Debian on UBIFS upgrade on SheevaPlug
[ link: ubifs-on-sheeva | tags: sheeva linux debian embedded | updated: Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:23:55 ]
I picked up a SheevaPlug recently. In a few weeks I'll try to use it as a git server in a classroom setting at Flourish Conf, where I will be speaking about Git.
This platform consists of a 1.2 GHz ARM processor (Feroceon 88FR131 rev 1 (v5l)), 512M of SDRAM, 512M of NAND flash, 1Gbit ethernet, USB, SD card reader, and ... well, that's it.
squid and apt
[ link: 20091113102221 | tags: apt debian squid | updated: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:27:56 ]
In the past few months apt-get update started failing when using a squid3 web cache.
It woudl give errors like these...
404 Not Found [IP: 149.20.20.135 80]The HTTP server sent an invalid reply header [IP: 130.89.149.227 80]Failed to fetch .../Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 149.20.20.135 80]Failed to fetch .../Sources 404 Not Found [IP: 149.20.20.135 80]- etc
adding an external encrypted volume under Debian
[ link: encrypted-usb-disk | tags: debian linux security | updated: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:27:56 ]
One of my old(er) USB-connected disks started to make a noise. So, it's time to replace it.
Here are the steps I took to create an encrypted USB volume that I can attach to my laptop.
nfs local caching with fscache and cachefilesd on Lenny
[ link: 20090612215638 | tags: debian nfs | updated: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:27:56 ]
The idea is to put a caching layer between filesystems, that tend to be slow, and the user, who is impatient. This is accomplished by the fscache kernel module, and the cachefilesd user space daemon. The kernel module intercepts what would be disk/network access and redirects it to the daemon. The daemon uses local media, which supposedly is faster, to cache recent data.
The new Linux native implementation is very generic, and can be used to accelerate anything like floppies and CD-ROMs. I am interested in this because I find NFS slow.
Read more about it at Linux Magazine.
android true type font
[ link: ttf-droid | tags: font desktop linux debian | updated: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:27:56 ]
Following a random tweet on identi.ca I upgraded my proprotional fonts on Debian/Sqeeze to ttf-droid.
I expect that some day this font will be packaged by Debian, but for now I had to:
wget 'http://launchpadlibrarian.net/21202254/ttf-droid_1.00%7Eb112%2Bdfsg-0ubuntu1_all.deb'
sudo dpkg -i ttf-droid_1.00\~b112+dfsg-0ubuntu1_all.deb
Because I am a big console junkie I don't use proprtional fonts much, but they do look nice on the web.
four steps to reproducible Debian installs
[ link: private-essential-debs | tags: debian desktop apt dpkg | updated: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:27:55 ]
For ever now some friends and I have been talking about making essential packages, which would pull in all the tools that we often use on Debian. So here goes...
With the power of the equivs package, this is actually a very short procedure.
wmiirc-lua debianization
[ link: wmiirc-lua-debianization | tags: lua wmii desktop wmiirc-lua debian | updated: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:27:55 ]
I just fixed the install scripts for wmiirc-lua. It is now possible to install wmiirc-lua in system directories and run from there. There is also a Wmii-lua session for the display managers (kdm, gdm, etc).
The new and improved way to install wmiirc-lua is to get libixp and wmii from hg and then...
sudo apt-get install lua5.1 liblua5.1-0-dev liblua5.1-posix0 git-core
git clone git://repo.or.cz/wmiirc-lua.git/
cd wmiirc-lua
git checkout debian
make deb
sudo debi
install-wmiirc-lua
... restart X, and select Wmii-lua as your login session.
debugging with -dbg libraries
[ link: debugging-wtih-dbg-deb | tags: debian devel debug | updated: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:27:55 ]
I am having a problem getting openssl to verify a signature that I generated from a smartcard. I decided to step through the
openssl code to see what it's actually doing when I call RSA_verify()... but I didn't feel like rebuilding openssl.
qemu eats up /dev/shm
[ link: qmeu-shm | tags: qemu linux debian | updated: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:27:55 ]
I've been using qemu (with kqemu) to run my client's windows software, which talks to the linux driver/daemon that I am working on. Having multiple qemu instances really chews into the shared memory... and the amount available depend on how /dev/shm is mounted.
# df /dev/shm
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
none 2.0G 713M 1.4G 35% /dev/shm
On Debian you can control this via /etc/default/tmpfs SHM_SIZE variable....
SHM_SIZE=2048m
That's 2 gigs total that I can give to all the VMs.
ipw2200 not working
[ link: ipw2200-firmware | tags: linux debian | updated: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:07:50 ]
Err! I recently nuked and paved over my X41, with debian/lenny. When I wanted to use the wireless I was greeted by:
ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.0kmprq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:04:02.0[A] -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw2200-bss.fw request_firmware failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: -2
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:04:02.0 disabled
It turns out that I have not done any wireless twiddling recently and forgotten that I had to get the firmware before things started working again.