jd:/dev/blog - Debian

Debian maintenance team are great

jd — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:52:00 +0200

A few months ago, I decided to move my libcgi-session-perl package to the pkg-perl project. This seemed the right thing to do since I just do not do Perl anymore, anyway.

And now that's the second time that I notice someone has uploaded a new upstream release in my back. WTF, this guy did my job!

That's awesome.

One step further for XCB into Debian

jd — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:11:00 +0200

I've take some time this morning to work on xcb-util packaging. I've mainly urge that work because Sebastian Dröge, the sweet cairo maintainer, agreed to enable the cairo XCB backend (#474353), which requires xcb-util.

The first upload I've made was built from the latest upstream release which is old (i.e. more than one year old). So I've put a git repository in place this morning and packaged the latest git upstream version, with some good patches from Arnaud (upstream+patches branch), that the upstream XCB developers are still reviewing since several weeks: that is the cost to pay for good code quality؟

Thanks to Sebastian, the new xcb-util targeted for unstable was just arrived in incoming that he already uploaded a new version of the Debian cairo package with XCB backend enabled.

Well, that's a very good day for me since it means that building awesome 3 is no more a PITA (hi MadCoder!) since every dependency is available in the Debian archive.

Testing out GRUB 2

jd — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:13:00 +0100

After reading Jordi post about GRUB 2, I decided to give it a try on my EeePC.

I've just installed the grub-pc package, answered the questions, and that was it. I tested it with the chainload method from GRUB legacy, and it worked. I just had to rerun grub-install to replace the legacy with the new one. And I've a nice Debian background in the menu now!

What seems amazing is that GRUB now see my... LVM logical volumes! So this seems to be really cool, because this means no more /boot-without-lvm-ext3-formatted partitions because my-boot-loader-sucks-a-bit.

rebuildd demo

jd — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:36:00 +0100

I've set up a quick rebuildd demo. It may allow you to rebuild one of your package on etch/lenny/sid and for amd64/i386 as you wish. You will get build log by email.

I've just wrote the PHP page in 2 hours. I just hate Web interfaces and PHP is crap, seriously. For the record, I've tried to use DataGrid, and after having lost 1h to get it work with no PHP/PEAR error printed or available, I managed to have it working with a big pear upgrade-all. OMFG.

rebuildd 0.3.0 released

jd — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:06:00 +0100

Everything seems to work, so just releasing it. I think it's becoming an amazing tool to do archive rebuild.

It just misses a good Web interface.

Testing out rebuildd 0.3.0

jd — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 10:04:00 +0100

awesome beiing in rc state, that leaves me a small amount of spare time. I decided to spend it on rebuildd. I had started the 0.3.0 version back in August, but never touched it again until now.

I was afraid because I did not remember in which state I left the code repository. And, good surprise, the code was in a quite good shape!

I just implemented and fixed some stuff that were reported on the BTS, and then, I only had to test it out.

For that I used the servers kindly provided by TuxFamily.org:

whisky: 6 x Pentium III @ 700 MHz/L2 1 MB + 1.7 GB RAM
octave: 8 x Pentium III @ 500 MHz/L2 2 MO + 2 GB RAM

I stored the MySQL database on whisky. filled it with rebuildd-job add-quinn-diff (new feature in 0.3.0) and then started rebuildd on each node. And then I saw the 2 hosts starting to grab, lock jobs, build packages on each side. Wonderful. That just works.

rebuildd-job stats says that 20 % of the archive is now built in less than 24h, seems fast, cool.

Bad point is that I'm building and trashing logs into /dev/null because I've no QA idea to implement right now.

Ubuntu: not contributing to Debian, and even doing bad work

jd — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:34:00 +0200

Googling around using the rebuildd keyword to find if people were talking about it, I found that patch from Ubuntu.

This patch is used to ship rebuildd Debian package in Ubuntu.

Wahou. First surprise! So, Ubuntu is fixing bugs and not telling me. I though that people saying "Ubuntu does not contribute back to Debian!" were exaggerating. Seems I was wrong.

Nevermind: I take the patch. I read the patch. I apply the pat… oh wait: the fix is wrong.

lol.

Debian archive rebuild for nostrip finished

jd — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:02:00 +0200

So after rebuilding the whole archive with octave and rebuildd during 8 days, here are the results.

Some stats:

813 bugs
95 bugs already resolved
A lot of FTBFS (some due to my buildd running out of free space)
One DD grunting at me
Some DD giving good advices
A lot of thanks

Direct side effect: a lot of packages updated with more fixes thans the nostrip ones: triggering a rebuild is also triggering DD's work.

