Matthew Garrett: Responsible stewardship of the UEFI secure boot ecosystem
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/60248.html
July 12, 2022, 5:50 AM
After I mentioned that Lenovo are now shipping laptops that only boot Windows by default, a few people pointed to a Lenovo document that says:Starting in 2022 for Secured-core PCs it is a Microsoft requirement for the 3rd Party Certificate to be disabled by default."Secured-core" is a term used to describe machines that meet a certain set of Microsoft requirements around firmware security, and by and large it's a good thing - devices that meet these requirements are resilient against a whole bun...
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Andrew Cater: 20220709 2100 UTC - Finished Debian media testing for the day
http://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.com/2022/07/20220709-2100-utc-finished-debian-media.html
July 9, 2022, 9:07 PM
 I've just finished my last test: Sledge is finishing his and will then push the release out. Today's been a bit slow and steady - but we've finally got there.Thanks, as ever, due to the release team for actually giving us an update, the press team for announcements - and, of course, the various sponsors, administrators and maintainers of Debian infrastructure like cdimage.debian.org and the CD building machines.It's been a quiet release for the media team in terms of participation - we've not ...
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Andrew Cater: Testing 11.4 Debian media images - almost finished - 20220709 1933 UTC
http://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.com/2022/07/testing-114-debian-media-images-almost.html
July 9, 2022, 7:34 PM
 We're flagging a bit now, I think but close to the end. The standard Debian images caused no problems: Sledge and I are just finishing up the last few live images to test now.Thanks, as ever, to the crew: RattusRattus and Isy, Sledge struggling through feeling awful. No debian-edu testing today, unfortunately, but that almost never breaks anyway.Everyone's getting geared up for Kosovo - you'll see the other three there with any luck - and you'd catch all of us at the BBQ in Cambridge. It's goi...
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Andrew Cater: As has become traditional - blogging as part of the media release for Debian 11.4 - 202207091436 UTC
http://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.com/2022/07/as-has-become-traditional-blogging-as.html
July 9, 2022, 2:37 PM
 A lower profile release today: Sledge working in the background as affected by COVID. RattusRattus and Isy doing sterling service on the other side of Cambridge, /me over here.Testing on the standard install media is pretty much done: Isy, Andy and Sledge have moved on to testing the live images.Stupidly hot for UK - it's 28 degrees indoors with windows open.All good so far :)
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 1.0.9 on CRAN: Regular Updates
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/07/09#rcpp_1.0.9
July 9, 2022, 2:08 PM
The Rcpp team is please to announce the newest release 1.0.9 of Rcpp which hit CRAN late yesterday, and has been uploaded to Debian as well. Windows and macOS builds should appear at CRAN in the next few days, as will builds in different Linux distribution and of course at r2u. The release was prepared om July 2, but it took a few days to clear a handful of spurious errors as false positives with CRAN — this can when the set of reverse dependencies is so large, and the CRAN team remains busy. ...
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Bits from Debian: DebConf22 Cheese and Wine Party
https://bits.debian.org/2022/07/debconf22-cheese-and-wine-party.html
July 8, 2022, 4:00 PM
In less than two days we will be in Prizren to start
DebCamp and
DebConf22 o/
This C&W is the 18th official DebConf Cheese and Wine party. The first C&W was
improvised in Helsinki during DebConf 5, in the so-called "French" room. Cheese
and Wine parties are now a tradition for DebConf.
The event is very simple: bring good edible stuff from your country. We like
cheese and wine, but we love the surprising stuff that people bring from all
around the world or regions of Kosovo. So, you can...
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Junichi Uekawa: Created a HTML app to generate my weekly notes.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2022-Jul-8.html.en#2022-Jul-8-21:30:52
July 8, 2022, 12:30 PM
Created a HTML app to generate my weekly notes.
For writing TODO items and log of what I did each hour.
I print this out every week and write notes on it, mostly to help myself remember what I was doing at that time.
I don't seem to have good short term memory and this helps me focus, at least tells me when I am not.
I rewrote this in SVG instead of a drawing app because I didn't feel like changing anything in that drawing app considering there's lots of repetition.
However, I'm n...
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Matthew Garrett: Lenovo shipping new laptops that only boot Windows by default
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/59931.html
July 8, 2022, 6:49 AM
I finally managed to get hold of a Thinkpad Z13 to examine a functional implementation of Microsoft's Pluton security co-processor. Trying to boot Linux from a USB stick failed out of the box for no obvious reason, but after further examination the cause became clear - the firmware defaults to not trusting bootloaders or drivers signed with the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA key. This means that given the default firmware configuration, nothing other than Windows will boot. It also means that you w...
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Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 218 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-218-released/
July 8, 2022, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 218. This version includes the following changes:
* Improve output of Markdown and reStructuredText to use code blocks with
syntax highlighting. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#306)
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
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Jonathan Dowland: Musick To Play In The Dark 2
https://jmtd.net/log/Musick_To_Play_In_The_Dark_2/
July 7, 2022, 1:54 PM
This took a while to arrive! After the success of the reissue of
Coil's Musick To Play In The Dark, it was inevitable that the
second edition would also be reissued. The pre-order opened late
November 2021 and mine arrived in late April this year.
I was toying with the idea of ordering one of the most exclusive editions
direct from DAIS Records, in particular the
glow in the dark one, but with international shipping the cost was pretty high.
I went with a UK distributor
(Boomkat)
instea...
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Russ Allbery: Review: A Master of Djinn
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-26767-6.html
July 6, 2022, 3:04 AM
Review: A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark

