Arrfab's blog - Funhttps://arrfab.net/2015-01-23T17:54:00+01:00Some tips and tricks, mostly around CentOSMore builders available for Koji/CBS2015-01-23T17:54:00+01:002015-01-23T17:54:00+01:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2015-01-23:/posts/2015/Jan/23/more-builders-available-for-kojicbs/<p>As you probably know, the CentOS Project now hosts the
<a href="http://cbs.centos.org">CBS</a> effort, (aka Community Build System), that
is used to build all packages for the
CentOS<a href="http://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup">SIGs</a>.</p>
<p>There was already one physical node dedicated to Koji Web and Koji Hub,
and another node dedicated to the build threads (koji-builder). As we
have now more people building packages,
we <a href="http://www.centos.org/minutes/2015/january/centos-devel.2015-01-19-14.00.html">thought</a>
it was time to add more builders to the mix, and here we go:
<a href="http://cbs.centos.org/koji/hosts">http://cbs.centos.org/koji/hosts</a> lists now two added machines that are
dedicated to Koji/CBS.</p>
<p>Those added nodes have 2 * Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650 0 @ 2.00GHz
with 8cores/sockets (+ Hyperthreading activated) , and 32Gb of RAM.
Let's see how the SIGs members will keep those builders busy and
throwing a bunch of interesting packages for the CentOS Community :-) .
Have a nice week-end</p>CentOS Dojo Lyon (France)2014-03-15T15:00:00+01:002014-03-15T15:00:00+01:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2014-03-15:/posts/2014/Mar/15/centos-dojo-lyon-france/<p>Comme vous le savez peut-être (ou pas !), nous tiendrons un Dojo CentOS
à Lyon le vendredi 11 avril. Si donc vous avez envie de partager votre
expérience autour de CentOS, en donnant une présentation par exemple, ou
bien si vous désirez seulement venir passer un bon moment avec nous en
écoutant les présentations prévues (appel - subliminal - aux candidats
volontaires !), sentez-vous libre de vous inscrire.<br>
L'inscription est gratuite ! Plus d'informations sur la page Wiki :
<a href="http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Dojo/Lyon2014">http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Dojo/Lyon2014</a> .</p>
<dl>
<dt>Hi people, are you in the Lyon (France) area around April 11th ? Willing</dt>
<dt>to come to a CentOS Dojo ? (either to attend it or even better, present</dt>
<dt>something around CentOS ?) . Feel free to register for this free event !</dt>
<dd><a href="http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Dojo/Lyon2014">http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Dojo/Lyon2014</a></dd>
</dl>Automatic laptop backup with NetworkManager (and correct selinux policies ...)2013-03-30T16:49:00+01:002013-03-30T16:49:00+01:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2013-03-30:/posts/2013/Mar/30/automatic-laptop-backup-with-networkmanager-and-correct-selinux-policies/<p>Those days, almost everyone uses a laptop as his primary (work)station :
I don't remember when I was using something else than a laptop for both
work and home usage. I admit that I'm using what I'll describe in the
following sentences for quite some time, but it seems some people I
spoke to don't know what can be done around
<a href="http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/">NetworkManager</a>, and because
I encountered a (small) issue with that process (because of updated
selinux policies), I thought it would be a good time to speak about it.</p>
<p>Let me first discuss a (little) bit about NetworkManager : almost
everyone (using CentOS/Fedora or other distributions) knows what it's
all about : helping you to quickly switch from one network to another,
that network being a wired one, a Wifi hotpot, or even a 3G connection
through your 3G usb modem or your smartphone being used as a modem, etc,
etc .... That's the "visible" part of NetworkManager. While some people
don't seem to like it, I admit myself that I really appreciate it and I
use it on a daily basis for \$work and \$home usage (switching from
wired to wireless, and so on). A quick read in the <a href="http://linux.die.net/man/8/networkmanager">NetworkManager man …</a></p><p>Those days, almost everyone uses a laptop as his primary (work)station :
I don't remember when I was using something else than a laptop for both
work and home usage. I admit that I'm using what I'll describe in the
following sentences for quite some time, but it seems some people I
spoke to don't know what can be done around
<a href="http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/">NetworkManager</a>, and because
I encountered a (small) issue with that process (because of updated
selinux policies), I thought it would be a good time to speak about it.</p>
<p>Let me first discuss a (little) bit about NetworkManager : almost
everyone (using CentOS/Fedora or other distributions) knows what it's
all about : helping you to quickly switch from one network to another,
that network being a wired one, a Wifi hotpot, or even a 3G connection
through your 3G usb modem or your smartphone being used as a modem, etc,
etc .... That's the "visible" part of NetworkManager. While some people
don't seem to like it, I admit myself that I really appreciate it and I
use it on a daily basis for \$work and \$home usage (switching from
wired to wireless, and so on). A quick read in the <a href="http://linux.die.net/man/8/networkmanager">NetworkManager man
page</a> shows that you can
"script" events based on the actual status of your network interface :
basically all executables scripts found by NetworkManager under
/etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/ will be executed on network change.
When I discovered that (was quite some time ago now ...), I decided that
it would be good to launch backup script for my laptop, depending on the
network my laptop is connected, and using different profiles. For
example, (the "head" of ) a simple script can look like :</p>
<table class="highlighttable"><tr><td class="linenos"><div class="linenodiv"><pre>1
2
3
4
5
6
7</pre></div></td><td class="code"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="ch">#!/bin/bash </span>
<span class="nv">IF</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="nv">$1</span>
<span class="nv">STATUS</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="nv">$2</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="o">[[</span> <span class="s2">"\$IF"</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"eth0"</span> <span class="o">&&</span> <span class="s2">"\$STATUS"</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"up"</span> <span class="o">]]</span> <span class="p">;</span> <span class="k">then</span>
<span class="nv">NET</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="se">\$</span><span class="o">(</span>/sbin/ip -4 route show dev eth0<span class="p">|</span>awk <span class="s1">'{print \$1}'</span><span class="p">|</span>grep -v> default<span class="o">)</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="o">[</span> <span class="s2">"\$NET"</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"192.168.2.0/24"</span> <span class="o">]</span> <span class="p">;</span> <span class="k">then</span> <span class="se">\#</span> and now the rest up to you ....