I'll do a rebuild in some weeks to check if fixed packages are really fixed and to rebuild packages that FTBFS and wil be fixed at that time.

And thanks to Mike Hommey for this idea.

rebuildd 0.2.1 released

jd — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 17:17:00 +0200

Running rebuildd for real since 48 hours, I've found some nasty bugs I have been able to fix. One of the biggest was me trying to do things that Python understood in a different maner, so it was quite interesting.

I'm now very happy about that project. From my point of view, I really managed to write a build handler daemon in a very better and more modern way that buildd used to do. It really fits my needs, and it's a real pleasure to use it. Ok, ok. stopping the self-congrats stuff.

I've updated the Web page to be more close to the 0.2.1 version.

Rebuilding on octave

jd — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 16:28:00 +0200

Due to the generosity of the administrator team from TuxFamily.org, I can now run rebuildd on octave, their (spare) HP NetServer LXr 8500 (8xPIII 500 MHz / 2 GB RAM). Which is quite faster that the P4 1.4 GHz I used for my first tests.

I can now run 24 builds in parallel.

Implementing Debian policy check with rebuildd

jd — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:47:00 +0200

After reading Mike Hommey's idea about buildd network for QA testing, I decided to try to implement the 10.1 policy recommendations check using rebuildd.

Here is how I proceeded.

Install and configure rebuildd

This is done by apt-get install rebuildd. Then, init database (I use sqlite) with rebuildd init.

Then I initialized build system with rebuildd-init-build-system. I had to add nostrip to DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS, so I decided to do quick and dirty and I edited /usr/bin/dpkg-build-package adding the good export info in the first lines.

Configuration file and post build cmd

My configuration file is simple and the one by default: I only changed email addresses and add a post_build_cmd script.

Here's the code for the script:


#!/bin/sh
dist=$1
pkg=$2
version=$3
arch=`dpkg --print-architecture`
RET=0
cd /var/cache/pbuilder/result || exit 1

for file in $(grep '.deb$' ${pkg}_${version}_${arch}.changes |cut -d\  -f6)
do
	echo Checking $file for stripped binaries...
	echo ---------------------------------------
	mkdir /tmp/$file
	dpkg -x $file /tmp/$file
	find /tmp/$file -type f | (while read line
	do 
		L=$(file $line | egrep 'ELF.*, stripped')
		if test ! -z "$L"
		then
			echo $L
			RET=1
		fi
	done; exit $RET)
	RET=$?
	rm -rf /tmp/$file
done
echo
echo ...done

echo Removing result files...
for file in $(grep-dctrl -sFiles . ${pkg}_${version}_${arch}.changes | sed '1d' | cut -d\  -f6)
do
	rm -f $file
	rm -f /var/cache/rebuildd/build/$file
done
rm -f ${pkg}_${version}_${arch}.changes
echo ...done

exit $RET

Fille the db

Then I fill the database with:

grep-dctrl -sPackage,Version .  /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.fr.debian.org_debian_dists_sid_main_source_Sources | cut -d: -f2- | tr '\n' ' ' | sed 's/   /\n/g'| sed 's/  / /' | xargs -L1 -ixxxxxx echo xxxxxx sid | rebuildd-job add

And finally I just have to start rebuildd and let it do the job.

Argh, already 3 build logs received with stripped binaries…

Update: Bug list can be found here

rebuildd 0.2.0 released

jd — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:52:00 +0200

I just released rebuildd 0.2.0 and uploaded it to NEW queue.

Lot of changes expected, and got lot of changes. Database is quite stable now, but not compatible with previous release (but who cares). The main change is the rewrite of the Web server, which is now standalone (and so optional) and use a new framework, webpy, which is finally quite cool.

I'd like to enhance a bit more the Web interface, but it's getting on my nerves so I think I'm going to let others do it.

Some stats between 0.1.0 and 0.2.0:

 30 files changed, 1032 insertions(+), 355 deletions(-)

rebuildd Web 2.0 features

jd — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:04:00 +0200

Ahaha, no sorry, no 2.0 features for rebuildd yet.

I'm a bit lazy about implementing the Web interface, The problem is that everything is quite ready for it as you can see on demo server, but I can't convince myself to do HTML. I'm bad and even using mako templates and looking on different Python Web frameworks can't help me. I can't bear doing HTML pages, I don't know how to do clean things with CSS. And I don't want to learn.

A friend pointed me to Paste which should do a lot of things for me, but I'm too lazy to try to read this.

Actually, everything on the job-management side is quite ok. I'm just lacking of a Web interface to have a nicer overview of what's going on.

