Developers' Blogs: VMiklos

Archives for: December 2007

Mon, 31 Dec 2007

03:19:44 pm, Categories: packages, Posted by: vmiklos

ten goals we reached in 2007

..continuing last year's article. so another year passed by and it's time to look back and see what we did during 2007. probably i miss a lot of stuff but here is my list:

1) ability to go back in the installer to a previous point if you missed something. do you remember the days when one had to reboot if he/she wanted to do so?

2) compiz improvements. this is now settled down in current and it's pretty sane. we cleaned up the old compiz and beryl, we have a single compiz-fusion, it has a nice step by step documentation and it works fine both for kde and gnome.

3) asciidoc. i think we highly improved our documentation since we switched from latex to asciidoc. a user manual of 98 pages in a nice pdf format is cute, isn't it?

4) newsletters. Alex started to issue newsletters and recently phayz helped out us, so it's alive again. i think it's something great.

5) yugo. 'factory' was our previous i686 build server, it was a very old machine with a cpu of 300mhz and so on. it was time to replace it and now yugo does the job.

6) fwlive. this was an old project but only test versions were available, based on old frugalware versions. now there is a live version of every released version of frugalware, thanks to janny, boobaa and ironiq. great!

7) gnetconfig. the first graphical config tool from priyank. i'm really bad at any graphical programming, so i'm glad to see finally we started to work on guis.

8) gfpm. something users always wanted and now it's here. a true graphical package manager, which is not just a wrapper but properly uses libpacman. awesome.

9) fun. this is our update manager which can sit on the system tray (or whatever i should call kicker not to be kde specific ) and notifies you if there is something to update. i'm sure this is more comfortable compared to watching the -security mailing list for updates or doing a -Syu daily

10) syncpkgd2. if you remember, the old method was that there were only clients and they tried to figure out what to build, they built and uploaded the packages. this was very suboptimal: it allowed only one buildserver / arch and it was slow. okay, being slow is the smaller problem, but every buildserver was a single point of failure. nowadays we have two i686 buildservers (thanks to boobaa) and it's theoretically it's possible to have two x86_64 buildservers, too. so even if one i686 buildserver is down, i can be at the beach, sipping a mojito

3 comments

Wed, 19 Dec 2007

09:44:06 pm, Categories: packages, Posted by: vmiklos

using reverse ssh tunnels

okay, i learned something today

you have a client behind a firewall and you have a server somewhere. and you want to ssh from the server to the client. that's exactly why ssh has a magic -R option!

if you do an

$ ssh -R 19022:localhost:22 server

that will mean that you can ssh to client:22 on the server by sshing to localhost:19022 on the server. yes, and it works even if the client is behind a firewall, yay!

update:

you probably want to add this to your ~/.ssh/config on the server as well:

Host client
        NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost yes
        HostName localhost
        Port 19022

so that you can easily just type

$ ssh client

on the server

Sun, 09 Dec 2007

09:38:09 pm, Categories: packages, Posted by: vmiklos

svn->git conversion using git-svn

git-svnimport will be removed in git-1.5.4 and i don't think it's tirival to use git-svn (which is great for bi-directional work) to properly convert an svn repo (with multiple branches) to a git one, so here is a recipe.

first, just use git-svn to create a git-svn repo. it's a git repo but it's a bit weird, it contains metadata which is necessary for bi-directional operations and you won't see the branches by default when you clone it. ah and it's not a bare repo.

in this example i'll convert ooo-build's svn repo (it has several branches and tags, so it's a good example).

mkdir -p ~/git/ooo-build cd ~/git/ooo-build git svn init -s svn+ssh://svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build git svn fetch

this will take a while. once it's completed, you need to convert this to a bare repo:

mkdir ../ooo-build.git cd ../ooo-build.git git --bare init git config remote.origin.url ~/git/ooo-build git config remote.origin.fetch +refs/remotes/tags/*:refs/tags/* git config --add remote.origin.fetch +refs/remotes/trunk:refs/heads/master git config --add remote.origin.fetch +refs/remotes/*:refs/heads/* git fetch

and you're done!

of course this is an incremental operation, so all you need is to run git svn fetch and git fetch from cron to keep the mirror up to date.

update:

it turns out you can even do this by having only one git repo. it has benefints: you don't have to duplicate the object database. and it has one problem: if you later switch fully to git, then you want to remove the git-svn metadata - doing so is the easiest if you just clone the repo.

