Lars Weiler

Farewell

Lars Weiler — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:39:33 +0000

It's not an easy task, but I thought deeply about it. This will be my last post on planet Gentoo. I will leave the project.

I've been a developer for more that five years now. I saw good and bad times of Gentoo. And I wish I could find the time to help more. But with the end of my study last summer and the begin of my full-time job, this is not possible any more. My commits decreased more and more. My bugs laid around for a long time. This is not acceptable – neither for me nor for the users.

Furthermore I live now in one of the best cities in Europe: Cologne. I like to spend my leisure time with visiting concerts and other cultural events. And there are a lot of in this town.

I liked to be a Gentoo developer, as I could learn a lot. Nowadays I need that knowledge for my daily work. There are a lot of Linux tasks in my job, although none Gentoo related. But that's also interesting.

You can still find me at some Linux-related events over here in Europe. I will also stay in the board of the „Friends of Gentoo e.V.“ in Germany. And you might see some bug reports or contributions from me. So, don't take this as a farewell for eternity.

Let me thank all the developers I met during the last years and especially those I had a beer with :-)

Good bye.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

PS/2 Keyboard at the Pegasos with linux 2.6.22

Lars Weiler — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:16:30 +0000

I finally finished setting up my desk in the new flat so that I can unpack my other computers beside the laptop. The Pegasos will play a new role as router until I bought a nice embedded box with integrated WLAN.

In preparation for this task I installed the latest gentoo-sources, compiled them and found out that the attached keyboard is not working. Well, “unplugged cable” was the first thought. But that was false, as the keyboard was working in the firmware and with the older kernel. I even checked that once again. So, it sounded like a kernel-bug.

And I found it: There was a change in the code for the i8042-controller, which handles the PS/2 inputs. The change is correct, but the Pegasos-Firmware does not publish the device-entry correctly. Fortunately there is a patch for your Firmware, which you can apply with some lines of code.

That's a cool feature of having a real firmware than a stupid BIOS. The Pegasos uses SmartFirmware which is an OpenFirmware implementation. You can find similar firmwares in PowerPC-based Macintoshs, Sun-systems, HPPA and Alpha machines. So, quite everything beside x86-cruft and newer machines which already use EFI.

Just enter the Firmware and type in nvedit. After that you will see a minimal editor for your nvramrc, which starts with a line-number every line. Here you enter (thanks to Matt Sealey for this code-snippet!)
probe-all " /pci/isa/8042" find-device " 8042" encode-string device-type install-console banner
(be careful with leading spaces). After that hit CTRL-C and you will be back at the Firmware "ok" prompt. Now you have to store the changes with nvstore.

You should make sure that during the firmware-startup the nvramrc will be read. Therefore enter printenv use-nvramrc? and check if it is set to "true". Otherwise change it with setenv use-nvramrc? true. Run nvstore once again and type reboot.

You have to do this procedure only once. The changes are saved in the non-volatile memory of your firmware.

There are already a couple of possible updates to the firmware. And the kernel should not use workarounds for a buggy firmware. Probably there will be an update to SmartFirmware on the Pegasos or we have to find a way to publish these changes to the user. One idea is to use the BootCreator-Tool which creates a small Forth-based bootmenu based on an easier bootmenu-file. But you can also add other Forth-code for the firmware, like the one above if we don't want to save it in the nvram.

Currently I think we have to wait if this problem evolves to an FAQ. Assuming that I updated to 2.6.22 very late now (it's already more than 6 weeks out) but that quite nobody in #gentoo-ppc was aware of this problem, I have the strange feeling that I'm the last user of Gentoo/PPC on the Pegasos.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Short summary of the last months

Lars Weiler — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:42:11 +0000

Now, let me quickly write a second blog-post, as you haven't read anything from me for a couple of months. In February I announced my extended outtime from Gentoo due to finishing my study. It's almost over now – I just have to give a final presentation next week. After that I'm going to move as I have to leave the student hostel I lived in for a couple of years. It seems that I will move to Cologne (hey zypher, stkn, wschlich and all other devs in that area ). If you already want to meet me (and some other devs) in that area, come to FrOSCon in Sankt Augustin tomorrow (Saturday, August 25).

Two weeks ago I managed to attend the Chaos Communication Camp, although I announced to everyone that I won't be there. It was fun to see the irritated faces of persons who thought they spotted a ghost And it was relaxing, as I submitted my diploma thesis just the same day I drove to the Camp. I had a look into the Gentoo village over there, but could not find any known person – beside GMsoft who hit me on a road somewhere on the campground.

