Exclude files from being exported into the zip/tar source archives on github.com

GitHub.com (and probably GitLab too) provides various ways to export the Git branch contents or tags and releases as Zip- or Tar-archives. When creating a release, these tar-/zipballs are automatically created and added to the release. I often find archives, which contain a lot of files not useful to the end user, like .github directories, Git (.gitignore, .gitattributes) or CI related files (.travis.yml, .appveyor.yml). Sometimes they also contain directories (e.g. for test files), upstream hosts in Git, but does not need for the source distribution. But there is an easy way to keep these files out of the automatically created source archives and keep the latter clean by using the export-ignore attribute in the .gitattributes files:

# don't export the github-pages source
/docs export-ignore
# export some other irrelevant directories
/foo export-ignore
# don't export the files necessary for CI
Gemfile export-ignore
.appveyor.yml export-ignore
.travis.yml export-ignore
# ignore Git related files
.gitattributes export-ignore
.gitignore export-ignore

Jekyll and GitHub pages: access the download URL (aka browser_download_url) for an asset of your latest release via site.github

Add the download URL of an asset of your latest release

Often there is the question to get the download URL for an asset (e.g. a setup-file) of the latest release of a project. In my case I provide an executable, which includes the version number in its name together with the source as ZIP- and Tarball-archive. Others provide versioned source tarballs or executables, which are different from the Git repository source tarballs.

project-X.Y.Z-setup.exe
project-X.Y.Z-src.tar.gz

Now to get the download URL(s) for the asset(s) using the GitHub API one can get and process this URL (replacing USER and PROJECT/var> with the GitHub user account and projectname accordingly):

https://api.github.com/repos/USER/PROJECT/releases/latest

Note, that the assets download URL is provided by the browser_download_url object in the assets objects list:

{
  ...
  "assets": [
    {
      ...
      "browser_download_url": "...",
      ...
    }
  ]
}

The content provided by the API is also available to Jekyll sites hosted on GitHub pages via the site.github namespace. You can easily check all the content of this namespace using this approach (somewhere in your code):

{{ site.github | inspect }}

You'll find, that you can even access detailed author and project information. Now to get the download URL of my asset, I just access the first list entry using this:

{{ site.github.latest_release.assets[0].browser_download_url }}

or this approach (less typing):

{% assign release = site.github.latest_release %}
{{ release.assets[0].browser_download_url }}

I use this to create structured data in JSON-LD for a software application. I can even access the file size, the creation and publication date of my asset. The following shows the JSON-LD snippet I add to one of my GitHub project pages (I replaced fixed content with dots):

{% assign release = site.github.latest_release %}
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org/",
  "@type": "SoftwareApplication",
  "name": "...",
  "softwareVersion": "{{ release.tag_name | strip | remove: 'v' }}",
  "alternateName": [
    "...",
    "{{ release.name }}"
  ],
  "description": "...",
  "applicationCategory": "...",
  "inLanguage": ["..", ".."],
  "operatingSystem": [
    "...",
    "..."
  ],
  "downloadUrl": "{{ release.assets[0].browser_download_url }}",
  "fileSize": "{{ release.assets[0].size | divided_by: 1024 }}",
  "releaseNotes": "{{ release.html_url }}",
  "license": "...",
  "url": "{{ site.github.repository_url }}",
  "datePublished": "{{ release.published_at }}",
  "dateCreated": "{{ release.created_at }}",
  "author":    {%- include json/person.json -%},
  "publisher": {%- include json/publisher.json -%}
}

If there is more than one asset (the GitHub repository source tarball and zipball are not assets) one probably has to use a more flexibale approach then accessing the first list entry via asset[0] as shown above. If there are several assets and the asset file name is created the same way for every release but includes the version number (see the file name examples from the beginning of this post), there is another approach, that might be to used. One can process:

{{ site.github.latest_release.tag_name }}

and create the download URL like this

{{ site.github.releases_url }}/download/latest/foo-{{ site.github.latest_release.tag_name | strip | remove 'v' }}-setup.exe
{{ site.github.releases_url }}/download/latest/foo-{{ site.github.latest_release.tag_name | strip | remove 'v' }}-src.tar.gz

Because it is common to tag the version as vX.Y.Z the leading v is removed from the version tag in the examples above.

Using the approach above one can even loop over site.github.releaes and create a changelog/news page automatically for all releases! Maybe you can share your ideas about the suggested approaches on my GIST page.

Make 'bts' (devscripts) accept TLS connection to mail server with self signed certificate

My mail server runs with a self signed certificate. So bts, configured like this ...