so - in case you want this, you have to:

mkdir -p ~/git/ooo-build.git cd ~/git/ooo-build.git git --bare init git --bare svn init -s svn+ssh://svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build git --bare svn fetch

and then you can fetch from yourself:

git config remote.origin.url . git config remote.origin.fetch +refs/remotes/tags/*:refs/tags/* git config --add remote.origin.fetch +refs/remotes/*:refs/heads/* git fetch

note: git config --add remote.origin.fetch +refs/remotes/trunk:refs/heads/master it unnecessary as git svn fetch will update this for you (it is different from git fetch)

thanks for devurandom from #git for pointing out that this is possible using git --bare init before git svn init and using git --bare svn fetch

6 comments

Developers' Blogs: VMiklos

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Fw Backend

Back to life again
As most of the devels know, i'm back again. But i have no own packages, i maintain slin's packages till he has not enough time to do it. And i maintain the x86_64 buildserver (called helicon) again.
Another thing: i created a testing bts, where you can test the changes of Flyspray before applying to the "stable" BTS. The current version is a development version of 0.9.9, but the final 1.0.0 is coming very soon, so i don't want to upgrade now, i'd like to wait for the final release. So please test the current version of the test site and tell me here, in comment or in email to iron (a) ironiq dot hu.
One another thing: there will be another i686 buildserver available. Now i'm waiting for the M/B and a HDD, other things are here, so if the last part will be arrived, i can install it and can go to its location. Maybe the whole procedure will end in 2-3 weeks.
BTS
Hi all...

Today our BTS is already up and working (have to test). The base problem was, that 2 of our disks gone wrong due overheating (the refrigeation of the room gone wrong). Fortunately there wasn't significant data loss. The disks were replaced with new ones, and a new hd controller card replaced the one on the motherboard. And this caused the second fault: something was wrong with card (or the driver), but caused nice failures. I had to reinstall the sys and put back to the integrated controller to get work the disks properly. Now we are working on the cleaning of the sys and re-syncing the raid arrays.

Sorry for the long failure.
BTS upgrade - last procedure
Due noone send me bugreport about the new testing BTS, i decided to upgrade the main BTS (http://bugs.frugalware.org). The upgrade will start on Monday (17th July) and will last approx. 2-3 days (i hope so). During this time the BTS will NOT be available, because i have to clean the database and upgrade it.

Please be patient during this time.
BTS upgrade - not far from the end
Well, maybe some of you have seen the test BTS. Now it's upgraded to the devel version. I also added a small feature into it (and accepted by the author, so that will be available soon in svn). So maybe it will be available soon on the main site.
BTS upgrade end
Today i did the upgrade. There was a small database cleanup (fortunately this was more simplier now then the testing was) before the upgrade. That's why the upgrade was faster then i thought. After this i copied the files from the testing BTS and the main things were ok. After small changes the site got its current status. So, the new BTS is ready to work.
Bugs downtime
Well, maybe you noticed, that bugs.frugalware.org is down. On weekend i wasn't at home, so i noticed the error only on sunday evening. The host was up again at 9pm, so i hoped that this was the last error. After this, slin and i was seeking for a better datacenter. We found a better one and wanted to start the procedure (TTL change in DNS, waiting for spreading, hosting change, dns change and so on) today, but i noticed that the host is down again. So we speed up the procedure and maybe today or tomorrow the machine will be available by IP and will be available by hostname at the end of this week.

Sorry for the long timeout again...
bugs is down
As some people noticed, bugs.frugalware.org is down (and also mail.frugalware.org is affected). Yesterday we noticed some heating problem, but had no time to examine the machine. Before rebooting the operator said that the fan is not working. But unfortunately i had absolutely no time to solve this problem. Maybe yesterday.
bugs up
Yes, it's up and working again. The downtime was a bit longer then i thought, but now the heating is quiet good: 2pcs of 8cm fan and a 12cm fan works now as heating. The HDDs' temperatures are below 40 Celsius (about 104 Fahrenheit). The raid1 arrays were OK after reboot.

Sorry for the "long" timeout...
Czech lang support & homepage-ng
This week the translation to czech language is started. The webpages is almos ready, now maybe comes the NEWS file or other translations (pacman and so).

