Understanding Debian: The Universal Operating System

"And my final test as to whether or not Debian succeeded was: could the founder step away from the project and could the project keep going because that is the only point at which you know that the project has basically taken a life of its own." ~ Ian Murdock

Fire Ruby - howto start with Firebird and Ruby on Ubuntu / Debian

This howto is about installing firebird ruby driver on Ubuntu or any Debian based distro
you might need some firebird dependencies and if you need the stable Firebird server  Firebird 2.5 guide to install it

The very basic firebird package to build only the driver is firebird2.5-dev

sudo apt-get install firebird2.5-dev git-core

and choose yes when asked
Then you need to install ruby and the recommended rails way is to use rbenv 

rbenv install 2.1.2
rbenv global 2.1.2
ruby -v

Best way is to install it from gem

gem install fb

Alternate way  is to build install our gem (latest build-able is located here )

git clone https://github.com/rowland/fb.git
cd fb/
gem build fb.gemspec

You will get something like this in terminal :

 Successfully built RubyGem
  Name: fb
  Version: 0.*.*
  File: fb-0.*.*.gem

Now is time to install it using the gem command

gem install fb-0.*.*.gem

Please read the README.
here is how i tested on my machine

Here is part of the example i ran on my pc

pico test.rb 

And here are the results for my ruby test

ruby test.rb 
ID: 0, Name: John 0
ID: 9, Name: John 9

What is next class ? RoR on Firebird

Compiling Linux Kernel Vanilla - Ubuntu/Debian way

Here is my guide on Compiling x.xx.x Vanilla Final - Ubuntu/Debian using the Debian way

This article is about compiling a kernel on Ubuntu systems. It describes how to build a custom kernel using the latest unmodified kernel sources from www.kernel.org (vanilla kernel) so that you are independent from the kernels supplied by your distribution.
Install the Required packages for building it

 
apt-get install git-core kernel-package fakeroot build-essential ncurses-dev

Then download latest kernel version

cd /usr/src

sudo su 
wget --continue http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.xx.x.tar.bz2
tar jxvf linux-*.*.*.tar.bz2
cd linux-*.*.*

$ cp /boot/config-`uname -r` ./.config
$ make menuconfig

make-kpkg clean

fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-vanillaice kernel_image kernel_headers
cd ..
dpkg -i linux-image-*.*.*

dpkg -i linux-headers-*.*.*
sudo shutdown -r now

you can install the headers too from /usr/src/linux-headers-3.*.*-*
in my case i can show you how the packages are named

ls *.deb
linux-image-*.*.*-vanillaice_4.4.*-vanillaice-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb
linux-headers-*.*.*-vanillaice_4.4.*-vanillaice-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb

I also created a python script http://github.com/mariuz/kernelcompile

that can be used like this

git clone https://mariuz@github.com/mariuz/kernelcompile.git

cd kernelcompile
sudo ./kernel-compile.py

php5 and firebird pdo on ubuntu / debian

The recommendd method is to use the official php5 source from ubuntu or debian and build only the pdo firebird extension and install it

sudo apt-get install php5-dev firebird2.5-dev php-pear devscripts debget

You need to build the pdo extension from php from ubuntu source code here is the source for php package (apt-get source will do the job for any release)

apt-get source php5
cd php5-*
cd ext/pdo_firebird
phpize
sudo ln -s /usr/include/php5 /usr/include/php
./configure
make
sudo make install 

Check to have in php.ini to have the next lines also with phpinfo() function

sudo pico/vi /etc/php5/conf.d/pdo.ini
# configuration for php PDO module
extension=pdo.so
extension=pdo_firebird.so


php -i | grep PDO
PDO
PDO support => enabled
PDO drivers => firebird
PDO_Firebird
PDO Driver for Firebird/InterBase => enabled

you can also check in apache if all is correct
by creating a page in /var/www/pdo_info.php
with this content



then in the browser press F3 and search PDO
to check if all is ok with the driver then create one small example that loads the driver and then is connecting to the database server



after the driver is loaded now you can use the pdo as usual , here is the fetch example

Using Lazarus IDE with Firebird in Ubuntu and Debian

Install the ide

sudo apt-get install lazarus-ide

Start the ide from the console/terminal

 lazarus-ide &

If everything went well you'll see a new tab called SQLdb. This tab will contain two components a TSQLConnection and a TSQLQuery.








SQLdb tab also contains a component TIBConnection that you can place it on the form


We will connect to /var/lib/firebird/2.5/data/employee.fdb
On the form put an TIBConnection, TSQLTransaction,TSQLQuery,TDatasource and an TDBGrid









TIBConnection is configured to have DatabaseName=/var/lib/firebird/2.5/data/employee.fdb
Password=masterkey
Username=sysdba
and Transaction=SQLTransaction1
You can put it to be Connected = True




Then configure SQLTransaction1
to use

Database=IBConnection1
Active =True;




Configure TSQLQuery this way

Database:IBConnection1
SQL=select * from employee;
Active = True;








Configure TDatasource
DataSet=SQLQuery1



Configure TDBGrid

DataSource = DataSource1




Next you can put an button and make them active from run time


procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
SQLQuery1.Active:=true;
end;

Mono Firebird Example updated for Mono 2.6/2.10.x release (#ubuntu / #debian)

Mono Firebird Example updated for Mono 2.6 release

First I hope you have Firebird 2.5 already installed with examples :)

Second Install Monodevelop and Mono
In my case was something like this on ubuntu

sudo apt-get install  mono-gmcs mono-gac mono-utils monodevelop monodoc-browser monodevelop-nunit monodevelop-versioncontrol  monodoc-gtk2.0-manual 

Also on Debian you can use mono 2.10.x by using experimental repository (after you add it in /etc/apt/sources.list)

sudo apt-get -t experimental install  mono-gmcs mono-gac mono-utils monodevelop monodoc-browser monodevelop-nunit monodevelop-versioncontrol  monodoc-gtk2.0-manual 

You must download the .Net Provider 2.6.5 for mono binary version NETProvider-2.6.5-MONO_LINUX.7z
Extract it somewhere in the project dir where you want to build it

Create an new C# Console Project
Then add the Firebird .net assembly to the test project
References-> Edit References -> .Net Assembly
browse to the FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient.dll that you downloaded before (and extracted)
then click Add button

Fill the Main.cs this way and Build Solution (Also add System.Data references)



Then click run after the solution is build and the result should be like this

Fixes to fbexport compilation on linux systems debian/ubuntu

It's easy to compile firebird export utility just download the version from sourceforge

cd fbexport-1.90
after that modify fbcopy/TableDependency.cpp
and add

#include <stdio.h>

to the include section otherwise you will get the error error: ‘printf’ was not declared in this scope
make should complete the job (of course you need the firebird headers , check if you have them installed with dpkg -L firebird2.5-dev)

 make
g++ -c -O1 -DIBPP_LINUX -DIBPP_GCC -Iibpp -o fbcopy/args.o fbcopy/args.cpp
g++ -c -O1 -DIBPP_LINUX -DIBPP_GCC -Iibpp -o fbcopy/fbcopy.o fbcopy/fbcopy.cpp
g++ -c -O1 -DIBPP_LINUX -DIBPP_GCC -Iibpp -o fbcopy/TableDependency.o fbcopy/TableDependency.cpp
g++ -c -O1 -DIBPP_LINUX -DIBPP_GCC -Iibpp -o fbcopy/main.o fbcopy/main.cpp
g++ -c -O1 -DIBPP_LINUX -DIBPP_GCC -Iibpp -o ibpp/all_in_one.o ibpp/all_in_one.cpp
g++ -pthread -lfbclient ibpp/all_in_one.o fbcopy/args.o fbcopy/fbcopy.o fbcopy/TableDependency.o fbcopy/main.o  -oexe/fbcopy
g++ -c -O1 -DIBPP_LINUX -DIBPP_GCC -Iibpp -o fbexport/ParseArgs.o fbexport/ParseArgs.cpp
g++ -c -O1 -DIBPP_LINUX -DIBPP_GCC -Iibpp -o fbexport/FBExport.o fbexport/FBExport.cpp
g++ -c -O1 -DIBPP_LINUX -DIBPP_GCC -Iibpp -o fbexport/cli-main.o fbexport/cli-main.cpp
g++ -pthread -lfbclient ibpp/all_in_one.o fbexport/ParseArgs.o fbexport/FBExport.o fbexport/cli-main.o -oexe/fbexport

