I decided to move to the only other distro I’ve used seriously since Linux’ move to 2.x kernels, Arch. I remember it as a slightly less polished than Debian, but more up-to-date than even Sid. Also, there is a vibrant group of Haskell hackers working on providing almost all of Hackage in Arch’s native packaging system.

Installing Arch turned out to be a bit of a blast from the past, even when compared to Debian. Luckily the Arch wiki is there to help with the things that are different compared to Debian. I would suggest having a second computer with a browser pointed to Arch’s home pages nearby during the entire install.

For my installation of Debian I had opted to use LVM and I wanted to keep my /home around so I had to follow the steps required to use LVM in Arch. Installation went smooth and the reboot was successful. Now starts the hard work—configuring the system and updating my home folder.

The very first thing I noticed was that vim wasn’t installed by default, only vi was available. Not a big problem, except that my muscle memory resulted in a lot of vim: command not found messages. Clearly I had to install vim just to keep my sanity.

Next thing to do was to install X.org and the video driver I need:

# pacman -S xorg xf86-video-intel

After adding hal to /etc/rc.conf I started it manually and I ran startx as non-root. Wow, it all worked perfect, without creating any configuration file for X first. I double checked and it used the driver I wanted, i.e. it didn’t pick a safe default, like vesa, as its first option. Brilliant.

After following the instructions for changing the keyboard layout in X.org using hal I even had my ‘@’ on the right key. (The most confusing thing was that in X.org the UK keyboard layout is called gb, while in the console setup it’s called uk.)

I’ll post a bit more about the setup and configuration of my system as I progress towards my ideal desktop.

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Here’s a solution I found:

1. Modify /usr/share/virtualbox/src/vboxdrv/Makefile, uncomment the line

   # VBOX_USE_INSERT_PAGE = 1
   

2. Recompile the kernel modules:

   # /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
   

Now I only have to find a solution for the second problem that upgrade brought in, deskbar-applet failing to load in the Gnome panel.

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Being somewhat spoiled by the current state of Linux-on-the-desktop (Gnome in my case) I have become used to inserting a blank CD, point Nautilus to burn:///, dragging and dropping a few files into it, and finally clicking the “Burn to CD” button. Works beautifully. Of course I thought that Nautilus’ CD-burning would know about audio CDs. So I dragged a few WAV files into Nautilus and clicked the button. Voilà, a data CD containing a few Wav files! Not really what I wanted.

So, to avoid this in the future here is the command line to use:

wodim -v dev=0,0,0 speed=40 -audio -pad *.wav

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Here’s my take on solving the problem:

module Main where

import Control.Monad
import Data.Char
import System.Directory
import System.Environment
import System.FilePath
import System.IO.HVFS.Utils
import System.Posix.Files

data IFile = IFile
    { iFileIPath :: FilePath
    , iFileIName :: FilePath
    , iFileFull :: FilePath
    } deriving (Show)

toIFile :: FilePath -> IFile
toIFile fp =  IFile path file fp
    where
        path = map toLower $ takeDirectory fp
        file = map toLower $ takeFileName fp

listFilesR :: FilePath -> IO [IFile]
listFilesR path =
    recurseDir SystemFS path >>=
    filterM doesFileExist >>=
    mapM (return . toIFile)

linkFile :: FilePath -> IFile -> IO ()
linkFile dest ifile = do
        createDirectoryIfMissing True newDir
        createLink (iFileFull ifile) newFile
    where
        newDir = normalise $ dest </> (iFileIPath ifile)
        newFile = newDir </> (iFileIName ifile)

main :: IO ()
main = do
    args <- getArgs
    listFilesR (args !! 0) >>= mapM_ (linkFile $ args !! 1)

Yes, this is the code I wrote in Literate Haskell, but I think I’d better not disclose my rant against clueless Windows users publically

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For a shiny new install of 64-bit Debian I chose to let the installer partition up my entire harddisk and instructed it to use LVM. This morning I noticed that the root partition was down to only 25% free space and during an upgrade it ran out of space. Not really a good thing. So, shut down the machine and out with the extra harddisk I’ve been putting off sticking in the machine. Here’s what I did after booting:

1. Create a single large partition and make it of type Linux LVM (8e) using cfdisk.

2. Prepare the new partition for use with LVM:

   # pvcreate /dev/sdb1
   

3. Add the new ‘physical volume’ into the ‘virtual group’:

   # vgextend mainvg /dev/sdb1
   

4. Extend the ‘logical volume’ where root lives:

   # lvextend --extents +50%LV /dev/mainvg/root
   

5. Then it turns out that Ext3 has no problem with extending a mounted filesystem so the last step was easy, but a little nerve wrecking since it was my root partition:

   # resize2fs /dev/mainvg/root
   

All done!