</pre></div>
</td></tr></table>
<p>You've got the idea, so it's now just a matter of writing the whole
script. One thing that I like when writing some small scripts is the
fact that I can be notified on my laptop when something happens (or
doesn't, because of errors). I use also quite often notify-send for
that, but because all scripts under dispatcher.d are executed under
root, I prefer from there "jumping" to my user account with a "su -
$my_user_name -c $my_backup_script.sh".</p>
<p>Of course, my script needs several things to "interact" with my desktop
session : the DISPLAY to use and also the dbus-session I currently use
(because I also have to use gvfs-mount to automatically mount in my
gnome session some remote folders, like , (yeah, don't shoot me for
that, not my idea) CIFS shares for \$work).</p>
<p>So that backup script needs some variables like this :</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="n">export</span> <span class="n">DISPLAY</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="ss">":0"</span>
<span class="n">export</span> <span class="n">DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="err">\$</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">cat</span> <span class="o">/</span><span class="n">proc</span><span class="o">/</span><span class="err">\$</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">pidof</span> <span class="n">nautilus</span><span class="p">)</span><span class="o">/</span><span class="n">environ</span><span class="o">|</span><span class="n">tr</span> <span class="s1">'\\0'</span> <span class="s1">'\\n'</span><span class="o">|</span><span class="n">grep</span> <span class="n">DBUS_SESSION_BUS</span><span class="o">|</span><span class="n">cut</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">f2</span><span class="o">-</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">d</span> <span class="s1">'='</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
<p>If I started that blog post, it's not to speak about NetworkManager at
first (well, I still thought that some people would benefit of those
unknown/unused dispatcher.d scripts ....) but because I encountered an
issue with the recent updates to CentOS 6.4 (and to be precise, newer
selinux-policy-3.7.19-195.el6_4.3.noarch package). So it was time to
dive into that issue , and *yes*, i run selinux everywhere, including
on my laptop ...</p>
<p>Long story short : because I use rsync for my backup scripts (why having
to reinvent the wheel ? ), I had to enable two selinux booleans :</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="n">setsebool</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">P</span> <span class="n">rsync_client</span> <span class="mi">1</span>
<span class="n">setsebool</span> <span class="o">-</span><span class="n">P</span> <span class="n">rsync_export_all_ro</span> <span class="mi">1</span>
</pre></div>
<p>But that was still not enough. sealert/audit.log/audit2allow to the
rescue (read the <a href="http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/SELinux">Selinux page</a>
on the <a href="http://wiki.centos.org">CentOS wiki</a>) and finally I created a
custom policy that suits my needs. Here it is :</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span> <span class="nt">module</span> <span class="nt">rsync-client</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="nc">pol</span> <span class="nt">1</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="nc">0</span><span class="o">;</span>
<span class="nt">require</span> <span class="p">{</span>
<span class="err">type</span> <span class="err">initrc_tmp_t</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="err">type</span> <span class="err">user_home_t</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="err">type</span> <span class="err">rsync_t</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="err">class</span> <span class="err">sock_file</span> <span class="err">getattr</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="err">class</span> <span class="err">file</span> <span class="err">write</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="p">}</span>
<span class="err">#</span><span class="o">=============</span> <span class="nt">rsync_t</span> <span class="o">==============</span>
<span class="nt">allow</span> <span class="nt">rsync_t</span> <span class="nt">initrc_tmp_t</span><span class="p">:</span><span class="nd">file</span> <span class="nt">write</span><span class="o">;</span>
<span class="nt">allow</span> <span class="nt">rsync_t</span> <span class="nt">user_home_t</span><span class="p">:</span><span class="nd">sock_file</span> <span class="nt">getattr</span><span class="o">;</span>
</pre></div>
<p>Now, everytime I connect my laptop to a (recognized) network, my laptop
auto-backups itself :</p>
<p><img alt="Backup with NM" src="/images/backup-NM.png"></p>CentOS Automated QA explained ...2012-01-09T15:41:00+01:002012-01-09T15:41:00+01:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2012-01-09:/posts/2012/Jan/09/centos-automated-qa-explained/<p>While <a href="http://centosnow.blogspot.com/2012/01/centos-in-2012.html">Johnny was
explaining</a>
to the rest of the world how CentOS 6.1 and 6.2 were released, I
received quite some questions about the QA tests and how they were
performed. Well, let me explain in some words how it's now organized.
Previously, there was only a Tests Matrix that was shared between the QA
team members : each member of that group had access to the QA bits,
could download/rsync the complete tree (with ISO images too) and do his
tests, and then reported the results in one way or the other (irc,
mailing-list). Of course it didn't scale out very well. Too much manual
intervention, and when someone was busy with personal (or work related)
issues, no feedback was coming back to the CentOS devteam.</p>
<p>So during <a href="http://archive.fosdem.org/2011/">Fosdem 2011</a>, I had a
meeting with <a href="http://www.karan.org/blog/index.php">Karanbir</a> to see how
we could solve that issue and put automation in the QA loop. We
dedicated some (old) machines to be used only for QA, and in a separate
VLAN. Basically, here are the steps from the built bits to the QA
reports.</p>
<ul>
<li>The CentOS buildfarm (using the newly build system called 'reimzul'
and using <a href="http://kr.github.com/beanstalkd/">beanstalkd</a> as a
queuing system …</li></ul><p>While <a href="http://centosnow.blogspot.com/2012/01/centos-in-2012.html">Johnny was
explaining</a>
to the rest of the world how CentOS 6.1 and 6.2 were released, I
received quite some questions about the QA tests and how they were
performed. Well, let me explain in some words how it's now organized.
