The day has come! Yesterday I dropped the superfluous hal dependency from gparted, today I uploaded gdm to stop using hal for getting the keyboard layout and use libxklavier instead. I also applied Julian Cristau’s udevified X.org branch to our xorg-edgers packages into my halsectomy PPA, created some udev rules for udev-based X.org input detection (1, 2), and off we go: that was the last hal reverse dependency. My system now fully boots and works without hal. ... Read More

A while ago I introduced a script lp-project-upload to automate tarball release uploads to Launchpad. Many people asked for further features, two of which I added now: First, it automatically invokes gpg to create a tarball signature (unless one is already present), and second it invokes an editor to specify changelog and release notes (just keep the files empty if you don’t need them). Uploaded to lucid’s ubuntu-dev-tools, enjoy!

when you go to dinner in a car^Wtank^Wbattleship^Wrazy something like this: I savely arrived in our hotel in Dallas, Texas this afternoon, after a rather uneventful 14 hour trip from Dresden via Frankfurt. On the way I emptied my laptop battery with some small hacking and catching up on bug report email, and did a lot of reading. I also tried to watch Harry Potter 6, but the headphones they give you were so hideous that I hardly understood anything, so I gave up after some ten minutes. ... Read More

Requirements Through the last years I have used various own hacks for backing up my desktop(s). There are dozens of packaged backup solutions in Debian/Ubuntu already, but none of them did quite fit my requirements: KISS! no fancy web UI, storage formats, or millions of plugins and configuration files; backups should just be a normally accessible directory Supports standard backup strategy: daily backups for last week, weekly backups for last month, permanent monthly backups. ... Read More

Vor einer Weile habe ich ein wirklich interessantes und schönes Motiv gefunden und fotografiert. Errät jemand, was das ist? A while ago I found a really interesting and beautiful motif and shot a photo of it. Can anyone guess what it is? Update: Natürlich habt Ihr es rausbekommen, es ist gefrorener Spinat in einer Schachtel. Ich habe das nur durch Zufall entdeckt, und fand die Eiskristalle einfach wunderschön. Of course you got it right; it’s frozen spinach in a box. ... Read More

Ein gruselig schönes Halloween an Euch alle! Gestern haben Netti und ich wieder gebastelt: Wir hatten mit einigen Freunden eine sehr schöne Feier. Danke nochmal an Sonni und Knäcke! English: Happy Halloween everyone! Netti and I made some nice pumpkin yesterday, and had a great party with some friends.

… auf der Taekwondo-Leiter ist erreicht! Gestern fand hier in Dresden mal wieder ein Lehrgang mit unserem Großmeister Kim Chul Hwan. Er hat uns ab um neun ordentlich auf Trab gehalten. Ich hab mich gestern auch mal wieder einer Gürtelprüfung gestellt, die ich auch bestanden habe. Formenlauf, Einschritt- und Freikampf gingen glatt über die Bühne, ich hatte nur etwas Bammel vor dem Bruchtest (Yop-Chagi), da ich den vorher noch nicht geübt hatte. ... Read More

PostgreSQL recently published new point releases which fix the usual range of important bugs (data loss/wrong results, etc.) and additionally fix another case of insecure “security definer” functions (the analogon to setuid programs in file system space for SQL functions) (CVE-2007-6600). Please see the complete changes for 8.1.18 (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS), 8.3.8 (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, 8.10, and 9.04), and 8.4.1 (Ubuntu 9.10). 8.4.1 is already in Ubuntu 9.10 and in my PostgreSQL Backports PPA for Ubuntu 8. ... Read More

It has been broken for two months, since we upgraded to the “new” (not quite any more) gdm in Karmic: But I finally got around to re-doing the gdm patch for supporting a guest session for 2.27. I use it myself a lot for testing stuff with a clean user profile, so I can finally delete my herd of test users again. One known drawback is that the guest session is not currently restricted by AppArmor rules yet. ... Read More

I moved my blog from its old wordpress.com home to my own server, replacing my ancient home page. — Mein Blog ist von seiner alten wordpress.com-Heimat auf meinen eigenen Server umgezogen, und hat damit auch gleich meine Uralt-Homepage ersetzt.