CBlog

1001 bugs

1001 bugs - das ist eins der Ergebnisse meiner Mitarbeit bei (open)SUSE: Ich habe vorhin meinen 1001. Bugreport eingereicht. Außerdem werde ich unter dem Motto "1001 bugs - or: the golden rules of bad programming" einen Vortrag auf der openSUSE conference halten. Die genaue Beschreibung meines Vortrags steht unter dem englischen Text. Ich habe schon eine ganze Reihe von Ideen für den Vortrag, bin aber für Vorschläge in den Kommentaren offen.

Wer sich für meine Bugzilla-Statistik interessiert, findet unten den Screenshot. Man sieht deutlich, dass ich bei SUSE Linux 9.2 mit dem Betatesten angefangen habe und seitdem die Entwickler mit Bugreports zuschütte ;-)

1001 bugs - that's one of the results of my work on (open)SUSE: I just filed my 1001. bugreport. Besides that, I'll give a talk "1001 bugs - or: the golden rules of bad programming" at the openSUSE conference. I already have lots of ideas for my talk, however I'm open for proposals - just add a comment here.

If you are interested in my bugzilla statistics, have a look at the screenshot below. You can clearly see that I started beta-testing with SUSE Linux 9.2 and since then overwhelm the developers with bugreports ;-)

But first I'll give you the the detailed description of my talk:

1001 bugs - or: the golden rules of bad programming

You'll find lots of books telling you how to write good code. That's nice and maybe even useful, but boring ;-)

My talk will give you something more inspiring: the golden rules of bad programming. It also comes with some interesting[tm] things I've seen in bugzilla as topping.

Most examples will be in pseudocode to be understandable for everybody.

Bugzilla report for "reporter contains @cboltz.de"
(the reports for 9.x and some other products are non-public, which means you'll probably get a lower number)

1001 bugs - or: the golden rules of bad programming

If you missed my talk at the openSUSE conference or want to see the slides (including notes) again - here we are:

1001 bugs - or: the golden rules of bad programming as PDF
(If you need an editable LibreOffice file, just drop me a note.)

Die BESTEN der BESTEN der BESTEN, SIR!

Gerade gesehen:

*SCNR*

(Titel geguttenborgt von Fefe)

patch2mail 1.1

(nur für Admins interessant, daher nur auf englisch)

I just released patch2mail 1.1 which will send you a mail when updates are available for your openSUSE system.

Changes:

patch2mail will now also send notifications for package updates, not only for patches (configurable in /etc/sysconfig/patch2mail)
include a note about package manager updates (they can hide other updates)
older distributions are still supported of course - just make sure to install the package for the correct distribution. However the new features listed above are only supported on 11.1 and newer.

You can download patch2mail from the openSUSE build service.

I have also submitted the new version to Factory (SR 74130).

Spezieller Alias - und ein neues Zuhause für apparmor.vim

Erstmal ein kleines Schnipsel aus meiner Konsole:

Let's start with a sniplet from my console:

cb@geeko:~/postfixadmin> svn help | head -n1
usage: svn <subcommand> [options] [args]
cb@geeko:~/postfixadmin> cd /home/cb/apparmor
cb@geeko:~/apparmor> svn help | head -n1
Bazaar 2.0.5 -- a free distributed version-control tool

Mein SVN ist nicht verrückt geworden ;-) - ich habe nur ein kleines Script vorgelagert, das man am Besten als Verzeichnis-abhängigen Alias bezeichnen könnte. Wenn ich im Verzeichnis ~/apparmor bin, wird aus "svn" wie durch Geisterhand ein "bzr"-Aufruf. Das Script ~/bin/svn ist nicht wirklich kompliziert:

My SVN didn't go crazy ;-) - I just prepended a small script you could best describe as directory-dependent alias. When I'm working in ~/apparmor, it magically replaces "svn" with a "bzr" call. The script ~/bin/svn is not really complicated:

#!/bin/bash
command=/usr/bin/svn  # use the full path. Just "svn" will result in an endless loop!
pwd | grep -q ^/home/cb/apparmor && command=/usr/bin/bzr
exec $command "$@"

Warum ich das Ganze brauche? Ich habe seit kurzem Commit-Rechte bei AppArmor, damit apparmor.vim endlich ein offizielles Zuhause hat. Außerdem habe ich schon ein paar Profil-Updates commited. (Keine Angst: vom C-Code werde ich mich fernhalten ;-)

AppArmor verwendet Bazaar für die Versionskontrolle, und das ist glücklicherweise Parameter-kompatibel zu SVN (zumindest bei dem, was ich brauche) und erspart mir so die Umgewöhnung an noch eine Versionsverwaltung.

Nebenbei: Für Bazaar musste ich mir einen Launchpad-Zugang einrichten, und habe natürlich[tm] auch gleich einen Bug in Launchpad gefunden ;-)

Why do I need this? Since a short while, I have commit access for AppArmor. This finally gives apparmor.vim an official home. I also commited some profile updates. (Don't worry - I'll stay away from the C code ;-)

AppArmor uses Bazaar as version control system, which is luckily parameter compatible to SVN (at least for the commands I use). This means I don't have to keep another version control system in mind.