Previously, there was only a Tests Matrix that was shared between the QA
team members : each member of that group had access to the QA bits,
could download/rsync the complete tree (with ISO images too) and do his
tests, and then reported the results in one way or the other (irc,
mailing-list). Of course it didn't scale out very well. Too much manual
intervention, and when someone was busy with personal (or work related)
issues, no feedback was coming back to the CentOS devteam.</p>
<p>So during <a href="http://archive.fosdem.org/2011/">Fosdem 2011</a>, I had a
meeting with <a href="http://www.karan.org/blog/index.php">Karanbir</a> to see how
we could solve that issue and put automation in the QA loop. We
dedicated some (old) machines to be used only for QA, and in a separate
VLAN. Basically, here are the steps from the built bits to the QA
reports.</p>
<ul>
<li>The CentOS buildfarm (using the newly build system called 'reimzul'
and using <a href="http://kr.github.com/beanstalkd/">beanstalkd</a> as a
queuing system) pushes automatically each new tree to the dedicated
QA hardware</li>
<li>There is a rsync post-xfer script that is launched from there that
also uses beanstalkd and some workers (so we can scale out easily if
we add machines)</li>
<li>Each built and pushed tree/ISOs set has its own BuildTag (that is
used to identify what was tested and when)</li>
<li>Some tools (hosted in an internal Git repository) are then used to
deploy some Virtual Machines (actually a mix of BareMetal and VMs :
blade/Virtual Box/Xen/KVM) and send a report if the "deploy VM step"
failed (VMs are installed through ISO/pxe boot/virt-install through
http/ftp/nfs methods)</li>
<li>A test suite (that we call the t_functional stack) is then copied
from the local git repo to those newly deployed machines and each
test is then ran. From that point a report is then automatically
sent to the QA mailing-list so that people can see the results,
while the full log is available on QA head node.</li>
</ul>
<p>The fact that we use two separate git repositories (one for the
deploy/provisioniong functions and another one for the tests themselves)
was really a good thing, as it permitted some people to include their
tests in the t_functional stack. For example ,
<a href="http://athmane.wordpress.com/">Athmane</a> did a great job writing/fixing
some tests used for 6.1 and 6.2.</p>
<p>More informations to come later about how you (yes, *you*) can
participate and contribute such CentOS QA auto-tests !</p>CentOS 6 LiveCD and LiveDVD tools2011-07-28T14:29:00+02:002011-07-28T14:29:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2011-07-28:/posts/2011/Jul/28/centos-6-livecd-and-livedvd-tools/<p>The number of questions I received from different people regarding the
LiveCD/LiveDVD tools and the kickstart files used to produce the ISO
images was quite "high". People looking at the normal place will be
disappointed because we haven't used the original <a href="https://projects.centos.org/svn/livecd/">livecd subversion
repo</a> to produce the actual
Live medias. So in the meantime, if people want to use the
livecd-creator tool, they can fetch the SRPM here :
<a href="http://people.centos.org/arrfab/CentOS6/SRPMS/livecd-tools-0.3.6-1.el6.src.rpm">http://people.centos.org/arrfab/CentOS6/SRPMS/livecd-tools-0.3.6-1.el6.src.rpm</a>
. I've just copied also the two kickstart files used for both LiveCD and
LiveDVD here :<a href="http://people.centos.org/arrfab/CentOS6/LiveCD-DVD/">http://people.centos.org/arrfab/CentOS6/LiveCD-DVD/</a></p>
<p>Hope that people will be satisfied .. faster to push those files there
than to change the whole 'used behind the scene' infra</p>CentOS 6 ISO spins2011-07-26T19:39:00+02:002011-07-26T19:39:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2011-07-26:/posts/2011/Jul/26/centos-6-iso-spins/<p>As you've probably seen if you're subscribed to the <a href="http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2011-July/017658.html">CentOS announce
list</a>
(or if you just rsync/mirror the <a href="http://mirror.centos.org/centos/">whole CentOS
tree</a>) , the CentOS 6.0 LiveCD was
released last monday. This is the first of our CentOS custom spins !
While I'm writing that blog post, the CentOS 6.0 LiveDVD is on its way
to the external mirrors too and will normally be announced shortly (when
enough mirrors will have it) ! It will be the second CentOS respin and
we have more in the pipe for you ! As Karanbir announced it in the <a href="http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2011-July/017645.html">6.0
release
mail</a>
, we planned also to provide two other spins : the minimal one and the
lws one. Good news is that the minimal one is almost finished and being
intensively tested. If things don't change (or bugs appear during QA),
the iso image will be only \~250Mb for the i386 arch and \~300Mb for the
x86_64 one. It's meant to be used as a real basic CentOS system (even
less packages that the @core group on a normal install if used with the
proper kickstart invocation !) : 186 packages only on your disk. You'll
have a very basic CentOS system with only openssh-server and yum …</p><p>As you've probably seen if you're subscribed to the <a href="http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2011-July/017658.html">CentOS announce
list</a>
(or if you just rsync/mirror the <a href="http://mirror.centos.org/centos/">whole CentOS
tree</a>) , the CentOS 6.0 LiveCD was
released last monday. This is the first of our CentOS custom spins !
