Mike Palmer

IPython 0.12 packages for Debian 6.0 Squeeze

mike — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:29:29 +0000

The other day a coworker pointed out some cool new features that we didn’t have available to us with IPython 0.10 from the stable repository. The only problem was debian’s maintainer hasn’t updated the sources since 0.11 for us to backport some of those features very easily. Since we spend a good chunk of time using IPython at orvant we decided to go ahead and update the sources ourselves. But we figured other python people using debian stable might be tempted by those features as well. So what better to do than pass it on? Anyways, here is what you’ll need.

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)

Source Package

You will also need to configure backports since ipython-parallel and ipython-qtconsole depend on zeromq.
http://backports.debian.org/

After you have configured backports you’ll need to install python-zmq which isn’t available in that repository. I have backported that too after a little cython/pyrex fun:

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) AMD64

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) i386

http://packages.debian.org/sid/python-zmq

Note: I couldn’t get notebook working with the version of python-tornado available in squeeze. So I kind of just ignored it since I wouldn’t really use something like that anyways. It might work if you install a newer version (2.1.0) from unstable but I suspect in the end that the package will get split out as ipython-notebook whenever the normal maintainer updates it. (due to dependencies among other things)

Build a Netatalk Time Capsule for OSX Lion 10.7 using Debian 6.0 Squeeze

mike — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 01:02:11 +0000

After going to the Apple Store with a friend and seeing the $300+ Apple Time Capsule I decided to see if I could do the same thing with Netatalk. Turns out I could but if you’re using Debian stable like me you need to get at netatalk 2.2.x before it’ll work with OSX Lion 10.7.x. After seeing a variety of other examples out there on the net and getting a little confused as to why they were doing certain things I decided to just post how I did it. Also, rather than install things from source I like to use debian packages to keep servers clean. But there was a small problem due to a netatalk make bug that debian’s package didn’t account for. So I will post those packages I backported to stable for this.

Packages

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) AMD64

netatalk_2.2.1-1_amd64.deb

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) i386

netatalk_2.2.1-1_i386.deb

Netatalk Time Capsule Server Setup

After you’ve installed the packages create a service group by creating /etc/avahi/services/afpd.service and adding the contents below: (this might not be necessary with netatalk 2.2)




  %h
  
    _afpovertcp._tcp
    548
  
  
    _device-info._tcp
    0
    model=Xserve

Make a directory to store your time machine data:

root@srv:$ mkdir /var/timemachine

Now mark the volume saying it is a supported time machine share:

root@srv:$ touch /var/timemachine/.com.apple.timemachine.supported

Define a volume in /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default with the allowed user, usedots to support hidden files, uprivs for afp3 privileges that osx lion needs, and tm to enable time machine support. (highlighted below)

# By default all users have access to their home directories.
~/                      "Home Directory"
/var/timemachine         TimeMachine allow:joe cnidscheme:dbd options:usedots,upriv,tm

Now that things are configured we need to restart avahi.

root@srv:$ /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart

And restart netatalk

root@srv:$ /etc/init.d/netatalk restart

Apple OSX 10.7.x Lion Setup

Now set your OSX installation so it sees unsigned time machine volumes.

joe@osx:$ defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

You should now see your volume in Time Machine Preferences under “Select Disk…”.

Debian/Ubuntu Nmap 5.51 packages

mike — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 02:43:44 +0000

So as many people know, Debian and Ubuntu’s often lag behind the stable releases of nmap due to the nature of releases. But sometimes you want to stay volatile on a few things to keep up with joneses at insecure.org and get at some of those cool new NSE scripts or features. Easy enough but I prefer packages for a multitude of reasons, mainly my own sanity maintaining any given system over time. So when there are no 5.51 packages around yet it might mean you have to take matters into your own hands. Hopefully my/our impatience, desires, results, (whatever you call it) at Orvant end up being useful to other people as well.

Orvant Packages

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) AMD64

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) i386

Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) AMD64

Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) i386

Source Package

Debian/Ubuntu wmi-client package with OpenVAS libwmiclient1 patches

mike — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 23:59:24 +0000

The other day I wanted to build some updated OpenVAS packages and realized I now needed libwmiclient1 for local Windows checks which wasn’t readily available anywhere. The old wmi-client package that used to be in debian was pulled due to the forked/branched nature of the source code as well as the idea that something better could be implemented with the upcoming Samba4 release. That didn’t seem to pan out in the end but OpenVAS still needs to use aspects of it to build libwmiclient1 for WMI support. I suppose monitoring applications like Nagios, Cacti, Zabbix, etc are all likely feeling the loss of wmic as well so I figure why not try to fill both gaps? Anyways, here are the packages we created for Orvant, OpenVAS or anybody else who wants or needs it.

