Looong time
Posted on June 16th, 2008 by Christian in Gentoo, Life
Well, it’s been a loong time since I first thought about retiring (yes, I know that #-dev’s topic states “developer blogs” ain’t for announcing important things, but my blog has to do for this; if not, I don’t care anymore 
).
But I think it’s about time for me to leave. I haven’t done much lately, I’ve been soo damn busy with work these last months like I would never have imagined. I gave it some more thought, and I finally got to the point (again I might add) where all just annoys and/or and frustrates me.
All the damn bickering, the childish behaviour Josh talked about (”noooo, that’s my TOY!“), the constant abuse of power (hey #-chat, #-kde ops). I thought most of us would at least try and behave like the elderish people we are (well besides the few of us, who really are children by law’s definition - hey there welp, omp, keytoaster 
). But I guess that’s just been an imaginary thought I had .. *shrug*
Retiring people
Posted on May 28th, 2008 by Christian in Gentoo
I’m not sure whether or not I blogged about this before, but here it is just for me to actually remember what, in which order I need to do. If you got the list in form of a csv file, simply do the following:
$ wget -q http://tinyurl.com/4atkz7 -O - | grep "(" | cut -d'(' -f2 | \ cut -d')' -f1 | awk '{ print tolower($1) }' > retirements $ for developer in $( < retirements ) do retire.py --metadata $developer /cvs/gentoo-x86/ | \ diffstat > ~/metadata.$developer done
That’ll give you a detailed list of which metadata.xml need to be changed.
metadata.xml (the third)
Posted on March 14th, 2008 by Christian in Gentoo
So Petteri came up with a nifty python script (nopaste|local), which in return spit out this. Which generated a rather complete list (nopaste|local), that looks like this:
700: perl
569: maintainer-needed
128: media-video
126: xemacs
47: sound
32: ha-cluster
32: crypto
19: desktop-misc
16: netmon
15: forensics
13: web-apps
10: pam-bugs
8: vserver-devs
8: mips
8: embedded
8: app-backup
8: apache-bugs
8: alsa-bugs
7: net-im
7: kde
6: tcltk
6: media-tv
6: dev-embedded
5: voip
5: theology
5: samba
5: net-p2p
5: freedesktop-bugs
4: sparc
4: java
4: graphics
2: net-mail
2: ldap-bugs
2: kernel
2: fonts
2: cpp
1: x11
1: wxwidgets
1: www-servers
1: tex
1: shell-tools
1: sgml
1: sci
1: qmail-bugs
1: python
1: proaudio
1: media-optical
1: kerberos
1: hp-cluster
1: amd64
metadata.xml (the second)
Posted on March 14th, 2008 by Christian in Gentoo
As I was kinda bored after work today, I had a closer look at what I saw during my fuckup in the morning. Well, Steve said, that when he looked at metadata.xml it’d be “really common” .. still that isn’t making it right ..
There is a reason we do have a herds.xml (exactly for the reason to associate people with packages, and that’s what the <herd> tag is for in metadata.xml) file. So after a preliminary look through the repository, here are the winners:
700 : perl
126 : xemacs
63 : haskell
47 : sound
32 : ha-cluster
31 : crypto
19 : desktop-misc
16 : netmon
15 : forensics
13 : web-apps
8 : mips
8 : app-backup
7 : kde
6 : tcltk
6 : net-im
6 : media-tv
6 : dev-embedded
5 : voip
5 : theology
5 : samba
5 : net-p2p
4 : sparc
4 : java
4 : graphics
2 : net-mail
2 : kernel
2 : fonts
2 : embedded
2 : cpp
1 : x11
1 : wxwidgets
1 : www-servers
1 : tex
1 : shell-tools
1 : sh
1 : sgml
1 : sci
1 : python
1 : proaudio
1 : php
1 : media-optical
1 : kerberos
1 : hp-cluster
1 : gentopia
1 : amd64
Don’t know how accurate that list is, but you can check it for yourself. The commands I’ve used are these:
for i in $( < ../herds.list ); do grep --exclude=eclass --exclude=CVS \ --exclude=profiles --exclude=skel.* -R \ "<email>$i@gentoo.org</email>" /cvs/gentoo-x86/* ; done > redundant-metadata-xml.list
for i in $( < herds.list ); do echo -e " $( grep "<email>$i@gentoo.org</email>" \ ~/public_html/redundant-metadata-xml.list | \ wc -l )\t: $i"; done | \ grep -v "^ 0" | \ sort -nr > public_html/redundant-metadata-xml.overview
While herds.list holds a list (separated by \n) with all the herds there are. The raw files are here and here and here. Knock yourself out!