While I'm writing that blog post, the CentOS 6.0 LiveDVD is on its way
to the external mirrors too and will normally be announced shortly (when
enough mirrors will have it) ! It will be the second CentOS respin and
we have more in the pipe for you ! As Karanbir announced it in the <a href="http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2011-July/017645.html">6.0
release
mail</a>
, we planned also to provide two other spins : the minimal one and the
lws one. Good news is that the minimal one is almost finished and being
intensively tested. If things don't change (or bugs appear during QA),
the iso image will be only \~250Mb for the i386 arch and \~300Mb for the
x86_64 one. It's meant to be used as a real basic CentOS system (even
less packages that the @core group on a normal install if used with the
proper kickstart invocation !) : 186 packages only on your disk. You'll
have a very basic CentOS system with only openssh-server and yum. We are
even testing the luks/lvm/md devices combination to be sure to meet your
needs.</p>
<p>The next custom respin (LWS code name - for LightWeigth Server edition)
will still be a CD iso image (but pushed to the limit) that will include
basic server packages, more or less in the idea of the ServerCD that
existed during the CentOS 4.x days ... That one still needs to be
finished while work has already being done.</p>
<p>Stay tuned for more informations when it will be pushed to mirrors and
announced .. all that at the same time as 6.1 and 5.7 (in parallel)
builds ..Interesting times ! :-)</p>CentOS 6 on the iMac2011-07-25T09:58:00+02:002011-07-25T09:58:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2011-07-25:/posts/2011/Jul/25/centos-6-on-the-imac/<p>I decided to put CentOS 6 on my iMac. It was running in dual-boot mode
with OSX and CentOS 5. Installing through the network (from a NFS share)
was really easy and no bug encountered but at the end of the install,
when it asked me to reboot, nothing : after having selected the Linux
partition in the <a href="http://refit.sf.net">rEfit</a> boot manager screen,
nothing. hmm ....</p>
<p>I restarted the install process to see if at least anaconda tried to
install grub on the first sector of the /boot partition and not in the
MBR but that was correctly seen and chosen by anaconda . So the issue
was somewhere else. I had a /boot ext3 partition (on /dev/sda3) while
/dev/sda4 is the VolumeGroup in which I had defined my Logical Volumes.
There was a big rewrite in Anaconda for the storage part and el6/CentOS
6 suffers from one bug found on the upstream bugzilla when having to
deal with Apple computers *and* using rEfit at the same time :
<a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=505817">https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=505817</a></p>
<p>Long story short : to have CentOS 6 running on your iMac (if using refit
as the EFI boot manager) :</p>
<ul>
<li>install CentOS 6 as usual (check …</li></ul><p>I decided to put CentOS 6 on my iMac. It was running in dual-boot mode
with OSX and CentOS 5. Installing through the network (from a NFS share)
was really easy and no bug encountered but at the end of the install,
when it asked me to reboot, nothing : after having selected the Linux
partition in the <a href="http://refit.sf.net">rEfit</a> boot manager screen,
nothing. hmm ....</p>
<p>I restarted the install process to see if at least anaconda tried to
install grub on the first sector of the /boot partition and not in the
MBR but that was correctly seen and chosen by anaconda . So the issue
was somewhere else. I had a /boot ext3 partition (on /dev/sda3) while
/dev/sda4 is the VolumeGroup in which I had defined my Logical Volumes.
There was a big rewrite in Anaconda for the storage part and el6/CentOS
6 suffers from one bug found on the upstream bugzilla when having to
deal with Apple computers *and* using rEfit at the same time :
<a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=505817">https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=505817</a></p>
<p>Long story short : to have CentOS 6 running on your iMac (if using refit
as the EFI boot manager) :</p>
<ul>
<li>install CentOS 6 as usual (check that grub will be installed on the
first sector of /boot and not in the MBR , normally correctly
seen/proposed by Anaconda)</li>
<li>on the first reboot, enter the rEFIt shell and launch 'gptsync' (it
will say that it has to 'sync' the gpt, accept the sync)</li>
<li>select now the Linux partition : it will fail with a black screen</li>
<li>power down the iMac and start it up : select Linux in the refit boot
manager and enjoy your CentOS 6 installation on the iMac</li>
</ul>IPV6 world day !2011-06-09T21:24:00+02:002011-06-09T21:24:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2011-06-09:/posts/2011/Jun/09/ipv6-world-day/<p>It seems quite a lot of people blogged about<a href="http://www.worldipv6day.org/">IPV6
day</a> . It's true that it's always a good
idea to speak about IPV6. I'm using IPV6 natively on my server hosted
at<a href="http://www.hetzner.de/en/">Hetzner</a> (they offer a /64 IPV6 subnet,
which is more than enough for a <a href="http://www.arrfab.net/blog/?p=271">CentOS server hosting several xen domU
Virtual Machines</a>). At home, that's
another story. I use a<a href="http://ipv6.he.net/">HE.net</a> <a href="http://www.tunnelbroker.net/">free
tunnel</a> to be able to reach ipv6 hosts.
Yes, even in 2011, you still have to use tunnels to use IPV6 ! Why ?
that's indeed a good question. Even if my CentOS ipv6 tunnel
end-point/router/radvd at home is working correctly, I decided to ask my
belgian provider if they had plans on implementing native IPV6. Well,
not for my home connection, as I already know that
<a href="http://www.belgacom.be/privathttp://www.belgacom.be/private/hbsres/jsp/dynamic/homepage.jsp">Belgacom</a>
(the biggest provider in belgium) doesn't support IPV6 on their BBOX2
modems that they give to customers when ordering a DSL connection at
home (<em>while i'm talking about Belgacom, please stop sending me direct
advertisement to my mailbox - the real one and not the electronic one -
with your invoices about a service - VDSL2/BelgacomTV - that you
*can't* offer to all your customers ... thanks</em>) . So I decided to …</p><p>It seems quite a lot of people blogged about<a href="http://www.worldipv6day.org/">IPV6
day</a> . It's true that it's always a good
idea to speak about IPV6. I'm using IPV6 natively on my server hosted
at<a href="http://www.hetzner.de/en/">Hetzner</a> (they offer a /64 IPV6 subnet,
which is more than enough for a <a href="http://www.arrfab.net/blog/?p=271">CentOS server hosting several xen domU
Virtual Machines</a>). At home, that's
another story. I use a<a href="http://ipv6.he.net/">HE.net</a> <a href="http://www.tunnelbroker.net/">free
tunnel</a> to be able to reach ipv6 hosts.
