Saturday, 30 July, 2016

Enabling Wifi QCA9377 on a Asus E200HA

By Jose M Calhariz on Saturday, 30 July, 2016, 17:30 - Hardware

I bought a new laptop E200HA, because my previous was a MacBook and It broke after a fall into the ground.

I let it boot first in Win10 to check if everything was OK and because I could not found the way to enter in the UEFI/BIOS. It is F2 and is edge triggered. It boots fast into Win10, but I got the feeling of being a little slow. No worries because I it bought for running Debian and because of the autonomy of the battery, 14hours playing music according to Asus. A little research if the new laptop could run Linux almost return no hits, but one very valuable link on how to setup the Wifi. So I got the feeling that I needed a Debian stretch CD for installation. So I download the first installation DVD from here. Run a trial of the DVD image using kvm

kvm -m 2047 -cdrom debian-stretch-DI-alpha7-amd64-DVD-1.iso

Found that the installer DVD now have the functionality of Live CD. This will be useful. Copy the image to a USB stick using dd command.

I turned on the E200HA, entered into the UEFI/BIOS by pressing and releasing the F2 key. Turned off the secure boot and select USB storage for boot. The E200HA happily boot the Linux and I select the rescue mode. Using another USB stick of 32GB that was formatted in xfs, because of the lower slack for storing the inodes than ext3/4. In this USB stick I put a raw image of the internal storage of the E200HA, preserving this way the Win10.

Another reboot, this time for installation of Debian stretch. It detected the lack of firmware files, for the WiFi adaptor. This link come very handy. The instructions are for an older Linux kernel. So I recommend doing something similar to the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/ajaybhatia/Qualcomm-Atheros-QCA9377-Wifi-Linux
cd Qualcomm-Atheros-QCA9377-Wifi-Linux/firmware-only
tar cvf QCA9377.tar QCA9377

Copy the tar file to a a second USB stick and connect it to the other USB port. This tar is not the files the Debian installer are expecting, so you need to change to the second console "Alt-F2", press enter to activate a shell, and do the following commands:

cd /lib/firmware
mkdir ath10k
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
cd ath10k
tar xf /mnt/QCA9377.tar

Return to the first console "Alt-F1" and continue with the installation. The list of missing firmware files is reduced and the WiFi can work. I had problems with the WiFI, but was because a neighbor router was on the same channel, since I changed the channel of my router the WiFi is working as a charm.

The following links maybe useful in the future or as a reference:

kvalo/ath10k-firmware

kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git

Tuesday, 28 June, 2016

at daemon 3.1.20, with 3 fixes

By Jose M Calhariz on Tuesday, 28 June, 2016, 22:14 - Software

From the Debian BUG system I incorporated 3 fixes. One of them is experimental. It fixes a broken code but may have side effects. Please test it.

  • New release 3.1.20:
   * Add option b to getopt, (Closes: #812972).
   * Comment a possible broken code, (Closes: #818508).
   * Add a fflush to catch more errors during writes, (Closes: #801186).

You may download from here at_3.1.20.orig.tar.gz.

Sunday, 20 March, 2016

at daemon, now with proper support for --without-selinux

By Jose M Calhariz on Sunday, 20 March, 2016, 20:03 - Software

Thanks to Wenzong Fan, now the configure flag --without-selinux works properly.

So here is a new release at 3.1.19.

Please test it.

Thursday, 11 February, 2016

Preview of amanda 3.3.8-1, second try.

By Jose M Calhariz on Thursday, 11 February, 2016, 18:13 - Software

I found a bug in amanda-3.3.8 that was quickly fixed by upstream. Please upgrade to this version.