At some days during my diploma thesis I felt the urge to receive quick motivation kicks by helping users or the PowerPC-team. So I had a run through all open ppc-bugs and managed to kick them down from around 80 to under 25. Unfortunately they rose to 93 now :-( Mostly stabilisation-requests, which are quite quick to resolve, especially with the help of gatt. opfer and I with the help of the author of gatt, Matthias, are working on an automated scripting for commiting and changing a bug after a package merged successfully. More will come after our own testing phase. Unfortunately I already packed my Pegasos for the move, so that I can't help out with testing. Anyways, the ppc-team will survive.

Now to the bad news: I don't have a job yet. All applications were declined, but everytime I was in the round of the last two candidates. But then the companies decided for the other one. It's too bad that I didn't specialised in the past and that I'm an all-rounder. It seems that companies don't have a need for persons who can jump in nearly every technical position. Now I have to wait for answers to the other applications I wrote. Probably my run of luck ended with the end of my study…

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Eight months later: Again the future of CD/DVD-recording

Lars Weiler — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:11:53 +0000

First, I have to correct one sentence in my previous entry about this topic. It read “non-free version of cdrtools”, which is not true. The current cdrtools are licensed under the CDDL, which is of course an Open Source license. But it is not compatible with the GNU GPL according to the list of GPL-Compatible Free Software Licenses.

But what changed within those more than eight months between the previous and this post? It seems that cdrkit died in May. There are still some random posts on the mailing-list, there was a minor bugfix-release with corrections in the man-page, but no real code-change.

On the other hand cdrtools made a big step forward and now supports unicode out of the box, ISO-files > 4GB (up to 8TB, think about DVD-9) and even Blu Ray!

I will try to keep current versions of both apps in portage, so that the user can decide which one to use. The only thing I'm not sure about is if I should change back the default virtual for cdrtools? Currently it's pointing to cdrkit, so that any dependency will use that application. But as soon as a GUI supports Blu Ray I should change it back to cdrtools. Probably that will be around Christmas when the average Nerd finds such a Blu Ray burner under the Christmas tree

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

„Introduction to Gentoo“

Lars Weiler — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 23:56:55 +0000

This evening I attended the meeting of the Linux User Group Oberhausen/Rheinland dertobi123 proposed in his blog two days ago in the already well known “Gasthof Harlos”, where we had a lot of Gentoo User Meetings during the last 3

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

My 4th Gentoo developer anniversary

Lars Weiler — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:12:44 +0000

Time passes so fast… Today is my fourth anniversary as a Gentoo developer. I'm using Gentoo on the PowerPC-platform since the 1.4-days in 2002, when I first heard about it. And as the PowerPC-installation was a big pain at that time, I helped out making it better and sent in some patches for ebuilds. After a very short time, Gerk made me a developer, so that I could commit the patches myself.

I think, it's time to sum up my activities within Gentoo:

PowerPC
- Starting with patches for Mac-on-Linux (which is now more or less in Gentoo's hand, as JoseJX adopted this project after more than one year of just laying around), I stabilised a lot of packages and worked on the installation instructions for the PowerPC documentation.
- Later I helped out pvdabeel with the release, as he was short in time during his thesis-period; now I'm still the one who works on the release, but unfortunately with less time for the 2007.0-release.
- I'm still the so-called Strategical Lead for Gentoo/PPC, but only as nobody else wants to do that job and that a Gentoo project needs such a position to fulfill the requirements for being an official project. This team really does not need both an operational and strategical lead. One position would be enough.
- Genesi sponsored a Pegasos and an EFIKA. The Pegasos just built again the G4-release and I use it quite daily for testing PowerPC-packages, as this is my only strong PowerPC-machine left. I will spend more time with the EFIKA once I finished my diploma-thesis…
Documentation/GWN
- I helped out in the documentation team with translating into my native tongue. Some time later I became the leader of the German translation team and could bring the documentation into a good shape, but handed over this job to dertobi123 (who gave it to grahl last year).
- Then I worked on some English documents and the XML/XSLT for the website generation. Mostly small tweaks for a better layout, but I added an XML-checker into CVS as some devs committed broken files and broke the whole webpage…
- I made some contributions to the GWN and even assembled it completely for a couple of times in 2005 and 2006 when the GWN-editor plate was not available. But I did not want to do that job weekly and so I'm happy that wolf31o2 does it now.
CVS and SVN server
- Somehow our infrastructure-team learned in 2003 that I was working on a quite large CVS implementation during my part-time-job. And as there was no CVS maintainer for Gentoo I received access to the server and took care for it from then on. This is a job I still do, as it does not require much attention. It just works
- In 2005 we added SubVersion for Gentoo own projects to this server. This was a quite hard job for me, as I was neither an SVN admin nor user, so I had to read quite a lot of the documentation. But trapni helped me a lot and in the end this is a service which also just runs and does not need much attention (beside the big server move we made two weeks ago).
F
Original post blogged on b2evolution.

