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debtree is a fantastic tool to create colorful graphs of package dependencies. One small shortcoming is that the user cannot provide a Packages.gz file directly to be used as repository. Since debtree is based on the excellent apt_pkg library, it is actually not that difficult to convince apt to look in a different location. To change debtree (and apt-get_ default behaviour you just need to create a new apt-get repository and then set the environment variable APT_CONFIG appropriately.

So ...

After the latest Xorg upgrade I started experiencing multiple problems concerning the suspend/resume cycle on my laptop. Today I took sometimes off to debug the situation. It seems that the culprit is the activation of the KMS on the XOrg package that landed in unstable in December.

In the same spirit of this blog post http://chistera.yi.org/~adeodato/blog/106_fakeapt.html , this is a simple bash function to simulate an aptitude run on a given status and packages list.

to install skype on a debian unstable machine :

• get the skype package here http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu
• dpkg -i --force-architecture skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb

now we need to fix a bunch of dependencies:

• apt-get -f install
• apt-get install libqt4-core libqt4-gui ia32-libs-gtk
• get the 32 bit version of libuuid from here : http://packages.debian.org/sid/i386/libuuid1/download
• copy the library in /usr/lib32

run skype.

blahhhhhh . It used to be easier...

During the weekend I upgraded my laptop to sqeeze. I usually track unstable pretty closely, but in between transition I gave myself a bit of slack in order to avoid messing up with the gnome transition. The result is ok, NetworkManager Just Work !!!, the new kernel seems pretty snappy. I finally get the power status for my network card.

My laptop is a old dell latidute x200. I always had problem with the graphic card and Xorg. With this upgrade I've always motivated myself to find a solution. Not surprisingly it was quite easy.

I've packaged latexdiff for debian, that is a small utility to generate latex files with revision markers from multiple versions of the same file. While packaging this utility I've learned about two very nice tools to help the debian maintainers: git-buildpackage and topgit.

Regarding git-buildpackage there is an extensive manual that should get you started :
http://honk.sigxcpu.org/projects/git-buildpackage/manual-html/gbp.html

Topgit documentation is a bit sparse. tg help should guide you for syntax. The README file in the tg distribution is full of examples.

Rails/redmine installation on debian etch as a user requires a bit of googling.

I've been looking for a solution to this problem for a long time. Basically apache2 is not able to do name-based virtual hosting if you also want to use ssl. The reason for this problem is very simple. In order to know then hostname, apache2 I need to establish a secure channel, but to establish a secure channel, if I have more then one virtual host, then I need to know the hostname, that is, to provide the client the correct certificate. There is also a better explanation on the apache website [1].

There correct solution to this problem is to use the TLS extension called SNI [2].

If I don't trust a stranger to wonder inside my house, why should I allow a closed source program to access my home directory ? Apart from the paranoia and conspiracy implications I decided to spend some time learning how to chroot skype (and iceweasel for that matter, since I don't really trust javascript, flash and the mozilla plugin model) in a chroot.

I started from this article :
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/566

This recipe didn't work out of the box. This is mine:

Now step by step:
First we install the software. I'm working on a debian unstable...

There are many many howto on the net regarding this topic. Here I'll not give another howto, but just a list of mistakes I've done today. I hope this will same some time to others.

openssl certs