The updates will go to collab-maint.The debs files for jessie are here:

amanda-common_3.3.8-1_cal1_i386.deb

amanda-server_3.3.8-1_cal1_i386.deb

amanda-client_3.3.8-1_cal1_i386.deb

Here comes the changelog:

amanda (1:3.3.8-1~cal1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New Upstream version
    * Changes for 3.3.8
      * s3 devices
          New NEARLINE S3-STORAGE-CLASS for Google storage.
          New AWS4 STORAGE-API
      * amcryptsimple
          Works with newer gpg2.
      * amgtar
          Default SPARSE value is NO if tar < 1.28.
          Because a bug in tar with some filesystem.
      * amstar
          support include in backup mode.
      * ampgsql
          Add FULL-WAL property.
      * Many bugs fix.
    * Changes for 3.3.7p1
      * Fix build in 3.3.7
    * Changes for 3.3.7
      * amvault
          new --no-interactivity argument.
          new --src-labelstr argument.
      * amdump
          compute crc32 of the streams and write them to the debug files.
      * chg-robot
          Add a BROKEN-DRIVE-LOADED-SLOT property.
      * Many bugs fix.
  * Refreshed patches.
  * Dropped patches that were applied by the upstream: fix-misc-typos,
    automake-add-missing, fix-amcheck-M.patch,
    fix-device-src_rait-device.c, fix-amreport-perl_Amanda_Report_human.pm
  * Change the email of the maintainer.
  * "wrap-and-sort -at" all control files.
  * swig is a new build depend.
  * Bump standard version to 3.9.6, no changes needed.
  * Replace deprecated dependency perl5 by perl, (Closes: #808209), thank
    you Gregor Herrmann for the NMU.
  * New patch fix-amgtar-exclude to fix amgtar when the exclude file don't
    exist.

 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose@calhariz.com>  Thu, 11 Feb 2016 17:52:08 +0000

Tuesday, 9 February, 2016

A Selection of Talks from FOSDEM 2016

By Jose M Calhariz on Tuesday, 9 February, 2016, 19:23 - Conference

It's that time of the year where I go to FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting). The keynotes and the maintracks are very good, with good presentations and contents.

It's very dificult to choose what talks to see, what talks to see later in video and what talks to loose. What I leave here is my selection of talks. This selection is representative of my tastes, not of the quality of the presentations. I will give links for material that is available now. I will do periodic updates when the new material is available: video or slides.

Friday, 5 February, 2016

Preview of amanda 3.3.8-1

By Jose M Calhariz on Friday, 5 February, 2016, 19:49 - Software

While I sort out a sponsor, my sponsor is very busy, here is a preview of the new packages. So anyone can install and test them on jessie.

The source of the packages is in collab-maint.The debs files for jessie are here:

amanda-common_3.3.8-1_cal0_i386.deb

amanda-server_3.3.8-1_cal0_i386.deb

amanda-client_3.3.8-1_cal0_i386.deb

Here comes the changelog:

amanda (1:3.3.8-1~cal0) unstable; urgency=low

  * New Upstream version
    * Changes for 3.3.8
      * s3 devices
          New NEARLINE S3-STORAGE-CLASS for Google storage.
          New AWS4 STORAGE-API
      * amcryptsimple
          Works with newer gpg2.
      * amgtar
          Default SPARSE value is NO if tar < 1.28.
          Because a bug in tar with some filesystem.
      * amstar
          support include in backup mode.
      * ampgsql
          Add FULL-WAL property.
      * Many bugs fix.
    * Changes for 3.3.7p1
      * Fix build in 3.3.7
    * Changes for 3.3.7
      * amvault
          new --no-interactivity argument.
          new --src-labelstr argument.
      * amdump
          compute crc32 of the streams and write them to the debug files.
      * chg-robot
          Add a BROKEN-DRIVE-LOADED-SLOT property.
      * Many bugs fix.
  * Refreshed patches.
  * Dropped patches that were applied by the upstream: fix-misc-typos,
    automake-add-missing, fix-amcheck-M.patch,
    fix-device-src_rait-device.c, fix-amreport-perl_Amanda_Report_human.pm
  * Change the email of the maintainer.
  * "wrap-and-sort -at" all control files.
  * swig is a new build depend.
  * Bump standard version to 3.9.6, no changes needed.
  * Replace deprecated dependency perl5 by perl, (Closes: #808209), thank
    you Gregor Herrmann for the NMU.

 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose@calhariz.com>  Tue, 02 Feb 2016 19:56:12 +0000

Tuesday, 29 December, 2015

Preview of switchconf 0.0.15-1

By Jose M Calhariz on Tuesday, 29 December, 2015, 21:04 - Software

Since the last version 0.0.9 on Debian, I have made some changes until version 0.0.14. The version 0.0.15 is only to include a fix for the new findutils. I thank you to Andreas Metzler for the fix and the prompt NMU.