Orvant Packages

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) AMD64

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) i386

Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) AMD64

Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) i386

Source Package

Using the WMI client package (libwmiclient1 is only useful for OpenVAS):

Debian Sid/Unstable VirtualBox 3 Guest

mike — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:20:40 +0000

As I was poking around the VirtualBox support forums the other day I noticed there seems to be a ton of confusion surrounding linux guests. A lot of that seems like it stems from the way virtualbox has to approach additional kernel modules in guest additions. So here is the “Debian way” that both Ubuntu and Debian users can use.

Installation:

Grab a stable net install (i386 or amd64 image) from Debian’s image download. You can try testing if you want, it should be closer to the base build of debian you are going to want but half the time the installer is severely broken until close to freeze periods in the debian freeze phase.

Setup a new VirtualBox Guest to install. Here is the basic gist:

Make sure to select Linux and Debian.

Selected the netinst ISO that you’ve just downloaded.

Make sure you enable 3D and give the GPU some memory to work with.

Configuring a Debian Guest:

Go through the normal install process and when you get to the end where you select the task. Just select “Standard Linux System” for now. Once you are done with the install reboot and replace all instances of lenny with sid in /etc/apt/sources.list and upgrade:

user@computer:$ sed 's/lenny/sid/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get -f dist-upgrade

Once you have upgraded to sid and rebooted, log back in as root and install the desktop environment by running tasksel and selecting “Desktop Environment”:

user@computer:$ tasksel

That will install a boatload of packages so when it completes you’ll want to setup X and install the virtualbox utilities.

user@computer:$ apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-dkms virtualbox-ose-guest-utils virtualbox-ose-guest-x11
Xorg -configure
mv /root/xorg.conf.root /etc/x11/xorg.conf

DKMS should build the virtualbox guest modules for your kernel on unstable or testing. For lenny or “virtualbox-ose-guest-source” you’d need to install modules-assistant and run “module-assistant” by hand to build a kernel module if it isn’t already under stable as it should be. Which is easy enough, DKMS just made that process easier/automagic.

Now you’ll want to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and update your mouse driver to be “vboxmouse” and your video driver to be “vboxvideo”. Then start up GDM and you should have access to direct rendering to run everything from compiz to avant.

user@computer:$ nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
/etc/init.d/gdm restart

Verdict:

Lets hope you made it to something like this:

Your Debian guest should now inegrate with your host computer. (clipboard, mouse, screen resizing, ability to mount shared folders) You’ll also be able to use direct rendering and opengl if you enabled it in virtualbox. There are still an annoying bug with direct rendering under linux guests where the screen does not refresh with something like compiz running. A way to make it less noticeable is to keep the screen ticking along with something changing. That is why I add the seconds to my clock on the guest. Also, if you are getting superblock in the future errors when restarting you will want to edit /etc/default/rcS to utc=no. Of course, that is only applicable to anybody west of prime meridian I guess.

Fancy Feast Nutrient Composition

mike — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:21:07 +0000

Over the past year or so I was dealing with a cat going through end stages of CRF. Basically the kidneys start shutting down and the cats toxicity levels rise making it nauseous. When a cat gets nauseous they start attributing sick feelings with the food they ate so its hard to feed a CRF cat one type of prescription low phosphorous food all the time. Eventually they just stop eating so you need to coax them into eating something. That said, I went looking around for things I could get at a moments notice if I had to.

When I went looking for dry matter analysis or nutritional composition I noticed that people like Purina don’t really post this kind of information online. They just put a very light overview of whats in their product. I contacted them asking them about it and a few weeks later this is what showed up in the mail:

Purina Fancy Feast Nutrient Composition – May 2009

Yeah, I know… Apparently Purina has not heard of this newfangled thing called “internets” yet. I figured I’d try and save others the trouble/wait if they were interested in this information.

Converting the site

mike — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:20:47 +0000

Its been a while since I last bothered updating any personal websites of mine. I seem to get enough of this type of thing at work to want to come home and do anything other than tinker around with things. Truth be told, I’m never not at work which is probably my biggest problem I guess. So against my better judgment, I decided to throw up wordpress in case I had anything to post.

I still seem to be getting quite a few hits on my notes, howto’s, example’s for tomcat, java, apache, mod_jk, mod_jk2, etc sections. I killed all that because its so old at this point that I’m sure there is current, thus better, information elsewhere on the internet.