Reading about the idea of pristine-deb, I actually noticed that using ar -rc file.deb debian-binary control.tar.gz data.tar.gz does not work, due to timestamps and other differences. I am currently working on a pristine-deb program which will workaround all these issues. It will be able to work with git repositories like pristine-tar and uses pristine-tar for control.tar.gz and data.tar.gz. I may also add a function to decompress all compressed files (like changelog.gz) and uses pristine-gz to compress this file again before adding it to the tarball. This may save some additional space. ... Read more 》

I’m currently working on a rewrite of debian-cd in Python. Although there is already deb-imgs-gen, I decided to start from scratch, because deb-imgs-gen is more than 1 year old. debimg’s main features are Speed debimg should be able to build netinst disks in less than 20 seconds Free Software This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. ... Read more 》

Colin Watson today uploaded casper 1.118, now supporting aufs. To use aufs in future Ubuntu disks built with casper 1.118 or newer, use union=aufs. Please test it. Another upload today was ndisgtk 0.8.1-1ubuntu1, bringing Ubuntu up-to-date with Debian and closing 3 bugs. BTW, I requested to include ndisgtk in main, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MainInclusionReportNdisgtk. Having ndisgtk on the Ubuntu disks would be very useful for users without linux network drivers available and without enough experiences to use ndiswrapper from the commandline.

I’m glad to announce that finally, after being powered by ftpsync for more than six months, the JAK LINUX website now uses ikiwiki. I currently have some small issues with the website: After using –rebuild, tarballs have a different modification time and are therefore reuploaded everytime, though the content is actually the same. I would also need a plugin to create directory indexes with sha1sums, but I haven’t found one yet. (If you know one, please let me know). ... Read more 》

In the last days, I used git very often. It was almost the first time I really used it, but I quickly understand the basic commands. As some of you may know, the readahead-list package is now maintained in a git repo in the collab-maint project. I decided to use git instead of bzr (which I used for everything before), because of its speed and because I wanted to learn more about git, how it works. ... Read more 》

Two days ago, zobel uploaded some of my package updates for me. One of them was ndisgtk 0.8.1, which adds more translations and fixes some problems. I intent to create a 0.9 release soon, with support for PolicyKit. I will upload the release candidate of this version to Debian experimental and Ubuntu Hardy. The other upload was readahead-list 1:1.20060421.1016-1, which I found on the Gentoo mirrors, but not where previous releases were located. This is OK, because the upstream author is a Gentoo developer and uploaded this tarball himself. I already requested to sync this release into Ubuntu Hardy, to reduce the diff between both distributions. ... Read more 》

Since yesterday, I am a Debian maintainer. This will help me and my sponsors, which have to do less now. I can now upload new versions of my packages if the version in unstable contains the “Dm-Upload-Allowed” field in the dsc (and only if the package is not NEW). For more information about the Concept of Debian Maintainers, see http://wiki.debian.org/Maintainers I’m very happy about this, as it makes my life easier. But this does not mean that I don’t want to be a DD anymore. A DD is able to vote, to sponsor packages, to upload NEW packages, and many more things. (BTW: I’m currently at T&S step)

pre-compiled aufs modules for Ubuntu Hardy will be available soon. Today, the linux-ubuntu-modules git has seen the commit which adds the aufs module for generic and server kernels on the i386 and amd64 architectures. But this is not the only thing. 5 patches from the aufs source have been commited to Ubuntu Hardy’s kernel repo. 1. [Export __lookup_hash](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2008-January/002036.html): and is needed for NFS 2. [Export put_filp](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2008-January/002037.html): This patch exports put_filp and is needed for NFS. 3. [Export do_splice_from and do_splice_to](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2008-January/002038.html): 4. [Export security_inode_permission()](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2008-January/002039.html), also used by UnionFS, where it is currently disabled 5. [Export deny_write_access()](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2008-January/002040.html): The aufs source package will see an update in Debian soon, which will be sync’ed into Ubuntu Hardy. This update uses the same code as the aufs code in linux-ubuntu-modules. This new code has improved XFS support, improved TMPFS support, improved support for lhash and put_filp patches. It’s also the first revision to support kernel 2.6.24. ... Read more 》

I just performed some benchmark on Bazaar, Git and Mercurial. This is a very small benchmark, I may publish a more detailed one in a few weeks. vcs-performance.pdf Some notes: 1. The unit in the first chart is seconds 2. I haven't run git-gc before taking the directory sizes. Running git-gc saves about 1083 kilobytes 3. This PDF file is licensed under the MIT License, see [http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php](http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)

Neil, you have problems with your HP laptop. But this is not HP’s fault. The laptop you bought has been designed for use with windows only, like all (?) other HP laptops for home users. Most (all?) HPs Business products are fully Linux compatible and come with pre-installed FreeDOS. A few months ago, I bought an HP Compaq 6720s (GR 644ET), installed Ubuntu 7.10 64-bit on it, and everything worked out of the box (except eth0, due to problems in Ubuntu’s kernel). I have absolutely no problems with my laptop, even the built-in card reader works out of the box. ... Read more 》