StoWiki/ Blog'n'Roll Archive

Latest entries

Retooling

I haven't blogged for a long time, but I've decided that I'm going to try to write again, at least about technical stuff.

My plan was to blog about the projects I've been working on lately, the main one being the setup of the latest version of Kolab with the systems we already have at work, but I'll do that on the next days.

Today I'm just going to make a list of the tools I use on a daily basis and my plans to start using additional ones in the near future.

Shells, Terminals and Text Editors

I do almost all my work on Z Shell sessions running inside tmux; for terminal emulation I use gnome-terminal on X, VX ConnectBot on Android systems and iTerm2 on Mac OS X.

For text editing I've been using Vim for a long time (even on Mobile devices) and while I'm aware I don't know half of the things it can do, what I know is good enough for my day to day needs.

In the past I also used Emacs as a programming editor and my main tool to write HTML, SGML and XML, but since I haven't really needed an IDE for a long time and I mainly use Lightweight Markup Languages I haven't used it for a long time (I briefly tried to use Org mode, but for some reason I ended up leaving it).

Documentation formats and tools

Since a long time ago I've been an advocate of Lightweight Markup Languages; I started to use LaTeX and Lout, then moved to SGML/XML formats (LinuxDoc and DocBook) and finally moved to plain text based formats.

I started using Wiki formats (parsewiki) and soon moved to reStructuredText; I also use other markup languages like Markdown (for this blog, aka ikiwiki) and tried MultiMarkdown to replace reStructuredText for general use, but as I never liked Markdown syntax I didn't liked an extended version of it.

While I've been using ReStructuredText for a long time, I recently found Asciidoctor and the Asciidoc format and I guess I'll be using it instead of rst whenever I can (I still need to try the slide backends and conversions to ODT, but if that works I guess I'll write all my new documents using Asciidoc).

Programming languages

I'm not a developer, but I read and patch a lot of free software code written on a lot of different programming languages (I wouldn't be able to write whole programs on most of them, but thanks to Stack Overflow I'm usually able to fix what I need).

Anyway, I'm able to program in some languages; I write a lot of shell scripts and I go for Python and C when I need something more complicated.

On the near future I plan to read about javascript programming and nodejs (I'll probably need it at work) and I already started looking at Haskell (I guess it was time to learn about functional programming and after reading about it, it looks like haskell is the way to go for me).

Version Control

For a long time I've been a Subversion user, at least for my own projects, but seems that everything has moved to git now and I finally started to use it (I even opened a github account) and plan to move all my personal subversion repositories at home and at work to git, including the move of all my debian packages from svn-buildpackage to git-buildpackage.

Further Reading

With the previous plans in mind, I've started reading a couple of interesting books:

Now I just need to get enough time to finish reading them ... ;)

Posted Sun 15 Feb 2015 10:24:41 CET
Static website generators

The last month I was supposed to work on a OpenStack related project, but for administrative reasons it has been delayed and I've tried to do small tasks to be able to finish them quickly and start the work on the main project when the issues get solved.

As the delay has been longer than expected last Wednesday I've realized than on the last weeks I did a lot of small system administration tasks:

With all the changes I did I noticed that I had to do something with our Intranet server; it is just a reverse proxy for a lot of different web services and its main page was one static HTML page with links to them, nothing else.

In the long term maybe we will replace it with something based on Drupal or Lifeay, but for now I just wanted something to be able to organize the links and provide some information about the services for the new users without having to write HTML (I really like Agile Documentation Tools that let me focus on the content and forget about the markup), and started to look at some of them.

My first idea was to use ikiwiki, as it has all the features I was looking for: I can use Markdown or reStructuredText to write the contents, the source pages are easily handled on a Version Control System, it supports the use of templates for the HTML, etc., but it seemed to me that using ikiwiki was like killing flies with a cannon (that's a Spanish say, I guess it's easy to understand it in English, ¿no?) and I decided to review other tools to build static web sites.