Yes, even in 2011, you still have to use tunnels to use IPV6 ! Why ?
that's indeed a good question. Even if my CentOS ipv6 tunnel
end-point/router/radvd at home is working correctly, I decided to ask my
belgian provider if they had plans on implementing native IPV6. Well,
not for my home connection, as I already know that
<a href="http://www.belgacom.be/privathttp://www.belgacom.be/private/hbsres/jsp/dynamic/homepage.jsp">Belgacom</a>
(the biggest provider in belgium) doesn't support IPV6 on their BBOX2
modems that they give to customers when ordering a DSL connection at
home (<em>while i'm talking about Belgacom, please stop sending me direct
advertisement to my mailbox - the real one and not the electronic one -
with your invoices about a service - VDSL2/BelgacomTV - that you
*can't* offer to all your customers ... thanks</em>) . So I decided to ask
their 'professional services' because we have two 'professional and
business' lines that we used at \$work. Long story short (to avoid
explaining how much emails/cases I had to send/open to have an answer) :
"no, even on the business lines we can't support IPV6 and we have no
plans (*sic*, I hope that guy was just kidding or probably doesn't
know the real answer ..) nor dates about future implementation of the
IPV6 services/connectivity " ..</p>
<p>Nice .. now /me goes back to CentOS QA mode ...</p>Bye-Bye Nokia .. we loved you, until now2011-02-12T10:25:00+01:002011-02-12T10:25:00+01:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2011-02-12:/posts/2011/Feb/12/bye-bye-nokia-we-loved-you-until-now/<p>I couldn't believe what I read yesterday .. but yes, Nokia has decided
to sign a special partnership with Microsoft to load WM7 on their
mobiles phones in the future .. The end of Symbian and Meego/Maemo ..
sad, sad .. time for me to think about my next mobile phone. Official
Nokia announce here
:<a href="http://conversations.nokia.com/nokia-strategy-2011/">http://conversations.nokia.com/nokia-strategy-2011/</a></p>CentOS team @ Fosdem 20112011-01-10T15:49:00+01:002011-01-10T15:49:00+01:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2011-01-10:/posts/2011/Jan/10/centos-team-fosdem-2011/<p>Some members of the CentOS team will be present at the Fosdem . Feel
free to come at our booth just to discuss ...</p>
<p>More informations on <a href="http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Fosdem2011">our
wiki</a> and on the
<a href="http://www.fosdem.org/">Fosdem</a> website</p>RPMforge el6 ppc builds ...2010-11-14T13:11:00+01:002010-11-14T13:11:00+01:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2010-11-14:/posts/2010/Nov/14/rpmforge-el6-ppc-builds/<p>Following <a href="http://lists.rpmforge.net/pipermail/users/2010-November/003342.html">Dag's post about packages now being built for
el6</a>
(and landing in the el6 repository for x86_64 and i386) I have to say
that the ppc builds are delayed for some reasons.</p>
<p>First is the (already existing) problem with the build arch. RHEL4/5 and
6 aren't build to work on Mac ppc hardware. I was able to build the
el4/el5 packages with a minimal mock environment (using the official
RHEL tree, but reduced to contain only the ppc and noarch packages,
obviously because the ppc64 packages coudn't be installed in the chroot
environment). It was even harder with the glibc package from RHEL5
because it contains specific patches <a href="http://www.arrfab.net/blog/?p=181">that require Power4 or above
processor for the ppc arch</a>. I was
able to reduild it without those patches, meaning that the buildroot
isn't even 100% equal to the real RHEL 5.x tree.<br>
Now that el6 landed, i'll have a look at all these problems and try to
chase them one by one. I think that my 10+ years old mac G4 will suffer
from all these tests but that's still the machine that i use to build
the RPMforge ppc builds.</p>
<p>So my first plan is to …</p><p>Following <a href="http://lists.rpmforge.net/pipermail/users/2010-November/003342.html">Dag's post about packages now being built for
el6</a>
(and landing in the el6 repository for x86_64 and i386) I have to say
that the ppc builds are delayed for some reasons.</p>
<p>First is the (already existing) problem with the build arch. RHEL4/5 and
6 aren't build to work on Mac ppc hardware. I was able to build the
el4/el5 packages with a minimal mock environment (using the official
RHEL tree, but reduced to contain only the ppc and noarch packages,
obviously because the ppc64 packages coudn't be installed in the chroot
environment). It was even harder with the glibc package from RHEL5
because it contains specific patches <a href="http://www.arrfab.net/blog/?p=181">that require Power4 or above
processor for the ppc arch</a>. I was
able to reduild it without those patches, meaning that the buildroot
isn't even 100% equal to the real RHEL 5.x tree.<br>
Now that el6 landed, i'll have a look at all these problems and try to
chase them one by one. I think that my 10+ years old mac G4 will suffer
from all these tests but that's still the machine that i use to build
the RPMforge ppc builds.</p>
<p>So my first plan is to try to have a minimal buildroot that can be
initiliazed on that old mac (as i've still no better hardware at my
disposal ...) and once that i'll be able to have a mock buildroot
initiliazed correctly with the RHEL6 ppc only packages (if that's
possible, still something to determine), i'll process the whole RPMforge
svn tree, meaning several days/weeks for the first run (and no, i refuse
to launch a createrepo on the produced tree after each successful build
