Bill's Web Log - FLOSShttps://billblough.net/2020-10-10T16:27:57-04:00sudo reboot2020-10-10T16:27:57-04:002020-10-10T16:27:57-04:00bbloughtag:billblough.net,2020-10-10:/blog/2020/10/10/sudo-reboot/<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>Benjy: The best-laid plans of mice...</p>
<p>Arthur: And men.</p>
<p>Frankie: What?</p>
<p>Arthur: Best-laid plans of mice and men.</p>
<p>Benjy: What have men got to do with it?</p>
<p>-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Last year, my intent had been to post monthly updates with details of the F …</p><hr>
<blockquote>
<p>Benjy: The best-laid plans of mice...</p>
<p>Arthur: And men.</p>
<p>Frankie: What?</p>
<p>Arthur: Best-laid plans of mice and men.</p>
<p>Benjy: What have men got to do with it?</p>
<p>-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Last year, my intent had been to post monthly updates with details of the F/LOSS
contributions I had made during the previous month. I wanted to do this as a
way to summarize and reflect on what I had done, and also to hopefully
motivate me to do more.</p>
<p>Fast forward, and it's been over a year since my last blog post. So much for
those plans.</p>
<p>I won't go into specific detail about the F/LOSS contributions I've made in the
past year. This isn't meant to be a "catch-up" post, per se. It's more of an
acknowledgment that I didn't do what I set out to do, as well as something
of a reset to enable me to continue blogging (or not) as I see fit.</p>
<p>So, to summarize those contributions:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>As expected, most of my contributions were to projects that I regularly
contribute to, like <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, <a href="https://axis.apache.org/axis2/c/core/">Apache Axis2/C</a>, or <a href="https://www.pwsafe.org/">PasswordSafe</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There were also some one-off contributions to projects that I use but am not
actively involved in, such as <a href="https://logging.apache.org/log4cxx/">log4cxx</a> or <a href="https://github.com/ajventer/pyKAN">PyKAN</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There was also a third category of contributions that are a bit of a special
case. I made some pseudonymous contributions to a F/LOSS project that I did
not want to tie to my public identity. I hope to write more about that
situation in a future post.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>All in all, I'm pretty happy with the contributions I've made in the
past year. Historically, my F/LOSS activity had been somewhat sporadic,
sometimes with months passing in between contributions. But looking through
my notes from the past year, it appears that I made contributions every single
month, with no skipped months. Of course, I would have liked to have done more,
but I consider the improvement in consistency to be a solid win.</p>
<p>As for the blog, well... Judging by the most recent year-long gap (as well as
the gaps before that), I'm not likely to start regularly writing posts anytime
soon. But then again, if sporadic F/LOSS contributions can turn into
regular F/LOSS contributions, then maybe sporadic blog posts can turn into
regular blog posts, too. Time will tell.</p>Free Software Activities (August 2019)2019-09-22T17:13:40-04:002019-09-22T17:13:40-04:00bbloughtag:billblough.net,2019-09-22:/blog/2019/09/22/free-software-activities-august-2019/<hr>
<h3>Debian</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Fixed bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/933422">933422</a>: passwordsafe — Switch to using wxgtk3</p>
<p>Versions:</p>
<ul>
<li>unstable/testing: 1.06+dfsg-3</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>Upgraded passwordsafe package to latest upstream version (1.08.2)</p>
<p>Versions:</p>
<ul>
<li>unstable/testing: 1.08.2+dfsg-1</li>
<li>buster-backports: 1.08.2+dfsg-1~bpo10+1</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>Updated python-django-cas-client to latest upstream version (1.5.1) and did …</p></li></ul><hr>
<h3>Debian</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Fixed bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/933422">933422</a>: passwordsafe — Switch to using wxgtk3</p>
<p>Versions:</p>
<ul>
<li>unstable/testing: 1.06+dfsg-3</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>Upgraded passwordsafe package to latest upstream version (1.08.2)</p>
<p>Versions:</p>
<ul>
<li>unstable/testing: 1.08.2+dfsg-1</li>
<li>buster-backports: 1.08.2+dfsg-1~bpo10+1</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>Updated python-django-cas-client to latest upstream version (1.5.1) and did
some miscellaneous cleanup/maintenance of the packaging.</p>
<p>Versions:</p>
<ul>
<li>unstable/testing: 1.5.1-1</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>Discovered an <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/934721">issue with sbuild</a> where the .changes file output by the
build was different from the .changes file passed to lintian. This meant
that the lintian results were sometimes different when lintian was run
via sbuild vs when it was run manually. Patch submitted.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Provided a <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/939080">patch for NuSOAP</a> to update deprecated class constructors.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Submitted a <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/ftp-team/website/merge_requests/3">merge request</a> to update the ftp-master website and replace
a reference to Buster as testing with Bullseye.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Axis2-C</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Fixed bug <a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AXIS2C-1619">AXIS2C-1619</a>: CVE-2012-6107: SSL/TLS Hostname validation</p>
<p>Commits:</p>
<ul>
<li>r1866225 - Perform SSL hostname validation</li>
<li>r1866245 - Add SSL host validation check to X509_V_OK code path</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>Free Software Activities (July 2019)2019-08-10T18:04:14-04:002019-08-10T18:04:14-04:00bbloughtag:billblough.net,2019-08-10:/blog/2019/08/10/free-software-activities-july-2019/<hr>
<h3>Debian</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/932626">932626</a>: passwordsafe — Non-English locales don't work due to
translation files being installed in the wrong directory.</p>
<p>The fixed versions are:</p>
<ul>
<li>unstable/testing: 1.06+dfsg-2</li>
<li>buster: 1.06+dfsg-1+deb10u1 (via <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/932945">932945</a>)</li>
<li>stretch: 1.00+dfsg-1+deb9u1 (via <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/932944">932944</a>)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/932947">932947</a>: file — The --mime-type flag fails on arm64 …</p></li></ul><hr>
<h3>Debian</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/932626">932626</a>: passwordsafe — Non-English locales don't work due to
translation files being installed in the wrong directory.</p>
<p>The fixed versions are:</p>
<ul>
<li>unstable/testing: 1.06+dfsg-2</li>
<li>buster: 1.06+dfsg-1+deb10u1 (via <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/932945">932945</a>)</li>
<li>stretch: 1.00+dfsg-1+deb9u1 (via <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/932944">932944</a>)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/932947">932947</a>: file — The --mime-type flag fails on arm64 due to seccomp</p>
<p>Recently, there was a <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2019/07/msg00391.html">message on debian-devel</a> 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.</p>
<p>However, this was happening around the same time that I was preparing the
the fix for <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/932626">932626</a> 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>not</em> calls to faccessat(). This led to
the difference in behavior between arm64 and the other architectures.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>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.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I attended <a href="https://debconf19.debconf.org">DebConf19</a> in Curitiba, Brazil.</p>
<p>This was my 3rd DebConf, and my first trip to Brazil. Actually, it was my
first trip to anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>If any of the DebConf team read this, thanks for your hard work. It was
another great DebConf.</p>
</li>
</ul>