To make a long story short, I selected some tools that met my requirements and looked nice on their demo sites; after my first review I thought that Hyde was going to be my bet, as it uses technologies I'm already familiar with, but after trying it I saw that I was going to have a problem with documentation (the current Hyde version lacks it) and it was going to be more complicated that using ikiwiki.

Before giving up I decided to review simpler tools, just in case, and after looking some of them I ended up using poole, a simple python script (the source is just one file and it only requires python-markdown to work).

Before moving to the content I tried to adapt a couple of free themes to be used by the tool, but I didn't liked the result, so I went back to the plain style provided by the tool and added a logo and a background.

With that simple look and feel I started to work with the content, splitting it into eight markdown files and a python macro to include a file that has all the links used on the site.

While trying to make the main page look good I noticed how little I know about CSS, but using search engines I was able to build a two column block into the main page and publish the contents and with the help of some CSS enabled co-workers I changed the look and feel of the site in about 30 minutes.

In summary, if you want a really simple website, you know a little bit of python and don't want to spend much time learning how to use a website generator then Poole is a good option. If you want something more complex I still think that ikiwiki is a good option, but YMMV.

Posted Sat 01 Oct 2011 23:49:39 CEST
The FreakyWall (Part 3: Packages)

In this post I'll describe the changes made to the kernel and some of the Squeeze packages for the Freaky Wall.

The plan is to submit whishlist bugs to the BTS on the hope of having all what is needed for this project available on Debian after the Squeeze release, as my feeling is that a freeze is not the right time to push this changes... ;)

I'm giving access here to all the changes made to the source packages, but if anyone wants the binary packages (amd64 only) send me an email and I'll give you the URL of an apt repository that contains all the modified packages (it's the one at work, that contains other modified packages) or, if there is interest, I can put them on people.debian.org.

Kernel

To be able to build the firewall we need a kFreeBSD kernel with some options not compiled on the version distributed with Debian.

To compile the kernel I've followed the procedure described on the following debian-bsd mailing list post:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-bsd/2010/09/msg00023.html

Basically I've done the following:

    apt-get build-dep kfreebsd-8
    apt-get source kfreebsd-8
    cd kfreebsd-8-8.1
    cat >> debian/arch/amd64/amd64.config << EOF

    # Add pflog, pfsync, ALTQ and CARP support
    # ----------------------------------------

    # http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/firewalls-pf.html
    device      pf
    device      pflog
    device      pfsync

    options         ALTQ
    options         ALTQ_CBQ        # Class Bases Queuing (CBQ)
    options         ALTQ_RED        # Random Early Detection (RED)
    options         ALTQ_RIO        # RED In/Out
    options         ALTQ_HFSC       # Hierarchical Packet Scheduler (HFSC)
    options         ALTQ_PRIQ       # Priority Queuing (PRIQ)
    options         ALTQ_NOPCC      # Required for SMP build

    # http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/carp.html
    device      carp
    EOF
    vi debian/changelog 
    dpkg-buildpackage -B -uc

Once the package was built I installed the new kernel package and rebooted the machine.

Utilities

To be able to use some utilities related to pf I have built patched versions of three packages:

On the next post I'll describe how I've configured the system, the network interfaces and the different utilities patched and compiled on this post.

Posted Tue 30 Nov 2010 22:48:47 CET
libpcap-1.1.1-2 to 2.1.patch Posted Tue 30 Nov 2010 22:33:45 CET
tcpdump 4.1.1-1 to 1.1.patch Posted Tue 30 Nov 2010 22:33:45 CET

List of all entries

Retooling
Posted Sun 15 Feb 2015 10:24:41 CET

Static website generators
Posted Sat 01 Oct 2011 23:49:39 CEST

The FreakyWall (Part 3: Packages)
Posted Tue 30 Nov 2010 22:48:47 CET

libpcap-1.1.1-2 to 2.1.patch
Posted Tue 30 Nov 2010 22:33:45 CET

tcpdump 4.1.1-1 to 1.1.patch
Posted Tue 30 Nov 2010 22:33:45 CET

freebsd-utils-8.1-2 to 2.4.patch
Posted Tue 30 Nov 2010 22:33:45 CET

The Freaky Wall (Part 2: Initial Installation)
Posted Wed 24 Nov 2010 21:47:39 CET

