blog/archive/2014/02/02.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from February 2014</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from February 2014</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Feb 2014 21:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
  15 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
  16 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  I called the project
  17 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
  18 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/&quot;&gt;Hungry Programmer&lt;/a&gt; umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
  19 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
  20 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
  21 proper home since then.&lt;/p&gt;
  22
  23 &lt;p&gt;Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
  24 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
  25 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
  26 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Alioth&lt;/a&gt;, but did not have time
  27 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)&lt;/p&gt;
  28
  29 &lt;p&gt;After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
  30 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
  31 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
  32 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
  33 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
  34 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
  35 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&quot;&gt;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&lt;/a&gt;
  36 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
  37 Debian Unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
  38 </description>
  39         </item>
  40
  41         <item>
  42                 <title>Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</title>
  43                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</link>
  44                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</guid>
  45                 <pubDate>Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
  46                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
  47 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
  48 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
  49 &lt;a href=&quot;https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html&quot;&gt;great
  50 Google Summer of Code work&lt;/a&gt; done last summer by Justus Winter to
  51 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
  52 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
  53 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&quot;&gt;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;,
  54 and started it using virt-manager.&lt;/p&gt;
  55
  56 &lt;p&gt;The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
  57 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
  58 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install&quot;&gt;the
  59 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page&lt;/a&gt; and ran these
  60 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
  61 kvm internal DHCP server:&lt;/p&gt;
  62
  63 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  64 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
  65 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[p]finet/ { print $2}&#39;)
  66 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[d]evnode/ { print $2}&#39;)
  67 dhclient /dev/eth0
  68 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  69
  70 &lt;p&gt;After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
  71 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
  72 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.&lt;/p&gt;
  73
  74 &lt;p&gt;But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
  75 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
  76 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
  77 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
  78 side.&lt;/p&gt;
  79
  80 &lt;p&gt;Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
  81 stuff:&lt;/p&gt;
  82
  83 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  84 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
  85 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
  86 EOF
  87 apt-get update
  88 apt-get dist-upgrade
  89 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
  90     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
  91 update-alternatives --config runsystem
  92 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  93
  94 &lt;p&gt;To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
  95 &lt;tt&gt;reboot-hurd&lt;/tt&gt; instead of just &lt;tt&gt;reboot&lt;/tt&gt;, as there is not
  96 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
  97 &#39;reboot&#39; command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
  98 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
  99 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
 100 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
 101 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
 102 ssh instead.
 103
 104 &lt;p&gt;Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
 105 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
 106 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
 107 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
 108 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
 109 adding this repository to the machine:&lt;/p&gt;
 110
 111 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 112 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
 113 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
 114 EOF
 115 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 116
 117 &lt;p&gt;At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
 118 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
 119 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
 120 BTS.  This is the completely list of &quot;unofficial&quot; packages installed:&lt;/p&gt;
 121
 122 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 123 # aptitude search &#39;?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))&#39;
 124 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
 125 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
 126 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
 127 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
 128 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
 129 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
 130 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
 131 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
 132 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
 133 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
 134 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
 135 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
 136 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
 137 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
 138 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
 139 #
 140 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 141
 142 &lt;p&gt;All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
 143 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
 144 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
 145 command line stuff.&lt;p&gt;
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