:-) )</p>
<p>If you're a RHEL ppc user and that there are some packages you really
want first (the only requests i've received directly for the el5 land
were clamav for example), feel free to ask them directly on the RPMforge
list.</p>
<p>Thanks for your comprehension : that's hard to produce such packages on
a platform not supported upstream ;-)</p>FrOSCon 2010 is over .. waiting now for 2011 :-)2010-08-26T15:40:00+02:002010-08-26T15:40:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2010-08-26:/posts/2010/Aug/26/froscon-2010-is-over-waiting-now-for-2011/<p>It was the first time that I was at <a href="http://www.froscon.org/">FrOSCon</a>
and I admit I enjoyed it. Not only because I can always see in real life
some other CentOS contributors (thanks again Andreas, Sarah, Didi and
Christoph), but also because I can see some other people really happy
with CentOS. Last year (even if i was not there), CentOS <a href="http://dag.wieers.com/blog/centos-based-livecd-at-froscon">was used to
'power' some TFT
screens</a> at
the entrance. So we did the same this year and just because Dag asked
it, we took a picture this year too :-)</p>
<p><img alt="CentOS @ FrOSCon
2010" src="http://www.arrfab.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/22082010025-300x225.jpg" title="CentOS @ FrOSCon 2010"></p>Automatic network switcher on Nokia E712010-08-19T12:54:00+02:002010-08-19T12:54:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2010-08-19:/posts/2010/Aug/19/automatic-network-switcher-on-nokia-e71/<p>I've always loved Nokia products and always have been satisfied by my
last two E-series
(<a href="http://www.nokia.co.uk/support/product-support/nokia-e51">E51</a>and
<a href="http://www.nokia.co.uk/support/product-support/nokia-e71">E71</a>). But
there are those little things that can bring you a better life when
using it. For example, you can decide which data access point (Wireless
or 3G) you want to use when launching an application. That's fine and of
course I prefer using my WLAN at home than the 3G connection. But what
if you schedule something to happen automagically on your phone, like
calendar and contacts sync (I sync those with the integrated Mail for
Exchange application, even if, obviously, i don't have an Exchange
server, but rather a <a href="http://www.zarafa.com/content/community">Zarafa OpenSource
server</a> with
<a href="http://z-push.sourceforge.net/soswp/">z-push</a> installed). You have to
define a 'sync plan' and choose which connection it will use in the
background. Wait, I'd like it to select my Wireless AP when at home (or
with some pre-defined wlans from friends, etc ..) if available and then
switch to 3G if no wlans available. That's where
<a href="http://www.birdstep.com/Products/Birdstep/SmartConnect/">SmartConnect</a>
helps you a lot : you can define a 'fake' access point which is in fact
a group that contains your connections (wlans/3G) with priorities and it
will use the first available one. Use …</p><p>I've always loved Nokia products and always have been satisfied by my
last two E-series
(<a href="http://www.nokia.co.uk/support/product-support/nokia-e51">E51</a>and
<a href="http://www.nokia.co.uk/support/product-support/nokia-e71">E71</a>). But
there are those little things that can bring you a better life when
using it. For example, you can decide which data access point (Wireless
or 3G) you want to use when launching an application. That's fine and of
course I prefer using my WLAN at home than the 3G connection. But what
if you schedule something to happen automagically on your phone, like
calendar and contacts sync (I sync those with the integrated Mail for
Exchange application, even if, obviously, i don't have an Exchange
server, but rather a <a href="http://www.zarafa.com/content/community">Zarafa OpenSource
server</a> with
<a href="http://z-push.sourceforge.net/soswp/">z-push</a> installed). You have to
define a 'sync plan' and choose which connection it will use in the
background. Wait, I'd like it to select my Wireless AP when at home (or
with some pre-defined wlans from friends, etc ..) if available and then
switch to 3G if no wlans available. That's where
<a href="http://www.birdstep.com/Products/Birdstep/SmartConnect/">SmartConnect</a>
helps you a lot : you can define a 'fake' access point which is in fact
a group that contains your connections (wlans/3G) with priorities and it
will use the first available one. Use that 'fake' access point on your
mobile, whatever the application (even tested with <a href="http://s2putty.sourceforge.net/">Putty for
Symbian</a>). Great and useful.</p>
<p>You can download it from the official website, or directly install it
from your mobile through the OVI app installer.</p>Following build status through Twitter ...2010-05-31T20:09:00+02:002010-05-31T20:09:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2010-05-31:/posts/2010/May/31/following-build-status-through-twitter/<p>The other day, <a href="http://orcorc.blogspot.com/">Russ</a> pointed me/us to a
cli client for Twitter :
<a href="http://www.floodgap.com/software/ttytter/">TTYter</a>. Even if i'm not
myself a Twitter (ab)user, I thought it would be funny to create a tweet
that can be followed by those Twitter abusers and wanting to follow the
build status of the RPMforge PPC rpm packages that I build. I've quickly
modified my automated build scripts to post a build status after each
build and you can follow it here : <a href="http://twitter.com/rpmppcbuilder">http://twitter.com/rpmppcbuilder</a> .
