Older blog entries for Joy (starting at number 3)

The new web server, klecker.debian.org, is online! I've coordinated the move to it (Jay is still somewhere travelling :), thanks to the admins (all of them helped in one way or another) it's all fine now. We have also moved the Packages/ part of the web pages to packages.debian.org, and lintian/ part to lintian.debian.org, and are pondering about rebuilding+mirroring the site every four hours (now it's done every eight).

The doc/bug-* docs on the FTP site should be regenerating regularly from now on, along with README.mirrors.* files, thanks to some cooperation from Omnic. Now we only need to work out the situation with lists.cfg file, so that mailing-lists.txt and {,un}subscribe.wml can be regenerated easily.

I've been fixing the main mirrors list, too, since lots of cruft had accumulated in there. The cleaning is far from over, unfortunately, because we have a whole shitload of mirrors all over the world. :) I wish I could say that for my country -- there's only one Debian mirror here :/

The larger BTS problems were fixed by removing some gecko's hacks. He might be back in action soon, so a new debbugs package might see the day soon.

The lully situation still isn't fixed. :/ TLS people, if you're reading, please take care of it ASAP.

Perhaps it's time I make another diary entry ;) considering how much stuff happened since the last time I wrote a diary entry here.

I became a more active member of the Debian web staff. I've been doing some bits of Perl to fix up our scripts for handling translations on the web pages, done some nice Makefile hackery to enhance the web pages build system, along with the usual updates to the web pages, in English and Croatian. I also helped the web lists archives get back on its feet, but in with a new internal setup, which enables several people to work on it. On related note, va.d.o, the host previously serving as www.debian.org and cvs.debian.org, died, so we had to move those services around. Hopefully it comes back soon, with a shiny new hardware and a better name - espy.debian.org I hope.

Although, since my upstream ISP got its bandwidth to most of Europe and USA fixed, moving to slower hosts didn't make much difference. I even uploaded some packages to samosa.d.o upload queue at >3kbps! :)

I also fixed a few small bugs in the BTS and went over its bug report list at bugs.debian.org/bugs.debian.org (heh) to close the already fixed items -- it turns out there were quite a few of them, and also several duplicates. I also snatched the honour of closing some very old reports, even dating back to 1997. Unfortunately, we have had some a brand new fsckups in the BTS, some of which are still not fixed... :(

Thanks to a glorious effort by m2 (Marcelo Magallon, can't find his account on advogato) we also moved the WNPP to the BTS wnpp pseudo-package entry, which makes it more dynamic and we hope more up-to-date. m2 also made scripts for some pretty looking indices, discussed a set of rules for filing wnpp bugs, and announced it all on -devel-announce. See the new WNPP web pages for more information.

Debian got praise from LWN about its organizational structure and the democratic system of making decisions. It turns out our `benevolent dictatorship' (according to joeyh, IIRC) isn't so bad after all :o) Sometimes it's annoying to make sure each and every little procedure is followed, but I guess that's the price you have to pay.

BTW it seems my patches for dselect help screen may get in sooner than I expected. All hail wiggy! :)

Oh yeah, in case you wondered how to reach me -- e-mail is joy (at) debian.org (address mangled to avoid spam, i get enough of it already on other addresses), you can see lots of my posts (in Croatian, though) in hr.comp.linux, and often find me logged into Openprojects IRC network as Joy.

BTW Netscape is really slow on this machine. Sucks. Whereas links, for instance, rules. Oh well. Enough ranting. :)

Oh well, I guess it's time to put some diary stuff in this nice little <textarea>. :)

Ask not what the BTS can do for you...

The amount of crap people can fill into a bug tracking system is unbelieveable. I spent a couple of hours today figuring out what do all those bug reports filed against packages like "cd-rom" or "base.tgz" mean, and where they should be reassigned to. It makes me want to... drink some Sprite. :| Plus, my bandwidth to our BTS server sucks.

And finally, after I got tired and sent the message to control@bugs, the kernel maintainer flamed me because of reassigning some 15 bugs regarding older kernel-related packages versions of which have changed already. We should definitely make more pseudo packages, such as "kernel-image-alpha", "kernel-image-powerpc", "kernel-image-idepci" etc.

Yesterday I uploaded XMMS 1.2.0. Two minutes after that people told me there was a 1.2.1 in preparation because of some screwup upstream. Great. Another 1.5MB tarball to download, package and upload, over my beautifully slow bandwidth. Gar.

I also made a kinda-security upload of xinetd after xmms, it fixes an ugly bug causing the site access rules not to be respected when it comes to hosts without a PTR. Yuck. What is even more "Yuck" is that the upload is stuck in incoming until the test cycle ends. Oh well. I'll have to nag aj (acting as the release manager while dark's away) to include it.

Which reminds me... before next test cycle start, I oughta translate the Release Notes. Or bug Matej to do it. :o) The installation manual is `finito', thank goodness.

Now, let's get back to the Sprite. Or, considering it's almost 3AM, to bed.

I just created my account. And spent an hour or so certifying other people.

Yeah, I'm really bored. :)