FOSDEM review and my extended outtime from Gentoo

Lars Weiler — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:36:49 +0000

I don't know, where I should start, but FOSDEM 2007 was the best FOSDEM I have been to. From Gentoo's view we had the most developers ever crowded at one event. Too bad that I again missed some, but it was nice to meet some of our new German devs, like phreak and jokey, and meet genone I ever missed before (at least at FOSDEM 2005). Then it was a big pleasure to meet the US-devs, starting with wolf31o2 and vapier, and again kingtaco.

Beside Gentoo I had a lot of talks with persons from the Free Software Foundation Europe as I know some of them personally for a couple of years already. Then I met some people from the CCC and had a rather long talk with Tim Pritlove about the future of Pentabarf, a very good tool for the organisation of a conference (and which I know from its early hours). And somehow I got into a situation where three different persons greeted me at the same time, but those three don't known each other… Am I so famous?

Now let me collect things which might need to be improved in the future:

The booth (well, our tables) looked good at Saturday when we had some nice hardware to show, but on Sunday it was mostly understaffed and we had nothing to show. Furthermore many people asked for T-Shirts and give-aways. Time for an “event-kit”!
Too bad that there isn't an area where you can sit together, have network and squash bugs together with another dev. I think that this is one of the things we can establish in the “Gentoo Village” at the Chaos Communication Camp this summer. Sitting in couches, having a beer and listening to ambient music while working together with users on their pet-bugs.
Dinner in a pre-noble restaurant which costs half of the money you spent for the whole weekend should not be repeated. It's better to have a buffet where you have to go to now and then and have a talk with different persons while you fetch another drink, instead of talking to the same persons at your table for the whole evening as you are somewhat bound to your seat.

Now let me thank some persons, starting with Wolfram, who picked me up in Cologne and drove me back. Then Dimitry and Guy for organising the dev-room and booking the Hostel. It was so relaxing for me that I had not to do this once again like in 2005. And all devs who attended FOSDEM and made this an unforgetable event!

Currently I'm preparing my extended outtime. I finally have to finish my diploma-thesis, which will take about three to four months. During this time I will not be available for Gentoo work. There are still some bugs open on my buglist but I don't think I can resolve them soon. I already quit IRC as this is a major time-burner. But as faster as I work on my thesis the sooner I will be back See you again this summer!

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

I do it one more time: Gentoo CVS move

Lars Weiler — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:12:49 +0000

The title sounds like I do it monthly… No! But it's the second time for me that I move Gentoo's CVS to a new server. I already did it in September 2003 when we moved from our former CVS-box (funny, I even can't remember its name) to our current CVS-server, named “lark”. At that time it was a pretty easy task, as we didn't had so many developers, a quite small CVS-tree and not so many scripts for automatic actions.

Nowadays lark provides beside the CVS for the portage-tree a couple of repositories for other subprojects and SubVersion for some more subprojects. We also have some scripts for backup, hooks for mailing the CIA-statistics or the changes of the English documentation for the translators.

Setting up a new server is a good time to review the scripts and make some things a little bit different. It's good that we have the new server, called “stork” for two months already. So I had enough time to set up the backup differently than before. As we use LVM2 for our cvsroot- and svnroot-storage, I can quickly create an lvm-snapshot of the current tree and create a backup from that snapshot. The old scripts did a live-backup and sometimes it happened that somebody commited something during that time, so that the backup was not that clean… The creation of the backup takes about 30 minutes (mostly it's bzip2 which takes so long). And transfering the backup to our backup-server takes about the same time.

robbat2 worked a lot on the ssh-key-transfer. Before we copied the authorized_keys from our dev-box to lark on a hourly basis. Now we use LDAP (finally) to extract the ssh-pubkey, which takes only two seconds (woot!). So we switched to a sync every 15 minutes, which will make devs more happy!

At 7UTC on Friday we will take down lark and do an rsync of the tree to stork. A test a couple of days ago was done within three minutes. Both servers will be on the same state then. Let's hope, that the DNS-update will also be fast. We have an estimated timeframe of two hours for the move, but I guess, we will be ready sooner.

Some words about the machines:

lark

active since September 2003 (that makes 3
Original post blogged on b2evolution.