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Paul's Blog Entries for January 2006

Thursday 5th January 2006

Wiki and Blog

After having set up and used a MoinMoin wiki at work for a few weeks, I decided it was time to have one at home too. So here it is. And there's a blog too, since having a searchable index of bits'n'bobs is very useful I've found.

Wrote YumRepoFromImages as I expected to have to go into some detail for the "gnome installation" thread on fedora-list.

Wrote BackupFilesToCDorDVD to expand on my own hints files at work, prompted by another fedora-list thread.

Made a start on porting JpackageJava from JPackage_Java_for_FC4.

Local Packages

  • Updated my perl-MailTools RPM to new upstream release 1.71.

Fedora Extras

Friday 6th January 2006

Wiki

Split off CreateRPMBuildEnvironment from JpackageJava as it deserves its own page where it can be done in more detail and enhanced.

MCIVTA

MCIVTA 1187 is one of the bigger editions. Nice to see that the debate on Munich chants has come to something, though I suspect that the perpetrators will take no notice whatsoever. It really needs to become as socially unacceptable as racist chants, and there's some way to go before we get there yet. I wonder how close the correlation is between the Munich chanters and the people whose language skills are so poor that they struggle to string together a sentence to express themselves without including the word "f***ing"?

Fedora Extras

JPO kindly approved my perl-String-CRC32 package. Good to see that he noticed the issues (no Bugzilla owner, wrong license) with the Fedora Core package in rawhide too - it saved me a job chasing those up ;-)

Saturday 5th January 2006

Fedora Extras

Leon

Leon's been very sleepy the last day or two, and this continued overnight as he slept through from around midnight to after 8:30am again (OK, so he had a bit of a feed at 5:30am but I think I must have slept through that ;-) ). It's nice to get some long sleep myself too :-) Received a surprise package from my ex-colleague John Cartman, with some soft toys for Leon, which was nice.

FA Cup

City overcame Scunthorpe 3-1, though we were 1-0 down at the end of an abject first half. It was worse than Wednesday night against Spurs, and that's going some. I don't know what was said at half time but it worked. Lee Croft came on in place of Nedum, who'd been having a nightmare, and made an immediate impact, setting up Robbie Fowler to score a couple of minutes in. Robbie's touches and flicks started coming off for him, and he stroked a desrved second in for 2-1. Sun Jihai's attacking flair provoked a handball from a defender for a penalty, and up stepped Robbie for his hat-trick, the first one by a City player since... well, I can't remember! Credit to Scunthorpe who came and played football like it should be, with neat passing and movement. I hope their 6,500 fans had a good day out. We'll need to play a lot better against the Rags next week though.

Food

Tried Sharwoods' Kung Po sauce, with a couple of large chicken breasts and half a celery. It was a bit sweet but Bingning's mum thought it was pukka, so we'll probably have it again.

Monday 9th January 2006

Wiki

Posted link to BackupFilesToCDorDVD in response to a query on fedora-list. This is the first public view of the tips wiki, other than the Mutterings link on my homepage.

Finally updated JpackageJava for Sun Java 1.5.0 Update 06 (despite JPackage themselves still being at update 05).

The wiki is very slow, and I suspect that the machine is underpowered for the job. Need to check out FastCGI as an alternative to mod_python.

Local Packages

  • Created perl-IO-Multiplex package

  • Updated perl-Net-Server to require perl(IO::Multiplex) as per Fedora Extras

  • Updated fetchyahoo to 2.10.2

  • BitTorrent 4.3.5 is broken on python 2.2 and possibly python 2.3 as well, and will need patching

Fedora Extras

Tuesday 10th January 2006

Fedora Extras

JPO kindly approved my perl-Digest-MD2 package.

