August « 2008 « codeblog

August 20, 2008

Ubuntu security repository structure

Filed under: Blogging,Security,Ubuntu,Ubuntu-Server — kees @ 12:04 pm

Miguel Ruiz asked about Ubuntu security repositories. Here’s how things are done:

The “security.ubuntu.com” archive contains explicitly only the “$RELEASE-security” pockets. It is included in all Ubuntu sources.list files so that the package manager knows what the most recent security release of a package will be.

The central “archive.ubuntu.com” server (and all the Ubuntu mirrors) also contain the “$RELEASE-security” pockets, in addition to the rest of the archive (and will continue to have all pockets — which answers the core of Miguel’s question). While mirrors are not required to mirror the -security pocket, it certainly helps with the load on the primary Ubuntu archive servers.

The “security.ubuntu.com” entry is last in sources.list, giving the option of pulling an updated package from an earlier mentioned mirror (resulting in a faster download for the user, and less bandwidth used by the central Ubuntu archive servers). In the case that the mirror is behind, the package is available directly from “security.ubuntu.com”. In this way, mirrors cannot (accidentally or intentionally) “go rogue” — the latest security updates are always visible on the security archive server.

Comments (3)

August 5, 2008

dbus session access from remote

Filed under: Blogging,Networking,Ubuntu — kees @ 8:49 pm

In order to turn off the music playing on my desktop (in audacious) from my laptop in another room, I must figure out the DBUS session, and set it up before using the audacious session management control (like “--play-pause“).


$ ssh MACHINE "set -x
export DISPLAY=:0.0
PID=\$(pidof audacious)
if [ -z \"\$PID\" ]; then
    rhythmbox-client --pause
else
    export \$(xargs -0 -n1 /proc/\$PID/environ | grep ^DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=)
    audacious --play-pause
fi"

(Updated to shorter version, thanks Kirikaza.)

Comments (4)

August 4, 2008

(late to the) history meme

Filed under: Blogging,Ubuntu — kees @ 11:27 am

My history isn’t entirely interesting, but does seem to show the single-mindedness of my terminals:

$ history | awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head 73 cd 68 vi 39 ls 24 bzr 18 exit 18 cat 13 u-build 13 sudo 13 am 10 echo

Random details:

I use a lot of terminals, and have only just recently gotten into the habit of using Ctrl-D to close them — as seen above, I use exit.
am is a script that takes apt-cache madison "$@" and shows only the most recent version from each release.
u-build is a script that prepares and performs a build in my sbuild/schroot/lvm environments.
echo snuck onto this list because I was verifying some x86 machine code, and kept typo-ing it as I ran “variations” of (the correct command line) echo -ne '\x33\xdb\x68\x70\x77\x6e\x0a\x8b\xcc\x8d\x43\x04\x43\x8b\xd0\xcd\x80\xeb\xfa' | ndisasm -u -
It seems I’m in need of the same thing helix noted from Greg KH’s terminal-tied-to-Twitter: an alias for cd "$@" && ls instead of constantly typing cd followed by ls.