uekawa: Working through crosvm dependencies in Debian.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2023-Jan-22.html.en#2023-Jan-22-19:40:49
January 22, 2023, 10:40 AM
Working through crosvm dependencies in Debian. intrusive-collections Debian package went in. Next up is argh.
I think most of them is there now and the next challenge is getting crosvm to build with the newer dependencies.
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppSimdJson 0.1.9 on CRAN: New Upstream
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/01/21#rcppsimdjson_0.1.9
January 21, 2023, 10:59 PM
The RcppSimdJson
package was just updated to release 0.1.9.
RcppSimdJson
wraps the fantastic and genuinely impressive simdjson library by Daniel Lemire and collaborators. Via
very clever algorithmic engineering to obtain largely branch-free code,
coupled with modern C++ and newer compiler instructions, it results in
parsing gigabytes of JSON parsed per second which is quite
mindboggling. The best-case performance is ‘faster than CPU speed’ as
use of parallel SIMD instructions and careful bra...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppFastFloat 0.0.4 on CRAN: New Upstream
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/01/21#rcppfastfloat_0.0.4
January 21, 2023, 10:53 PM
A new release of RcppFastFloat
arrived on CRAN yesterday. The
package wraps fast_float, another
nice library by Daniel Lemire. For
details, see the arXiv
paper showing that one can convert character representations of
‘numbers’ into floating point at rates at or exceeding one gigabyte per
second.
This release updates the underlying fast_float library
version. Special thanks to Daniel
Lemire for quickly accomodating a parsing use case we had encode as
a test, namely with various whitespace co...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 233 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-233-released/
January 20, 2023, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 233. This version includes the following changes:
[ FC Stegerman ]
* Split packaging metadata into an extras_require.json file instead of using
the pep517 and the pip modules directly. This was causing build failures if
not using a virtualenv and/or building without internet access.
(Closes: #1029066, reproducible-builds/diffoscope#325)
[ Vagrant Cascadian ]
* Add an external tool reference for GNU Guix ...
--------------------
Antoine Beaupré: Mastodon comments in ikiwiki
https://anarc.at/blog/2023-01-19-mastodon-comments-in-ikiwiki/
January 19, 2023, 9:50 PM
Today I noticed bounces in my mail box. They were from ikiwiki trying
to send registration confirmation email to users who probably never
asked for it.
I'm getting truly fed up with spam in my wiki. At this point, all
comments are manually approved and I still get trouble: now it's
scammers spamming the registration form with dummy accounts, which
bounce back to me when I make new posts, or just generate backscatter
spam for the confirmation email. It's really bad. I have hundreds of
users regi...
--------------------
Steinar H. Gunderson: Not speaking at FOSDEM
http://blog.sesse.net/blog/tech/2023-01-19-01-17_not_speaking_at_fosdem.html
January 19, 2023, 12:17 AM
The schedules are out, and evidently, I could not find anywhere to
have a plocate talk; the only devroom I could find that was remotely
relevant (Distributions) didn't include me (perhaps because I was
a day or so after the submission deadline?), and when I moved to
lightning talks, evidently that didn't fit either.
So, 54 devrooms, and no place for a topic that is dear to my heart.
Achievement unlocked, I guess? Somewhat ironic when the last part of the talk
would be a lament that we don't hav...
--------------------
Jonathan Dowland: Belfast (David Holmes Remix)
https://jmtd.net/log/belfast/
January 18, 2023, 9:36 AM
This morning’s record to start the day is David Holmes’s remix of “Belfast”, by Orbital: the latest cover mount record with Electronic Sound magazine.
This, and several other new remixes are available on the recent compilation “30 Something” which, despite being yet another comp, I’ve found quite compelling.
An unusual decision by ES: they’ve split the remix across both sides, but kept the RPM at 45. I haven’t ran the numbers to figure out if they could have fit it on...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: PKCS#11. hardware keystores, and Apple frustrations
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/64968.html
January 18, 2023, 5:26 AM
There's a bunch of ways you can store cryptographic keys. The most obvious is to just stick them on disk, but that has the downside that anyone with access to the system could just steal them and do whatever they wanted with them. At the far end of the scale you have Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), hardware devices that are specially designed to self destruct if you try to take them apart and extract the keys, and which will generate an audit trail of every key operation. In between you have t...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: Forward
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-5420-9206-X.html
January 18, 2023, 3:28 AM
Review: Forward, edited by Blake Crouch

