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Content Tagged Debian
Junichi Uekawa: Starting to play with eeePC.
Starting to play with eeePC.
Thanks to ASUS,
I am now playing with an eeePC.
With the help of Andrew Lee, I have set up LXDE environment,
with full wifi support (through madwifi), and other goodies.
I'm now looking into making the boot time shorter.
I like the concept of finit, which is just to rewrite most
initialization in C, nothing can beat that. However, Debian
in general will need something more extensible than that.
insserv and CONCURRENCY=shell helped the boot time a bit
but it's still in the orders of approx. 60 seconds, which isn't
quite fast enough.
Alexis Sukrieh: TinyMCE 3.0.8 entering Debian
I’ve uploaded a new major release of TinyMCE into sid, the package jumps from the 2.x branch to the new 3.x one.
For the record, packages that use TinyMCE should rather depend on that packge instead of shipping the sources itself.
Jose Luis Rivas Contreras: libtorrent 0.12.2 and rtorrent 0.8.2 available in debs
They're not yet available in the official debian mirror but at least in mine they are. You can download the i386 debs from my repo, my deb-repo (using experimental suite!) for apt-get install or make you own using the apt-get repo with apt-get source.
Another easy way is to do:
dget --build http://debian.ghostbar.ath.cx/libtorrent/0.12.2-1/libtorrent_0.12.2-1.dsc dpkg -i libtorrent*.deb dget --build http://debian.ghostbar.ath.cx/rtorrent/0.8.2-1/rtorrent_0.8.2-1.dsc dpkg -i rtorrent*.deb
Enjoy them! :)
Matthew Garrett
Modern CPUs are great. They have all sorts of advanced power saving features, which is one of those nice cases where everyone can save money, gain performance and claim environmental credentials at the same time. Everyone's a winner.Well. Everyone's a winner as long as your software doesn't suck.
I've talked about the benefits of the tickless kernels and reducing wakeups and spending longer in deep C states before, so if you don't know about them then go and read that first. This time I'm going to focus on a different level of hardware, and a different level of suck.
For a long time, laptops supported changing the speed of processors when switching between AC and battery. CPU power consumption is proportional to frequency, so dropping the frequency meant a longer battery life. Of course, it also meant that it took longer to get anything done - the reason this was still a win was because CPUs in those days consumed just as much power when idle as when running. Transmeta introduced a technology called Longrun with their Crusoe processors, bringing the ability to drop both the frequency and the voltage of the CPU simultaneously. With power consumption being proportional to the square of the voltage, even a small drop resulted in worthwhile power savings. As the only really worthwhile thing Transmeta brought to the x86 world[1], this was unsurprisingly ripped off by everyone else. Intel introduced their Enhanced Speedstep, AMD gave people PowerNow and VIA have Longhaul.
Obviously, reducing the frequency of the CPU increased battery life. Everyone's happy?
No[2].
The problem is that nowadays, processors don't consume as much energy when they're idle as when they're running. The aforementioned C states mean that an idle processor consumes a tiny percentage of a loaded one - an ultra-low voltage Intel part will draw on the order of a watt. Executing code, even at the lowest voltage and frequency, will draw far more power. Obviously, we want to keep the processor idle for as long as possible. The easiest way to do this would be to never run anything, but that's not a real option. The alternative is to run when we have to, but make sure that we get it over with as quickly as possible so we can return to the idle state. Counterintuitively, that means switching to the highest voltage and frequency, executing the code and then dropping back into the idle state. By going faster, we save power[3].
In summary, the only sensible way to use a CPU is to run it as fast as possible in order to let it idle as much as possible, and drop the frequency and voltage when it's not doing anything. The. Only. Sensible. Way.
