Debian is missing a tool, want to write it?

Seeing this piece in the news, about how Debian-Multimedia.org is now unsafe, I was reminded we don't have a tool to manipulate sources.lists entries.

For example:

$ apt-sources list
..
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
..

How about listing only my repos?

$ apt-sources list steve.org.uk
deb-src http://packages.steve.org.uk/firefox-wrapper/squeeze/ ./
deb     http://packages.steve.org.uk/firefox-wrapper/squeeze/ ./
deb     http://packages.steve.org.uk/meta/squeeze/ ./
deb-src http://packages.steve.org.uk/meta/squeeze/ ./
deb-src http://packages.steve.org.uk/minidlna/squeeze/ ./
deb     http://packages.steve.org.uk/minidlna/squeeze/ ./

Now add in a command to delete lines matching a given pattern:

# apt-sources delete debian-multimedia.org

Doesn't that seem like a tool that should exist?

I've added this quick hack to this repository which you can submit pull requests against, or use as a base.

TODO: Write the "add" handler. Neaten.

Ever felt jealous that Ubuntu users can add PPAs? Nows your chance to do something like this:

# apt-sources add "deb http://packages.steve.org.uk/lumail/wheezy/ ./"

Syndicated 2013-06-14 05:04:29 from Steve Kemp's Blog

Migrations and changes

So I'd previously talked about migrating machines. From having one virtual machine running "mail" + "web" + "stuff" I've now got three hosts:

ssh.steve.org.uk

This is supposed to be used solely for shell access, email reading, IRC.

Sadly it still hosts one website, the web interface to my Mercurial repositories. This can't be moved without moving the repositories which is a step too far. Although I don't particularly want people browsing my code/changes I do want them to be able to clone them. If I could get anonymous-SSH checkouts working, sanely, then I'd be happy, but I don't see how to do that.

skx-web

This hosts all my websites except for two.

The two that are excluded are my mercurial repositories, which still lives on ssh.steve.org.uk, and my blogspam service.

blogspam

This runs my blogspam.net service.

I wish I could retired this, since it uses cruftly XML::RPC. I'd rather see a RESTful application sending/receiving JSON.

Sadly I can't kill it without annoying a lot of people. So it must remain.

I chose to add the blogspam guest, because that service does really take over an IP, and it just seemed simplest to move it to one machine. As a quick hack both http://repository.steve.org.uk & http://blogspam.net/ run under Apache. Although the other websites run under their own UID with thttpd + my proxy.

Now time to change the subject entirely. I've recently joined gym. Which isn't as horrible as I thought it might be, though as a matter of policy I refuse to go on any of those fancy running/jogging machines.

The first three weeks I just alternated between the cycling machines and the rowing machines. Initially ten minutes on each, then twenty, then thirty.

Now I'm being all brave and adventurous, using new machines and pieces of equipment.

Writing this I've got a dull ache in both my arms, after doing seated-dips with 100Lbs. So I guess I'm starting to make progress.

No specific goals in mind, but I've been paying slightly more attention to my diet over the past month and I think if I'm a "little fitter" and have "slightly nicer arms" then I'll be happy enough.

I've no desire to go all anal and count calories, or give up chocolate and beer. So it is almost hard to explain why I'm going, but .. it is fun, and watching the numbers change is fun too.

I'll probably post more about this in the future.

Syndicated 2013-06-11 13:44:47 from Steve Kemp's Blog

Migrations and movements

Recently I wanted to cleanup my "main" remote machine. It is a system I've had for many years, which started off as a i386 KVM-guest and was later migrated in place to an AMD64 installation.

These days the host runs:

• Mail for many domains, via QPSMTPD and ms-lite.
• Website hosting for many domains. Each site running under a dedicated per-UID thttpd instance, behind a node reverse proxy.
• IRC for kirsi.

The plan was originally to move the "mail stuff" to a new (wheezy) guest. I aborted that after discovering that the mutt-patched package has (IMHO) regressed.

So today I spun up a new virtual machine, and configured it to host websites.

Thus far I've migrated steve.org.uk, and lumail.org to the new host. Both simple sites that are built via my static-site-generator. Migration mostly involved configuring the proxy and the thttpd instances - then using rsync to migrate the content.

I've renamed my current host, which was previously www.steve.org.uk and is now ssh.steve.org.uk, and pushed DNS changes.

If all is smooth and happy I'll slowly migrate the rest of the sites. Fingers crossed this will be painless and I'll have a clean split between "login + mail" and "websites".

Syndicated 2013-06-08 14:11:34 from Steve Kemp's Blog

How do people deal with email?

As part of writing a new mail client I'm wondering about how to change my email-life, and how other people process/handle their incoming email.

I sort my incoming email into folders at delivery-time using procmail. Mail is generally filtered into mailboxes on the basis of the company that sent it, the person that sent it, or the machine which generated it.

Because I manage a lot of machines personally I've split things up so that I have a folder per host. So on a morning I might have unread mail in the following folders:

machines.steve.org.uk/
machines.da-db1/
machines.da-db2/
machines.da-web1/
machines.da-web2/
machines.da-web3/
machines.da-web4/

The per-machine mailboxes usually contain a single mail every day from LogWatch, along with output from any cron-jobs. For example today I received the mail:

From: Cron Daemon
To: steve@steve.org.uk
Subject: Cron steve@steve.org.uk /home/steve/bin/download-check

URL http://nodejs.org/ - no longer matches v0.10.9

Generally speaking I don't need to read the per-machine messages. I'll keep the most recent 100 for reference, but only need to look if something seems "off" on a machine. But if I don't look I'd not see the node upgrade notice, so find that I do read them after all.

This suggest to me that email isn't the right way to handle this kind of thing. Instead I should use a notification system - at work we have a central service called MauveAlert (yes, Red Dwarf reference). Mauve receives "alerts" of various kinds, via UDP. The alerts are then fanned out to appropriate people via XMPP, Email, or SMSs.

I have a similarly-inspired system I use on my Debian Administration cluster. A (node) service runs non-stop collecting UDP messages and showing them on a dashboard. I look at it throughout the day to see when slaughter runs, etc.

Anyway in conslusion I get a lot of mail. Some of it is related to random projects, and all ends up in the steve.org.uk/ mailbox, some of it relates to machines, and gets filed away, and I have regular conversions with folk so I have a .people.kirsi/ folder which receives a lot of attention, for example.

ObRandom:daily() - Mark ~/Maildir/.machines.*, etc, read.

Syndicated 2013-06-05 10:58:58 from Steve Kemp's Blog

Minimalism still works out

When people ask me why I chose to embed Lua in my mail-client I'll point to my on_idle() documentation.

Moving from a callback which runs once every second, or so, to allowing the user to schedule tasks on arbitrary boundaries is pretty cool - and obviously requires no explicit support from myself.

Now I've fixed a couple of bugs which went unspotted/unreported in the first release I'm ready for a new one "soon".

In the meantime I'm running the client exclusively, and loving the ability to view all unread mail, only, regardless of the parent folder.

Syndicated 2013-06-04 05:12:26 (Updated 2013-06-04 06:21:37) from Steve Kemp's Blog