The files are here, take notice about the replaced ~ in the original by _:

switchconf_0.0.15.orig.tar.xz switchconf_0.0.15-1_wip1.debian.tar.xz switchconf_0.0.15-1_wip1_all.deb

If you need the dsc file, just ask me.

Here comes the changelog since 0.0.9, without the lastest NMU:

switchconf (0.0.15-1~wip1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low

  * New upstream version:
    * Replace 'find -perm +1' by 'find -perm /1', thank you Andreas
      Metzler for the patch and the NMU.
  * Add systemd service file, thank you Felipe Sateler for reviewing it.
  * Bump standards-version to 3.9.6, no changes needed.
  * New maintainer email address.

 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose@calhariz.com>  Tue, 29 Dec 2015 19:59:07 +0000

switchconf (0.0.14-1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low

  * Force the use of bash, instead of a POSIX shell.

 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 24 Aug 2014 04:37:04 +0100

switchconf (0.0.13-2) UNRELEASED; urgency=low

  * Add Homepage field pointing to alioth page of the project

 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 02 Mar 2014 18:01:07 +0000

switchconf (0.0.13-1) wheezy; urgency=low

  * New upstream version:
    * Distribution tar is now compressed by xz
  * Change to source format 3.0 (quilt)

 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 02 Mar 2014 15:56:31 +0000

switchconf (0.0.12-1) wheezy; urgency=low

  * Fixed some typos on switchconf

 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 02 Mar 2014 15:39:09 +0000

switchconf (0.0.11-1) wheezy; urgency=low

  * New upstream version:
    * Makefile: add target dist-exp to build distribution files.
    * Add flag -f with the path to the configuration file.
  * Update debian/rules to version 0.24.
  * Update debian/control with new name and email address of Maintainer.
  * Update copyright.

 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Sun, 16 Feb 2014 18:04:22 +0000

switchconf (0.0.10-1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low

  * New upstream version:
    * Fix return code on error.
    * Use syslog system to report errors.

 -- Jose M Calhariz <jose.calhariz@ist.utl.pt>  Thu, 16 Jan 2014 20:23:46 +0000

Sunday, 20 December, 2015

Preview of amanda 3.3.7p1-1

By Jose M Calhariz on Sunday, 20 December, 2015, 15:23 - Software

Currently, as of today, amanda on sid is not installable because of a dependency on perl5 instead of perl. While I sort out a sponsor, my sponsor is very busy, here is a preview of the new packages. So anyone can install and test them and work around bug #808209.

The source of the packages is in collab-maint. The debs files are here:

Sunday, 13 December, 2015

at daemon now with SELinux support

By Jose M Calhariz on Sunday, 13 December, 2015, 18:24 - Software

Thanks to the work of Laurent Bigonville, now the at daemon have SELinux support.

So here is a new release at 3.1.18.

Please test it.

Sunday, 6 December, 2015

Taking over the development of at daemon.

By Jose M Calhariz on Sunday, 6 December, 2015, 16:09

I decided some time ago to take over the development of at daemon.

Here is a new release of at v3.1.17

From the Changelog:

at 3.1.17 (2015-08-31):

  Jose M Calhariz:
        at.1.in: Document behaviour when using past time, thanks Kelly Price (Closes: #639900).
        Makefile.in: On distclean remove at.allow.5, auto generated file.

Saturday, 5 September, 2015

Problems with UEFI?

By Jose M Calhariz on Saturday, 5 September, 2015, 16:49 - Hardware

Do you have problems with UEFI? Take a look into this page

Sunday, 30 August, 2015

Preview of switchconf 0.0.14-2 in Debian

By Jose M Calhariz on Sunday, 30 August, 2015, 16:50 - Software

There was a long time since I published the last version of switchconf.

This time someone requested that I add support for systemd by adding a service file. This service file does not make switchconf depend on systemd. It will still work with svs init scripts.

As my knowledge of systemd is minimal, please review my changes.