BTS_SMTP_HOST=mail.wgdd.de:587
BTS_SMTP_AUTH_USERNAME='user'
BTS_SMTP_AUTH_PASSWORD='pass'

...lately refused to send mails with this error:

bts: failed to open SMTP connection to mail.wgdd.de:587
(SSL connect attempt failed error:1416F086:SSL routines:tls_process_server_certificate:certificate verify failed)

After searching a bit, I found a way to fix this locally without turning off the server certificate verification. The fix belongs into the send_mail() function. When calling the Net::SMTPS->new() constructor, it is possible to add the fingerprint of my self signed certificate like this (bold):

if (have_smtps) {
    $smtp = Net::SMTPS->new($host, Port => $port,
        Hello => $smtphelo, doSSL => 'starttls',
        SSL_fingerprint => 'sha1$hex-fingerprint')
        or die "$progname: failed to open SMTP connection to $smtphost\n($@)\n";
} else {
    $smtp = Net::SMTP->new($host, Port => $port, Hello => $smtphelo)
        or die "$progname: failed to open SMTP connection to $smtphost\n($@)\n";
}

Pretty happy to being able to use the bts command again.

Prevent suspend/hibernate if system is remotely backed up via rdiff-backup

I usually use rdiff-backup to backup several of my systems. One is a workstation which goes to sleep after some time of idling around. Now having a user logged in running rdiff-backup (or rsync, rsnapshot etc for that matter) won't prevent the system from being put to sleep. Naturally this happens before the backup is complete. So some time ago I was looking for a resolution and recieved a suggestion to use a script in /etc/pm/sleep.d/. I had to modify the script a bit, because the query result always was true. So this is my solution in /etc/pm/sleep.d/01_prevent_sleep_on_backup now:

#!/bin/sh

. "${PM_FUNCTIONS}"

command_exists rdiff-backup || exit $NA

case "$1" in
        hibernate|suspend)
                if ps cax | grep -q rdiff-backup
                then
                        exit 1
                fi
        ;;
esac

exit 0

Currently testing ...

Update

The above works with pm-utils; but it fails with systemd. Seems I have to move and modify the script for my system.

Update 2

It doesn't work. In short: exit 1 doesn't prevent systemd from going to suspend. I can see, that the script itself leads to the results I want, so the logic is correct. But I cannot find a way to tell systemd, to stop suspend. Shouldn't it be doing this automtically in a case, where a remote user is logged in and runs a command?

Update 3

There is also a related bug report.

Setting up a network buildd with pbuilder ... continued

Last year I'd described my setup of a local network-buildd using pbuilder, ccache, inoticoming and NFS. One then-still-open goal was to support different Debian releases. This is especially necessary for backports of e.g. bluefish. The rules to contribute backports require to include all changelog entries since the last version on debian-backports or since stable if it's the first version in an uploaded package. Therefor one needs to know the last version in e.g. wheezy-backports. Because I'm not typing the command (the source package only gets uploaded and inoticoming starts the build process) I was looking for a way to automatically retrieve that version and add the relevant -vX.Y-Z switch to dpkg-buildpackage.

The solution I found requires aptitude and a sources.list entry for the relevant release. If you are only interested in the solution, just jump to the end :)

I'm going to add the version switch to the DEBBUILDOPTS variable of pbuilder. In my setup I have a common (shared) snippet called /etc/pbuilderrc.inc and one configuration file per release and architecture, say /etc/pbuilderrc.amd64.stable. Now the first already contains ...

DEBBUILDOPTS="-us -uc -j2"

... and DEBBUILDOPTS can be extended in the latter:

DEBBUILDOPTS+="..."

Because the config file is parsed pretty early in the process the package name has not yet been assigned to any variable. The last argument to pbuilder is the .dsc file. So I use the last argument and parse the file to retrieve the source package name.

cat ${@: -1} | grep -e ^Source | awk -F\  '{ print $2 }'

The solution above works, because pbuilder is a BASH script. Otherwise it maybe needs some tweaking. I use the source package name, because it is unique and there is just one :) Now with this name I check for all versions in wheezy* and stable* and sort them. The sort order of aptitude is from low to high, so the last line shopuld contain the highest version. This covers the possibility that there has not yet been a backport or that there is one:

aptitude versions -F '%p' --show-package-names=never --group-by=none --sort=version \
   "?narrow(?source-package(^PACKAGE\$), ?or(?archive(^wheezy.*), ?archive(^stable.*)))" |\
   tail -n 1 | sed -e 's#~bpo.*$##g'

The sed-part is necessary because otherwise dh_genchanges will add a superfluous changelog entry (the last one of the last upload). To make things easier, I assign the name and version to variables. So this is the complete solution:

[..]
MYPACKAGE="`cat ${@: -1} | grep -e ^Source | awk -F\  '{ print $2 }'`"
MYBPOVERS="`aptitude versions -F '%p' --show-package-names=never --group-by=none --sort=version "?narrow(?source-package(^$MYPACKAGE\$), ?or(?archive(^wheezy.*), ?archive(^stable.*)))" | tail -n 1 | sed -e 's#~bpo.*$##g'`"

log "I: Package is $MYPACKAGE and last stable/bpo version is $MYBPOVERS"

DEBBUILDOPTS+=" -v$MYBPOVERS"
[..]

Examples

I've recently built a new bluefish backport. The last backport version is 2.2.6-1~bpo70+1. There is also the stable version 2.2.3-4. So the version I need is 2.2.6-1 (2.2.6-1~bpo70+1 < 2.2.6-1!!). Checking the log it works:

I: Package is bluefish and last stable/bpo version is 2.2.6-1

A different example is rsync. I've recently locally rebuilt it for a stable system (wanted to make use of the --chown switch). There is not yet a backport. So the version I (would) need is 3.0.9-4. Checking the logs again and works too:

I: Package is rsync and last stable/bpo version is 3.0.9-4

Feedback appreciated ...

Links

• aptitude: Search term reference
• aptitude: Customizing the package list

WISO Steuer-Sparbuch unter Debian Linux

Ich bin begeistert, denn meine USB-Stick Installation vom WISO Steuer-Sparbuch lässt sich ganz einfach unter Debian Linux mit Wine nutzen:

wine32 /media/pfad/mein/stick/WISO/Steuersoftware\ 2014/usbstart.exe

Es gab überhaupt keine Probleme während der mehrstündigen Arbeit!! Die Update-Funktion werde ich bei Gelegenheit noch testen, genauso wie die Installation auf den USB-Stick unter Wine. Für letzteres hatte ich noch auf Windows zurückgegriffen. Genial :)

Update 10.12.2014: Leider wird die Steuererklärung (Kurzform) nicht erstellt und scheinbar auch nicht via Elster übertragen. Die erstellte PDF-Datei enthält nur die Checkliste sowie die Übersichten zu einzelnen Positionen. Ich musste leider doch Windows aufrufen, um die Erklärung und die PDFs korrekt zu erstellen. Schade! Werde das ans WISO-Team melden.

Create a KNOPPIX USB (boot-)stick from a running Linux system

I was recently examining, how to boot a (live) KNOPPIX from an USB stick. It turns out I did not find a manual about how to create a bootable USB stick containing KNOPPIX without burning KNOPPIX to a CD/DVD first?! So this is a short howto without burning anything. I'm showing how to put a KNOPPIX ISO image to an USB stick. I need an ISO image of KNOPPIX, an USB stick and syslinux installed. I've chosen to put the 4GB DVD image KNOPPIX_V7.2.0DVD-2013-06-16-EN.iso onto a 16GB USB stick. The place left on the USB device should be available to the user as NTFS partition. I'll use the term /dev/sdX to refer to the stick (where X is a lowercase character, e.g. /dev/sdb) and completely empty it first (THIS WILL DELETE ALL DATA INCLUDING THE PARTITION TABLE!):

shred -z /dev/sdX

Now after the ISO image has been downloaded, we need to alter it a bit. For this some information about the USB stick is required. The relevant bits heads and sectors/track are highlighted below:

fdisk -l /dev/sdX

Disk /dev/sdX: 16.0 GB, 16008609792 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15267 cylinders, total 31266816 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Now we change the ISO image for hybrid mode:

isohybrid -o 1 -h 64 -s 32 -e 1 KNOPPIX_V7.2.0DVD-2013-06-16-EN.iso

and copy the ISO image to the USB stick:

cat KNOPPIX_V7.2.0DVD-2013-06-16-EN.iso > /dev/sdX

After the command has succeeded, the partition table will show a bootable "Hidden HPFS/NTFS" partition. Note that you can adjust the partition type by using the -t, --type switch of isohybrid.

fdisk -l /dev/sdX

Disk /dev/sdX: 16.0 GB, 16008609792 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15267 cylinders, total 31266816 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdX   *           1     8032255     4016127+  17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS

Now we can create one or more partitions on the stick for shipping data or $whatever by using fdisk, e.g. create a new primary partition and set the type to HPFS/NTFS/exFAT:

fdisk /dev/sdX

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdX: 16.0 GB, 16008609792 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15267 cylinders, total 31266816 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x12345678

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdX   *           1     8032255     4016127+  17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS

Command (m for help): n
Partition type:
   p   primary (1 primary, 0 extended, 3 free)
   e   extended
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 2): 2
First sector (8032256-31266815, default 8032256): 
Using default value 8032256
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (8032256-31266815, default 31266815): 
Using default value 31266815

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 2
Hex code (type L to list codes): 7
Changed system type of partition 2 to 7 (HPFS/NTFS/exFAT)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdX: 16.0 GB, 16008609792 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15267 cylinders, total 31266816 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x12345678

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdX1   *           1     8032255     4016127+  17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdX2         8032256    31266815    11617280    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Command (m for help): w

[..]

Run mkfs.ntfs on /dev/sdX2 to create the NTFS file system there. The USB stick is ready now. Connected to the system where one wants to start a live KNOPPIX and chosen to boot this system from USB will result in a running KNOPPIX system.

The same should also work for creating a Debian live system USB stick. Thanks to the author of this article.

N54L LCD-Mod with U204FR-A3 (LCDModkit) and lcdproc (II)

Here it goes. I was looking for an LCD display for my microservers 5,25'' bay and found this neat post. The manufacturer of the LCD display used there provides different displays for this purpose. I've decided for an U204FR-A2 in black with a red backlight. It left Hongkong around five days later and arrived here another 6 days later. All in all: I got it after 11 days.