Some people write software that lets you choose different power profiles depending on whether you're on AC or battery. Typically, one of the choices lets you reduce the speed of your processor when you're on battery. This is bad. It is wrong. The people who implement these programs are dangerous. Do not listen to them. Do not endorse their product and/or newsletter. Do not allow your eldest child to engage in conjugal acts with them. Doing this will reduce your battery life. It will heat up your home. It will kill baby seals. The sea will rise and your car will float away. If you are already running it, make sure that it always sets your cpufreq governor to ondemand and does not limit the frequencies in use. Failure to do so will result in me setting you on fire[4].
The only legitimate reasons for limiting the speed of your CPU are to avoid overheating (which should be fixed in the kernel, really - having userspace in charge of ensuring the continued functioning of the machine is madness) or to make the machine quieter. And if you want your machine to be quieter, there should be a tickbox marked "Reduce performance in order to reduce noise" or something, which would take into account all the sources of heat in your machine rather than just your CPU. Encouraging the managing of acoustic levels by asking users to restrict the functionality of their CPU is just another way of saying "Look! We suck!". Letting the user choose a specific CPU governor or a specific frequency is not a useful thing to do. Don't do it unless you want to see dead kittens. Delivered by UPS.
[1] And, presumably, whatever else Intel and everyone else ended up licensing off them which resulted in their reinvention as an IP company rather than a CPU one, but that's just not interesting to me.
[2] Even ignoring the people that are unhappy for entirely unrelated reasons, such as injured toenails or the brutal murder of their family
[3] There's a corner case here, which is a system that is always entirely CPU bound. Say we halve the CPU's speed. Along with the voltage drop, that gets us down to about 20% of the original power consumption. Of course, it now takes twice as long to do anything and your screen, RAM, hard drive, chipset and so on are still drawing power, so will end up costing you twice as much power as they would have done if you'd run at full speed. If you do the maths, it works out that you save power if your processor's full-speed power consumption is more than 1.7 times that of the rest of the platform. In the real world, things are made more complicated by the rest of your platform consuming more power if you're working over a longer period of time - your hard drive is going to end up spending more time spun up, your memory bus is going to be active for longer and so on. You're basically not going to hit this case.
[4] While the burning of your body will result in carbon emissions, the reduction in power usage should offset this in the long run
Peter Van Eynde: On the legality of hacking the iPhone
The Belgian minister for Economy was seen with an iPhone recently. However Apple does not sell these things in Belgium.So he got a little call from a journalist, according to him the only entity that could make him stop using a liberated iPhone is Apple and "until I get their summons to the court I'll continue using it" he then continued "and according to the people I spoke to, this is perfectly legal".
That was almost worth the 2 hours drive through the worst traffic ever...
Thijs Kinkhorst: Great leaps of innovative progress developments!
My previous entry features the first ever comment on this blog to arrive over IPv6. Fantastic! I guess this will be the final breakthrough that the protocol needed!!Jon Dowland: command history meme
The command-history meme seems to have finally died a death (or maybe Im not reading in the right places).
One thing I couldn't help to notice was that the most common two commands for virtually everyone were cd and—usually right behind it—ls.
I'd wager that often, the ls follows straight on from the cd.
For some time at work, I've had the following in my ~/.bashrc:
cd() {
builtin cd $@ && ls -lhrt
}This might well break some things, I'm not sure, but it's saved me a bit of typing.
Stefano Zacchiroli: vcs distribution stats for packaging
Some more stats: $VCS distribution for Debian packaging
I've set up yet another stat page, this time it's about the distribution of $VCS for Debian packaging. It's as trivial as you can imagine: it gets all the Vcs-XXX fields out of unstable Sources and plot how many packages are using a given $VCS.
I've got no surprises in the relative popularity of $VCS: subversion is clearly the most widespread (with about 2700 packages on a total of about 13000) and git is growing (700 packages); with the exception of bzr (90 packages), all the other are used by less then 50 packages. Thanks to Lucas I've also included graphs in the page, as I think it would be interesting to monitor the evolution. (Probably as everybody) I'm confident to see an increasing trend for git balanced by a decrease of subversion, we'll see.
