X-Git-Url: http://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/3960a1f7c057b9521d181ed19ff80b4446b78347..ba7c0d679f76b718672964dfa4c748f7167247cf:/blog/archive/2014/04/index.html diff --git a/blog/archive/2014/04/index.html b/blog/archive/2014/04/index.html index 0cb4c2658e..91edac51a3 100644 --- a/blog/archive/2014/04/index.html +++ b/blog/archive/2014/04/index.html @@ -21,6 +21,263 @@

Entries from April 2014.

+
+
+ Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release +
+
+ 29th April 2014 +
+
+

I've been following the Gnash +project for quite a while now. It is a free software +implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser +plugin. Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the +newer AVM2 format - see +Lightspark for that one), +allowing several flash based sites to work. Thanks to the friendly +developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the +Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to +those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2 +support, but it has not happened yet. If you install both Lightspark +and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file, +so you can get both handled as free software. Unfortunately, +Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many +sites do not work yet.

+ +

A few months ago, I started looking at +Coverity, the static source +checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks +to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the +company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of +the projects I decided to check out. Coverity is able to find lock +errors, memory errors, dead code and more. A few days ago they even +extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL. +There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the +amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static +code checkers I have tested over the years.

+ +

Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash +developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity. I was quite happy +today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues +detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed. This make me confident that +the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than +the previous one. Most of the reported issues were and are in the +test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.

+ +

If you want to help out, you find us on +the +gnash-dev mailing list and on +the #gnash channel on +irc.freenode.net IRC server.

+ +
+
+ + + Tags: english, multimedia, video, web. + + +
+
+
+ +
+
+ Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7) +
+
+ 23rd April 2014 +
+
+

It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware +related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically. +So I implemented one, using +my Isenkram +package. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and +run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option, +"Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)". When you +select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for +the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.

+ +

The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry +description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of +packages to install. The first part is in +/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc and look like +this:

+ +

+Task: isenkram
+Section: hardware
+Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
+ Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
+ proposed.
+Test-new-install: mark show
+Relevance: 8
+Packages: for-current-hardware
+

+ +

The second part is in +/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware and look like +this:

+ +

+#!/bin/sh
+#
+(
+    isenkram-lookup
+    isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
+) | sort -u
+

+ +

All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it +trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to +have installed on our machines. I've not been able to find a way to +get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install +before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful, +check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.

+ +

The information about which packages are handling which hardware is +fetched either from the isenkram package itself in +/usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package +database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database +parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs +#719837 and +#730704). The cause is in +the python-apt code (bug +#745487), but using a +workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and +reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to +around 2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop +daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to +unstable today.

+ +

I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in +Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to +use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper +AppStream support into Debian is floating around as +DEP-11, and +GSoC +project will take place this summer to improve the situation. I +look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to +start using the information when it is ready.

+ +

If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either +add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in +the pymissile +package or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram +package. See also +all my +blog posts tagged isenkram for details on the notation. I expect +the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the +moment I got no better place to store it.

+ +
+
+ + + Tags: debian, english, isenkram. + + +
+
+
+ +
+
+ FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid +
+
+ 15th April 2014 +
+
+

The Freedombox +project is working on providing the software and hardware to make +it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication +at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family +encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and +today a major mile stone was reached.

+ +

Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to +created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was +the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images +during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is +the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from +Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can +build everything directly from Debian. :)

+ +

Some key packages used by Freedombox are +freedombox-setup, +plinth, +pagekite, +tor, +privoxy, +owncloud and +dnsmasq. There +are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User +documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please +check out +the manual and help us improve it.

+ +

To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox +setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to +become root:

+ +

+sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
+  mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
+  u-boot-tools
+git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
+  freedom-maker
+make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
+

+ +

Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback +devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more +details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the +make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really +virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu, +vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need +the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it +include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.

+ +

If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed +method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load +the preseed values:

+ +

+url=http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
+

+ +

I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if +it still work.

+ +

If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using +systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in +Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did +a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start +during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems +too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can +be run from the plinth web interface.

+ +

Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help +us get the new release published. :) Please join us on +IRC (#freedombox on +irc.debian.org) and +the +mailing list if you want to help make this vision come true.

+ +
+
+ + + Tags: debian, english, freedombox, sikkerhet, surveillance, web. + + +
+
+
+
Språkkoder for POSIX locale i Norge @@ -36,7 +293,7 @@ notatet fortsatt var aktuelt, og tenkte det var greit å repetere hva som fortsatt gjelder. Det jeg skrev da er fortsatt like aktuelt.

Når en velger språk i programmer på unix, så velger en blant mange -språkkode. For språk i Norge anbefales følgende språkkoder (anbefalt +språkkoder. For språk i Norge anbefales følgende språkkoder (anbefalt locale i parantes):

@@ -580,6 +837,31 @@ image.

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