Debian on bartman's blog

ipv6 on your desktop in 2 steps

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 09:51:30 -0400

Some people have been telling me that they “have no time” or “are too lazy” to setup IPv6 on their desktop, but would like to.

Below are 2 easy steps to get IPv6 running on your Debian Linux sytem (shoudl be identical on Ubuntu, and similar distros).

If you’re not running Linux, check out these pages instead: MacOS X, Windows.

Debian on UBIFS upgrade on SheevaPlug

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:37:25 -0500

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]{tags/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

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:22:21 -0500

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

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:07:56 -0400

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

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:56:38 -0400

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.

android true type font

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:49:42 -0400

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

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:34:29 -0400

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

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 11:23:45 -0400

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]{wmiirc-in-lua-v0.1.1} 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

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:03:06 -0400

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

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:45:53 -0400

I’ve been using qemu ([with kqemu]{kqemu-install}) 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….

ipw2200 not working

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 11:31:39 -0400

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.

unpopular debian packages on my system

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:06:49 -0400

Using the ept-cache utility advertised on joey’s blog I was able to have a look at some packages on my site that are likely not on your system.

To get packages of inverse popularity which you have installed run:

    ept-cache search -t clean -s t- | less

Of interest are the following.

pxeboot and nfsroot with debian

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:22:36 -0400

I have two boxes (i386 and amd64) in the lab that I use for testing of drivers I work on. Recently another Maxtor hard disk died on me, and I decided to get network booting working. I already have a file server from which I host my $HOME directories and do all backups from. It sounded like a win.

I’ve never done this before, so it took me a few hours to get the first host going, the second took 10 minutes plus the amount of time to build the kernel for it.

Below, I describe steps I took to get pxe-enabled hardware to boot a debian image, from a debian DHCP, TFTP and NFS servers.

etc snapshots with git

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:47:06 -0400

I got this idea from a blog posting a few months back. I think the guy was using darcs. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the reference to link to him.

Anyway, here is how you can track your /etc directory with git, and have apt update it automatically each time a package is installed.

glGo on ubuntu/dapper amd64

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:51:49 -0400

I started playing go. I tried cgoban and gtkgo. Both crashed a lot. Then I tried glGo… it’s much better.

apt-get pdiffs

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:47:13 -0400

Debian/unstable apt-get has this feature called pdiff files (or pdiffs). It downloads only the diffs between the previous day’s Packages and Sources indexes, which claims to improve downloads for regular use.

When you don’t update often you will find that your updates could take 30 minutes, plus.

You can disable use of pdiff files by running:

apt-get update -o Acquire::PDiffs=false

ldap account management

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:22:04 -0400

Ok, so in [last eppisode]{ldap-upgrade-to-2.3.23-brakage} we looked at how my Debian/testing upgrade of slapd killed my slapd install because I was using two incompatible schemas.

Now, I will show you how to limit what accounts are accessible to pam_ldap module on each host.

stupid ldap

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:45:23 -0400

For some very stupid reason I decided to upgrade my fileserver, which happens to run my ldap database as well.

Setting up slapd (2.3.23-1) ...
  Backing up /etc/ldap/slapd.conf in /var/backups/slapd-2.2.26-5... done.
  Moving old database directories to /var/backups:

  Backup path /var/backups/dc=jukie-2.2.26-5.ldapdb exists. Giving up...
dpkg: error processing slapd (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 slapd
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Frig!

bootstrapping debian on my sbc

Tue, 16 May 2006 09:57:48 -0400

So my [sbc]{tag/sbc} of choice these days is the WRAP 1C-2. This model is powered by a 266Mhz Geode and has 128M of RAM, a CF reader, 1 mini-PCI slot, a serial console and 3 10/100 Mbit NICs. I get mine (I have three now) from Xagyl Communications. Each was about $200.

This entry talks about bootstrapping debian onto a CF card.

secure apt-get

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 23:28:36 -0400

Debiean-heads might find it interesting that Joey Hess has produced a detailed SecureApt article on how to use security features of apt-get.

The particularly interesting bits are:

details about the security levels put into packages
examples of how apt-key aught to be used
timeline that the debian pgp keys will adhere to
problems to be avoided and symptoms you will see if you have ’em
links to relevant documentation

Perl, Catalyst, CPAN, and Debian

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 12:35:39 -0500

I've decided to give Catalyst a try. I am not a big web-head, but occasionally I want to put stuff up on my site... and would like most of the work to be done for me, but not so much of the work that I cannot control what is happening. I was not ready for a new scripting language so Ruby on Rails and Turbo Gears were out.

Catalyst is available from CPAN -- the real reason why anyone would be crazy enough to use perl. But running CPAN stuff on Debian is a pain in the ass, more so then Debian taught me is an acceptable level of ass pain, because perl stuff in Debian tends to lag behind CPAN; even in testing.

ldap on debian

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 13:00:02 -0400

I've started writing a debian authentication from ldap tutorial. Here is the unfinished text:

Ldap Authentication on Debian

I've seen a much more ass kicking one on Planet Debian recently from Edd Dumbill. Here is a link:

Turn your world LDAP-tastic, and

Visual LDAP administration tools - a recent fallowup

LDAP authentication (part 1)

Sat, 08 Jan 2005 09:50:26 -0500

Wasted some time this week converting my server to LDAP directories and renumbering UIDs/GIDs to the “Debian numbering ranges” from the RedHat ranges that I have lived with for 7 years – I have a lot of data to migrate over to the new IDs… data is intact.

LDAP is so ugly after you used SQL, and is a bitch to setup, but after a few hours I managed to get it working with PAM and NSS. I will have to document my steps because I had to read ~10 documents on the web to finally get things working – the Debian packages do not do all the work for you in this case.

debian install CDs

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:41:42 -0500

I've just realized that I never have to burn another stinking Debian installer CD.

Why bother, if I can just boot into Knoppix and run debootstrap.

Just look how easy the process is:

boot into knoppix.
mkdir /1
mke2fs -j /dev/sda1
mount /dev/sda1 /1
debootstrap sarge /1 http://ftp.debian.org/debian

Of course this will not boot, so I will have to build the kernel. But I would do that anyways right after I rebooted the first time into any install anyway.

cool debian tools

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 16:32:16 -0500

A few of us, Debian veterans, started naming off cool tools and tricks on IRC for the benefit of a newbie. One person suggested to put this list up somewhere... so here goes:

apt-file - APT package searching utility -- command-line interface
auto-apt - package search by file and on-demand package installation tool
apt-show-versions - Lists available package versions with distribution
cron-apt - Automatic update of packages using apt
deborphan - Find orphaned libraries
apt-listchanges - Display new Debian changelog entries from .deb archives
apt-spy - writes a sources.list file based on bandwidth tests
dpkg-repack - generates a .deb from an installed package

Tools for keeners and developers: