Tag Archives: debian

Triage X Bugs of the Week 4 and 5 (TXBW4-5)

Last week I was too busy for the triaging work, so I did more this week… Anyway there are still some 871 bug candidate for triaging, so again, any help would be appreciated !

Also I’d like to thank again people giving me cheers and advices when they receive my pings 😉

The buglist now:

  • #419986 ping & close – server lockups related to dri.
  • #415588 ping – modelines are ignored.
  • #417601 ping & close – mga dri issue.
  • #439357 closed – 3 year old install issue… Not relevant anymore…
  • #377847 ping – nv driver: No way to set 1600×1200, apparently it works with nouveau.
  • #449039 ping – crash with too many remote clients.
  • #440880 closed – 3 year old, user never replied.
  • #457440 ping – ctrl-alt keyboard combinations ceased working after prompts by ratpoison.
  • #413691 ping & closed – arrow keys sometimes produce repeated digits.
  • #451537 ping then closed by submitter – Can no longer scroll up/down with edge of touchpad.
  • #437254 ping – touchpad issue, at first the reported tried to hack out a patch…
  • #444183 ping – macbook xserver-xorg-input-mouse: Vertical scrolling doesn’t work anymore.
  • #445625 ping: try nouveau? – crash with nv driver and dual head configuration.
  • #428091 ping – Display has wrong colours and is offset (in 16bpp only).

The X Strike Force (still) needs you !

You can have a look at the X Strike Force Bug Closing Procedure and check XSF unstable bugs sorted by date.

Triage X Bugs of the Week 3 (TXBW3)

This week it has been harder for me to start on this… but KiBi’s post Debian XSF News #1 pushed me to continue. Thanks for the cheers!

  • #331637 ping – Xrandr disabled while Xorg log says the opposite.
  • #321357 tagged wontfix – xset behaves as intended, there is no easy way to set keyboard autorepeat for single key…
  • #242442 close – xclock -rv looks visible to me.
  • #427346 close – was already tagged unreproducible, I couldn’t reproduce it either so I closed it.
  • #169239 ping – 8 year old wish… probably too late ?
  • #431449 ping – xmodmap errors when launched by keyboard shortcut.
  • #202923 close – xorg has timestamps in server log messages.
  • #252214 tagged wontfix – Andrew Pimlott (reporter) said “This bug probable needs a NOBODYCARES tag. :-)” so wontfix will do it.

The X Strike Force (still) needs you !

You can have a look at the X Strike Force Bug Closing Procedure and check XSF unstable bugs sorted by date.

Triage X Bugs of the Week 2 (TXBW2)

Hey, one more week !

  • #418377 – ping & closed (default X resolution for etch?! installation).
  • #419960 – ping & closed (submitter screen apparently does not support DPMS).
  • #409337 – ping (Xorg/Gdm vertical refresh config).
  • #389030 – closed (boot with no usb mouse now work !).
  • #309226 – ping (xnest crash, seams fixed now).
  • #397438 – ping (dual monitor on old ati driver).
  • #414275 – ping, user can’t test it any more, so closing.

Well my UDD query report 879 bugs today… not a great improvement since last week… if more bugs are opened than I can close, I’m not going to make it alone !

The X Strike Force (still) needs you !

You can have a look at the X Strike Force Bug Closing Procedure and check XSF unstable bugs sorted by date.

Did you realize how great format 3.0 (quilt) is ?

I did just yesterday !

I was hacking on fluxbox and rebuilding the package to test directly on my system.
When I was happy with my changes I thought, I should write a patch for this…
But guess what ! With format 3.0 (quilt) it was already there, in the debian/patch directory, just waiting to be renamed and completed with a nice DEP-3 header !

It is a lot more easy to contribute with those tools!

So thank you debian folks !

Triage X Bugs of the Week 1 (TXBW1)

Here is my report for the first week, (actualy I’m a little bit late, but friday loked like a better day for such reports)

  • #385803 – Reported upstream.
  • #391452 – Wontfix, there is a nicer alternative.
  • #335515 – Ping & closed.
  • #394529 – Asked for a phrasing (any native English writer can help here).
  • #252585 – I’m not sure the actual needed changes worth it, so I proposed to just document it, waiting for feedback…
  • #379480 – Ping & closed.
  • #290881 – Today’s package has changed, so reassigned and updated info.
  • #251449 – Added info, if someone is more easy with wiki stuff than bug triaging, then updating the FAQ is a work for you ;).
  • #420018 – Ping & closed.

That’s it… about 880 bugs more to go !

The X Strike Force (still) needs you !

You can have a look at the X Strike Force Bug Closing Procedure and check XSF unstable bugs sorted by date.

Working on X isn’t that hard !

First, Hello Planet Debian !

Some words about me

I’m a new member of the X Strike Force, the debian team responsible for packaging Xorg. I basically stepped in with the openchrome driver.
I also have wider interest in free software or open source in general, but you can have a look at the rest of my blog, so I won’t bother you with too much details.

More about X

Talking with various attendant at MiniDebConf Paris, I got the impression that people think working on Xorg is hard.

I must say: It’s not !

First debian work is mostly packaging, and the developers of the applications we package (debian call them upstream) are pretty responsive, so you won’t be on your own.
Most of the work is preparing the packages for their new release, place them in experimental first, and ask for testers.
Then people test and the real work start: we receive bug reports.
Sometime seeing the report, it’s easy to point the user to test some other version, do some change, remove some old libraries in /usr/local/lib.
Sometime we need to ask for more information.