metadata.xml
Posted on March 14th, 2008 by Christian in Gentoo
So I ended up cleaning out some retired (~20) people from metadata.xml, where I found this interesting piece of metadata.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "http://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd"> <pkgmetadata> <herd>kernel-misc</herd> <maintainer> <email>crypto@gentoo.org</email> <name>Crypto herd</name> </maintainer> <maintainer> <email>masterdriverz@gentoo.org</email> <name>Charlie Shephered</name> </maintainer> </pkgmetadata>
And here the hint for all you people again: A DAMN HERD AIN’T NO MAINTAINER. SO IF YOUR HERD IS MAINTAINING A PACKAGE, PUT IT INTO <herd> and not into the <maintainer>. kthnxbye.
To be or not to be …
Posted on March 9th, 2008 by Christian in Gentoo, Life
… that’s the question. I’ve been thinking lots and lots about my involvement with our “beloved” distribution.
I talked to some of the users (that is Gordon), some fellow developers (hello Christina, Łukasz, solar, Jorge, Anders) about whether or not I’m actually still wanted and/or needed. Turns out, the collective opinion is, that I am fun to have around (*shrug* don’t ask me why, I don’t find myself particularly funny/amusing) and that’d I’d be the person to have around.
That being said, I still do have some things on my agenda (they haven’t changed .. like getting healthier - as in heading to the gym; getting a better paid job; getting my own life; getting some friends), which are going to jockey with those Gentoo interests.
stages
Posted on January 8th, 2008 by Christian in Gentoo, Life
For what it’s worth, I’ve been trying to get some stages together the last few days. Thanks to solar and Brent, the ppc-stages are now coming along quite fast.
I haven’t really tested them yet, but for what it’s worth, you’ll find stages based on Saturday’s snapshot (that is 200780105 for those not smart enough to take a look at the calendar) here for the following profiles:
- uclibc/ppc (normal/-softfloat)
- uclibc/ppc/hardened
- uclibc/x86
- uclibc/x86/hardened
- hardened/amd64
- hardened/amd64/nomultilib
- hardened/x86/2.6 (x86/i686)
Now remember, this isn’t *official* release material. This is just *MY* effort (for now) to provide current stages.
And just a side-note for those brewing their own (uClibc) soup: if you remerge system/world, you’ll have to keyword =sys-libs/uclibc.0.9.28.3-r2. Otherwise you’ll stumble on bug 195368, which is fixed thanks to solar, just not marked stable yet.
Advanced bashrc (’Turning a simple chroot into a binpkg repository’ continued)
Posted on December 31st, 2007 by Christian in Gentoo
As I pointed out back in October, it’s rather easy to create a setup which syncs a built binary package to a remote node (which is serving them to the world - via http,rsync,ftp - pick your poison).
Now, ever since we had slight space problems on miranda (cough my binpkgs cough), I wanted to look into methods on how to get rid of storing them on the buildnode and the webnode. I think now (hehe, it’s only 7pm), I finally managed to get a “proper” bashrc which does a lot of that foo. Take a look at this:
... syncpkg() { # Syncing the binary tbz2 to my webhost if is_feature "buildpkg" && \ [[ -n $REPO_HOST && -n $REPO_BASE && -n $REPO_PATH ]] ; then REMOTE_TARGET="$REPO_HOST:$REPO_BASE/$REPO_PATH" REMOTE_ECACHE="$REPO_BASE/$REPO_PATH/settings/.ebuild.x" einfo "Publishing data to remote repository ($REPO_PATH) on ${REPO_HOST##*@}" if ! $( ssh $REPO_HOST "test -d $REPO_BASE/$REPO_PATH/settings" ) ; then ssh $REPO_HOST "mkdir -p $REPO_BASE/$REPO_PATH/settings" \ >> /var/log/syncpkg.log 2>&1 fi if [ -x /usr/bin/q ] ; then /usr/bin/qlist -IvCU > /etc/portage/package.list fi ebegin " [ SYNC: 1/3] /etc/make.conf, /etc/portage/package* to $REPO_PATH/settings" rssh /etc/{make.conf,portage/package*,portage/profile,portage/bin,portage/bashrc} \ $REMOTE_TARGET/settings/ > /var/log/syncpkg.log 2>&1 eend $? ebegin " [ SYNC: 2/3] $PKGDIR to $REPO_PATH" rssh $PKGDIR/ $REMOTE_TARGET/ >> /var/log/syncpkg.log 2>&1 eend $? ebegin " [ SYNC: 3/3] Cleaning $PKGDIR" rm -rf $PKGDIR/* >> /var/log/syncpkg.log 2>&1 eend $? # We sync our copy of .ebuild.x