Publisher:
Amazon Original Stories


Copyright:
September 2019


ISBN:
1-5420-9206-X


ISBN:
1-5420-4363-8


ISBN:
1-5420-9357-0


ISBN:
1-5420-0434-9


ISBN:
1-5420-4363-8


ISBN:
1-5420-4425-1


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
300

This is another Amazon collection of short fiction, this time mostly at
novelette length. (The longer ones m...
--------------------
Arnaud Rebillout: Build container images in GitLab CI (iptables-legacy at the rescue)
https://arnaudr.io/2023/01/18/build-container-images-in-gitlab-ci-iptables-legacy-at-the-rescue/
January 18, 2023, 12:00 AM
It's 2023 and these days, building a container image in a CI pipeline should be
straightforward. So let's try.
For this blog post we'll focus on GitLab SaaS only, that is,
gitlab.com, as it's what I use for work and for personal
projects.
To get started, we just need two files in our Git repository:
a Containerfile (or Dockerfile if you prefer to name it this way) that
defines how to build a container image.
a .gitlab-ci.yml file that defines what the CI should do. In the example
below, w...
--------------------
Thomas Lange: FAI 6.0 released and new ISO images using Debian 12 bookworm/testing
http://blog.fai-project.org/posts/fai6/
January 17, 2023, 4:20 PM
After more than a year, a new major FAI release is ready to download.
Following new features are included:
add support for release specification in package_config via release=<name>
the partitioning tool now supports partition labels with GPT
support partition labels and partition uuids in fstab
support for Alpine Linux and Arch Linux package managers in install_packages
Ubuntu 22.04 and Rocky Linux 9 support added
add support for NVme devices in fai-kvm
add ssh key for root remote acce...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: Night and Silence
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-698-18353-3.html
January 17, 2023, 3:34 AM
Review: Night and Silence, by Seanan McGuire

Series:
October Daye #12


Publisher:
DAW Books


Copyright:
2018


ISBN:
0-698-18353-3


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
353

Night and Silence is the 12th book in Seanan McGuire's long-running
October Daye Celtic-inspired urban fantasy series. This is a "read the
books in order" sort of series; you definitely do not want to start here.
Gillian, Toby's estranged daughter, has be...
--------------------
Gunnar Wolf: Back to Understanding Computers and Cognition
https://gwolf.org/2023/01/back-to-understanding-computers-and-cognition.html
January 16, 2023, 4:29 AM
As many of you know, I work at UNAM, Mexico’s largest university. My
work is split in two parts: My “full-time” job is to be the systems
and network administrator at the Economics Research
Institute, and I do some hours of teaching
at the Engineering Faculty.
At the Institute, my role is academic — but although I have tried to
frame my works in a way amenable to analysis grounded on the Social
Sciences (Construcción Colaborativa del
Conocimiento, Hecho con Creative
Commons, Mecanismos ...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: The Truth
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-06-230736-3.html
January 16, 2023, 2:51 AM
Review: The Truth, by Terry Pratchett