The Freaky Wall (Part 1: Why?)
Posted Mon 22 Nov 2010 22:21:34 CET

Debian Squeeze, PowerPC and the Linux Containers
Posted Tue 26 Oct 2010 13:17:59 CEST

Debian Signs @ DebConf 9
Posted Tue 28 Jul 2009 11:44:29 CEST

Free Software Summer
Posted Wed 17 Jun 2009 07:59:19 CEST

Encrypting a Debian GNU/Linux installation (take 3)
Posted Thu 26 Feb 2009 08:30:16 CET

Encrypting a Debian GNU/Linux installation (followup)
Posted Wed 25 Feb 2009 00:42:30 CET

Encrypting a Debian GNU/Linux installation on a MacBook
Posted Sun 22 Feb 2009 00:11:52 CET

My first nginx module
Posted Thu 18 Sep 2008 10:58:11 CEST

Hugo meets Marc
Posted Sat 23 Aug 2008 09:21:28 CEST

Marc
Posted Fri 22 Aug 2008 12:17:32 CEST

Summertime, change times
Posted Thu 14 Aug 2008 09:49:16 CEST

Redmine
Posted Sat 01 Mar 2008 09:59:45 CET

Tips & Tricks: plone, nginx and path rewriting
Posted Thu 28 Feb 2008 03:11:38 CET

Still Alive
Posted Mon 25 Feb 2008 21:38:42 CET

Lifestyle, Resignations and the Peter Principle
Posted Tue 07 Aug 2007 22:04:39 CEST

Pending sysadmin posts
Posted Fri 15 Jun 2007 00:55:32 CEST

DebConf 7 - sto 0
Posted Thu 14 Jun 2007 23:44:35 CEST

Four More Years of Bread and Circus
Posted Mon 28 May 2007 10:12:45 CEST

2nd gvSIG Conference
Posted Fri 24 Nov 2006 00:54:03 CET

Spammers
Posted Fri 11 Aug 2006 08:42:40 CEST

Moved to ikiwiki
Posted Wed 09 Aug 2006 22:51:54 CEST

Debian Tutorial @ the V Jornades de Programari Lliure
Posted Fri 30 Jun 2006 13:02:08 CEST

ikiwiki
Posted Mon 15 May 2006 11:25:00 CEST

Ridiculous
Posted Tue 09 May 2006 14:45:26 CEST

SoC and CDDT
Posted Thu 04 May 2006 20:10:36 CEST

Life goes on
Posted Thu 23 Mar 2006 23:28:06 CET

Life after the Public Administration
Posted Tue 28 Feb 2006 12:04:48 CET

Three days left at LliureX
Posted Fri 24 Feb 2006 00:40:22 CET

Shell Scripts Frontend Tool 0.9.2
Posted Sun 19 Feb 2006 21:15:21 CET

Shell Scripts Frontend Tool
Posted Tue 14 Feb 2006 21:50:54 CET

IICISL Slides
Posted Fri 10 Feb 2006 20:59:21 CET

II Open Source World Conference and the CDDT
Posted Sat 04 Feb 2006 00:07:45 CET

Tired and Burn Out
Posted Fri 03 Feb 2006 21:21:44 CET

La MaratOO'o 2.0.1
Posted Mon 28 Nov 2005 10:39:16 CET

Desktop Environments and Window Managers
Posted Tue 25 Oct 2005 15:02:15 CEST

The Power of Kabbalah
Posted Thu 13 Oct 2005 14:09:25 CEST

I Hate Hardware
Posted Wed 28 Sep 2005 19:52:19 CEST

LliureX Installer (Part 2)
Posted Sat 24 Sep 2005 01:25:56 CEST

LliureX Installer (Part 1)
Posted Tue 20 Sep 2005 12:19:53 CEST

zsh and baz
Posted Fri 19 Aug 2005 12:25:55 CEST

debian-installer and l10n
Posted Fri 05 Aug 2005 02:28:12 CEST

IV Jornades de Programari Lliure
Posted Sun 10 Jul 2005 00:22:09 CEST

Etch
Posted Tue 07 Jun 2005 10:04:47 CEST

Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 released
Posted Mon 06 Jun 2005 23:57:30 CEST