and the binary is in exe dir

exe/fbexport
--------------------------------
FBExport v1.80 by Milan Babuskov (mbabuskov), using IBPP 2.5.3.0
Tool for importing/exporting data with Firebird and InterBase databases.
Usage: fbexport -[S|Sc|Si|Sh|I|If|X|L] Options

 -S  Select = output to file  (S - binary, Si - INSERTs, Sc - CSV, Sh - HTML)
 -I  Insert = input from file
 -If Insert by Full SQL = input from file, by parameterized SQL
 -X  eXecute SQL statement, use with -F to execute sql scripts
 -L  List connected users

Options are:                           -H Host          [LOCALHOST]
 -D Database                           -U Username      [SYSDBA]
 -F Filename (use - for stdout)        -O Role
 -P Password                           -T Trim chars    [off]
 -A "Charset"                          -J "Date format" [D.M.Y]
 -Q "SQL Query statement"              -K "Time format" [H:M:S]
 -C # = Checkpoint at # rows [1000]    -M Commit at each checkpoint [off]
 -E # = Ignore up to # errors [0] Set to -1 to ignore all
 -R Rollback transaction if any errors occur while importing [off]
 -V Table = Verbatim copy of table (use -Q to set where clause if desired)
 -B Separator [,] = Field separator for CSV export. Allows special value: TAB
Command-line options are not case-sensitive (except the TAB setting)

Update

I have added a few more fixes in this fork on the github (related to linking errors) and included the compiling fixes from above 

Gallium3 nouveau on !debian sid now enabled part two

After hitting the building mesa bug error in first part
: nouveau/nouveau_class.h: No such file or directory

I have decided to install libdrm 2.4.24 but there is no such thing in debian
so you must install by source from git

git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/mesa/drm
cd drm
./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-nouveau-experimental-api --prefix=/usr
sudo make install 

Then go back to mesa dir from git

make
sudo cp lib/gallium/nouveau_dri.so /usr/lib/dri/
LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo 2>&1 >/dev/null | grep so$
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/tls/nouveau_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/nouveau_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/tls/nouveau_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/nouveau_dri.so
glxinfo | egrep renderer
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on NVAA

Now you can play with opengl:openarena,xonotic or webgl
So i'm really free of nvidia's blobs
Update: seems that is possible to install nouveau gallium with a simple

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental

dpkg -L  libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental | grep nouveau
/usr/lib/dri/nouveau_dri.so

#oracle Virtualbox 4.0.x doesn't work on !debian sid

Seems that is a known issue ,
I have dist-upgraded and from vbox 3.x is now 4.0 but that is very slow
the windowsxp vm works with cpu 100% in top and the mouse moves like in slow motion
I will remove virtualbox and use virt-manager from now on

ps: yah i want to see my grades on the university website ...works on ie only fsck

libvirt-manager install tips on #Debian sid

A good idea is to add yourself to libvirt group and also kvm

sudo adduser mariuz libvirt
sudo adduser mariuz kvm

the dir of /var/lib/libvirt/images is unwritable for the group libvirt (seems that is created with root.root )
so is good to make it group rw and change the owner to grup libvirt

sudo chmod g+rw /var/lib/libvirt/images/

otherwise you will get the dreaded message qemu: could not open disk image /var/lib/libvirt/images