Series:
Discworld #25


Publisher:
Harper


Copyright:
November 2000


Printing:
August 2014


ISBN:
0-06-230736-3


Format:
Mass market


Pages:
435

The Truth is the 25th Discworld novel. Some reading order guides
group it loosely into an "industrial revolution" sequence following
Moving Pictures, but while there are
thematic similarities I'll talk about in a moment, ...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.11.4.3.1 on CRAN: Updates
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/01/15#rcpparmadillo_0.11.4.3.1
January 16, 2023, 12:39 AM
Armadillo is a powerful
and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra and scientific
computing. It aims towards a good balance between speed and ease of use,
has a syntax deliberately close to Matlab, and is useful for algorithm
development directly in C++, or quick conversion of research code into
production environments. RcppArmadillo
integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is
widely used by (currently) 1034 packages other packages on CRAN, downloaded 27.6 mi...
--------------------
Freexian Collaborators: Monthly report about Debian Long Term Support, December 2022 (by Anton Gladky)
https://www.freexian.com/blog/debian-lts-report-2022-12/
January 16, 2023, 12:00 AM
Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.
Debian LTS contributors
In December, 17 contributors have been paid to work on Debian
LTS, their reports are available:
Abhijith PA
did 3.0h (out of 0h assigned and 14.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 11.0h to the next month.
Anton Gladky
did 8.0h (out of 6.0h assigned and 9.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 7.0h to the next month.
Ben Hutchings
did 24.0h (out of 9.0h assigned and 15.0h f...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Blogging and microblogging
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/64660.html
January 15, 2023, 10:40 PM
Long-term Linux users may remember that Alan Cox used to write an online diary. This was before the concept of a "Weblog" had really become a thing, and there certainly weren't any expectations around what one was used for - while now blogging tends to imply a reasonably long-form piece on a specific topic, Alan was just sitting there noting small life concerns or particular technical details in interesting problems he'd solved that day. For me, that was fascinating. I was trying to figure out h...
--------------------
Kentaro Hayashi: bibata cursor theme is available on Debian (unstable)
https://kenhys.hatenablog.jp/entry/2023/01/14/151612
January 14, 2023, 6:16 AM
Recently bibata cursor theme is available on Debian (unstable)
github.com
You can install via sudo apt install -y bibata-cursor-theme.
After you installed its theme, you can configure the cursor theme via desktop configuration. (budgie desktop screenshot)
Set bibata-cursor-theme
In bibata-cursor-theme, you can choose the following cursor themes:
Bibata Original Amber: Yellowish and sharp edge bibata cursors.
Bibata Modern Amber: Yellowish and rounded edge bibata cursors.
Bibata Original C...
--------------------
Ian Jackson: SGO (and my) VPN and network access tools - in bookworm
https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/14161.html
January 14, 2023, 12:41 AM
Recently, we managed to get secnet and hippotat into Debian. They are on track to go into Debian bookworm. This completes in Debian the set of VPN/networking tools I (and other Greenend) folks have been using for many years.
The Sinister Greenend Organisation’s suite of network access tools consists mainly of:
secnet - VPN.
hippotat - IP-over-HTTP (workaround for bad networks)
userv ipif - user-created network interfaces
secnet
secnet is our very mature VPN system.
Its basic protocol idea is...
--------------------
Matt Brown: Rebooting...
https://www.mattb.nz/w/2023/01/14/rebooting.../
January 14, 2023, 12:00 AM
Hi!
After nearly 7 years of dormancy, I’m rebooting this website and have a goal to write regularly on a variety of topics going forward. More on that and my goals in a coming post…
For now, this is just a placeholder note to help double-check that everything on the new site is working as expected and the letters are flowing through the “pipes” in the right places.
Technical Details
I’ve migrated the site from Wordpress, to a fully static configuration using Hugo and TailwindCSS for he...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 232 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-232-released/
January 13, 2023, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 232. This version includes the following changes:
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Allow ICC tests to (temporarily) fail.
* Update debian/tests/control after the addition of PyPDF 3 support.
[ FC Stegerman ]
* Update regular expression for Android .APK files.
[ Sam James ]
* Support PyPDF version 3.
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
--------------------
Jonathan McDowell: Building a read-only Debian root setup: Part 1
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2023/01/debian-read-only-root-part1.html
January 12, 2023, 9:38 PM
I mentioned in the post about upgrading my home internet that part of the work I did was creating a read-only Debian root with a squashfs image. This post covers the details of how I boot with that image; a later post will cover how I build the squashfs image.
First, David Reader kindly pointed me at his rodebian setup, which was helpful in making me think about the whole problem but ultimately not the direction I went. Primarily because on the old router (an RB3011) I am space constrained, wit...
--------------------
Junichi Uekawa: Reading through intrusive-collections.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2023-Jan-11.html.en#2023-Jan-11-10:16:00
January 11, 2023, 1:16 AM
Reading through intrusive-collections. My eyes are not quite used to reading macro packages and they don't quite make sense to me yet. Error messages look strange too.
--------------------
Daniel Lange: Happy tenth birthday, dear Thunar bug
https://daniel-lange.com/archives/177-Happy-tenth-birthday,-dear-Thunar-bug.html
January 10, 2023, 11:00 PM
Thunar, the Xfce4 file manager, has a bug that it underflows the time remaining for a file copy since ten years now (bugzilla, gitlab). Happy birthday!...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Integrating Linux with Okta Device Trust
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/64311.html
January 10, 2023, 5:48 AM
I've written about bearer tokens and how much pain they cause me before, but sadly wishing for a better world doesn't make it happen so I'm making do with what's available. Okta has a feature called Device Trust which allows to you configure access control policies that prevent people obtaining tokens unless they're using a trusted device. This doesn't actually bind the tokens to the hardware in any way, so if a device is compromised or if a user is untrustworthy this doesn't prevent the token e...
--------------------
Junichi Uekawa: Uploaded Debian packages, since a long time.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2023-Jan-9.html.en#2023-Jan-9-16:39:00
January 9, 2023, 7:39 AM
Uploaded Debian packages, since a long time.
enumn and remain are rust packages, and needed for crosvm. Working slowly through the dependency chain.
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: Black Stars
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-5420-3272-5.html
January 9, 2023, 5:54 AM
Review: Black Stars, edited by Nisi Shawl & Latoya Peterson

