It’s finally become properly autumnal, in the real world and in Debian. One week ago, I announced (on behalf of the whole release team) that Debian 8 “Jessie” had successfully frozen on time. At 18:00 that evening we had 310 release critical bugs – that is, the number that we must reduce to 0 before…
Category: Debian
Clean builds for the win
I’ve just spent a little time squashing several bugs on the trot, all the same: insufficient build-dependencies when built in a clean environment. Typically this means that the package was uploaded after being built on a developer’s normal machine, which already has everything required installed. It’s long been the case that we have several ways…
iptables-persistent overhaul
A couple of weeks ago I finally got round to doing some major surgery on iptables-persistent. First of all it is principally now called netfilter-persistent (although the source package hasn’t been renamed) and has a plugin architecture so that it can be extended by other packages. One of those packages is iptables-persistent; others may follow. This…
Cold caller: 1, jmw: 0
Some evil nasty cold callers  who want to sell us windows and doors have been on the phone for a third time. Previously they have been cagey and haven’t given away any information that could identify them, except the name “Status”. They always claim to have made an appointment with the homeowner (that’s me) to…
Tips for a successful BSP
It is important to rehearse your space carefully. Find a quantity of friends equal to the attendees you expect, lay out the intended room, and check that everybody has free and easy access to their chair. Invest in a decent access point and some power strips with a decent cord length. Relax. I cannot stress…
Point Release Security, Reloaded
When I first undertook the tracking of minor security fixes in point releases, I quickly out-scaled flat text files and a good memory. A Python library and sqlite database helped automate sending notifications and keeping tabs, but the manual work associated with tracking incoming bugs from the security team, applications to and responses from the…
I’m probably not going to DebConf12
For two years I have been very fortunate indeed to be fully sponsored for travel and accommodation at DebConf – once on the Newbies programme, and once from normal funds. However, considering the cost this year (at least $1,000 in travel expenses) and of personal circumstances, which are not favourable, I am reliant on sponsorship…
Reinstalling at arm’s length
Recently I had need to re-purpose a server and for convenience, I decided to do a complete wipe and reinstall since it had previously been used for all sorts of package testing, experiments, dak debugging, the list goes on. I took a careful backup and then cooked up some USB installation media, but it took so long to boot (USB1.1, yay) I ran out of time before the building was locked.
Since this box has two hard disks, and not being one to back down from a challenge, I eventually reinstalled it over the weekend with nothing – no install media, no reinstall robot or intelligent hands – just a reliable internet connection and a healthy dose of courage. Here’s how.
DebConf 11
So, I got enough of the requisite sponsorship and finally booked some flights…