Local Packages

BitTorrent 4.3.5 has a number of issues that prevent it working on python 2.2 like it's supposed to. Since I'm getting Connection refused when trying to connect to upstream's codeville server, I can't see if they've been addressed yet, so here's my patch (I'm not a python programmer so apologies if there's a better way): 

--- BitTorrent-4.3.5/BitTorrent/RawServer.py    2006-01-07 01:10:52.000000000 +0000
+++ BitTorrent-4.3.5/BitTorrent/RawServer.py    2006-01-10 11:05:04.000000000 +0000
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@
         self.port = None
 
 
-        if isinstance(addr, basestring):
+        if isinstance(addr, (str, unicode)):
             # UNIX socket, not really ip
             self.ip = addr
         else:
--- BitTorrent-4.3.5/bittorrent-curses  2006-01-07 01:10:55.000000000 +0000
+++ BitTorrent-4.3.5/bittorrent-curses  2006-01-10 11:21:46.000000000 +0000
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env python
+#!/usr/bin/python
+
 
 # The contents of this file are subject to the BitTorrent Open Source License
 # Version 1.1 (the License).  You may not copy or use this file, in either
@@ -113,7 +114,10 @@
         self.spew_scroll_pos = 0
 
         self._remake_window()
-        curses.use_default_colors()
+        try:
+            curses.use_default_colors()
+        except:
+            pass
 
     def set_torrent_values(self, name, path, size, numpieces):
         self.file = name
--- BitTorrent-4.3.5/launchmany-curses  2006-01-10 11:38:00.000000000 +0000
+++ BitTorrent-4.3.5/launchmany-curses  2006-01-10 11:38:40.000000000 +0000
@@ -95,7 +95,10 @@
         signal(SIGWINCH, self.winch_handler)
         self.changeflag = Event()
         self._remake_window()
-        curses.use_default_colors()
+        try:
+            curses.use_default_colors()
+        except:
+            pass
 
     def winch_handler(self, signum, stackframe):
         self.changeflag.set()

I also needed to tweak the initscript for the tracker, as bittorrent-tracker now writes a pidfile to /var/run, which it's not normally allowed to do when running as a non-root user. Whilst tweaking the spec file, I also took the opportunity to merge the logrotate and sysconfig scripts for the tracker and seeder into single scripts. Don't know why I didn't do that in the first place since it's much neater.

Upgraded dovecot to the 1.0.alpha5 release, which now includes a bunch of plugins. I built packages for FC3, FC4, and RHEL4 only, as there's currently a buildreq on gettext-devel; it appears that this was split from gettext sometime after FC2, which currently precludes builds on older distros. Haven't had time yet to investigate what exactly is needed from gettext-devel to fine-tune the dependencies.

Mail Server

Upgraded my mail server to dovecot 1.0.alpha5 (from 1.0.alpha4). No problems (yet).

Wednesday 11th January 2006

Wiki

MoinMoin 1.5.0 was released recently, so I made an RPM package for it and updated this wiki. 

# cd /var/www/wikidir
# python /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/MoinMoin/scripts/cachecleaner.py
# mv underlay underlay.bak
# cp -a /usr/share/moin/underlay .
# chown -R apache:apache underlay
# chcon -R -t httpd_sys_script_rw_t underlay

So far so good! The only configuration change I had to make was to add: 

# Changed default in MoinMoin 1.5.0
page_front_page = u"FrontPage"

The new default front page is HelpOnLanguages if page_front_page is not explicitly specified.

MCIVTA

MCIVTA 1188 had rather too many stats in it for my liking, particularly since the Anorak's stats appeared only two issues earlier.

Tickets

Got an email from City to my brother-in-law's email address (I get his ticket emails since I organise all our tickets) stating that there were still tickets for the derby left, and he had enough loyalty points to qualify for one. Trouble is, he's in the States until tomorrow and there might not be any left by then. So I've bought him a ticket and I hope he can make it!

Thursday 12th January 2006

Wasted Morning

Spent the morning reading magazines in Altrincham library whilst the Micra was having its MOT done. When we booked it they said "Get it in for 8:30 and it should be done for 10:30". Got back from signing on at 10:30 and they hadn't started it yet <:(

5-a-side

Before Leon was born I used to play 5-a-side every Thursday evening. That all stopped back in September as I was helping to look after the little'un, and I haven't had any decent exercise since. I also put some weight on over Christmas (surprise!). So when I was asked to fill in at late notice, I was expecting to be knackered after 10 minutes. I wasn't though, and I actually enjoyed the session as much as ever. I really have learned to pace myself in my old age.

Friday 13th January 2006

Psst, Anyone Want a Ticket for the Derby?

Turns out the brother-in-law doesn't want the derby ticket, so I've been trying to get rid of it. Nobody seems interested. £36.50 for a football match is a bit much I suppose, especially if you're not a "hardcore" fan.