Publisher:
Amazon Original Stories


Copyright:
August 2021


ISBN:
1-5420-3272-5


ISBN:
1-5420-3270-9


ISBN:
1-5420-3271-7


ISBN:
1-5420-3273-3


ISBN:
1-5420-3268-7


ISBN:
1-5420-3269-5


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
168

This is a bit of an odd duck from a metadata standpoint. Black
Stars is a series of sho...
--------------------
Gunnar Wolf: Back to Xochicalco
https://gwolf.org/2023/01/back-to-xochicalco.html
January 9, 2023, 5:20 AM
In Mexico, we have the great luck to live among vestiges of long-gone
cultures, some that were conquered and in some way got adapted and
survived into our modern, mostly-West-Europan-derived society, and
some that thrived but disappeared many more centuries ago. And
although not everybody feels the same way, in my family we have always
enjoyed visiting archaeological sites — when I was a child and today.
Some of the regulars that follow this blog (or its syndicators) will
remember Xochicalco,...
--------------------
Petter Reinholdtsen: LinuxCNC MQTT publisher component
https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LinuxCNC_MQTT_publisher_component.html
January 8, 2023, 6:30 PM
I watched a 2015
video from Andreas Schiffler the other day, where he set up
LinuxCNC to send status
information to the MQTT broker IBM Bluemix. As I also use MQTT for
graphing, it occured to me that a generic MQTT LinuxCNC component
would be useful and I set out to implement it. Today I got the first
draft limping along and submitted as
a patch to the
LinuxCNC project.
The simple part was setting up the MQTT publishing code in Python.
I already have set up other parts submitting data to my M...
--------------------
Anuradha Weeraman: Parallelizing and running distributed builds with distcc
https://anuradha.medium.com/parallelizing-and-running-distributed-builds-with-distcc-61f3470c0f69?source=rss-ade561389abc------2
January 8, 2023, 4:23 PM
Parallelizing the compilation of a large codebase is a breeze with distcc, which allows you to spread the load across multiple nodes and speed up the compilation time.Here’s a sample network topology for a distributed build:Install distcc on the three Debian/Ubuntu-based nodes:# apt install distccEdit /etc/default/distcc and set:STARTDISTCC="true"# Customize for your environmentALLOWEDNETS="192.168.2.0/24"# Specify your network deviceLISTENER="192.168.2.146"Additionally, the JOBS and NICE var...
--------------------
Scarlett Gately Moore: Debian: Coming soon! MycroftAI! KDE snaps update.
https://www.scarlettgatelymoore.dev/debian-coming-soon-mycroftai-kde-snaps-update/
January 8, 2023, 3:31 PM
About Mycroft
I am excited to announce that I have joined the MycroftAI team in Salsa and working hard to get this packaged up and released in Debian. You can track our progress here:
https://salsa.debian.org/mycroftai-team
Snaps are on temporary hold while we get everything switched over to core22. This includes the neon-extension, that requires merges and store requests to be honored. Hopefully folks are returning from holidays and things will start moving again. Thank you for your p...
--------------------
Antoine Beaupré: 20 years blogging
https://anarc.at/blog/2023-01-07-bring-back-blogging/
January 8, 2023, 4:09 AM
Many folks have woken up to the dangers of commercialization and
centralisation of this very fine internet we have around here. For
many of us, of course, it's one big "I told you so"...
(To fair, I stopped "telling you so" because evangelism is pretty
annoying. It's certainly dishonest coming from an atheist, so I preach
by example now. I often wonder what works better. But I digress.)
Colleagues have been posting about getting back into blogging. This
post from gwolf, in particular, reviews ...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: Postwar
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-4406-2476-3.html
January 8, 2023, 3:49 AM
Review: Postwar, by Tony Judt