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My now second machine used to be my primary. When it was demoted I left GNOME installed on it since you never know when it might come in handy. Over the last few months I’ve had no use for a GUI on it at all so last Friday I decided to remove GNOME. That got me in trouble because sudo is installed as a dependency of GNOME’s, and it’s marked “automatic” in aptitude. Couple that with my habit of locking the root account and I ended up with a system that I don’t have full access to anymore. Not good!

My immediate thought was to boot a live CD, chroot to the root filesystem of the installed system and unlock the root password. Except the damn box refused to boot from CD. I tried all my live and install CDs, Ubuntu (Breezy and Dapper), Knoppix, STD, Debian install (Woody and Sarge). Nothing worked.

A short search later and I found muLinux. A one-floppy live system that on paper seemed capable of doing what I needed. Now I had another problem, where do I get a floppy nowadays? The system admins downstairs had one they could spare. Good! Next problem—where to find a machine with a floppy drive that I can use to create the floppy?

That’s when it hit me. This plan wasn’t the best one, it just happened to be the first one that popped into my mind. I had been too focused on my first idea to take the time to stop and think of other ways of getting my root account back.

In the end I didn’t need to use a live CD/floppy, I could just use the system already present on the box:

1. Boot straight into bash by sticking init=/bin/bash on the boot line in GRUB
2. Remount the root filesystem, mount -o remount,rw /
3. Unlock the password, passwd -u root

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I was banging my head against code equivalent to the following for quite a few hours:

#define _XOPEN_SOURCE 500
#define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
#include <errno.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>

char buf[1024];

int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    int n;
    off_t off;

    for(n = 0; n < 1024; n++) {
        buf[n] = 'a';
    }

    int fd1;

    if(-1 == (fd1 = open("file1", O_WRONLY | O_CREAT, 0666)))
        error(EXIT_FAILURE, errno, "open (test1)");
    off = 0x80000000;
    printf("size: %d\n", sizeof(off));
    if(pwrite(fd1, buf, 1024, off) != 1024)
        error(EXIT_FAILURE, errno, "pwrite (%lli)", off);

    return(0);
}

Can you spot the problem?

Well, I can tell you it doesn’t work. off_t becomes 64-bit due to the #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64 so the off variable isn’t negative in my code. Somehow however it becomes negative on the way into pwrite, and without a single compiler or linker error at that!

Have you spot the problem yet?

Here’s the correctly working code:

#define _XOPEN_SOURCE 500
#define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
#include <errno.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <unistd.h>

char buf[1024];

int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    int n;
    off_t off;

    for(n = 0; n < 1024; n++) {
        buf[n] = 'a';
    }

    int fd1;

    if(-1 == (fd1 = open("file1", O_WRONLY | O_CREAT, 0666)))
        error(EXIT_FAILURE, errno, "open (test1)");
    off = 0x80000000;
    printf("size: %d\n", sizeof(off));
    if(pwrite(fd1, buf, 1024, off) != 1024)
        error(EXIT_FAILURE, errno, "pwrite (%lli)", off);

    return(0);
}

Don’t see any difference? Look at the list of included files!

Let me just say the C and I aren’t on speaking terms at the moment!

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I like keeping my Debian systems minimal. When running Sid there ends up being quite a few upgrades to download and when dependencies change your system ends up having “orphaned” packages, i.e. packages that were pulled in to satisfy a dependency but by now the dependent package has since moved on (or been deleted). This is of course a worrying thought, packages are installed that don’t actually need to be present on the system. My stomach’s turning. Some people use aptitude to handle this, personally I’ve never really like aptitude and I use debfoster.

Yesterday, after a sizable upgrade of my system at work I ran debfoster to prune orphaned packages. This was in fact the first time I ran it after setting up the system which resulted in quite a few questions regarding whether to keep specific packages or not. This is about the time when my brain popped out for a coffee. When asked if I wanted to keep lvm2 or not there was no brain to consult and I answered no. Had the brain been around it would have reminded me that I opted to use logical volumes on that particular machine (for two reasons, 1) I had never done it before and it’s damn cool, and 2) it makes the system a bit more flexible and future proof).

