Free Software Activities (July 2019)

Debian

• Bug 932626: passwordsafe — Non-English locales don't work due to translation files being installed in the wrong directory.

  The fixed versions are:

  • unstable/testing: 1.06+dfsg-2
  • buster: 1.06+dfsg-1+deb10u1 (via 932945)
  • stretch: 1.00+dfsg-1+deb9u1 (via 932944)

• Bug 932947: file — The --mime-type flag fails on arm64 due to seccomp

  Recently, there was a message on debian-devel about enabling seccomp sandboxing for the file utility. While I knew that passwordsafe uses file to determine some mime type information, testing on my development box (which is amd64-based) didn't show any problems.

  However, this was happening around the same time that I was preparing the the fix for 932626 as noted above. Lo and behold, when I uploaded the fix, everything went fine except for on the arm64 architecture. The build there failed due to the package's test suite failing.

  After doing some troubleshooting on one of the arm64 porterboxes, it was clear that the seccomp change to file was the culprit. I haven't worked with arm64 very much, so I don't know all of the details. But based on my research, it appears that arm64 doesn't implement the access() system call, but uses faccessat() instead. However, in this case, seccomp was allowing calls to access(), but not calls to faccessat(). This led to the difference in behavior between arm64 and the other architectures.

  So I filed the bug to let the maintainer know the details, in hopes that the seccomp filters could be adjusted. However, it seems he took it as the "final straw" with regard to some of the other problems he was hearing about, and decided to revert the seccomp change altogether.

  Once the change was reverted, I requested a rebuild of the failed passwordsafe package on arm64 so it could be rebuilt against the fixed dependency without doing another full upload.

• I updated django-cas-server in unstable to 1.1.0, which is the latest upstream version. I also did some miscellaneous cleanup/maintenance on the packaging.

• I attended DebConf19 in Curitiba, Brazil.

  This was my 3rd DebConf, and my first trip to Brazil. Actually, it was my first trip to anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere.

  As usual, DebConf was quite enjoyable. From a technical perspective, there were lots of interesting talks. I learned some new things, and was also exposed to some new (to me) projects and techniques, as well as some new ideas in general. It also gave me some ideas of other ways/places I could potentially contribute to Debian.

  From a social perspective, it was a good opportunity to see and spend time with people that I normally only get to interact with via email or irc. I also enjoyed being able to put faces/voices to names that I only see on mailing lists. Even if I don't know or interact with them much, it really helps my mental picture when I'm reading things they wrote. And of course, I met some new people, too. It was nice to share stories and experiences over food and drinks, or in the hacklabs.

  If any of the DebConf team read this, thanks for your hard work. It was another great DebConf.