Series:
Dead Djinn Universe #1


Publisher:
Tordotcom


Copyright:
2021


ISBN:
1-250-26767-6


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
391

A Master of Djinn is the first novel in the Dead Djinn Universe,
but (as you might guess from the series title) is a direct sequel to the
novelette "A Dead Djinn in Cairo". The
novelette is not as good as the novel, but I recommend reading it first
f...
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Alberto García: Running the Steam Deck’s OS in a virtual machine using QEMU
https://blogs.igalia.com/berto/2022/07/05/running-the-steam-decks-os-in-a-virtual-machine-using-qemu/
July 5, 2022, 7:11 PM
Introduction
The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming computer that runs a Linux-based operating system called SteamOS. The machine comes with SteamOS 3 (code name “holo”), which is in turn based on Arch Linux.
Although there is no SteamOS 3 installer for a generic PC (yet), it is very easy to install on a virtual machine using QEMU. This post explains how to do it.
The goal of this VM is not to play games (you can already install Steam on your computer after all) but to use SteamOS in desktop mo...
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Russ Allbery: Review: A Mirror Mended
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-76665-6.html
July 5, 2022, 2:27 AM
Review: A Mirror Mended, by Alix E. Harrow

Series:
Fractured Fables #2


Publisher:
Tordotcom


Copyright:
2022


ISBN:
1-250-76665-6


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
129

This is a direct sequel to A Spindle
Splintered and will completely spoil that story, so start there rather
than here.
A Mirror Mended opens with a glimpse at yet another version of the
Sleeping Beauty story, this one (delightfully) a Spanish telenovela.
...
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Russ Allbery: Review: She Who Became the Sun
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-62179-8.html
July 4, 2022, 2:58 AM
Review: She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

Series:
Radiant Emperor #1


Publisher:
Tor


Copyright:
2021


Printing:
2022


ISBN:
1-250-62179-8


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
414

In 1345 in Zhongli village, in fourth year of a drought, lived a man with
his son and his daughter, the last surviving of seven children. The son
was promised by his father to the Wuhuang Monastery on his twelfth
birthday i...
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Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in June 2022
http://blog.alteholz.eu/2022/07/my-debian-activities-in-june-2022/
July 3, 2022, 11:37 AM
FTP master
This month I accepted 305 and rejected 59 packages. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 310.
From time to time I am also looking at the list of packages to be removed. If you would like to make life easier for the people who remove packages, please make sure that the resulting dak command really makes sense. If this command consists of garbage, please adapt the Subject: of your bug report accordingly.
Also it does not make sense to file bugs to remove packages from NE...
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Martin-Éric Racine: Refactoring Debian's dhcpcd packaging
http://q-funk.blogspot.com/2022/07/refactoring-debians-dhcpcd-packaging.html
July 3, 2022, 8:57 AM
Given news that ISC's DHCP suite is getting deprecated by upstream and seeing how dhclient has never worked properly for DHCPv6, I decided to look into alternatives. ISC itself recommends Roy Maple's dhcpcd as a migration path. Sadly, Debian's package had been left unattended for a good 2 years. After refactoring the packaging, updating to the latest upstream and performing one NMU, I decided to adopt the package.
Numerous issues were exposed in the process:
Upstream's ./configure makes BSD...
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Russ Allbery: Review: The Haunting of Tram Car 015
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/haunting-tram-015.html
July 3, 2022, 4:50 AM
Review: The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark

Publisher:
Tordotcom


Copyright:
February 2019


ASIN:
B07H796G2Z


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
65

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is a novella and the second story in
the Dead Djinn universe, after "A Dead Djinn
in Cairo". While there are a few references to the previous story, it's
not a direct sequel and has different main characters. Order of reading
is not important.
Ag...
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Junichi Uekawa: Watching my raspberry pi update I noticed I have nodejs 12 in them.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2022-Jul-3.html.en#2022-Jul-3-06:07:13
July 2, 2022, 9:07 PM
Watching my raspberry pi update I noticed I have nodejs 12 in them.
Most systems I work on have nodejs 16 installed. I don't remember what changed ...
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François Marier: Remote logging of Turris Omnia log messages using syslog-ng and rsyslog
https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/remote-logging-turris-omnia-router/
July 2, 2022, 3:45 AM
As part of debugging an upstream connection problem I've been seeing
recently, I wanted to be able to monitor the logs from my Turris
Omnia router. Here's how I
configured it to send its logs to a server I already had on the local
network.
Server setup
The first thing I did was to open up my server's
rsyslog (Debian's default syslog server) to
remote connections since it's going to be the destination host for the
router's log messages.
I added the following to /etc/rsyslog.d/router.conf:
mod...
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Russ Allbery: Review: Overdue
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-64160-534-0.html
July 2, 2022, 2:50 AM
Review: Overdue, by Amanda Oliver