BTW: For Bazaar I had to create a Launchpad account, and of course[tm] found a Launchpad bug instantly ;-)

Releases!

Gleich zwei Releases in einem Blog-Eintrag:

gerade eben habe ich PostfixAdmin 2.3.3 freigegeben - ein reines Bugfix-Release, für Details verweise ich auf das Changelog ;-)
openSUSE 11.4 wurde am letzten Donnerstag freigegeben - mit vielen neuen Versionen, Features und, was mich besonders freut, mit AppArmor 2.5.1 and funktionierenden AppArmor-Utils :-) Details gibt es im offiziellen openSUSE Release Announcement.

One blog post, two releases:

I just released PostfixAdmin 2.3.3 - a pure bugfix release, see the Changelog for details;-)
openSUSE 11.4 was released last thursday - with lots of new versions, features, and, most pleasant for me, with AppArmor 2.5.1 and working AppArmor utilities :-) See the official openSUSE Release Announcement for details.

Keysigning made easy

(... more or less ;-)

Auf der openSUSE conference gab es neben vielen interessanten Vorträgen und noch mehr netter Leute aus der openSUSE community eine Keysigning-Party. Damit nicht jeder von ganz vorn anfangen muss, hier mein HowTo zum schnellen Signieren der Keys mit caff. Da die "Amtssprache" auf der conference englisch war, gibt es dieses HowTo auch nur in englisch ;-)

At the openSUSE conference I heard many interesting talks and met lots of nice people from the openSUSE community. I also took part at the keysigning party. To avoid that everybody has to start from scratch, here is a HowTo sign keys efficiently with caff.

Preparation

Install caff. It's included in the package "signing-party" in the home:worldcitizen repo and requires perl-GnuPG-Interface and several other packages from devel:languages:perl.

zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/perl/openSUSE_11.3/ devel:languages:perl
zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/worldcitizen/openSUSE_11.3 home:worldcitizen
zypper in signing-party

caff uses postfix to send out the signed keys (or whatever listens on localhost:25), therefore you have to make sure to have a working config. Many mailservers reject mails from dialup hosts nowadays. You have to setup postfix to send mails using your provider's mail relay (usually needs SMTP Auth), and you have to make sure it converts your local "geeko@localhost" sender with a working mail address. You can do this with YaST or (as I did) edit /etc/postfix/main.cf directly:

relayhost = mailserver.example.com
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
sender_canonical_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sender_canonical

Restart postfix after this changes ("rcpostfix restart").

sasl_passwd must contain a line like this:

# servername           SMTP Auth username   password
mailserver.example.com user@example.com     topsecret

sender_cannonical looks like this: (host.name is the output of "hostname -f", geeko is your username)

geeko@host.name user@example.com

Then run postmap - postfix always reads the binary form (*.db) of the files, not the plain text version.

postmap sasl_passwd
postmap sender_cannonical

If unsure, send a test mail to yourself ("echo foo | mail -s testmail you@example.com") and check if the sender address is correct.

Now you have to configure caff. Run "caff" once to generate the configuration file ~/.caffrc, then edit at least the following settings:

$CONFIG{'owner'}
$CONFIG{'email'}
$CONFIG{'keyid'}

Signing the keys

I always sign the fingerprints instead of the key ids. This has the advantage that I don't have to compare the fingerprints manually.

cp ksp-opensuse-conf-10.txt keys-to-sign.txt
vi keys-to-sign.txt

Remove all keys you do not want to sign (those from people that missed the keysigning party or with invalid ID cards) from keys-to-sign.txt. Also remove your own key from the list, it's pointless to sign it.

If people gave you additional keys on a paper strip, create a list of their key ids and save it as additional-keys.txt. Then run

gpg --recv-keys `cat additional-keys`
echo "--- additional keys ---" >> keys-to-sign.txt
LANG=C gpg --fingerprint `cat additional-keys ` >> keys-to-sign.txt

After that, open keys-to-sign.txt and check the fingerprint of the newly added keys. This is important because they were not included in the original checksum of the ksp*.txt file.

Then create a list of fingerprints to sign:

grep "Key fingerprint" keys-to-sign.txt  | sed 's/.*= // ; s/ //g' > fingerprints-to-sign.txt

For some reason, caff failed to download the keys for me. Therefore I did it myself. (Replace /home/cb/.caff/ with the tempdir you use for caff in the following command)

gpg --homedir=/home/cb/.caff/gnupghome --secret-keyring /home/cb/.gnupg/secring.gpg \
    --recv-keys `cat fingerprints-to-sign.txt`

After that, you can finally sign the keys and mail them to their owners:

caff `cat fingerprints-to-sign.txt`

To be sure nothing goes wrong, check against your printed list from the keysigning party that you really want to sign the key. To save the signature, type "save" at the gpg> prompt.

That's it. You should now have produced a mail flood ;-) to the owners of all the keys you signed.