I unpacked the LCD device. It comes with an internal USB connector and is driven by an Hitachi HD44780 LCD controller. The connection wasn't a problem at all. I've already put a Silverstone SST-EC04-P PCIe card with two USB 3.0 external ports and an internal 19pin dual port connector into the systems PCIe 1x slot. Now to connect the LCD with this card I've bought an Inline 19pin USB 3.0 header to 8pin double USB 2.0 header adapter and connected the card with the LCD display. Easy, right?

To make the display "attached" to the case - it comes with two steel sheets and two screw holes each, that cannot be attached to anything in the microserver case - I've used a small workaround: double-faced adhesive tape and two halfs of a matchbox - one can also use small scantlings - and created a bonding between the steel sheets and the case.

That's it. I put the cover plate carefully back - the steels sheets of the LCD display and the LED of the server will bump to each other!

There are two programs to output information to the LCD display. These are lcdproc and lcd4linux. I started with the first one which only provides pre-defined screens. Seems with the latter one can create own screens. This is an option for the future.

lcdproc consists of two programs. First there is a daemon called LCDd. It controls the driver, contrast etc.pp. The relevant parts of its configuration file /etc/LCDd.conf look like as shown below. Note that I did not change the default values for contrast or brightness.

[server]
Driver=hd44780
WaitTime=25

[hd44780]
ConnectionType=lcd2usb
Size=20x4

To print something to the screen one can use the lcdproc command, which is configured via /etc/lcdproc.conf. I've enabled the Iface, TimeDate, SMP-CPU, and MiniClock screens. The program is started during startup via cron. The file /etc/cron.d/lcdproc simply contains this:

@reboot root    lcdproc

The following pictures show the resulting screens, which change every 25 seconds. That's it.

Local link networking on Debian/Linux between server and workstation

My network is based on wireless LAN, which is running at 54MBit/s. Transfering files between two systems therefor is not very fast. I could use wired connections, but cables would need to be pretty long to connect to the router. However the file server and the workstation are located near to each other and both have a free Gigabit LAN link. So why not connect these systems directly?

Both systems run network-manager, whereas the server runs without a graphical/desktop environment. The file /etc/network/interfaces contains this entry related to the LAN devices on both systems:

allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0

To create the connection it is necessary to have the package avahi-autoipd installed. In a graphical environment is is then as easy as open the network(-manager) preferences dialog, create a new wired connection, change to the IPv4 Settings tab in its Options dialog and choose the Link local only method. Done.

On the server I have no desktop environment. Therefor I wrote the necessary file /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/LocalLink myself. The UUID value can be obtained via uuid -n 1:

[802-3-ethernet]
duplex=full
mac-address=<MAC-address>

[connection]
id=LocalLink
uuid=<value of: uuid -n 1>
type=802-3-ethernet
timestamp=0
autoconnect=true

[ipv6]
method=auto

[ipv4]
method=link-local

I restarted the manager via service network-manager restart on the server and the link came up too. The direct link was ready.

A note: I was able to create the connection by using a patch cable because my cards are able to handle the situation. On older systems it might be necessary to use a cross-over-cable.

I would really like to use bonding on the wired ethernet and the wireless devices. But the wireless connections are done via router whereas the ethernet connections are created via local link. I think, this is impossible. Any ideas/hints?

Setting up a network buildd with pbuilder, ccache, inoticoming and NFS

I recently bought an N54L HP microserver, which shall act as a build-daemon (buildd) for Debian packaging. The idea of my workflow is the following:

1. do the maintenance tasks locally, usually using svn-buildpackage, quilt etc.pp
2. build a source package locally
3. upload the source to an incoming directory on the server
4. watch this incoming directory and start a build process as soon as a package is uploaded
5. put the result into an accessible directory
6. support different vendors (debian, ubuntu)
7. support different releases (experimental, unstable, stable, oldstable)
8. support different architectures (amd64, i386)
9. speed up the build process

Setting up the building environment

My first idea was to use sbuild as described in several places. However I went with pbuilder for a long time having a setup I personally like. So I decided to stay with it. I reduce the time and work to update the configure files by using

• one central file /etc/pbuilderrc.inc defining all the common/shared settings and
• small configure files defining vendor, release, architecture and mirrors

Here are the relevant parts of my central configure snippet:

[..]
EXTRAPACKAGES="apt-utils debconf debconf-utils libfile-fcntllock-perl"
[..]
BASETGZ="/var/cache/pbuilder/base.$DISTRIBUTION.$ARCHITECTURE.tgz"
APTCACHE="/var/cache/pbuilder/aptcache/$DISTRIBUTION/$ARCHITECTURE/"
BUILDRESULT="/var/cache/pbuilder/result/$DISTRIBUTION/$ARCHITECTURE/"
[..]
case "$VENDOR" in
ubuntu)
MIRRORSITE="http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu"
COMPONENTS="main restricted universe multiverse"
OTHERMIRROR="\
deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $DISTRIBUTION main restricted universe multiverse|\
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $DISTRIBUTION-updates main restricted universe multiverse|\
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $DISTRIBUTION-security main restricted universe multiverse|\
"
;;
*)
MIRRORSITE="http://ftp.debian.org/debian"
COMPONENTS="main contrib non-free"
OTHERMIRROR="\
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian $DISTRIBUTION main contrib non-free|\
"
;;
esac
[..]
DEBBUILDOPTS="-us -uc -j2"
AUTO_DEBSIGN=no
USE_PDEBUILD_INTERNAL=yes
[..]