It would be nice also to have such stuff for other build machines as
well ... While i'm talking about those PPC packages, if you still have a
PPC machine doing nothing and that you want to throw away, please
redirect it to me instead (that can even be an IBM js2x blade that I
would be able to have it hosted somewhere) ;-)</p>Fosdem 2010 is over ...2010-02-11T09:31:00+01:002010-02-11T09:31:00+01:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2010-02-11:/posts/2010/Feb/11/fosdem-2010-is-over/<p>Yes i know, it's even over for more than 4 days, but i was too busy with
other stuff to write a small report of the event , which i'll do later
if `locate free_time` returns something useful.</p>
<p>In the meantime, a (funny) picture from the CentOS booth at Fosdem 2010
:D</p>
<p><img alt="CentOS_amazing" src="http://www.arrfab.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/CentOS_amazing1.jpg" title="CentOS_amazing"></p>CentOS 5.3 on Neoware e90 Thin Client2009-09-14T14:41:00+02:002009-09-14T14:41:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2009-09-14:/posts/2009/Sep/14/centos-5-3-on-neoware-e90-thin-client/<p>As <a href="http://www.hp.com">Hp</a> acquired <a href="http://www.neoware.com">Neoware</a>
several months ago, customers are searching for new thin clients .. and
I received a <a href="http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Home.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=3638812&lang=en&cc=us">Neoware e90 thin
client</a>
(that wasn't used anymore). What could I do with it ? ... hmm, let's try
to use it at home as a small appliance to host a USB HDD that can be
shared . Advantage is that it doesn't consume a lot of electricity (in
comparison with my Asus Barebone with a AMD x2 64) and doesn't produce
noise at all .. which is also a good thing. The thin client I received
has a Via Nehemiah cpu @ 800mghz and 128Mb ram. It also has a small
IDE-DiskOnChip disk (32mb) but that is obviously too small to setup
CentOS on it. I decided to dedicate a small 1Gb USB stick gift I
received from a "well-known hypervisor" company (aka Vmware) and use it
for / and swap.</p>
<p>I disconnected the DiskOnChip module from the motherboard and configured
the bios to boot in pxe as first device and local usb-hdd for the second
one (if you need a password, it's likely to be either 'dogbites' or
'DOGBITES') and i started a CentOS 5.3 setup. But that didn't work on
first try : the embedded …</p><p>As <a href="http://www.hp.com">Hp</a> acquired <a href="http://www.neoware.com">Neoware</a>
several months ago, customers are searching for new thin clients .. and
I received a <a href="http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Home.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=3638812&lang=en&cc=us">Neoware e90 thin
client</a>
(that wasn't used anymore). What could I do with it ? ... hmm, let's try
to use it at home as a small appliance to host a USB HDD that can be
shared . Advantage is that it doesn't consume a lot of electricity (in
comparison with my Asus Barebone with a AMD x2 64) and doesn't produce
noise at all .. which is also a good thing. The thin client I received
has a Via Nehemiah cpu @ 800mghz and 128Mb ram. It also has a small
IDE-DiskOnChip disk (32mb) but that is obviously too small to setup
CentOS on it. I decided to dedicate a small 1Gb USB stick gift I
received from a "well-known hypervisor" company (aka Vmware) and use it
for / and swap.</p>
<p>I disconnected the DiskOnChip module from the motherboard and configured
the bios to boot in pxe as first device and local usb-hdd for the second
one (if you need a password, it's likely to be either 'dogbites' or
'DOGBITES') and i started a CentOS 5.3 setup. But that didn't work on
first try : the embedded NIC (VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II]
(rev 74) ) refused to aquire an IP address . Switching to VT3/VT4 showed
me that even if via-rhine.ko kernel module was loaded, it was impossible
to have a network connection. (message was related to "netdev watchdog
transmit timed out" and some IRQ messages too). I then decided to add
the kernel parameter 'irqpoll' and then the setup was able to work on
the network. One problem solved ... Second problem is that with 128mb
ram, CentOS 5.x normally isn't installable. Well, if you use text mode
(anyway graphical mode will even refuse to start ...) and use disk-druid
to create the swap partition, anaconda will use it directly to simulate
the missing RAM. Other thing is that I *had* to use was a NFS based
setup : I tried a http based setup and it always died on me (maybe
because it had to fetch stage2.img while with NFS it just loop-mounts it
...). Anyway it installed succesfully on the USB stick (minimal install,
so every component removed from the software selection, took 29 minutes
to complete) and it rebooted normally. Don't forget also to add the
irqpoll kernel parameter in grub.conf so that you'll have network
connection after reboot ... And as an image talks more than a long
sentence .. :</p>
<p><img alt="14092009" src="http://www.arrfab.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/14092009-300x225.jpg" title="14092009"></p>Setting up DRBD on only one active and available node2009-08-25T13:50:00+02:002009-08-25T13:50:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2009-08-25:/posts/2009/Aug/25/setting-up-drbd-on-only-one-active-and-available-node/<p>Recently I had to install a new server that will act as a mail server
(Zarafa but that doesn't matter) and being member of a <a href="http://www.drbd.org/">DRBD
cluster</a> (to replicate automagically the Zarafa
MySQL DB and Attachments on disks to the other node) . Fine, except that
only one physical node was at my disposal : we'll convert the existing
M\$ Exchange server physical box to CentOS/DRBD after the migration. So
what ?</p>
<p>I was thinking about that nice feature in mdadm when you want to create
a Linux software Raid 1 array but with only one available disk ("mdadm
--create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 <strong><em>missing</em></strong>"
for those of you who don't know that nice feature) and add the second
disk later .. That would be cool to do exactly the same with DRBD : one
node active and then add the missing one later .. Don't try to find a
'missing' parameter in the drbd.conf file .. but that's possible (even
if not documented in the <a href="http://www.drbd.org/docs/about/">online
docs)</a>. Do you remember that nice
parameter you use when you initialize your first DRBD resource (drbadm
-- --overwrite-data-of-peer primary \$resourcename) ? Why not testing it
with only one available node ? Yes, it works .. In fact …</p><p>Recently I had to install a new server that will act as a mail server
(Zarafa but that doesn't matter) and being member of a <a href="http://www.drbd.org/">DRBD
cluster</a> (to replicate automagically the Zarafa
MySQL DB and Attachments on disks to the other node) . Fine, except that
only one physical node was at my disposal : we'll convert the existing
M\$ Exchange server physical box to CentOS/DRBD after the migration. So
what ?</p>
<p>I was thinking about that nice feature in mdadm when you want to create
a Linux software Raid 1 array but with only one available disk ("mdadm