The total number of packages using some $VCS is encouraging, we are at about 29% of the archive (you know that if your package is not declearing some Vcs- headers in its source stanza I'm not counting it, right? Go add the headers!).
Interesting side effect: as I'm now maintaining a handful of these stat pages, I was pondering «hey, we should create a wiki page with pointers to all the stat pages about Debian we have». Well, in fact it already exists: Statistics on wiki.d.o.
David Welton: Helen Carolina Welton
I normally avoid topics of a personal nature in this journal, as it's meant for programming / business topics, however, I am extremely happy to announce the birth of our first daughter!
William Pitcock: redhat initrd considered harmful.
Tried to switch a CentOS domU from the Debian kernel to pyGrub + CentOS kernel today. Here’s what I discovered:
- the redhat initrd sucks
- unsurprisingly, the debian initrd will not work with a redhat kernel
- modifying the redhat initrd to do the right thing is impossible
- lets try using hdaX: no. that didn’t work.
- apparently using e2label to force a filesystem label helps? nope.
- nash is not really a shell, but instead an evaluator of static commands
- mkinitrd is a horribly written bash script
- modifying mkinitrd to generate /dev/hdaX and /dev/sdaX? no dice.
- trying to embed a shell into the initrd like in debian’s initrd for debugging? impossible.
I gave up for the night. Sadly that user is probably going to post a horrible review of my Xen hosting service to WHT now. Oh well, it’s not as if I needed his $5/mo anyway. Yes, $5/mo apparently gets you the privilege of 24×7 support now. I didn’t know. Update: Oh, cool, apparently he didn’t.
Update: According to the CentOS wiki page on the subject, providing a virtual disk instead of a LVM volume makes it happy. The problem then is that any VMs made using an LVM partition can’t be transferred to a virtual disk, as the whole LVM volume is a filesystem. Or am I missing something? I suspect RedHat calls this a feature, personally I call it a bug.
Andrew Pollock: [life] Tour de Cure
Sarah and I are doing the Tour de Cure again this year, like we did in 2006, again as part of the Google team.
This time around we're doing the 50 kilometre ride, since the 25 kilometre one was a bit of a cakewalk. That said, the fitness levels of both of us are pretty abominable at the moment, so it'll be interesting.
So this is the obligatory grovel for donations. If you'd like to make one, you can do it at http://tour.diabetes.org/goto/andrew_pollock
Here's what I'm not spamming people with:
I recently accepted the challenge of cycling in the American Diabetes Association's Tour de Cure fund-raising event. The Tour de Cure is a series of cycling events held in over 80 cities nationwide. The Tour is a ride, not a race; it features different route lengths from a leisurely 10-mile course to a demanding 100-mile journey. I have joined thousands of others to pedal in support of the Association's mission: to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes.
I am asking you to help by supporting my fund-raising efforts with a donation. Your tax-deductible gift will make a difference in the lives of more than 20 million Americans who suffer from diabetes and another 54 million people in the United States with pre-diabetes.
Any amount, great or small, helps in the fight against this deadly disease. I greatly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress. If you want to do even more to help, please consider joining me in this great event. Our efforts will help set the pace in the fight against diabetes.
More information on the American Diabetes Association, its programs and diabetes in general can be found at the Association's Web site: www.diabetes.org.
For more information on Tour de Cure, please visit www.diabetes.org/tour.
Joey Hess: spamvertunity
"your download link will arrive momentarily at the email address you submitted. to ensure the email does not get marked as spam, please instruct your email client to accept mail from nin.com."
I wonder how many spambots are busy blasting off zillions of spams with headers forged to be from nin.com as we speak? Best of all, the spams can be customised, you know that many of the people getting them will enjoy this music.
(Sometimes I wish I could take advantage of these money-making opportunities as they present themselves to me..)
Andrew McMillan: Finally: DAViCal 0.9.5
Finally, I have released DAViCal 0.9.5. Hopefully this will resolve the series of installation- and upgrade- related problems which plagued the 0.9.4 release.