Anyway, I still like to do useless coding on client eye candy:

By the way, any help would be welcome.

About unit tests

jd — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:36:00 +0200

I just wrote something like 20 unit tests for rebuildd. Writing them, I found at least 2 critical bugs.

Either I'm bad, or unit tests are very useful.

Or both.

rebuildd online preview

jd — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 11:22:00 +0200

I just set up a small rebuildd test daemon on a dev box. You can see it here.

Five days of coding: rebuildd

jd — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:14:00 +0200

Last week I decided to begin a new project, whose name is now rebuildd.

If the name is not explicit to you, let me explain: it's like buildd, but its first purpose is to rebuild packages.

If you want to know more, you can take a look on the Web page I just set up.

Some updates

jd — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:17:00 +0200

I'd have liked to post some updates sooner, but theses days have been again very very busy.

This morning I take a few minutes to do some stuff on my Debian TODO list (which only exists in my head, so since my memory is quite overloaded, this list is sometimes shortened accidentally), so I've myself thinking about Julien Delange status. He was my sponsee, but he sent me a mail some weeks ago telling he won't continue its Debian work.

I already told dato to adopt amule, and then this morning I adopted one of this package, fixing a bug in the meantime, and finally orphaned the 4 others.

Next weeks, I'll try to continue to follow at least my SRM tasks at least. I have for now abandonned my AM work, since I have finished with my previous NM.

See you soon, and have fun at DC.

Help needed for DeFuBu

jd — Thu, 24 May 2007 10:26:00 +0200

I'm currently quite busy and I don't have time to manage a vote for the DeFuBu contest. I am already 2 months late for this.

I am hereby requesting some help to organise the vote. I have a list of people/bug number and you should only put this formatted and find people to vote for, and then calculate the ranking. I'll do the rest. So please contact me if you have some spare time.

Never lose hope

jd — Thu, 03 May 2007 17:29:42 +0000

Five years old wishlist bug might be fulfilled by some people with 5 lines code!

DeFuBu contest #8

jd — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:48:41 +0000

Welcome to this 8th issue of the DeFuBu contest, the almost monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS.

The challengers

Pierre Tramo with #409352 (mplayer_1.0~rc1-12.diff.gz is CHAOTIC)
Christian Perrier with #230485 (apache2/ssl-cert's debconf abuse makes baby jesus cry)
Jeroen van Wolffelaar with #409637 (tasksel: [INTL:eo] kelkaj korektoj pri la esperanta traduko.)
Steve Langasek with #410605 (dpkg: bzip2 code in compression.c incorrectly uses zlib define (Z_ERRNO))
Josh Triplett with #412460 (magicor-data: Penguins don't have teeth) and #398276 (xdm: don't bundle turning on sit0 irradiating me all day)
Mike Hommey with #413660 (RFP: mozilla-firefox -- Mozilla's firefox package is required in non-free) and #413714 (iceweasel: {overflow:hidden} ugly chopping characters in half)

How the vote has been done

Four Debian related people voted, Raphael Hertzog, Jeroen van Wolffelaar, Ana Guerrero and Margarita Manterola.

Full ranking

Bugs

#409637 (tasksel: [INTL:eo] kelkaj korektoj pri la esperanta traduko.) (34 points)
#412460 (magicor-data: Penguins don't have teeth) (29 points)
#230485 (apache2/ssl-cert's debconf abuse makes baby jesus cry) (26 points)
#398276 (xdm: don't bundle turning on sit0 irradiating me all day) (23 points)
#410605 (dpkg: bzip2 code in compression.c incorrectly uses zlib define (Z_ERRNO)) (16 points)
#409352 (mplayer_1.0~rc1-12.diff.gz is CHAOTIC) (15 points)
#413660 (RFP: mozilla-firefox -- Mozilla's firefox package is required in non-free) (14 points)
#413714 (iceweasel: {overflow:hidden} ugly chopping characters in half) (3 points)

Challengers

Josh Triplett with (52 points with 2 bugs)
Jeroen van Wolffelaar (34 points with 1 bug)
Christian Perrier (26 points with 1 bug)
Mike Hommey with (17 points with 2 bugs)
Steve Langasek (16 points with 1 bug)
Pierre Tramo (15 points with 1 bug)

The winners

Bug: #409637 (tasksel: [INTL:eo] kelkaj korektoj pri la esperanta traduko.)
Challenger: Josh Triplett
Bug reporter: Serge Leblanc
Voter: Raphael Hertzog with unordered tiercé: #412460, #409637 and #230485

Notes

To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number or a request to vote, or anything that may help.

About DeFuBu