Publisher:
Chicago Review Press


Copyright:
2022


ISBN:
1-64160-534-0


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
190

Like many lifetime readers, I adored the public library. I read my way
through three different children's libraries at the rate of a grocery sack
of books per week, including numerous re-readings, and then moved on to
the adult section as my introduction to science fiction. But once I had a
regu...
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Steve Kemp: An update on my simple golang TCL interpreter
https://blog.steve.fi/an_update_on_my_simple_golang_tcl_interpreter.html
July 1, 2022, 2:00 PM
So my previous post introduced a trivial interpreter for a TCL-like language.
In the past week or two I've cleaned it up, fixed a bunch of bugs, and added 100% test-coverage. I'm actually pretty happy with it now.
One of the reasons for starting this toy project was to experiment with how easy it is to extend the language using itself
Some things are simple, for example replacing this:
puts "3 x 4 = [expr 3 * 4]"
With this:
puts "3 x 4 = [* 3 4]"
Just means defining a function (proc) n...
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Ben Hutchings: Debian LTS work, June 2022
https://www.decadent.org.uk/ben/blog/debian-lts-work-june-2022.html
July 1, 2022, 1:12 PM
In June I was not assigned additional hours of work by Freexian's
Debian LTS initiative, but carried over 16 hours from May and worked
all of those hours.
I spent some time triaging security issues for Linux. I tested
several security fixes for Linux 4.9 and 4.19 and submitted them for
inclusion in the upstream stable branches.
I rebased the Linux 4.9 (linux) package on the latest stable update
(4.9.320), uploaded this and issued the final DLA for stretch,
DLA-3065-1....
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Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities June 2022
http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2022/07/01/floss-activities/
July 1, 2022, 2:51 AM
Focus
This month I didn't have any particular focus.
I just worked on issues in my info bubble.
Changes
duck:
add more obsolete domains
(1
2),
indicator phrases
(1
2)
lintian:
add more obsolete domains
Debian BTS usertags:
fix old release goal tags,
reassign edos tags to debian-qa,
reassign sphinx tag to debian-python
Debian userdir-ldap:
modernise and cleanup welcome message wording
Debian website:
consultants fix
Debian package uploads:
sptag
Debian wiki pages:
AutomaticPackagingTools,
Ava...
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Russell Coker: Links June 2022
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/06/30/links-june-2022/
June 30, 2022, 1:38 PM
Google did some interesting research on the impact of discrimination on code reviers [1]. It turns out that this is a bigger problem than most white men would have ever suspected and it even has an adverse effect on Asian people.
nothello.net is an amusing site to make the point that you shouldn’t use IM to say hello separately from asking the question [2]. A good link to share on your corporate IM system.
TechCrunch has an amusing article about the Facebook farewell to Sheryl Sandburg [3].
Bl...
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Aigars Mahinovs: Long travel in an electric car
http://aigarius.com/blog/2022/06/29/long-travel-in-an-electric-car/
June 29, 2022, 6:37 PM
Since the first week of April 2022 I have (finally!) changed my company car from
a plug-in hybrid to a fully electic car. My new ride, for the next two years, is
a BMW i4 M50 in Aventurine Red metallic.
An ellegant car with very deep and
memorable color, insanely powerful (544 hp/795 Nm), sub-4 second 0-100 km/h, large
84 kWh battery (80 kWh usable), charging up to 210 kW, top speed of 225 km/h
and also very efficient (which came out best in this trip) with WLTP range of 510 km
and EVDB real r...
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Tim Retout: Git internals and SHA-1
https://retout.co.uk/2022/06/29/git-internals-and-sha1/
June 29, 2022, 5:54 PM
LWN reminds us that Git still uses SHA-1 by default.
Commit or tag signing is not a mitigation, and to understand why you need to
know a little about Git’s internal structure.
Git internally looks rather like a content-addressable filesystem, with four
object types: tags, commits, trees and blobs.
Content-addressable means changing the content of an object changes the way
you address or reference it, and this is achieved using a cryptographic hash
function. Here is an illustration of the inte...
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Russell Coker: Philips 438P1 43″ 4K Monitor
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/06/29/philips-438p1-43-4k/
June 29, 2022, 12:00 PM
I have just returned a Philips 438P1 43″ 4K Monitor [1] and gone back to my Samsung 28″ 4K monitor model LU28E590DS/XY AKA UE590.
The main listed differences are the size and the fact that the Samsung is TN but the Philips is IPS. Here’s a comparison of TN and IPS technologies [2]. Generally I think that TN is probably best for a monitor but in theory IPS shouldn’t be far behind.
The Philips monitor has a screen with a shiny surface which may be good for a TV but isn’t good for a monit...
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Michael Ablassmeier: More work on virtnbdbackup
https://abbbi.github.io//virtnbdbackup-blog/
June 29, 2022, 12:00 AM
Had some time to add more features to my libvirt backup utility, now it
supports:
Added backup mode differencial.
Save virtual domains UEFI bios, initrd and kernel images if defined.
virtnbdmap now uses the nbdkit COW plugin to map the backups as regular
NBD device. This allows users to replay complete backup chains
(full+inc/diff) to recover single files. As the resulting device is
writable, one can directly boot the virtual machine from the backup
images.
Check out my last article on...
--------------------
Michael Ablassmeier: More work on virtnbdbackup
https://abbbi.github.io//virtnbdbackup/
June 29, 2022, 12:00 AM
Had some time to add more features to my libvirt backup utility, now it
supports:
backing up virtual domains UEFI bios, initrd and kernel images if
defined.
virtnbdmap now uses the nbdkit COW plugin to map the backups as regular
NBD device. This allows users to replay complete backup chains
(full+inc/diff) to recover single files. Also makes the mapped device
writable, as such one can directly boot the virtual machine from the backup
images.
Check out my last article on that
topic or wat...
--------------------
Dima Kogan: vnlog 1.33 released
http://notes.secretsauce.net/notes/2022/06/28_vnlog-133-released.html
June 28, 2022, 4:47 PM
This is a minor release to the vnlog toolkit that adds a few convenience options
to the vnl-filter tool. The new options are
vnl-filter -l
Prints out the existing columns, and exits. I've been low-level wanting this for
years, but never acutely-enough to actually write it. Today I finally did it.
vnl-filter --sub-abs
Defines an absolute-value abs() function in the default awk mode. I've been
low-level wanting this for years as well. Previously I'd use --perl just to
get abs(), or I'd...
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Jonathan Dowland: WadC 3.1
https://jmtd.net/log/wadc_3.1/
June 28, 2022, 2:18 PM
Example map with tuneables on the right
WadC — the procedural programming environment for generating Doom
maps — version 3.1 has been released. The majority of this was done
a long time ago, but I've dragged my feet in releasing it. I've said
this before, but this is intended to be the last release I do of WadC.
The headline feature for this release is the introduction of a tuning
concept I had for the UI. It occurred to me that a beginner to WadC
might want to load up an example progra...
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Jamie McClelland: Deleting an app won't bring back Roe v Wade
https://current.workingdirectory.net/posts/2022/dont-panic-organize/
June 25, 2022, 10:27 PM
In some ways it feels like 2016 all over again.
I’m seeing panic-stricken calls for everyone to delete their period apps, close
their Facebook accounts, de-Google their cell phones and, generally speaking,
turn their entire online lives upside down to avoid the techno-surveillance
dragnet unleashed by the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
I’m sympathetic and generally agree that many of us should do most of those
things on any given day. But, there is a serious problem with this cycle of
repressio...
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Ryan Kavanagh: Routable network addresses with OpenIKED and systemd-networkd
https://rak.ac/blog/2022-06-25-routable-network-addresses-openiked-systemd-networkd/
June 25, 2022, 11:41 AM
I’ve been using OpenIKED for some time now to configure my VPN.
One of its features is that it can dynamically assign addresses on the internal network to clients, and clients can assign these addresses and routes to interfaces.
However, these interfaces must exist before iked can start.
Some months ago I switched my Debian laptop’s configuration from the traditional ifupdown to systemd-networkd.
It took me some time to figure out how to have systemd-networkd create dummy interfaces on which...
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Kees Cook: finding binary differences
https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2022/06/24/finding-binary-differences/
June 24, 2022, 8:11 PM
As part of the continuing work to replace 1-element arrays in the Linux kernel, it’s very handy to show that a source change has had no executable code difference. For example, if you started with this:
struct foo {
unsigned long flags;
u32 length;
u32 data[1];
};
void foo_init(int count)
{
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