You get the main idea, right? Create own files and directories for each architecture, release and vendor. Further I only want to pull build related packages into the build environment, not into the server environment. So I enabled USE_PDEBUILD_INTERNAL. I don't want to sign anything on the buildd itself and use both cores. That's what DEBBUILDOPTS and AUTO_DEBSIGN are used for. Further I saw some warnings reported during build processes. I therefor install the packages mentioned in EXTRAPACKAGES to every build enviroment. The following are the configure files for the unstable amd64 (default) and the stable i386 build environments:

VENDOR="debian"
DISTRIBUTION="sid"
ARCHITECTURE="amd64"

. /etc/pbuilderrc.inc

VENDOR="debian"
DISTRIBUTION="wheezy"
ARCHITECTURE="i386"

. /etc/pbuilderrc.inc

OTHERMIRROR+="\
deb http://security.debian.org $DISTRIBUTION/updates main contrib non-free|\
"

Now to not having to update all of these environments manually there is a small parallelized script /usr/local/sbin/update-pbuilder-chroots:

#!/bin/sh

t=$(tempfile -p .upc. -s .list) || exit 1

cat > $t << EOF
/etc/pbuilderrc.amd64.sid
/etc/pbuilderrc.i386.sid
/etc/pbuilderrc.amd64.wheezy
/etc/pbuilderrc.i386.wheezy
/etc/pbuilderrc.amd64.squeeze
/etc/pbuilderrc.i386.squeeze
EOF

parallel /usr/sbin/pbuilder update --override-config --configfile :::: $t | tee -a /var/log/pbuilder.log

rm -f $t

exit 0

The script will make sure, that every change to the configuration file(s) will be considered (--override-config) and is run once a week via cron. The default build environment is updated on a daily base without this restriction:

@reboot root    rm -rf /var/cache/pbuilder/build/*/ >> /dev/null 2>&1
@daily  root    test -x /usr/sbin/pbuilder && /usr/sbin/pbuilder update --configfile /etc/pbuilderrc.amd64.sid | tee -a /var/log/pbuilder.log >> /dev/null 2>&1
@weekly root    test -x /usr/local/sbin/update-pbuilder-chroots && /usr/local/sbin/update-pbuilder-chroots >> /dev/null 2>&1

Speeding up the build process

Sometimes it is necessary to recompile a package. The tool to speed up this process is ccache, which can be easily integrated into pbuilder by setting CCACHEDIR in /etc/pbuilderrc.inc. It acts like a cache for compiled files and avoids recompilation in several buildd runs.

CCACHEDIR=/var/cache/pbuilder/ccache

It is also possible to use a TMPFS for BUILDPLACE to speed up the build process itself. In this case APTCACHEHARDLINK must be disabled. Well, yeah, I don't do this.

Watch an incoming directory and start the build process

Not much to say about this except that the user nobody is used to run the pbuilder command. Therefor it is necessary to mention this in /etc/sudoers to allow him to do this via sudo command:

Defaults        env_keep = "DH_OPTIONS DH_VERBOSE DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS DH_OPTIONS MAKEFLAGS CC CXX CPP F77 F90"
[..]
nobody          ALL=NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/pbuilder

The first line is only necessary, if a pbuilder command is started with one of these environmental variables set. This can be useful when e.g. debugging a build failure with a future gcc version that is not yet the default or when debugging a clang build issue or when creating non-stripped binary packages for creating a backtrace (BTW: When there is a common repository of all debugging symbols created?).

Now to start the build process, I created an incoming directory with mods 777 at /var/cache/pbuilder/incoming/ and use inoticoming to watch it. This is started during boot via cron. The following shows the entry for the default unstable amd64 build environment:

@reboot root    /usr/bin/inoticoming --logfile /var/log/inoticoming.log --pid-file /var/run/inoticoming.pid /var/cache/pbuilder/incoming --chdir /var/cache/pbuilder/incoming --suffix .dsc --stderr-to-log --stdout-to-log /bin/su -c '/usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/pbuilder build --autocleanaptcache {}' nobody \;

Done. That's how the basic buildd works.

Getting the results

The pbuilder BUILDRESULT directory with mods 777 is shared via NFS mount to the workstation. After successfully building the package, debsign and dput can be used as usual.

