Tony's Diary

Experiments in Fedora 0x01

Tue, 27 May 2008 17:23:00

Running your own local yum repo isn't all that hard as it turns out.

Allow building as a non-root user.
1. Make some important directories. I only care about powerpc packages, so I make the ppc and ppc64 directories, clearly if you use another architecture you should change that ;P
```
mkdir -p /home/user/rpmbuild/fedora/{BUILD,SOURCES,SPECS,SRPMS,tmp,RPMS/{noarch,ppc,ppc64}}
```
2. Now create a ~/.rpmmacros file. To use those directories you just created.
```
%_topdir        /home/user/rpmbuild/fedora/
%_builddir      %{_topdir}/BUILD
%_rpmdir        %{_topdir}/RPMS
%_specdir       %{_topdir}/SPECS
%_srcrpmdir     %{_topdir}/SRPMS
%_sourcedir     %{_topdir}/SOURCES/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}
%_tmppath       %{_topdir}/tmp
%_buildroot     %{_topdir}/%{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-root
%packager       user@example.com
```
  With this there you can rpm -i src.rpm files, and run rpmbuild commands to generate RPMS (binary and source). I intend to have a bunch of packages on the go at any time so I use the %_sourcedir macro, have one directory per %{name}-%{version}-%{release}. You could just as easily do:
```
%_sourcedir     %{_topdir}/SOURCES
```
  It's easiest to decide upfront as changing will be a little cumbersome.
Make some RPMS. True this can be a little challenging at times but fortunately the packages I'm interested presented little challenge ... woot!
Fedora has a util for rummaging through RPMs and makeing the repodata files. It's called createrepo. So install that: yum install -y createrepo

I then moved all my locally built RPMS into a separate directory structure. I tried to make this look at least a little like real Fedora repos. Again I only care about powerpc, hence setting $basearch. You don't need to :). In case it isn't obvious I ran this script from the root directory of the repo (in my case /opt/yum).

#!/bin/sh

basearch=ppc
releasever=9
rpmbuild_base=/home/user/rpmbuild/fedora

for i in local local-debuginfo local-source ; do
        d="$i/$releasever/$basearch"
        [ ! -d $d ] && mkdir -p $d
done

find $rpmbuild_base/RPMS/  -type f \
	-exec /bin/cp {} ./local/$releasever/$basearch/. \;
find $rpmbuild_base/SRPMS/ -type f \
	-exec /bin/cp {} ./local-source/$releasever/$basearch/. \;
find ./local/$releasever/$basearch/. -type f -name '*debug*' \
	-exec /bin/mv {} ./local-debuginfo/$releasever/$basearch/. \;

for i in local local-debuginfo local-source ; do
        cd "$i/$releasever/$basearch"
        /usr/bin/createrepo .
        cd -
done

Setup apache to serve up that directory. This machine shouldn't need any other web services, so I just make / point at my /opt/yum directory

NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
    ServerAdmin user@example.com
    DocumentRoot /opt/yum/
    ServerAlias host
    ServerName host.example.com
    ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/yum.repo-error_log
    CustomLog /var/log/httpd/yum.repo-access_log combined

    <Directory /opt/yum>
        Options Indexes
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Now create a yum config you use this new goodness.

[local]
name=local $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://host.example.com/local/$releasever/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

[local-debuginfo]
name=local $releasever - $basearch - Debug
baseurl=http://host.example.com/local-debuginfo/$releasever/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

[local-source]
name=local $releasever - $basearch - Source
baseurl=http://host.example.com/local-source/$releasever/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

If that all went well then:

[user@host ~]$ yum repolist
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
repo id              repo name                                 status
fedora               Fedora 9 - ppc                            enabled
fedora-debuginfo     Fedora 9 - ppc - Debug                    enabled
fedora-source        Fedora 9 - Source                         enabled
local                local 9 - ppc                             enabled
local-debuginfo      local 9 - ppc - Debug                     enabled
local-source         local 9 - ppc - Source                    enabled
updates              Fedora 9 - ppc - Updates                  enabled
updates-debuginfo    Fedora 9 - ppc - Updates - Debug          enabled
updates-source       Fedora 9 - Updates Source                 enabled

and debuginfo-install and yumdownloader should do the right things woot!

There are probabluy all sorts of other cool things you can do here but this is enought to keep a few local machines in sync :)

Update: Type fixes, and add note about installign createrepo

Experiments in Fedora 0x00

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:07:00

So it's been a long time since I used RPM based distro "in anger", so I'm trying Fedora 9. First tips

yum check-update Check all enabled repositories for update and display them.
yumdownloader --source ${package} To grab the source RPM (*.src.rpm) for ${package}. You must have the appropriate source repositories configured and enabled. It's a shame that this isn't available (or did I missit) with the yum command.
Rename /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf to something that doesn't end in .conf once you've setup your web content. Otherwise you just get the std. "Welcome to Fedora" page.

