openSUSE Lizards » Andreas Stieger

subversion with libserf

Andreas Stieger — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:09:05 +0000

I packaged subversion to built against libserf in addition to neon. This adds a second repository access module to handle http and https schemes with potential improvements. To enable, install the packages from my home repository and adjust your ~/.subversion/servers file:

[global] http-library = serf

Beyond this, the package tracks the package from devel:tools:scm:svn.

license implications when packaging TrueCrypt

Andreas Stieger — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:42:45 +0000

I use an encrypted USB stick to carry credentials and data for production servers I look after when I’m on call. One requirement was portability between my work (Windows) and home (GNU/Linux) desktops, so TrueCrypt came to mind. I packaged it all up an applied some patches to fix compiler issues and warnings. The TrueCrypt license, however, is not OSI-approved, and as such the program cannot be built in the openSUSE build service (see blacklist, discussion).

I almost forgot about the whole thing until I upgraded the package for new dependencies in the upcoming release of openSUSE 11.4. I talked with people over at packman, a popular 3rd-party repository for software not included in openSUSE proper for one reason or another. We analysed the license a bit and concluded that if we shipped binaries built from non-pristine sources, the product would have to be re-branded as per the requirements of their license. I am usually pragmatic about these things as long as FLOSS and non-FLOSS licences can be adhered to, but didn’t want to go the route Debian took with Firefox et al.

We contacted the TrueCrypt developers on this issue, we’ll see what comes out of that. Until then, if someone wants to build this package, here is what you need:

truecrypt.spec
truecrypt.desktop
truecrypt-tc_token_err.patch
truecrypt-NULL_PTR-redefinition-warning.patch
truecrypt-undefined-operation-warning.patch

irssi on freenode with SSL verification

Andreas Stieger — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:25:55 +0000

Those of you who frequent openSUSE’s support channels on freenode might be interested to know that with the ircd SSL encryption in now available. However some users had problems verifying the SSL certificate on connection when using irssi. Here is an example working server configuration section for your ~/.irssi/config:

address = "chat.freenode.net"; chatnet = "freenode"; port = "7000"; use_ssl = "yes"; ssl_verify = "yes"; ssl_capath = "/etc/ssl/certs";

suspend to disk with encrypted root file system on lvm

Andreas Stieger — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:08:35 +0000

Suspend to disk a.k.a. Hybernation doesn’t quite work when running openSUSE in an encrypted root file system and swap on LUKS on LVM, as with Ludwig Nussel’s instructions. The system is not able to resume from the swap area, because the initial ramdisk opens the lvm system before the luks. This results in only root logical volume being opened at that time, but not the swap volume. A regular boot follows.

Here’s the mkinitd boot scripts (or their symlinks, rather) in question:

$ ls -1 /lib/mkinitrd/boot ... 61-lvm2.sh 71-luks.sh ...

Until all this is properly supported, here is a quirk to make it work: Make the lvm2 initrd boot script depend on the luks one*.

Edit /lib/mkinitrd/scripts/boot-lvm2.sh (this is what 61-lvm2.sh points to) and change the third line from
#%depends: evms
to
#%depends: evms luks

Recreate the initrd.
$ cp -iv /boot/mkinitrd /boot/mkinitrd.backup $ mkinitrd

You will notice that the symlinks were renamed now:
71-luks.sh 72-lvm2.sh

No try suspending to disk, you should be prompted for your luks password and resume from disk should work.

$ s2disk

*This of course assumes that you only have lvm devices inside luks, not the other way around. It’s not too hard to have both - simply duplicate and adjust the luks script and run one instance before and one after lvm.