AlexExtreme started comtributing to the new webpage. He has got some idea, me too. The base of the new news system is ready, i just have to implement to the webpage. I think next week or so there will be some viewable thing.
Frugalware Blog System
Welcome to our new blog system. As you can see, the blog is already at its final place, so here you can read our devels' posts. It's still not 100% complete, you'll see changins on the site (skin and so on), maybe a skin-change will come, but the core is ok.

I'd like to ask all of our devels to contact me in mail to create them a blog and a user.
fwlive 0.1rc12
After a longer testing period, 0.1rc12 is available.
There isn't any official announcement, because it's just a testversion. If everything is ok with this version, after a few small modification the livecd will be released (maybe next week).
Fwng - The new webpage
As you know, I'm on creating the new webpage for Frugalware. Well, some days ago i've got a big help, AlexExtreme. He created a new layout for the webpage and helped me to port the current fwng code to the new layout. Till he created this, i've made the rss, roadmap, authors, about, screenshot and the news page. Also the news page has a new feature: the news can be shown individually. Now we are working on simplifying the page access with mod_rewrite. Please see the page and comment it here or on #frugalware irc channel.
genesis-ng news
The new main server was under a big memtest that ended this morning (i switched off the machine). The result is quiet good: the memtest was running more then 120 hours without error. The contact was informed that we'd like to replace the old genesis to the new one. Currently we are waiting for a contact time when we can do the change.
Helicon downtime
Because of unknown reason the sw raid1 broke up and the OS could not start correctly. With the local sysadmin i started working on the problem, but the buildserver won't be available tomorrow and if the problem cannot be solved, then on weekend, too. Sorry for the long timeout. Also the darcsweb is affected.
Helicon downtime and BTS upgrade
Helicon downtime:
At this weekend there will be a complete network donwtime at out x86_64 buildserver's network provider. The downtime will be on 8-9th of July (this weekend). Because of this, helicon won't be available from saturday morning till sunday evening (or so). We hope everything will go well and won't be any problem or slippage. Please don't start longer builds that cannot end on Friday. Thanks...

BTS upgrade
I started upgrading our BTS to a newer version. But this is not as easy as i'd like to. I realized that a previous upgrade changed the database structure a bit. I copied to a new one and cleaned it and as i could see, without any problem. But i'm not sure about it, so please test it and report on frugalware-devel mailing list. The test page is available here: bugs.ironiq.hu.
Main Server Change
Today the main server - called "genesis" - was changed to the new one. The downtime lasted about 1hour. This time we did some upgrade. The new server's response time is much better than the old one. Thanks for all of the donators.
New build server
Well... Yesterday we have got a donation, that we have been waiting for a long time. A brand new Athlon64 mainboard with CPU and DDR400 memory (here are the parts' specs, with a modification: the memory is a Hynix 512MB DDR400). These tools are in my hand and will be put into its place maybe next week (if everything will be ok). I'll put pictures here, as i'll have enough time to work with it.
New buildserver...
As you know, we've got a big donation, a new x86_64 buildserver. Well, the machine is ready and will be put into its final place in this week, maybe tomorrow or the next day. Its name is "helicon" and will be available for the devels maybe on this week.
Other...
If the devels want to have a blog here for its news or side-projects, send me an email to iron(a)frugalware.org with the username and the wanted blog name and I'll create it
New webpage is coming...
I've been talking with VMiklos and we decided to rewrite the whole webpage. We are waiting for a new design. Till it is not ready, we were talking the new things. For example the pkg search page will be rewritten. The database will be redesigned, because the current version is a bit slow and a bit buggy. We would like to create a better and easier way to translate the page: using gettext (if it's possible).
As we were talking about these things, i've been thinking about the FwLive homepage. The new subdomain will be ready perhaps this night or tomorrow. The address is: http://fwlive.frugalware.hu . Here will be available the scripts I've written for the live configuration. This weekend i'll continue writing the scripts, next week i'll install the 32bit version of Frugalware and will test the scripts. If everything is ready, maybe after Christmas the LiveCD will be ready.
Other, but important weekend work
Yesterday evening i decided to search and implement a new anti-spam thing. I didn't know which one should be useful, but i've had idea. I decided previously to implement somehow the captcha security. After some searching i've found a nice plugin to this blog engine. I decided to include this. After some hacking the security is now working. Maybe not so nice, but working and this is the most important for me.

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