Publisher:
Penguin Books


Copyright:
2005


ISBN:
1-4406-2476-3


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
835

Tony Judt (1948–2010) was a British-American historian and Erich Maria
Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University.
Postwar is his magnum opus, a history of Europe from 1945 to 2005.
A book described as a history of Europe could be anything from a textbook
to a political analysis, so t...
--------------------
Charles Plessy: Could somebody patch Firefox to display Markdown files?
http://charles.plessy.org/Debian/debi%C3%A2neries/markdown/
January 8, 2023, 12:18 AM
When Firefox receives a file with media type text/markdown, it prompts the
user to download it, while other browsers display it as plain text. In the
ticket 1319262, it is proposed to display Markdown files by default, but
there needs a patch…
--------------------
Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in December 2022
https://reproducible-builds.org/reports/2022-12/
January 7, 2023, 3:22 PM
Welcome to the December 2022 report from the Reproducible Builds project.
We are extremely pleased to announce that the dates for the Reproducible Builds Summit in 2023 have been announced in 2022 already:
When: October 31st, November 1st, November 2nd 2023.
Where: Dock Europe, Hamburg, Germany.
We plan to spend three days continuing to the grow of the Reproducible Builds effort. As in previous events, the exact content of the meeting will be shaped by the participants. And, as ment...
--------------------
Jonathan Carter: What are the most important improvements that Debian need to make?
https://jonathancarter.org/2023/01/07/what-are-the-most-important-improvements-that-debian-need-to-make/
January 7, 2023, 12:19 PM
“What are the most important improvements that Debian need to make?” – I decided to see what all the fuss is about and asked ChatGPT that exact question.
It’s response:
The list of potential improvements for Debian that I provided is based on my understanding of the challenges and opportunities that software projects like Debian typically face, as well as my understanding of the goals and values of the Debian project. It is not based on any specific information about the current p...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Asking ChatGPT to write my security-sensitive code for me
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/64090.html
January 7, 2023, 9:09 AM
I have a patchset that makes it safe to use hibernation under Linux even in a secure boot world but it relies on preventing userland from using one of the TPM PCRs[1] that would otherwise be available to it. TPM 2 devices support emulating PCRs in NVRAM, which would obviously be beneficial in not taking away a scare resource, but the docs suggest there's no way to tie a key generation to an NVRAM value which makes this more complicated.So, why not ask a computer to do this for me? I asked ChatGP...
--------------------
Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in December 2022
http://blog.alteholz.eu/2023/01/my-debian-activities-in-december-2022/
January 6, 2023, 4:34 PM
FTP master
This month I accepted 276 and rejected 27 packages. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 288.
Debian LTS
This was my hundred-second month that I did some work for the Debian LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian. 
This month my all in all workload has been 14h but due to Christmas I managed only to do 10h.
During that time I uploaded:
[DLA 3256-1] xorg-server security update for six CVEs
[DLA 3255-1] mplayer security update for ten CVEs
Debian ELTS
...
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Jonathan McDowell: Finally making use of bpftrace
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2023/01/finally-using-bpftrace.html
January 6, 2023, 8:29 AM
I am old enough to remember when BPF meant the traditional Berkeley Packet Filter, and was confined to filtering network packets. It’s grown into much, much, more as eBPF and getting familiar with it so that I can add it to the suite of tips and tricks I can call upon has been on my to-do list for a while. To this end I was lucky enough to attend a live walk through of bpftrace last year. bpftrace is a high level tool that allows the easy creation and execution of eBPF tracers under Linux.