over to the webnode, as it might not be # synced as often / at the same time as the buildnode. Thus the # `qpkg --eclean' would remove packages, which *are* in the tree, but # the webnode hasn't synced up yet. rssh $PORTDIR/.ebuild.x $REMOTE_TARGET/settings/.ebuild.x \ >> /var/log/syncpkg.log 2>&1 if $( ssh $REPO_HOST "test -f $REMOTE_ECACHE" ) ; then ebegin " [MAINT: 1/3] Removing stale packages in $REPO_PATH" ssh $REPO_HOST "CACHE_EBUILD_FILE=$REMOTE_ECACHE qpkg -Eq -P \ $REPO_BASE/$REPO_PATH/" >> /var/log/syncpkg.log 2>&1 eend $? fi # And now remove the .ebuild.x copy again. ssh $REPO_HOST "rm -f $REMOTE_ECACHE" >> /var/log/syncpkg.log 2>&1 # The user ssh'ing, needs to be in the portage group on the remote # end. Otherwise, things *will* go wrong (like genpkgindex being # unable to write to /var/cache/edb/xpak). Also /var/cache/edb/xpak # needs to be owned by portage:portage, as well as group-writeable. if $( ssh $REPO_HOST "test -w /var/cache/edb/xpak" ) ; then ebegin " [MAINT: 2/3] Regenerating $REPO_PATH/Packages" ssh $REPO_HOST "$REPO_BASE/$REPO_PATH/settings/bin/genpkgindex \ $REPO_BASE/$REPO_PATH/All" >> /var/log/syncpkg.log 2>&1 eend $? fi if ! $( ssh $REPO_HOST "test -L $REPO_BASE/$REPO_PATH/Packages" ) ; then ebegin " [MAINT: 3/3] Fixing $REPO_PATH/Packages symlink" ssh $REPO_HOST "cd $REPO_BASE/$REPO_PATH; rm -f Packages; ln -s \ All/Packages" >> /var/log/syncpkg.log 2>&1 eend $? fi fi } ...
As you can see, it does a lot of things, which are all connected with binary package repositories (including cleaning up old packages no longer in the tree - trying not to waste too much space). Sadly, I currently have to use a custom patched qpkg version, as the one implementing the –eclean features isn’t in the tree yet. When I talked to Ned the other day, he complained about it being slow (well, yeah — it has to go through the whole tree) which I don’t really see when you look at what it’s doing.
Also, I had a weird phenomenon today happening: the buildnode built a binary package, sent it to the webnode, which ran `qpkg –eclean‘ afterwards. But after that the binary package was gone. “Why” you ask now ? Well, apparently the webnode isn’t synced the same time the buildnode syncs (the webnode is in Germany, the buildnode in the US). So I had to come up with a trick, in order to fool qpkg into not cleaning the freshly built binary packages. See the `rssh’ in front of the qpkg call ? Guess what, that’s the lil’ dirty trick …
Anyway, the full bashrc is available in the settings/ directory inside my binary repositories (located at http://packages.barfoo.org/hardened/). The next thing I’m gonna have to look at (which Markus already did), is building packages via buildbot.
Update: as you see, I updated the bashrc a bit. That’s because after writing this, I started a new (fresh) binpkg repository (empty), and out of the sudden the thing ain’t syncing correctly (as in no Packages file, no portage settings). Turns out, rsync doesn’t create directories which ain’t there. So another extra `ssh‘ execution to create the settings/ directory inside the repo.
screen and UTF-8 (continued)
Posted on October 25th, 2007 by Christian in Gentoo
OK, since I last posted about my problems with screen and irssi being unable to handle unicode chars, I got a lot of feedback (here or on IRC), and actually it was Alexander who pointed me into the right direction. LANG=C doesn’t seem to support UTF-8 characters. So after adding
export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF8" export LANG="en_US.UTF8"
to my environment *everything* is just fine … 
screen and UTF-8
Posted on October 20th, 2007 by Christian in Gentoo
Since I got annoyed by umlauts being printed as ░, I figured I’d install a UTF-8 capable font on this box here and all my problems would be gone. But not so fast.
screen is a real fucked up thing. If you’re starting screen via screen -U everything is nice and cosy, and you get your UTF-8 goodness. But, don’t think you’ll get away with just enabling UTF-8 as default and enabling UTF-8 for each new window by doing this:
defutf8 on utf8 on on
You won’t get any UTF-8 char (at least w/ irssi) out of that .. 