To download use the following entries:

switchconf_0.0.14-2_wip4_all.deb

switchconf_0.0.14-2_wip4.debian.tar.xz

switchconf_0.0.14-2_wip4.dsc

switchconf_0.0.14-2_wip4_amd64.changes

switchconf_0.0.14.orig.tar.xz

Tuesday, 28 April, 2015

Locking in Linux Systems

By Jose M Calhariz on Tuesday, 28 April, 2015, 15:13 - Software

Some notes on locking.

flock (1) (2)

lockfile (1)

Do not put the PID inside the lock file.

mutt_dotlock (1)

lockfile_create (3)

maillock (1) lockfile-create lockfile-remove lockfile-touch lockfile-check

lockfile-create --use-pid -r 0 file ; echo $?

lockfile-remove file

if ! lockfile-create --use-pid -r 0 file ; then echo no lock ; else echo lock ; fi

Tuesday, 27 January, 2015

A Selection of Talks from FOSDEM 2015

By Jose M Calhariz on Tuesday, 27 January, 2015, 13:26 - Conference

It's that time of the year where I go to FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting). The keynotes and the maintracks are very good, with good presentations and contents.

It's very dificult to choose what talks to see, what talks to see later in video and what talks to loose. What I leave here is my selection of talks. This selection is representative of my tastes, not of the quality of the presentations. I will give links for material that is available now. I will do periodic updates when the new material is available: video or slides.

Saturday, 30 August, 2014

A Selection of Talks from DebConf14.

By Jose M Calhariz on Saturday, 30 August, 2014, 01:34 - Conference

This year I came to DebConf14. It's the anual conference of Debian. It's an interesting conference where the people get together to talk and hack about Debian. This year have the big bonus of a Q&A from Linus Torvalds.

Here is a selection of talks from DebConf14.

  Video

  Video

  Video

  Video

  Video

  Video

  Video

Sunday, 24 August, 2014

Published switchconf v 0.0.14

By Jose M Calhariz on Sunday, 24 August, 2014, 17:42 - Software

I have published a new version of switchconf, v0.0.14.

Can be downloaded from switchconf_0.0.14.orig.tar.xz

This is the relevant part from the Changelog.

 * Force the use of bash, instead of a POSIX shell.

Friday, 21 March, 2014

Align LVM PV with SSD erase blocks

By Jose M Calhariz on Friday, 21 March, 2014, 16:59

I found this article from Theodore Ts'o, interesting.

Sunday, 2 March, 2014

Published switchconf v 0.0.13

By Jose M Calhariz on Sunday, 2 March, 2014, 17:56 - Software

I have published a new version of switchconf.

There are a number of changes since the previous public release 0.0.9 that I have to thank to John Halam. He sent me a big patch with a lots of new features that I am integrating one by one.

You may download switchconf from here.

Saturday, 1 February, 2014

Collect and keeps up to date the system information using sysinfoupdate

By Jose M Calhariz on Saturday, 1 February, 2014, 19:50 - Software

In 2005 I was looking for ways to auto collect information about a Linux server. The information was to be used in case of bare bones recovery. I didn't found a satisfactory program so I created one, sysinfoupdate. This program have been growing long this years and now is a system that helps to maintain a diary of a Linux Installation. The diary records all the important changes the sysadmin does to the system. This records can be used during recovery after a broken hardware or to detect what change may be causing a malfunction, for example.

It's use is very simple, create a diario directory in your home directory, for example /root/diario, and then run sysinfoupdate. Inside diario you will find a group files with textual information about your system. It works best if you run it as superuser and you keep track of the changes under a version control system, like subversion or git.

You can download the Debian package here or download the source from here.

A Selection of Talks from FOSDEM 2014.

By Jose M Calhariz on Saturday, 1 February, 2014, 19:29 - Conference

It's that time of the year where I go to FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting). The keynotes and the maintracks are very good, with good presentations and contents.

It is a big conference and this year, is not an exception. With 445 speakers and 512 talks at 22 rooms in only two days. It's impossible to see all the presentations. This year all the rooms have a video camcorder.

It's very dificult to choose what talks to see, what talks to see later in video and what talks to loose. What I leave here is my selection of talks. This selection is representative of my tastes, not of the quality of the presentations. I will give links for material that is available now. I will do periodic updates when the new material is available: video or slides.

  video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

       Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

   Video

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