Note: These may not be the best ways to get the job done but they worked for me

Update: fix typos

Muscle Memory

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:28:00

Like most of you that type passwords often I tend to let my finger's "muscle memory" do the hard work remembering my passwords. This works rather well except on two occasions

When you come back from an extended vacation, and even your fingers have forgotten
When you can't use those muscles, because you've fractured the middle digit on your left hand :(:(

Ho Hum, took me far too long to get into my laptop this morning. I'm much better off than the other guys.

Zurich eh?

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:59:00

So Mikey claims he can travel to Zurich and then $180m in artwork goes missing. Coincidence? ...

More use?

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 20:27:00

Do new years resolutions count if you make the 4 days in?. If they do then; this is a new years resolution; if they don't then I've just decide to ...

blog more.

Given I only blogged twice in 2006, I've already equalled that so one more entry in the next 361 days and I'm set. ... The pressure is on.

PS: Thanks Kylie for the prod

Damn rusty and his 5 things!

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 20:27:00

I was not tagged by Rusty in the five things meme. Below are 5 things about me that I've not blogged about.

I'm addicted to Survivor
I think Abstract art is a waste of wall space, time, materials and money.
I've eaten horse, and liked it. (sorry Alli)
The first time I used the Internet, I didn't know that was what I was doing. I just thought it was a really popular BBS. Turns out it was Usenet ;P. I'm waaay to embarrassed by my first post to link to it but it is in Google Groups. I looked.
I fear heights ... well falling. To combat this I go rock climbing whenever I can.

I hereby tag Steve, Somewomen, AJ, James and Leon

Also Rusty wonders if someone with more time than sense^W^W^Wbandwidth than him would trace it back. I did. This whole things seems to have begun with this post. The path between rusty and the origin (including a few detours :() can be found here. I find it interesting that it stayed in the "literary world" for quite some time but the root cause "people collecting" was lost rather quickly.

Back from the abyss

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:04:00

At last week's CLUG meeting Steve pointed at this blog, and the lack of activity, and berrated me for being so slack.

So I'm inventing stuff to blog about.

Occaisonally I need to know what time it is in another timezone. This is pretty easy with date, eg

$ TZ=Europe/Rome date -R
Fri, 03 Nov 2006 02:24:39 +0100

I discovered the other day that date can do some cool stuff. Say you know the time in Rome, and you'd like to know the time in Tokyo, all without leaving the east cost of Australia.

$ TZ=Asia/Tokyo date --date='TZ="Europe/Rome" 11:31pm' -R
Sat, 04 Nov 2006 07:31:00 +0900

Yet to determine if I'll use this in day to day life but I think it's pretty cute :), and not too hard to remember either.

Happy Graduation to Me!

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 14:13:00

Sung to the tune of "Happy Birthday":
Happy graduation to me
Happy graduation to me
I got my degree-ee
Happy graduation to me

As Steve mentions I went out and got me one of these.

Click for a larger image (1.4M)

Who can resit?

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 13:22:00

A meme and a Middle Earth meme at that!

Entish

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

Bon Voyage

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 12:30:00

Wishing Andrew and Mikal a safe trip and lots of great times at the other end.

Why I use Linux

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:12:00

I was asked on the bus today[1] "So like Linux huh? Why?", well words to that effect anyway. I was about to enter into a brain dump on Opensource but decided to relate a story instead.

While a number of years elapsed between the first and second events I think it's still interesting.

Event 1:
When 100Mb networking was new, I had an occasion to buy a brand spanking new server, I did my research and purchased a machine (and more importantly PCI NIC) that was supported by the kernel(I think it was a 1.3 kernel, but it may have in fact been 2.0). It was with much sadness that I discovered that under Linux there was no networking to be had, The hardware detected a link etc but I got strange error messages which are lost in time now. It seems that the NIC I had has a different chip revision than the ones currently supported. After a little to'ing and fro'ing with Donald Becker, the card chipset was now supported. I think it took 2 days to get the card going. I was happy. The server was in production for close to 7 years before it finally became too old to perform it's task as was replaced.

Event 2:
My Wife needed a new machine. We settled on a name brand desktop system. It wasn't the biggest baddest machine but it was more than adequate. Got the box home set it up and all was good. Soon I decided to un-retire some old games, all was good until one game would lock up and eventually BSOD[2]. I did the windows driver shuffle to no avail. Contacted the game vendor, never got a response. Contacted the hardware vendor, was told to run the recovery DVD and that would fix things. I knew this was bogus, rang back in about 35mins said I still had the same problem. I was told it had to be a problem with the software and that they couldn't help. Not really the response I wanted. I took the unprecedented (for me) step of filing a bug report with Microsoft. Which was literally as easy as clicking a button. This resulted in a nice web page in which Microsoft claimed that this was a known bug with the soundcard and I should contact the vendor for help. Actually this seemed like a good diagnosis. If I completely turned off sound in the game (fortunately I could edit a .ini file to do this) the game worked albeit silently. I recontacted the vendor with this new information and was told to run the recovery DVD. Oh dear. I admit at this point I gave up, it'd been more than a month since I started this. It was something like 8 months later I once again got bored enough to try things. I checked the vendors support site and saw that there were updated drivers available for the box, and they'd only been released 3 days ago. I got brave and tried them. Lo and behold I could now play the game, it's a shame it only took 9 months to get there.