Re...
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Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 231 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-231-released/
January 6, 2023, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 231. This version includes the following changes:
* Improve "[X] may produce better output" messages. Based on a patch by
Helmut Grohne. (Closes: #1026982)
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
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Kentaro Hayashi: Rebuild mozc with Mozc UT Dictionary
https://kenhys.hatenablog.jp/entry/2023/01/05/205537
January 5, 2023, 11:55 AM
When rebuilding mozc with Mozc UT Dictionary, it may be better to build in docker container because you don't want install unused IM development packages.
In beforehand, download latest Mozc UT dictionary here.
osdn.net
In a debian/sid container, you need to do it:
# apt install -y devscripts
# (enable deb-src, modify /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources)
# apt source mozc
# cat mozcdic-ut-20221230/mozcdic-ut-20221230.txt >> mozc-2.28.4715.102+dfsg/src/data/dictionary_oss/dictionary0...
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Enrico Zini: Staticsite redesign
http://www.enricozini.org/blog/2023/ssite/staticsite-redesign
January 4, 2023, 2:03 PM
These are some notes about my redesign work in staticsite 2.x.
Maping constraints and invariants
I started keeping notes of constraints and invariants,
and this helped a lot in keeping bounds on the cognitive efforts of design.
I particularly liked how mapping the set of constraints added during site
generation has helped breaking down processing into a series of well defined
steps. Code that handles each step now has a specific task, and can rely on
clear assumptions.
Declarative page metadata
...
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Junichi Uekawa: debcargo rust repository and some observations.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2023-Jan-4.html.en#2023-Jan-4-15:28:59
January 4, 2023, 6:28 AM
debcargo rust repository and some observations.
It's been about a week since I first started looking at Debian rust packages and adding some packages in preparation for crosvm.
Some things that don't work quite well right now yet.
My local branches disappeared. I don't have access and everything is through a merge request, presumably that is not a generally supported workflow and the team members are using branches to manage pending works.
./release.sh is optimized for updates and f...
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Anton Gladky: Boost 1.81 in Debian Testing
https://gladk.de/posts/202301_boost_181/
January 4, 2023, 4:16 AM
The latest version of Boost, version 1.81, is now available in Debian Testing.
As contributors to Boost, we highly encourage you to consider building your package
against Boost 1.81 in order to facilitate a smooth transition. Installing the -dev
Boost packages from the experimental repository is simple, as shown in the following
command:
sudo apt install libboost-dev -t experimental
If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improvement, please do not
hesitate to file bugs or prepare m...
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Enrico Zini: Released staticsite 2.x
http://www.enricozini.org/blog/2023/ssite/release-staticsite-2-x
January 4, 2023, 12:30 AM
In theory I wanted to announce the release of
staticsite 2.0, but then I found
bugs that prevented me from writing this post, so I'm also releasing
2.1 2.2 2.3 :grin:
staticsite is the static site generator that I ended up writing after giving
other generators a try.
I did a big round of cleanup of the code, which among other things allowed me
to implement incremental builds.
It turned out that staticsite is fast enough that incremental builds are not
really needed, however, a bug in caching ren...
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Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities December 2022
http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2023/01/04/floss-activities/
January 3, 2023, 11:02 PM
Focus
This month I didn't have any particular focus.
I just worked on issues in my info bubble.
Changes
devscripts:
allow rmadison to query archived releases, unofficial ports