Now i can install natty in the virtmanager

A few days with #Gnash on #debian #sid #amd64

seems that on my systems amd64 the adobe's proprietary plugin is temporarily removed because of it's dependencies
Yes i do use the flashplayer-mozilla from debian multimedia but today update removed it also the nspluginwrapper

flashplayer-mozilla depends on nspluginwrapper and ia32-libs
but the new version of ia32-libs conflicts with older version of ia32-libs-gtk

debtree flashplayer-mozilla > out.dot
dot -T png -o out.png out.dot

or use the svg version to see the dependencies better
dot -T svg -o out.svg out.dot

so i will use gnash plugin >0.8.8 for a few days for the youtube videos that are not converted to webm (seems that is working in iceweasel, and google chrome, on arora i have one error)

apt-get install mozilla-plugin-gnash

it's not that bad : both cpus are used so is full multi threaded
some movies are working ok : like the new compiz 0.9.2 examples
but some are not (like the reea.net main splash movie)

Why #ubuntu 64 bit not recommended for daily usage ? part two

if you think that 64 bit is not good for daily usage think again
some things like video decoding and encoding is faster even on atom based machines
and there is good reason because is so fast : the increased number of registers and
the registers are wider

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=499

As these benchmarks show, ffvp8 is clearly much faster than libvpx, particularly on 64-bit. It’s even faster by a large margin on Atom, despite the fact that we haven’t even begun optimizing for it. In many cases, ffvp8′s extra speed can make the difference between a video that plays and one that doesn’t, especially in modern browsers with software compositing engines taking up a lot of CPU time. Want to get faster playback of VP8 videos? The next versions of FFmpeg-based players, like VLC, will include ffvp8. Want to get faster playback of WebM in your browser? Lobby your browser developers to use ffvp8 instead of libvpx. I expect Chrome to switch first, as they already use libavcodec for most of their playback system.

Another thing is that all the apps are faster on 64bit than on 32bit and i can sense that speed
you know like when you overclock you cpu to gain something like 10% more in FPS
There is a feeling that system is faster on 64bit than on 32bit (more responsive)
Forget about flash , flash is slow on all systems be it quad or six core monsters
anyway is working without many issues on 64bit systems , So why the fark ubuntu is recomending
a slow operating system ?

http://tuxradar.com/content/ubuntu-904-32-bit-vs-64-bit-benchmarks

At this point, using a 64-bit distro is rather like enabling hyperthreading on your CPU - you get a free performance boost for your PC, and if that means you can put off upgrading it for another six months then it's an easy win. As we said earlier, it's a nice bonus. Sure, 5-10% isn't a lot, but when it's across your whole desktop and comes at no cost, why not?

generating visitors stats with visitors and uzing gzip-ed logs

tip of the day using visitors stats

zcat /var/log/apache2/firebirdsqlro_access.log.*.gz | visitors - >stats.html
--
50345 lines processed in 2 seconds
0 invalid lines, 0 blacklisted referers


http://firebirdsql.ro/images/stats.html


I like the piwik stats interface and seems that is using html canvas instead of flash

http://piwik.org/

On #debian : shortcutting circular dependencies in apt or forcing them

I wonder if is possible to detect and shortcut the circular dependencies in apt tree , the kind of shortcut we have in sql for some joins (i don't remember the post exactly)

http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html

Testing Firebird 2.1 on Debian experimental

Testing Firebird 2.1 on Debian experimental

Update: There is now Firebird 2.5 final in experimental
also if you want 2.1 is already in testing and unstable (no need for experimental repository)

Here is my sources.list
cat /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main

Add:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ experimental main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ experimental main

Then:

# apt-get update -t experimental
# apt-get install -t experimental firebird2.1-classic

or install super-server

# apt-get install -t experimental firebird2.1-classic

Install examples and flamerobin

apt-get install -t experimental firebird2.1-examples flamerobin

follow the examples extaction procedure from this page [Scrooll down and ignore the apt sources.list lines]
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Firebird2.1


With firebird2.1-classic i have this error when i try to connect to employee.fdb

Engine Code : 335544653
Engine Message :
cannot attach to password database


This is a caveat with classic server and not a bug in Flamerobin.