Setting up the workstation

I use svn-buildpackage for most of my packages. Because pbuilder won't download source tarballs on demand by default (maybe via hook?), the tarball must always be included building the source package, which then gets uploaded via dput to the buildd. This is considered in the command listed in svn-builder in ~/.svn-buildpackage.conf (note, below shows my personal layout):

svn-builder=debuild --post-dpkg-buildpackage-hook=\"dput -f buildd /usr/local/src/packages/$PACKAGE/%p_%s_source.changes\" --no-lintian -d -sa -us -uc -S
svn-override=origDir=/usr/local/src/packages/$PACKAGE
svn-override=buildArea=/usr/local/src/packages/$PACKAGE
[..]

The host buildd has been added to ~/.dput.cf:

[buildd]
fqdn = mybuildd
login = mylogin
method = scp
incoming = /var/cache/pbuilder/incoming
allow_unsigned_uploads = 1
run_lintian = 0

Done. Now the svn-buildpackage command will create a source package including the source tarball and upload it to the buildd, where the package building starts right after the upload.

Conclusions

This is the main setup which works nicely for the default build environment so far. On the TODO list is to extend this setup so I can easily deal with all the architectures and releases (point 6..8 at the beginning).

Update 17.02.2015

The original article suggested to use the %v variable in the hook to transfer the _sources.changes file to the build-daemon. This will fail if the source version e.g. is X:Y-Z in which case the file created is package_Y-Z_source.changes but the command to execute is:

dput -f buildd package_X:Y-Z_source.changes

and thus will fail. According to dpkg-buildpackage(1) the hook command also accepts a %s variable, which seems to extract the superflous version characters.

Reconfiguring my mail server to reject spam

I now spent some time in optimizing my mail server configuration, especially adjusting the rules, which clients and mails get accepted and which not. In its current setup, it's already configured to not act as an open relay. Mails sent via the server have to use SMTP-AUTH.

So these are the rules, that get applied now:

smtpd_delay_reject = yes
smtpd_data_restrictions =
        reject_unauth_pipelining
smtpd_client_restrictions =
        permit_sasl_authenticated,
        permit_mynetworks,
        reject_invalid_hostname,
        reject_unknown_client_hostname,
        reject_non_fqdn_hostname,
        reject_rbl_client sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org
smtpd_sender_restrictions =
        reject_unknown_address,
        reject_unknown_sender_domain,
        reject_non_fqdn_sender
smtpd_recipient_restrictions =
        permit_sasl_authenticated,
        permit_mynetworks,
        reject_unauth_destination,
        reject_unknown_recipient_domain,
        reject_unverified_recipient,
        reject_non_fqdn_recipient,
        permit

At the moment it already reduced the amount of spam by around 90 %. I hve not yet seen any downside, but I have to check these settings a bit longer to be sure.

Customizing nanonblogger - incorporation into debian.wgdd.de design?

I was looking for a small and simple blogging engine to reinstall my old blogging domain www.wgdd.de without having to reinstall Wordpress, which is to my opinion much too large for my small blog. Unfortunately there seem to be only few alternatives, e.g. zine (too old) or jekyll (well, might be an alternative) and several of them haven't seen any updates for years. So I decided to give a try to NanoBlogger, which is also available in Debian. If you don't know this software: it is a static website generator made of common UNIX tools and doesn't require any database nor webserver backends.

After figuring out how to start (there is some nice documentation) I imported all my wordpress articles (manually) and news from another website of mine. Some downsides I discovered: some commands don't work es expected, e.g. nb edit tag X simply says no changes were made! goodbye.i That's not intuitive. Also figuring out how to change an entries posting date wasn't easy. It basically boils down to the following steps (consider this entry itself):

1. create an entry (with or without setting a TIMESTAMP, save it and update the weblog (the latter is done automatically) - these steps will automatically fill the DATE field and name the file accordingly to the output of date -u -d "2012-10-05 21:53:06"
2. now either way by adding a TIMESTAMP field editing the file or adding it via commandline: don't touch the DATE field!; just adjust the date in the TIMESTAMP field; after saving the file, nanoblogger will fix the DATE field itself
3. next time you are editing the file, the TIMESTAMP field is still present: if you are not going to change it again, you must remove it; otherwise nanoblogger will report this error: invalid entry TIMESTAMP or conflict

Some more downsides:

Some more downsides:

• It becomes slower with increasing entry count. Especially when making a change to blog.conf, which requires a complete rebuild of the weblog, this might become annoying.
• After changing an entries timestamp, its tag assignments are lost.
• Articles cannot be as easily managed as entries, although it is not claer to me, why. E.g. deletion of an articles is impossible (why not: nb delete article X (just make X and assignment based on any sorting order listing articles)?
• Looks like entry descriptions are not put into the meta-description tag of the resulting file (clear bug?).
• Internationalization doesn't seem to be easy (customizable). It would be nice to have the possibility to create files containing the chosen language. Also it would be nice if the lang attribute would be set accordingly to xml:lang based on a chosen language, e.g. by setting a variable BLOG_LANG. I've already fixed _this_ locally. Another idea would be to have a LANG field in the entry meta file, which content would then be added to the lang and xml:lang attributes of the relevant container element. Maybe I'll try to fix this locally too.
• The tag handling isn't that comfortable. Would be nice to have a field for this too.