MCIVTA

Seems I wasn't the only one thinking there were too many stats in MCIVTA recently, judging by the spoof stats article in MCIVTA 1189.

Local Packages

  • Updated perl-Test-Prereq to 1.030

  • Updated perl-HTML-!SimpleLinkExtor to 1.12

A curiosity for perl-Test-Prereq is that I can only get it to build on Fedora Core 2 if I use the root account - the test suite calls up CPAN and it wants to access /root/.cpan, which only root can do. I'm not seeing this issue on Red Hat 9, any other Fedora Core, or Red Hat Enterprise 3/4. Wierd. Perhaps I'm missing a build requirement?

I also got fed up of the changelog in Brian's perl packages always being one version behind - it's clearly an issue with his release process. So I raised CPAN RT#17045 about it.

Saturday 14th January 2006

The Derby

Third win in four home derbies since we returned to the Premiership :-) Didn't notice any Munich chants other than a couple of muttered "Munich"s from some plonker a few rows behind me. Thought United were very poor, though obviously I wasn't too upset about that. Only Rooney really looked the part for them. Angelina Ballerina's sending-off was a bit harsh but I think they actually played better without him. For us, I thought Trevor Sinclair had a great game, and if he keeps up this month's form to the end of the season, he'll be in with a shout of usurping SWP from the England squad. In midfield, Stephen Ireland played well but Joey had a nightmare with his passing. As for the atmosphere, much better than last season; not surprising given the way the game went, but perhaps Sir Alex's comments got some people fired up too?

The nice chap that bought the ticket I acquired for my brother-in-law had a bet on Trevor Sinclair to score the first goal at 20/1, so he was very happy too.

Monday 16th January 2006

Wiki

Updated my FedoraNEWS JPackage Java article along the same lines as JpackageJava.

Local Packages

Noticed that the FC2 Repo still had packages in the Application/CPAN group, which I thought I'd eradicated. It was a couple of old packages I don't build for later distros (perl-FreezeThaw, which is in Fedora Extras, and perl-FileHandle-Unget version 0.14, which I only build for FC2/RHEL3 and older distros because there is a later version available, which has different dependencies not available in FC2 etc., and I build that for FC3 etc.).

Tuesday 17th January 2006

Local Packages

  • Updated perl-MailTools to 1.72

  • Updated dovecot to 1.0.beta1

  • Updated perl-MIME-tools to have a UTF8 ChangeLog and not provide perl(main) as per the package in Fedora Extras

  • Created new package perl-Crypt-SmbHash (dependency of smbldap-tools, coming soon)

  • Imported perl-Digest-MD4 from Fedora Extras (dependency of perl-Crypt-SmbHash)

Mail Server

Upgraded to the new 1.0.beta1 release of dovecot. Seems OK so far, and not too many configuration changes to merge in from /etc/dovecot.conf.rpmnew

Thursday 19th January 2006

Local Packages

  • Updated gtkwave to 1.3.82
  • Updated perl-Devel-Symdump to 2.06
  • Updated perl-Pod-Simple to 3.04 (test suite works again in RHL9 and RHEL3, unlike for version 3.03)

Fedora Extras

  • Updated gtkwave to 1.3.82 (build system stuck again so will have to requeue builds later)

Saturday 21st January 2006

Football

Didn't go to Bolton, despite the fact that it's sufficiently close that I usually get home from there quicker than I can get back from home games. At £39 a ticket plus another fiver for the car park, they must be having a laugh. Instead, we went shopping and got a few bits of bargain clothing for Leon:

tiny-leon-with-dad.jpg

Monday 23rd January 2006

Local Packages

  • Updated tidy to the 26th October 2005 snapshot (docs remain at 20th October 2005 release). The libraries have once again been split off into a separate libtidy package (which is how I built the package originally), since the Fedora Extras package is now built that way. Apparently it helps multilib support.
  • Updated dovecot to 1.0.beta2

  • Updated perl-MailTools to 1.73

Mail Server

Updated dovecot to the 1.0.beta2 release. No issues so far.

Tuesday 24th January 2006

Local Packages

Updated bittorrent to 4.3.6. The changelog on the BitTorrent website says that it includes some python-2.2 compatibility fixes, whicb I find strange since the patch I made for python-2.2 compatibility for bittorrent-4.3.5 still applies cleanly.