--create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 <strong><em>missing</em></strong>"
for those of you who don't know that nice feature) and add the second
disk later .. That would be cool to do exactly the same with DRBD : one
node active and then add the missing one later .. Don't try to find a
'missing' parameter in the drbd.conf file .. but that's possible (even
if not documented in the <a href="http://www.drbd.org/docs/about/">online
docs)</a>. Do you remember that nice
parameter you use when you initialize your first DRBD resource (drbadm
-- --overwrite-data-of-peer primary \$resourcename) ? Why not testing it
with only one available node ? Yes, it works .. In fact that remembers
me the name of that parameter in the previous DRBD versions (aka "--
--do-what-I-say" ) : that was really a way of instructing DRBD to do
what you wanted it to do.</p>
<p>The only "issue" found so far is that it isn't possible to use the
"drbdadm resize" command online to extend its size (yes, I use the
<a href="http://www.drbd.org/users-guide-emb/s-nested-lvm.html">nested LVM
configuration</a> :
so backend disks / LVM / LV as a DRBD device / LVM / new LV on top of
the drbd device) but I can easily understand why such operation really
needs a connection to the second real node (which obviously is missing
here)</p>
<p>Oh, while i'm talking about DRBD you have to know (if you use it
already) that DRBD 8.3.2 (and the corresponding kABI kmods) are
available in the <a href="http://dev.centos.org/centos">[testing]</a> repo ;-)</p>Controlling your OOimpress presentations over bluetooth2009-06-22T15:05:00+02:002009-06-22T15:05:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2009-06-22:/posts/2009/Jun/22/controlling-your-ooimpress-presentations-over-bluetooth/<p>One other thing I learned from the
<a href="http://blogs.linbit.com/florian">Florian</a>'s talk last week-end is
<a href="http://anyremote.sourceforge.net/">anyRemote</a> . It can be used to
control your Linux laptop (or the application started on your Linux
laptop/desktop) , like for example OpenOffice Impress from your mobile
phone (over IR/bluetooth/WiFi) . Of course that's not the only stuff
that you can use for that : <a href="http://dag.wieers.com/">Dag</a>recently posted
his <a href="http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/wiipresent/">WiiPresent</a> package he
wrote during the last Fosdem (co-authored with
<a href="http://www.ribalba.de/">Didi</a>) but in my case it's difficult to justify
to my kids that 'Daddy has to steal one of your wiimote's because he
wants to use it during an OSS presentation' . Advantage of anyRemote is
that it's compatible with my Nokia mobile phone so I was interested in
testing/using it. It was not available on RPMforge .. until now ! :
i've made a commit to the rpmforge svn yesterday (so expect the packages
to appear in some days, when Dag's buildsystem will process them)</p>
<p>People in the meantime who don't want to wait can 'ping' me for the
locally built RPMs for CentOS 5 ;-)</p>An opensource backend to sync my mobile phone2009-06-05T08:54:00+02:002009-06-05T08:54:00+02:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2009-06-05:/posts/2009/Jun/05/an-opensource-backend-to-sync-my-mobile-phone/<p>While I used for several months the service offered by
<a href="http://www.scheduleworld.com/sw2/index.html">ScheduleWorld</a>, I didn't
like the idea that my calendar was stored elsewhere than on one of my
machines. The fact that ScheduleWorld decided recently to switch to V2
(and now don't provide the service for free anymore), it pushed me to
find a solution to sync my calendar between my <a href="http://www.nokia.co.uk/link?cid=PLAIN_TEXT_519105">Nokia
E51</a> and my Linux
laptop/computers. I really appreciate my Nokia mobile phone, but
unfortunately it doesn't support iCal (and I've not found a symbian app
that could do that ..) . The only protocols that the Nokia can 'talk' is
SyncML or 'ActiveSync' (through their '<a href="http://www.businesssoftware.nokia.com/mail_for_exchange_downloads.php">Mail for
Exchange</a>'
free plugin) . That directly limits the scope for the backend. While I
considered <a href="https://www.forge.funambol.org/DomainHome.html">Funambol</a> at
a time (to use SyncML) , I finally ended with
<a href="http://www.zarafa.com">Zarafa</a> (and
<a href="http://z-push.sourceforge.net/soswp/">Z-push</a>) . It's all open-source
(in the community edition though) and emulates an ical (and caldav
support is now available in the 6.30 release) and Z-push emulates an
'ActiveSync-over-the-air' server so I'm now able to directly sync my
calendar/contacts/tasks/mails from my Nokia mobile phone to the server
(using a MySQL backend) and either use the Zarafa webaccess (that I
don't use that much …</p><p>While I used for several months the service offered by
<a href="http://www.scheduleworld.com/sw2/index.html">ScheduleWorld</a>, I didn't
like the idea that my calendar was stored elsewhere than on one of my
machines. The fact that ScheduleWorld decided recently to switch to V2
(and now don't provide the service for free anymore), it pushed me to
find a solution to sync my calendar between my <a href="http://www.nokia.co.uk/link?cid=PLAIN_TEXT_519105">Nokia
E51</a> and my Linux
laptop/computers. I really appreciate my Nokia mobile phone, but
unfortunately it doesn't support iCal (and I've not found a symbian app
that could do that ..) . The only protocols that the Nokia can 'talk' is
SyncML or 'ActiveSync' (through their '<a href="http://www.businesssoftware.nokia.com/mail_for_exchange_downloads.php">Mail for
Exchange</a>'
free plugin) . That directly limits the scope for the backend. While I
considered <a href="https://www.forge.funambol.org/DomainHome.html">Funambol</a> at
a time (to use SyncML) , I finally ended with
<a href="http://www.zarafa.com">Zarafa</a> (and
<a href="http://z-push.sourceforge.net/soswp/">Z-push</a>) . It's all open-source
(in the community edition though) and emulates an ical (and caldav
support is now available in the 6.30 release) and Z-push emulates an
'ActiveSync-over-the-air' server so I'm now able to directly sync my
calendar/contacts/tasks/mails from my Nokia mobile phone to the server
(using a MySQL backend) and either use the Zarafa webaccess (that I
don't use that much though) or Thunderbird with the <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2313">Lightning
extension</a> .
(every "iCal aware" program works of course)<br>
Note : Z-push isn't yet available in the RPM format on the Zarafa
website due to a clause in the GPL license (more informations on the
<a href="https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=585">RPMfusion bugzilla related
page</a>) . Thanks to
<a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Robert">Robert Scheck</a> a spec file
was written but isn't yet available. Robert is interested in seeing his
package landing in <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL">EPEL</a> and
<a href="http://rpmfusion.org/">RPMfusion</a> while I consider myself providing it
in <a href="http://rpmforge.net">RPMforge</a>. In the meantime, if you're
interested in the RPM version, feel free to 'poke' me or consult the
spec file in the <a href="https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=585">RPMfusion
bugzilla</a> .</p>