After a reboot I was sitting there with a system that was fairly useless since the root partition couldn’t be mounted. A quick calculation of just how long it’d take me to re-install later, I popped in the only live CD I had available at work–Ubuntu 5.04, Hoary Hedgehog. Using that I found a page on the Knoppix Wiki on how to use LVM2 with Knoppix. Now armed with something that looked like a workable plan I did the following in a terminal

$ sudo su -
# modprobe dm-mod
# vgscan
# vgchange -a y
# cd /mnt; mkdir debsys

Then I went ahead and mounted the root partition on /mnt/debsys. I also mounted the other partitions I have on my installed system, /var, etc. Then to get into it and fix it I

# chroot /debsys
# apt-get install lvm2 lvm-common

Except lvm2 refused to install, it complained about the kernel being too old. Not surprising since Hoary is getting really old by now. to get around that I downloaded the source for lvm2, modified debian/preinst so that the kernel version check was skipped, re-built the package, and installed it. Worked like a charm.

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I have to admit that their releasing VMWare Server is surprising, and since it allows creation of new images it makes the limitation of VMWare Player rather strange. Well, I’m not complaining. I’ve finally been able to purge Windows from my desk. From today on all my Windows boxen will be VMWare images accessed from my Linux machine. Brilliant. Thank you VMWare!

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Might Be Just Right

by Doc Searls

At LinuxWorld in Boston earlier this year, I got together with an old Swedish friend. She’s a nurse, not a technologist, but she was curious about my work and the conference that brought me to town. Somewhere in the midst of my explanation of Linux and its virtues, she said, “Ah, Linux is lagom”. She explained that lagom is a Swedish term that conveys a sense of balance, proportion and appropriateness. “Not too much, not too little…just right.”

When I told her that Linus Torvalds’ first language and surname were both Swedish, she said, “Well of course. There you go.” (I’m half-Swedish myself, though I’m not sure that matters.)

So I put the question “Is Linux logom?” to The Man Himself in an e-mail. He debugged my spelling and declined to commit:

Lagom, with an “a”.

And yes, it means “just right”, in the sense of “not too much, not too little”. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom

Then he added, in a following e-mail:

They still end up confusing “lagom” with finding the “optimal” amount. That’s pretty much missing the point. It’s not that something is “lagom” because it’s the best possible or “optimal”. Quite the reverse. Something being “lagom” very much involves not caring too much about what the optimal amount even is. Or possibly questions where “optimal” simply doesn’t make sense.

So I began checking other sources. The best I found was from “In Other Words”, published in AskOxford, published by the Oxford English Dictionary (www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/wordfrom/otherwords). It lists lagom among a handful of “the most insightful, intriguing, and satisfying expressions on the planet-for which there are no English equivalents”. It says:

Swedish commentator Dr Bengt Gustavsson argued that the lagom mentality can be seen as the trait that gives Swedish society its characteristic stability and yet an openness to external influences. The word alludes subconsciously to the avoidance of both conspicuous success and humiliating failure, which is deeply ingrained in the Swedish psyche. It is the inclination among Swedes to shun ostentation, accept modest rewards, be good team players-to fly beneath the radar.

Beneath the Radar was also the title of Bob Young’s book about starting and guiding Red Hat to success. Coincidence?

Perhaps characteristically, Linus adds these final words to the matter: “but whether that applies to Linux I have no idea.”

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So far Arch has proven to be a nice, well designed system with a lean feel to it. Being used to Debian (lately Ubuntu) and its extreme attention to detail, Arch does give a more rough impression. It’s a price I think is worth paying, and believe me, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I’ve spent about 2 hours getting the base system, postfix, X.org, and GNOME installed and configured properly. A few small details remain, but I would have to attend to those no matter what distro I choose (getting HAL to refrain from mounting one of the partitions on my USB stick isn’t something that comes pre-configured in any distro I know of ).

The only thing left doing now is building proper Arch packages for muttng and keysafe.

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drive d: file="/dev/sdb1"

After this I can use mlabel to set the label of the partition:

mlabel d:MyLabel

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My first impression wasn’t too good. I tried running it on Linux first (preferred platform for work/play/goofing around, yes anything) but installation failed miserably. The zip-file containing JDK1.5 only contains Java for Windows. Luckily I have Sun’s JDK1.5 on my Ubuntu machine already so I switched to using the StandAlone version. Now began the fun. There are numerous problems with the shell-scripts:

• they are not executable
• they have DOS line-endings
• the main setup script has a wacky reference to JAVA_HOME
• all files are read-only (not only the scripts, but all files)

So, after a call to ‘chmod’ to make everything writable, a few calls to dos2unix and chmod +x on the script files, a quick edit of webgoat.sh to set JAVA_HOME to something sane I thought I’d be off. Oh, no! Running webgoat.sh results in nothing. netstat -lpt reveals there is some java app listening on port 8005, but pointing my browser to it results in nothing. The total lack of documentation on how to use it didn’t help in my frustration.