debiman:
update prerequisites
reportbug:
drop cruft,
add tags based on subject
debbugs:
fix usertag validation
Debian DDPO:
better syntax error messages
Debian madison:
allow querying
archived releases,
unofficial ports
Debian ftp-master website:
typos
Debian mirrors list:
fix debian.co.il
Debian mirror status:
fix
cra...
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Enrico Zini: Things I learnt in December 2022
http://www.enricozini.org/blog/2022/debian/til-2022-12
January 3, 2023, 9:00 PM
Python: typing.overload
typing.overload
makes it easier to type functions with behaviour that depends on input types.
Functions marked with @overload are ignored by Python and only used by the
type checker:
@overload
def process(response: None) -> None:
...
@overload
def process(response: int) -> tuple[int, str]:
...
@overload
def process(response: bytes) -> str:
...
def process(response):
# <actual implementation>
Python's multiprocessing and deadlocks
Python's ...
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Jonathan Dowland: Tex Shinobi first impressions
https://jmtd.net/log/tex_shinobi/
January 3, 2023, 3:22 PM
Happy New Year!
Older IBM Ultranav keyboard
For the last 13 years I've been using standalone versions of the Lenovo
(formerly IBM) Thinkpad keyboard design — with integrated trackpoint — as my
main computer input devices.
My latest ("ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II") was starting to fail so I decided
to look into alternatives for a replacement. The sticking point was I really like
the trackpoint as a mouse replacement, and very few other manufacturers offer that.
I've thus far mana...
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Russell Coker: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2023/01/03/note-10-1-2014/
January 3, 2023, 2:37 AM
In May 2014 I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition tablet (wikipedia page [1]) with 32G of RAM. It’s display is 2560×1600 resolution which still compares well to the latest tablets. The Galaxy Tab S8 [2] is the latest high-end tablet series from Samsung and the 11 inch tablet in that series also has a 2560×1600 giving it a slightly lower DPI! The latest series also has 12.4″ and 14.6″ tablets with resolutions of 2800×1752 and 2960×1848 respectively. Obviously if you want a 14...
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Gunnar Wolf: Refueling the blog
https://gwolf.org/2023/01/refueling-the-blog.html
January 2, 2023, 6:48 PM
So, it’s this weird time of year where we make a balance and share
with the world some ideas about the future. And… yes, it’s time to
take care of this blog, as its activity has dropped once
again. So… maybe it’d be nice to start this post by checking how
much have I blogged over the years:
2004: 27
2005: 92
2006: 65
2007: 83
2008: 64
2009: 62
2010: 48
2011: 25
2012: 27
2013: 29
2014: 37
2015: 18
2016: 19
2017: 20
2018: 19
2019: 19
2020: 14
2021:...
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Ben Hutchings: Debian LTS work, December 2022
https://www.decadent.org.uk/ben/blog/debian-lts-work-december-2022.html
January 2, 2023, 5:33 PM
In December I was assigned 15 hours by Freexian's Debian LTS
initiative and carried over 9 hours from November. I worked
all of those hours.
I merged the latest bullseye point release into the linux-5.10
package, uploaded that, and issued
DLA-3244-1.
I also updated the linux (4.19) package to the latest stable and
and stable-rt versions, uploaded it, and issued
DLA-3245-1....
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Emmanuel Kasper: Ensuring someone is listening before telling a joke
https://00formicapunk00.wordpress.com/2023/01/02/ensuring-someone-is-listening-before-telling-a-joke/
January 2, 2023, 3:42 PM
Alice (speaking to Bob): Bob, I have a good joke to tell, can I call you at 12:00 ?
Bob (turns head towards Alice): OK, fine for me, but can we make it at 13:00 ?
Alice (nodding): Works for me.
At 13:00, Alice starts telling a joke.
Did you recognize the three way TCP handshake ?
Protagonists:
Alice: Client
Bob: Server
Dialog:
I have a good joke to tell: TCP segment with SYN flag
12:00: initial sequence number
OK: TCP segment with SYN and ACK flag
13:00: acknowledgment number (initial sequ...
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