I said we, but for now unless it’s about openchrome, I can’t help much, but I follow the bugs on the X mailing list and learn from others response, I think I’ll be able to help soon.

An other way to help: TXBW

I’m sure you’ve read about RCBW, kudos to every one posting some and to every BSP attendant.
But if you thought X was hard, you certainly find the remaining RC bugs too hard (Or if not, you might want some distraction with an easier task).

So I have a proposition for you: Triage X Bugs of the Week (TXBW)

As Lucas told on his blog I’ve proposed him a patch to help triaging X bugs using UDD. And he accepted it, Thanks !

So here is the link I’m using: XSF unstable bugs sorted by date.
But remember the udd database is not live data, if you close a bug, it won’t disappear immediately.
Also please read the X Strike Force Bug Closing Procedure before starting.

To conclude my TXBW data (well TXB of the Day so to speak)

  • #233204 – pinged submitter.
  • #334461 – closed, no longer occur.
  • #204378 – proposed a development direction, if anybody is really interested in actually using XDM, please have a look.
  • #303889 – closed, ion3 no longer available to test.
  • #369389 – closed, the report details very old versions.

I hope this can be a success like the RCBW initiative is.
Currently there are hundreds of X bugs, more than a half are at least one year old so they deserve to be triaged !

The X Strike Force (still) needs you !

Time to put back software on the front page

I’ve been more on software recently, and I didn’t blog much…

I’m still maintaining openchrome Xorg driver, not much to do now that the latest upstream SVN version is on KiBi’s X autobuild system. Except waiting for the bugs to occur.

I also just requested to become DM to release the X Strike Force of the task of sponsoring me…

After a rather awkward first message (still sorry about that), I started working on webalizer’s debian package.
Nothing’s published yet, but this will come.

Finally I received an email from Axel Beckert about xrootconsole, well he already blogged about it, I accepted to co-maintain xrootconsole with him. More details on my xrootconsole page.

To conclude, after some month following the debian community, I’m starting to feel part of it!

Installing debian on EeePC 1201HA: the synaptics touchpad

As usual debian’s wiki is a great resource, look it’s page about Synaptics Touchpad and most of the configuration is done.

So here I got the finger tap to work, but is spite of my efforts, the two finger scroll would not work. Well actually it did work using synclient but it was lost by next restart… And the hint was on the wiki but on Elantech Touchpad‘s page, near the end, in “GUI assistance” section: “Beware that they can override the global X settings in xorg.conf.”

So if you’re using gnome, look at the Mouse setting in gnome menu. You can also try gsynaptics, but while gnome mouse settings are reloaded each time you switch VT or suspend the computer, gsynaptics has to be reloaded manually.

Gnome didn’t let me check the two finger scroll option, so I opened gconf-editor searched for the touchpad key and found it as /desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad and changed scroll_method to 2. It’s still grey in the menu, but it’s checked an it works!

There is one remaining issue with gnome, if you want a different button for 2 finger tap than button 3, you can’t! I first fell on the fedora bug report about it which lead me to gnome’s one. So as of today, there is a patch, but not integrated in gnome, and I did not test it.

So I was tempted to switch to my old wm fluxbox, but didn’t take the time to configure it yet. Also reading Who-T’s blog, and especially this post xmodmap keyboard deconfiguration made me think that configuring one’s desktop trough Gnome and the like is going to be “the right way” in near future. As fluxbox session is just a plain bash script, we’ll need more working CLI tools for the hotplug configuration…

Well to come back, the touchpad is not going to be hotplug so a plain old config file like xorg.conf should in my opinion remain a valid choice (especially now that it does no goes through some other xml stuff as with hal). But then, the desktop configuration (ie Gnome) shouldn’t mess with it as it’s doing now!

Installing debian on EeePC 1201HA: the grub 2 trick

As already stated in the previous post update I’m now using the method described on debian eeepc wiki for booting in native resolution, so I’m no longer using the IEGD driver (nor my xserver by the way).

I find it a lot more stable !

I no longer have the issues with the mouse cursor jumping randomly to the lower right corner.

I even configured the touchpad to use the tap to click mode and the two finger scroll mode. (This will be the subject of a following post)

One more thing about using 915resolution in grub2, if like me you find that windows no longer want to boot, then only load 915resolution.mod before loading the linux kernel and not at grub startup.
You can do that by adding the following lines in /etc/grub.d/10_linux.

	echo insmod 915resolution
	echo 915resolution 58 1366 768 32

Instead of creating the /etc/grub.d/01_915resolution file.

I did place it at the end of the if block testing the GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX variable.

Hope this will help some of you !

Taking over Netsed

Netsed, the network packet stream editor, is a program originally written by Michal Zalewski .

While the program idea is good, it’s implementation had some lack, and nobody seamed to care enough to fix it.

I did already hack it some years ago, and it appeared that my changes was fixing a debian RC bug (#586037) so I took netsed maintenance as one of my new projects!

For now only my changes and patches proposed by Mats Erik Andersson are integrated.

But I will start working on a test suite (still have to find the right tools for that, would ruby be nice ?), and of course implement UDP support.

Also I’d like to really thank Mats Erik Andersson and Tim Retout for their answers and support.

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