However, you see I'm still using this software. So it's not that bad, right :) However I hope, development is going on with this software.

I was also checking, if and how I could integrate this blog into my other website debian.wgdd.de where I used to have a similar news layout in a manually maintained HTML file. The good thing was, that the basic layouts were pretty similar. I was able to achive almost the same layout design by just renaming the div-containers in nanoblogger output (templates/main_index.htm) accordingly to my chosing and adding an import-statement at the top of the blog CSS stylesheet importing my own stylesheet. This worked pretty nice. However, there were still some duplicate selectors (happily no ID- or CLASS-based duplicates). So IMHO customization would still have been difficult including large changes - e.g. applying customizations to all template files in templates/, making it necessary to synchronize the layout design code in around 10 different files. So I decided against the layout customization and searched for a way, to dynamically load only the blog container without the title bar and the sidebar into a HTML file. My first (PHP-based) solution basicly looks like this:

<?php
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->preserveWhiteSpace = false; 
$doc->load('http://invalid.tld/index.html');
$doc->formatOutput = true;

$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);
$xpath->registerNamespace("html", "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml");

$result = $xpath->query('//html:div[@id="content"]')->item(0);

echo $doc->saveXML($result);
?>

I'll play with this a bit more. In an ideal world, I would like to import only entries related to the debian tag. Unfortunately nanoblogger doesn't provide a site containing only such blog entries (only a site containing the titles of such posts). I can imagine a way to do this: it would require another xpath query or an iteraion over $result. And this is the possible downside: it might increase load time further, which I don't want. However, it's a start.

Stay tuned.

Update

I was able to solve a few issues and I discovered, that I don't need the PHP code above. The blog software provides parts of the website via the /parts/ directory, e.g. parts/index.html (recent blog entries) or parts/category/index.html (category entries).

New bluefish 2.0 packages available for i386 and amd64

With the release candidate 2 for Bluefish 2.0 my repository provides bluefish packages for the amd64 and i386 architectures. They will be automatically installed when you update your installed bluefish-unstable packages:

# apt-get dist-upgrade
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  bluefish bluefish-data bluefish-dbg bluefish-plugins
The following packages will be upgraded:
  bluefish-unstable bluefish-unstable-data bluefish-unstable-dbg bluefish-unstable-plugins

The latter became so called "transitional packages" and don't provide any functionality. They can be safely removed after upgrading to the bluefish packages:

# apt-get autoremove --purge bluefish-unstable bluefish-unstable-data bluefish-unstable-dbg bluefish-unstable-plugins

The package upgrade/installation will further replace any installation of the bluefish packages of Debian and Ubuntu!

Re: Making pbuilder just that little bit faster

It is true that making /var/cache/pbuilder/build a tmpfs makes a noticeable speed difference. But it seems you cannot cache the downloaded debs: ln: creating hard link ...: Invalid cross-device link.

Testing SMART status of my Toshiba USB harddrive

I recently bought an external USB harddrive, made by Toshiba. It's the HDDR500E03X model with 500GB space, internal shock sensor and ramp loading technology. Now yesterday I learned, that I can also cover its health status using the smartmontools. The usb* device types did not fit, but the sat did. It is as easy as running:

smartctl -d sat -c /dev/sdb
smartctl -d sat -t long /dev/sdb

Toshiba Tecra A10 (PTSB5E) - Part III

Connecting a NOKIA 6310i mobile phone via serial DLR-3P cable and the serial connector of the laptop (for Bluetooth see part II): After installation of the gnokii package(s) the the configuration file says:

model = 6510
connection = dlr3p

Then gnokii reports:

$ gnokii --identify
GNOKII Version 0.6.28
IMEI         : XXXX
Manufacturer : Nokia
Modell       : 6310i
Product name : NPL-1
Revision     : V 5.22

Toshiba Tecra A10 (PTSB5E) - Part II

So I got a little bit further with my little toy.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth works. The packages gnome-bluetooth and bluez are installed and the kernel module bluetooth is loaded. hciconfig reports this:

# hciconfig
hci0:   Type: USB
        BD Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8
        UP RUNNING PSCAN
        RX bytes:11354 acl:105 sco:0 events:286 errors:0
        TX bytes:4012 acl:99 sco:0 commands:66 errors:0

I tried to connect to a SAMSUNG and a NOKIA mobile phone. After enabling visibility of the phone the bluetooth-applet showed the device. However I got an error saying The name org.openobex was not provided by any .service files when trying to access the mobile device. This was solved by installing obexd-server obex-data-server. Then I was able to access the phone contents via Bluetooth.

Virtualization

I recently tried to debug the mopac7 build error. I installed the qemu(-kvm) emulator. Loading of the kvm_intel module failed with kvm: disabled by bios. But this was easy to solve by enabling the Intel virtualization technology in the BIOS: push and hold the ESC key during startup until the laptop tells you to press the F1 key. Then enable the related BIOS option and you are done.