So to my way of thinking, this illustrates the good things with Linux. If it doesn't work someone will be able to help, even if they're on the other side of the world working for NASA, with the other OS, not so much[3]. Now It's possible that I may have biased the outcome of the events with pre-conceived notions about the outcomes but I don't think so. I don't know if this help the person on the bus, or if it was just a way for them to pass a boring bus ride in Canberra.

I'll let you all get back to work now.

[1] insert witty comment about my dress sense, I didn't think the Tux was even visible
[2] Yes I have windows on computers at home.
[3] I should note that I did try manufacturer (as opposed to vendor) drivers, contacted other players of the game involved and used both manufacturer and vendor forums/newsgroups to try and find a solution.

Blog Meme: File extension.

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 14:06:00

In trying to avoid Uni I decided to fill in the survey. I don't think the result is accurate ;P
Which File Extension are You?

Appealing?

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:29:00

Well today I was asked when daylight savings comes into effect. After playing with the date command I discovered the following:
tony@balder:~$ date -R -d 'Sun, 30 Oct 2005 01:59:59' Sun, 30 Oct 2005 01:59:59 +1000 tony@balder:~$ date -R -d 'Sun, 30 Oct 2005 01:59:59 + 1 second' Sun, 30 Oct 2005 03:00:00 +1100
Which is far more humorous to me than it should be ;P( See I told you all I could space, Now I can warp time). Perhaps that's because unlike Hugh my brain ran out my ears rather than exploding.

Oh dear :-(

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 07:57:00

Fixed

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 10:36:00

Due to the way I installed blosxom my permanent links didn't work unless (like Mikey) you included the index.cgi in the URL. Well that's fixed now. For those that may or may not care this is the apache magic

        
ScriptAlias /~tony/diary /home/bakeyournoodle.com/tony/public_html/diary/blosxom.cgi

# Keep Sage working
RewriteCond    %{QUERY_STRING}  ^flav=rss$
RewriteRule    ^(/~tony/diary).*$  $1/index.rss?  [L,R]

RewriteRule    ^(/~tony/diary/)index.cgi(.+[^/])$  $1$2  [R]

I think this means that aside from the switch over period, no one should see anything break.

swsusp2 works!

Tue, 31 May 2005 13:11:00

Finally after trying every now and again it's working.

install kernel 2.6.11.11
install swsusp2 2.1.8
apt-get install vbetool hibernate acpid

I think the key is vbetool, which Bernard told me about at LCA2005

I discovered today I can warp space

Mon, 30 May 2005 18:36:00

When I started riding to ANU with a trip computer on-board the distance was 17.1kms. Today my ride was 16.8kms. Wheee that's 300 meters I've saved. I haven't altered my route, so the only logical conclusion is that, by willing the pain to be over, I have shortened the ride.

If only I had shortened the time as well.

Back From NZ

Sat, 28 May 2005 12:34:00

Went to NZ for the ghosts meeting with the LCA2006 crew. Was lots of fun. Recommend the Allan Court Motel for people needing self-catering accommodation, and the Eureka cafe/bar for those in need of good food and great beer (not the radler though[1]).

After Ghosts travelled back to Wellington to catch up with my Mum (whom I haven't seen in a while) and my sister Leeanne (whom I've never met). Went to Midnight Espresso for a few coffee's The place hasn't changed much since high school. After that we went up the coast for a few days. It was great to see Mum, catch up with a few old friends. 2 days was too short though.

[1]: take a perfectly good pilsner and add a dose of lemon/lime cordial, yck[2]
[2]: Okay cartman I'll lay off now ;P

Shell Hacks

Wed, 18 May 2005 16:07:00

AJ is hereby awarded a UUOC for this

Bah!

Sat, 07 May 2005 10:38:00

Do "they" [whoever "they" are ] think we wont notice?

# egrep  'Failed password for root from.*ssh2' /var/tmp/munged.log  | cut -d' ' -f12 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
      6 210.206.30.139
     16 84.244.0.157
     44 67.19.139.112
    400 80.83.128.248
    561 193.6.40.134
    561 207.194.134.180
    561 211.115.89.81

Thats in the last 4 hours.

Blogging leads to ....

Wed, 04 May 2005 02:00:00

... Needing an RSS feed and apparently an aggregator (sp?) tool locally.

I chose sage mostly because I always have firefox open, and partially because it was recommended to me.

This entirely superfluous blog is to see if sage works correctly. It seems not as I can't jump straight into a post. I wonder if it's me blosxom or sage ??

LCA is over, My brain hurts.

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:44:00

I've been assured that in order to blog you don't actually need to have anything useful to say. I thought I start with the obligatory linux.conf.au is over post. All things considered it was a blast and I'd happily do it all again. In fact I am ;P. I'll be helping the nuts in Dunedin, out with some of the planning.

Also I was lucky enough to get an extension on one of my Java assignments. It's due at 17:00 on Thursday. consequently I've leapt in to get it finished. I'm horribly embarrassed with the code, but that wont stop me from submitting it.