Skip to content

my notebook pure unstable again

After using the unofficial kde 3.4 packages from alioth for some months, I have migrated back to Debian unstable on the weekend, and my main work machine is now plain sid again. That means that I am running x.org and official transitioned kde 3.4, and can finally report bugs against the official setup again. So, kde and x.org people, brace for impact of bug reports and keep up your excellent work.

Continue reading "my notebook pure unstable again"

Versatile Post-Processing for cronjob's output

aba blogs about his wishes for post-processing of the output of cron jobs

Well, I have a wishlist as well (of course all items should be configurable):

  • Save cronjob output to a file
  • Append that output to log files on the system, after applying regexp filters
  • Send E-Mail to a number configurable addresses
  • Have a list of regexps that the output is filtered through before being included in the e-mail
  • Allow the preceding operation to be done multiple times for a single mail, allowing to include different "verbosity levels" in a single message to have the admin decide which to read
  • Allow certain parts of messages to be tacced (printed with line order reversed)
  • Modify message subject if certain conditions are met (for including tags like [OK], [ALERT] etc)
  • Allow arbitrary texts (preferably using macro expansion) in between message parts

This is only what immediately comes to my mind. I will keep this wishlist updated, and have a Wiki Page.

crypt(1) for the command line

Looks like there is no passwd-compatible crypt(1) for the command line. htpasswd, unfortunately, uses a different algorithm.

This short perl script might be a replacement:


#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

while(<>) {
    my $seed = `apg -a 1 -m 8`;
    chomp;
    print crypt(&#8220;$_&#8221;, &#8220;\\$1\\$$seed&#8221;). &#8220;\\n&#8221;;
}

Or do we have something better already in the distribution?


Update: looks like mkpasswd (from the whois package, whatever makes it belong in there) does the job quite nicely, but the script shown above takes care of automatic salt creation as well. Any ideas how to do that more elegantly, without requireing apg?

X.org

In a fit of carelessness, I decided to pull one of my test notebooks to current unstable, including the Xfree 86 => X.org migration. To my surprise, the migration was not only absolutely painless, but the new X server worked on the first try. This is a new experience with X11 for me.

Splendid work, Guys! Keep it up!

After the weekend (where I need my main notebook to be operational), I am going to try moving my main work vehicle to X.org.


The update of my main work notebook was as painless as expected after the test with the unimportant box. aptitude, clean up dependencies, and you're back in business. On the first starts (from the command line), fonts were broken (too large), but after rebooting and logging in from kdm, the fonts are ok again.

To my astonishment, xfree86-driver-synaptics works fine with X.org as well.

exim4 needs gnutls expertise

exim4, sarge's default MTA, uses gnutls for the obvious license reasons. However, gnutls does seem to have issues of interoperability, which have manifested themselves in a list of bugs, most prominently being #297174, which we are at a loss to debug.

Neither Andreas nor me have the knowhow to debug gnutls, and Upstream uses openssl - the gnutls patch was contributed and the author of the original patch doesn't seem to be around any more.

Can anybody help?

Discontinuing Zg2 backports for woody - No more systems left

Looks like I finally got rid of my last woody system on 2005-07-26, so two months after sarge's release it is now time to discontinue supply of woody backports on zg.debian.zugschlus.de. Cleaning up the actual package pool will take a whileis finished and reduced the pool from 803MB to a mere 35MB, and it looks like I'm gonna miss again the opportunity of converting my local package-pool-helper scripts to debpool.

Continue reading "Discontinuing Zg2 backports for woody - No more systems left"

Updates to clamav-data build process for volatile

I have again worked on the automatic package build, test and publishing process for clamav-data, which runs twice an hour on a volatile.debian.net host. Details of the process are described in VUA 2-2 on debian-volatile-announce

Continue reading "Updates to clamav-data build process for volatile"

My packages cdebconf blockers?

Surprise: Packages depending on debconf should have an alternative for debconf-2.0, so Joey says in a Mail to -devel. I must have missed something.

I have never heard of that requirement before, and I surely am not the only one. I won't be able to update my packages quite soon, but I'll try to get things sorted out in August.

I'll have to touch:

  • adduser - doesn't use debhelper, manual change committed to VN
  • clamav-data
  • clamav-getfiles
  • snoopy - fixed in 1.3-10, now properly using debhelper's macros

Packages that I co-maintain which are affected as well (so I need to keep an eye on):

  • aide

exim4 is not affected, Andreas has thought of that. Good.

hp compaq nc 8000 and its built-in modem

The softmodems that can be found in today's notebooks have been a mess from the very beginning. This especially holds when such a modem is to be used on Linux. Today, we have gazillions of different (and incompatible!) methods of using these gadgets, but none of them works with all softmodem flavours out there. This article describes what I have tried to bring my hp compaq nc8000 online, and how I finally succeeded.

Continue reading "hp compaq nc 8000 and its built-in modem"

Debian BTS with version tracking

The Debian BTS has recently learned to track versions. Bugs can be closed and "found" for certain package versions, so that it is easier now to determine whether a bug is present in a distribution or not. However, Colin still needs to write a "metric shitload of documentation", and I still fall way short of understanding how to use the feature.

Continue reading "Debian BTS with version tracking"

Was haben die eigentlich alle?

module-assistant (0.9.5) unstable; urgency=low

\ the "fighting Zugs\^h\^h\^h\^h Murphy's law" release
\
printing one summary of installation error messages on multiple packages
(closes: #318856)
\* typo fixes in de.po

-- Eduard Bloch <blade@debian.org> Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:10:15 +0200

HRMPF