Toshiba Tecra A10 (PTSB5E) - Part I

I recently got a Toshiba Tecra A10-1HU laptop. This is a series describing my experiences with this hardware using Debian Sid.

This one comes without any operating system. So I got a recent testing-netinstall CD-image and ran the installer procedure (in expert mode). Everything went fine and I ended with a shiny Squeeze and kernel 2.6.30. Because I use Sid as my usual system, my first action was a dist-upgrade to Sid.

This is what lspci -nn tells:

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
00:03.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset MEI Controller [8086:2a44] (rev 07)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10f5] (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:2942] (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 [8086:2944] (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller [8086:2917] (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller [8086:2929] (rev 03)
01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100 [8086:4232]
05:0b.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II [1180:0476] (rev ba)
05:0b.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller [1180:0832] (rev 04)
05:0b.2 SD Host controller [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter [1180:0822] (rev 21)
05:0b.3 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller [1180:0843] (rev ff)
05:0b.4 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter [1180:0592] (rev 11)
05:0b.5 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller [1180:0852] (rev 11)

Things that worked out-of-the-box:

Display/Graphics (Intel GMA 4500M HD)

The integrated graphics chipset, an Intel GMA 4500M HD, works with the xserver-xorg-video-intel package and the default X.org configuration. No custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf is necessary. The (IMHO non-reflecting?) display runs at 1280x800 at 60 Hz.

Cable network device

The integrated Intel 82567LM Gigabit Network device works with the e1000e kernel module. No customization was necessary.

Touchpad/Trackpoint

The notebook comes with the so called Toshiba Dual Pointing Device a touchpad (+2 buttons) and a trackpoint (+2 buttons). Both worked without customization.

Energy savings/Suspend/Resume

apmd and acpid handle this. No problems yet. Suspend/Resume works. I did not yet test (and I'm not sure if I should) hibernate and uswsusp.

Webcam

The webcam is a CNA7157 model or at least detected as such. The video4linux modules handle it and the cheese application produces pictures.

Volume-control wheel

It works. Module and package information will follow as soon as I figure them out.

Things that needed customization

WLAN (Intel WiFi Link 5100)

The notebook comes with an Intel WiFi Link 5100 device. It does not work out-of-the-box. Following this article, I've installed the firmware-iwlwifi package and loaded the iwlagn (now iwlwifi) module.

Sound (Intel)

For the sound device to work the snd_hda_intel module is necessary. Further the following lines must be added to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

# not sure about the first line, start adding the second only
options snd-cmipci mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388
options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=toshiba position_fix=1

Unsure/Not yet working

Temperature sensor

After installing sensors-applet I got two identical temperature displays. I'm not sure what they show. Anybody an idea how to examine this?

Modem

The notebook comes with an internal modem device:

00:03.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset MEI Controller [8086:2a44] (rev 07)

From what I read I need hsfmodem or the sl-modem packages. Unfortunately the latest version is not available for amd64 from the archive, although it seems to have been built.

Untested

I did not yet test

• Bluetooth (icon there, kernel module loaded)
• Firewire (kernel module loaded)
• Card-reader (kernel modules loaded) Card reader works

Summit

This what lspci -k -nn tells about the used kernel modules:

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0004]
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0004]
00:03.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset MEI Controller [8086:2a44] (rev 07)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10f5] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: e1000e
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 03)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:2942] (rev 03)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 [8086:2944] (rev 03)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller [8086:2917] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller [8086:2929] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: ahci
01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100 [8086:4232]
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1201]
        Kernel driver in use: iwlagn
05:0b.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II [1180:0476] (rev ba)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: yenta_cardbus
05:0b.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller [1180:0832] (rev 04)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci
05:0b.2 SD Host controller [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter [1180:0822] (rev 21)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
        Kernel driver in use: sdhci-pci
05:0b.3 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller [1180:0843] (rev ff)
        Kernel driver in use: ricoh-mmc
05:0b.4 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter [1180:0592] (rev 11)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]
05:0b.5 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller [1180:0852] (rev 11)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]

Ubuntu Jaunty repository replaced by Ubuntu Intrepid repository

Packages of bluefish-unstable are now built for Ubuntu Jaunty instead of Intrepid. You must adjust the entries in /etc/apt/sources.list or update /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.wgdd.de_ubuntu.list. You'll receive HTML error code 410 ("resource gone") using the old entries.

(WW) AllowEmtpyInput is on, devices using drivers <kbd> or <mouse> will be disabled

Maybe you will observe a changed mouse and keyboard behaviour after updating X.org recently in Debian Sid. Then you will probably discover the warning mentioned in the title in your X.org server log /var/log/Xorg.0.log. The very short and dirty solution to get things working for the moment is to put this into your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Option "AutoAddDevices" "off"
EndSection

See the first entry in /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg/NEWS.Debian.gz and follow the mentioned links for more information. However, the above solution should only be a temporary workaround: Try to migrate things (I will post changes for my system asap).