This is the recipe to reproduce it:
* install Debian classic-server package
* (before anything else) connect to any database using a direct path
to the database, not server:/path/to/db using any program linked
with libfbembed, for example the firebird-supplied tools (sql,
gfix etc)
- this starts the lock manager as the currently running user
(let's name it 'X', which most probably is *not* 'firebird')
* try to connect to any database either using the server:/path/to/db
connection string, or using an utility that is linked with
libfbclient (which preepends localhost: on raw connection
strings), for example flamerobin
- you can't as that utility would connect via the fb_inet_server,
which runs as user 'firebird' by default and cannot open the
lock files created by the user 'X'.

To avoid this

* always use localhost: in front of any paths. this way the lock
files and the shared memory segment will be owned by the
'firebird' user.

Testing debian installer on windows box

I had at Lechinta an wubi installer but the cpu is too slow for ntfs-ng
so i decided to install debian/ubuntu on an native partition

So i installed the debian on windows and after it finished it rebooted and started
the classic debian installer (graphic mode)

I installed the base system then i dist-upgraded to lenny (testing)
and then to sid(unstable)

Just replace etch with testing in /etc/apt/sources.list
#apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade
#reboot
Just replace testing with unstable in /etc/apt/sources.list
#apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade
#reboot




so now i have an modern distro
The space is small on this p3 machine @500Mhz so i had to install an lightweight window manager
so i installed xfce4 from command line

#apt-get install xfce4 xorg gdm
#/etc/init.d/gdm start

Then i needed an browser so i typed
#sudo apt-get install iceweasel

That is firefox3.0.x under debian , they didn't accepted mozilla firefox restrictions and EULA so they decided to name it that way


Next install synaptic and it should give you an starting point to installing packages
#sudo apt-get install synaptic

Here is how to install flash player under debian

Microsoft err Mozilla Demanding Firefox Display EULA In Ubuntu

what next ? eula for source code

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/14/195203&from=rss

no wonder opensource will go the webkit route and it will be included in gnome by default (epiphany webkit )
mozilla looks more and more with microsoft (you know like in animal farm)

adding locale in debian and php

sudo apt-get install language-pack-ro-base or
sudo apt-get install language-pack-fr-base

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

locale -a
C
de_AT.utf8
de_BE.utf8
de_CH.utf8
de_DE.utf8
de_LU.utf8
en_US.utf8
fr_BE.utf8
fr_CA.utf8
fr_CH.utf8
fr_FR.utf8
fr_LU.utf8
POSIX
ro_RO.utf8


write an php test script locales.php

setlocale(LC_TIME, 'ro_RO.UTF8'); // note the charset info !
echo strftime("%B");

php locales.php
august

specs for an new small server that will be used for web and db in the same time

Xeon quad core

16GB RAM 2x1000GB SATA HD on RAID 0
Operating System Debian Stable 64
2000GB BW
100Mbps network

https://order.layeredtech.com/ConfigureServer.lt?method=display&productId=1775&__utma=1.1468572713.1210778814.1210778814.1211467849.2&__utmb=1&__utmc=1&__utmx=-&__utmz=1.1210778814.1.1.utmccn%3D(direct)


Or you can choose from this list

http://www.layeredtech.com/dedicated-servers/enterprise.php

the important stuff is memory/hdd and to be quad core

the operating system must be debian 64 bit or ubuntu server edition

openssl-blacklist update

http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-3

You can test sslblacklist on any distro to se if they are broken



wget http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl-blacklist/openssl-blacklist_0.1-0ubuntu0.6.06.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf openssl-blacklist_0.1-0ubuntu0.6.06.1.tar.gz
cd openssl-blacklist-0.1/
mkdir -p /usr/share/openssl-blacklist/
cp blacklist.RSA-* /usr/share/openssl-blacklist/



./openssl-vulnkey ssl.key/random_debian.key
Not blacklisted:fb11451111111111111111111111111 ssl.key/random_debian.key






http://metasploit.com/users/hdm/tools/debian-openssl/