Thanks for everyone being patient while this release was thoroughly tested through five pre-release versions, and especially thanks to those patient people who helped test those pre-releases.
Now if I don't get too distracted by:
- processing my GPS tracks of the last two weeks around the South Island
- Uploading my last six months worth of photos
- Making sure the kids have done their homework
- Describing the places near where I live.
- ...anything else that catches my interest
... then maybe I will be able to really concentrate on nailing the scheduling extensions work over the next couple of months...
Wish me luck!
Joey Hess: running a wiki on Amazon S3
Continuing on with my plans to make ikiwiki more appealing to users without a dedicated server, this evening I've written an ikiwiki plugin that makes it use Amazon S3.
So, it's possible to publish a blog or other static website, built using ikiwiki, without needing your own web server at all. Ikiwiki builds a website and uploads it to Amazon, which then handles the web serving for you.
If you want a traditional wiki that people can edit online, you can still serve the pages out of S3, but you will need to find a "real" web server to host the ikiwiki CGI that handles the page editing. It'll then inject modified files into S3 as necessary.
Amazon EC2 would be the obvious choice for where to run the "real" web server, but probably not the easiest one to set up. In my experiments, I've been running the ikiwiki CGI on nearlyfreespeech, and serving the rest of the wiki out of S3. Since page edits are relatively rare, I estimate this approach will cost a dollar or so a year for the CGI hosting (most of it paying for disk storage). The Amazon S3 hosting of course depends on number of hits and storage size. And presumably it will scale very well, and be very competatively priced, if you believe Amazon's marketing. :-)
I'm loving that the design decisions I made about ikiwiki at the very beginning -- that it would use static web pages, and would be backed by a real revision control system, is now letting it be deployed in these interesting ways that I did not begin to envision back then!
Jon Dowland: Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
I would not blame the people I speak to regularly for getting some kind of fatigue regarding Nine Inch Nails. It seems like a week hasn't gone by this year without something happening: a single, an album, or tour dates.
It didn't come as much of a suprise that a new album was released in it's entirety this monday gone. ID3 tags in previously-released singles said "watch nin.com on 5th of may". It wasn't even that suprising that the whole album was free, either.
What was a suprise, to me at least, was that this album is fantastic. I'd heard two tracks prior to the album being released (although one only by a few days). Whilst I enjoyed them, they were pretty safe, lyrically and musically. They didn't push any boundaries. They also did not forshadow the album at all.
This album is the best Nine Inch Nails release this century. It's too early to tell whether it stands higher in my estimation than 1999's The Fragile. If so, it's the best release since 1994. I had not even considered this a possibility.
I also think it's the best album to present to someone who isn't familiar with their work to see if they'd like to look for more. It has a good range of tracks covering loud, aggressive, introspective, instrumental, dancable, dark and delicate.
I'm now starting a self-imposed ban on listening to the album, so as to not overdo it too much so early on. Regardless, I can still hear The four of us are dead playing over and over again in my head. This is a strong candidate for my favourite NIN song ever. It made me think of what the Cure should be writing.
Each track in this release (like each of the 36 tracks in the last album) have their own unique embedded picture in them. There is scant software in Debian that can handle these, unfortunately. I think "tagtool" can add and remove art. Amarok copes admirably. Rhythmbox doesn't, unless you apply this patch, which is stagnating in gnome's BTS, unfortunately. For the lazy (with 32bit x86), here's a tarball of a recent-ish rhythmbox rebuilt with this patch. I'd supply a Debian package but I didn't feel like building the documentation at the time.
I haven't found a single program for the n800 that can handle the artwork.
How to Install and configure Dansguardian with NTLM auth and multi-group Filtering on Debian Etch
How To Install And Configure Dansguardian With NTLM Auth And Multi-Group Configurations On Debian Etch
This how-to describs how to install, configure Dansguardian with NTLM auth and multi-group configurations on Debian Etch, and get around some hurdles along the way.
Read more...