gnu
Monday, February 2 2015
SystemD 2015
[16:47:22] matt [wronka.org]/Psi+ http://ma.ttias.be/whats-new-systemd-2015-edition/
Unix: Do one thing well.
SystemD: Why do one thing, when you could be doing other things as well?
I'm not a huge fan of SystemD, in fact, I was considering switching back to FreeBSD for my home workstations to avoid it. However, there were some points in the notes on the 2015 roadmap which might actually be useful for the specific usecase I have for GNU/Linux.
Booting a standard GNU/Linux distro with a read-only root (e.g. from NFS) is frustrating; it doesn't work well, and even though many of the caveats are documented around the Web, it seems like there's always something that doesn't quite work. FreeBSD, for what its worth, booted diskless quite nicely when I was comparing the two about two years ago. In the end, I went with USB boot images for each node at home.
Looking at the roadmap, the 2015 plan for SystemD seems to be moving towards a system which is better designed for read-only root by default, which would be neat, and hopefully mean once the system is configured, bitrot would be less of an issue.
[16:47:22] matt [wronka.org]/Psi+ http://ma.ttias.be/whats-new-systemd-2015-edition/
Unix: Do one thing well.
SystemD: Why do one thing, when you could be doing other things as well?
I'm not a huge fan of SystemD, in fact, I was considering switching back to FreeBSD for my home workstations to avoid it. However, there were some points in the notes on the 2015 roadmap which might actually be useful for the specific usecase I have for GNU/Linux.
Booting a standard GNU/Linux distro with a read-only root (e.g. from NFS) is frustrating; it doesn't work well, and even though many of the caveats are documented around the Web, it seems like there's always something that doesn't quite work. FreeBSD, for what its worth, booted diskless quite nicely when I was comparing the two about two years ago. In the end, I went with USB boot images for each node at home.
Looking at the roadmap, the 2015 plan for SystemD seems to be moving towards a system which is better designed for read-only root by default, which would be neat, and hopefully mean once the system is configured, bitrot would be less of an issue.
Wednesday, March 6 2013
GnuPG and eMail Address Validation
[04:40:40] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.generay It's bothered me for some time that GNU Privacy Guard (gpg or gnupg) rejects valid eMail addresses. It feels like a piece of software that should get eMail validation correct, despite how often others get it wrong.
It turns out that GPG actually let's any non-ASCII character through ostensibly for PGP compatability. I patched the validation routines to also allow some cases it was currently rejecting. This means that although this isn't a 100% to-spec validation routine, it should at least allow all valid cases.
http://matt.wronka.org/stuff/projects/icpp/gnupg/gnupg-1.4.13-emailvalidator.diff
[04:40:40] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.generay It's bothered me for some time that GNU Privacy Guard (gpg or gnupg) rejects valid eMail addresses. It feels like a piece of software that should get eMail validation correct, despite how often others get it wrong.
It turns out that GPG actually let's any non-ASCII character through ostensibly for PGP compatability. I patched the validation routines to also allow some cases it was currently rejecting. This means that although this isn't a 100% to-spec validation routine, it should at least allow all valid cases.
http://matt.wronka.org/stuff/projects/icpp/gnupg/gnupg-1.4.13-emailvalidator.diff
Wednesday, January 16 2013
PXE Boot
[19:26:23] matt [wronka.org]/Trip If you miss those days of trying to load a GNU/Linux distribution from CD-ROM; boot from disc, start the installation, and get partway through the install which only then complains about being unable to find the drive from which you've so far been reading--PXE booting with Linux 3 and a NIC that requires non-distributable firmware is for you.
[19:26:23] matt [wronka.org]/Trip If you miss those days of trying to load a GNU/Linux distribution from CD-ROM; boot from disc, start the installation, and get partway through the install which only then complains about being unable to find the drive from which you've so far been reading--PXE booting with Linux 3 and a NIC that requires non-distributable firmware is for you.