Comments re-enabled
Posted Sat 28 May 2005 21:09:31 CEST

Uff
Posted Wed 18 May 2005 14:38:18 CEST

CDD Dev Camp
Posted Tue 10 May 2005 20:40:33 CEST

Malas lenguas tour 2005
Posted Tue 10 May 2005 14:31:53 CEST

LliureX and the II Free Software Congress, Valencian Community
Posted Tue 10 May 2005 00:46:49 CEST

Sarge frozen!
Posted Wed 04 May 2005 00:54:30 CEST

Who's the man?
Posted Tue 03 May 2005 00:07:09 CEST

CDD Development Camp
Posted Wed 20 Apr 2005 23:21:07 CEST

No Banana Union, No Software Patents - Suppory Denmark!
Posted Mon 07 Mar 2005 17:43:22 CET

Guadalinex, Ubuntu and the Debian future
Posted Mon 07 Feb 2005 09:41:17 CET

shfs and hardware detection
Posted Fri 07 Jan 2005 00:44:00 CET

New year, new server
Posted Wed 05 Jan 2005 01:20:03 CET

Hugo
Posted Mon 20 Dec 2004 16:38:23 CET

Two customization models
Posted Mon 13 Dec 2004 08:09:17 CET

CDD Tool Proposal
Posted Tue 07 Dec 2004 12:10:03 CET

A good summary of the Debian release proposals
Posted Wed 01 Dec 2004 21:15:47 CET

Second Ubuntu Conference @ Mataró
Posted Tue 30 Nov 2004 10:49:44 CET

Computer Science Engineers
Posted Sun 07 Nov 2004 23:45:00 CET

More Custom Debian Distribution Players
Posted Sun 03 Oct 2004 14:07:15 CEST

Back from Florence
Posted Tue 28 Sep 2004 01:49:00 CEST

Going to Firenze World Vision 2004 workshop on CDD
Posted Fri 24 Sep 2004 09:38:01 CEST

Ubuntu release model and Debian
Posted Mon 20 Sep 2004 01:39:21 CEST

Summer's over, let's roll again
Posted Thu 02 Sep 2004 01:18:13 CEST

The LliureX classroom model
Posted Tue 27 Jul 2004 12:55:32 CEST

Canonical Software and Mark Shuttleworth
Posted Sun 25 Jul 2004 19:14:32 CEST

My Master Thesis and the 2nd OCS Online Congress
Posted Fri 23 Jul 2004 20:16:58 CEST

Going Wireless
Posted Wed 14 Jul 2004 14:30:31 CEST

Second day at Manresa
Posted Thu 08 Jul 2004 20:17:00 CEST

First Day At Manresa
Posted Wed 07 Jul 2004 21:54:00 CEST

High School Teacher Competitive Examination (Update 2)
Posted Mon 05 Jul 2004 22:37:29 CEST

High School Teacher Competitive Examination (Update 1)
Posted Fri 02 Jul 2004 20:20:23 CEST

My Sarge GR Vote
Posted Fri 02 Jul 2004 20:06:41 CEST

High School Teacher Competitive Examination
Posted Tue 29 Jun 2004 19:20:35 CEST

Communication channels
Posted Tue 22 Jun 2004 00:13:23 CEST

CIA Open Source Notification System
Posted Fri 18 Jun 2004 00:48:32 CEST

First Post
Posted Wed 16 Jun 2004 22:16:02 CEST