After browsing the WebGoat Archives I turned off my Apache2 to free up port 80. Rerun webgost.sh, still nothing!

Some more browsing the archives revelead that I’m not only one having problems running WebGoat on Linux , the answer wasn’t too encouraging. I decided to try my luck on (yuck) Windows. Unzip, run the bat-file, point a browser to http://localhost/. Wow, worked perfectly!

Ok, on to the next problem, where are the lessons? Again, bitten by the lack of documentation it seems. Well, the archive has been saving me before… Again, I’m not the only one having problems the answer was there as well:

http://localhost/WebGoat/attack
Username: guest
Password: guest

Worked again, and now I can start taking the lessons. Not a great start, but after this bumpy ride I got to the destination. I do hope the WebGoat developers improve on the Linux support and documentation though!

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First I need to say that of course he is right. You don’t get to run the OpenBSD project without knowing what you talk about most of the time. The only problem, from my point of view, is that he’s evaluating OpenBSD from an administrator’s point of view.

I’ll address a few of the points where I think he’s overly negative about Linux and I’ll end with a few of my own points.

Linux developers are the slaves of corporations

Well, of course he’s right, but I think TdR would agree that they are in good company. Especially if one considers the bigger picture. The kernel on its own is useless piece of code without the rest of software that makes up a useful Linux system. That software is largely shared with *BSD, and several large pieces in there are supported by corporations, GNOME, Qt (the GUI toolkit used in KDE), GCC, Apache… The list goes on and on. All of these things are available on *BSD as well, and they make those OSs usable as well.

Linux is of lower quality than *BSD

He’s probably right. The *BSD maintainers are well-known for being demanding when it comes to what code makes it into the kernel. The problem with Linux adopting a similar style is that it’d reduce the momentum that Linux enjoys at the moment, without that momentum Linux would become less popular. It’d probably lead to several kernel developers moving onto some other OS project where they have a chance of getting there code in. Linus has a hard job balancing quality and speed of implementation, so far he’s been doing a good job. Sure, a few patches have been merged that should have been left out, but so far the Linux community has reacted fast enough to avoid disaster.

TdR also forgets to point out a crucial difference between *BSD and Linux. All of the *BSDs are both a kernel and a distribution. In the case of Linux there is a separation between kernel and distributions, for good and for bad. What it does allow is a more relaxed attitude with the kernel. There’s more freedom since some of the work is shifted to others. In this case it works in favour of Linux, even though it works against it in other situations.

Linux is getting to be as bloated as Windows

Yes. I can’t argue with that. It’s getting big, yes, but Windows’ biggest problem–the backwards-compatability requirement–is not weighing Linux down at all. Entire subsystems have been replaced with better solutions, and the old code is being phased out. I don’t believe Microsoft has ever done that.

“Linux people do what they do because they hate Windows.”

He continues: “We do it becuase we love Unix.”

“All generalisations are evil!”

I wonder if TdR hasn’t been reading too many Linux vs. Windows postings on /.. It’s just such a silly statement!

My points

I recently bought a Toshiba laptop. I installed Ubuntu on it, and almost everything worked on it right away. I needed to tweak a few things, install a few more packages to get it to the point where Linux was a replacement for Windows (functionality-wise I mean, I wasn’t even considering running Windows as my main OS on it). Could I have done it with *BSD? Maybe! I don’t know. Looking at *BSDs laptop pages suggest some success with installing them on laptops. My particular model is not mentioned anywhere–there are two pages, besides my own, on running Linux on it. I am absolutely sure I would have to spend a considerable amount of time configuring a *BSD system on it if I got it to install successfully.

That is the kind of experience a modern OS has to offer in order to attract regular users today. AFACS *BSD doesn’t offer it! As long as they don’t they will be satisfied with being second to Linux in most user’s eyes. Administrators, or power users, are a different matter.

It might even be that TdR should be thankful for Linux. User-friendly Linux distributions are attracting much attention from people today. Chances are many of them will be bitten by Unix bug and then they might be moving onto *BSD for their server needs. When I buy a server for home use I know I’ll be putting OpenBSD on it.

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