Wednesday 25th January 2006

Fedora Extras

Submitted smbldap-tools and its dependency perl-Crypt-SmbHash for review.

JPO kindly reviewed perl-Crypt-SmbHash and it's now imported and built for rawhide. Still awaiting the FC-4 branch in cvs; won't be doing an FC-3 branch as FC-3 has now reached End Of Life.

Thursday 26th January 2006

Strike Action

Went to sign on today but didn't need to; many civil servants, including job centre staff, are on strike today (and maybe tomorrow too) and so anyone signing on is excused. I still needed to get my AB1 signed though (some management type did it for me), so it wasn't a wasted journey.

Local Packages

  • Updated perl-Test-Pod-Coverage to 1.08
  • Imported perl-Jcode, perl-Unicode-Map8, and perl-Unicode-MapUTF8 from Fedora Extras (all are dependencies of smbldap-tools). Some of the versions in Fedora Extras are rather ancient so there was a fair bit of updating and tidying needed. The perl-Jcode package wouldn't build on Red Hat Linux 9 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (some old perl/unicode issues I suspect), so that took out perl-Unicode-MapUTF8 for those distributions too.
  • Published my smbldap-tools package. Since this depends on perl-Unicode-MapUTF8, I didn't build versions for Red Hat Linux 9 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.

  • nmap has finally been fixed to build on Fedora Core 4 again, so I have an nmap-3.999 package now. The GUI frontend now requires gtk2 >= 2.4.0 so it doesn't get built for Red Hat Linux 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, or Fedora Core 1

Friday 27th January 2006

Firewall

Finally gave Shoreline Firewall a go, in the hope of getting decent NAT behaviour on my LAN. It fixed the issues I'd been having (IMAPS, SSH not working except from firewall itself) straight away. So my old firewall script from projectfiles.com has now bitten the dust.

Fedora Extras

Got some feedback from Steve Pritchard on my smbldap-tools submission. I'll apply those suggestions and hopefully it'll be approved soon.

Local Packages

Updated my local smbldap-tools package along the same lines as the Fedora Extras one, except that it uses either /etc/pki/tls/certs or /usr/share/ssl/certs as the directory for TLS certificates depending on the distribution.

I need to update my distribution-detection spec-foo, which currently looks like this: 

# Detect the distribution we're using
%define __distinit %(%{__sed} -e 's/ release .*//' -e 's/\\([A-Za-z]\\)[^ ]*/\\1/g' /etc/redhat-release | /usr/bin/tr -d '[:space:]' | /usr/bin/cut -c 1-4 | /usr/bin/tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
%define __distvers %(%{__sed} -e 's/.* release \\([^ ]*\\) [(].*[)].*/\\1/' /etc/redhat-release)
# Apply kludges for CentOS & White Box
%if "%{__distinit}" == "c" || "%{__distinit}" == "wbel"
%define __distinit rhel
%endif

This unfortunately results in %{__distinit}%{__distvers} values of e.g. rhel4.2 on CentOS 4.2, whereas I really want it to be rhel4. The fix is simple enough but it'll be a lot of specs to update.

Saturday 28th January 2006

FA Cup

City struggled past Wigan (who, unlike City, fielded a weakened team), a late Andrew Cole strike splitting the sides. The first three quarters of the game were rather dull but things livened up a bit after Jason Roberts came on for the pie-eaters and they committed a few more players forward, which opened things up for both sides.

Family Get-Together

My brother-in-law Haihong and his partner Mary came up for the new year celebrations and brought three friends along. We couldn't put them all up at home so we booked a room a the nearby Cornerstones Hotel, which was pretty good value. Leon wasn't too happy though, bursting into tears at the sight of all those strangers.

Sunday 29th January 2006

Fedora Extras

  • Took over orphaned package bluefish. I'd actually been maintaining it for some time.

Monday 30th January 2006

Fedora Extras

Tuesday 31st January 2006

Local Packages

  • Updated gtkwave to 1.3.83

  • Updated perl-Net-CIDR-Lite to 0.19

  • Tweaked dovecot buildreqs to remove dependency on gettext-devel, which doesn't exist in older distributions. Unfortunately, builds on most of the older distributions still fall over due to autotools problems, but it does now build OK on FC2.

Fedora Extras

Next Month: February 2006

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