szn.dk (18).
Choosing what program to open what file; mailcap.order #debian
Configuring what program to use to open what file is quite straight forward:
Edit /etc/mailcap.order, run update-mime.
Only problem is, when I did that, I got:
Warning: package evince listed in /etc/mailcap.order does not have mailcap entries.
The man-page for mailcap.order helpfully says: "Remember that this files [sic] takes package names and not executable names."
But, the command "evince" comes in the package called "evince", so I assumed the "package name" was "evince". That holds for "eog", which comes in the package "eog", and is also a GNOME application, as far as I know, and which update-mime doesn't complain about.
Oh well, strace -e openat to the rescue, and - hey presto - it turns out the "package name" for evince is "org.gnome.Evince". I plopped that into mailcap.order, and now Bob's my uncle. Nice to know.
Perl 5.30 - oh my #perl
I like this:
Declarations such as my $x if 0 are no longer permitted.
Dear Signal #community #free software #programming #vcs
Please provide a useful changelog in your signal-desktop Debian package.
The previous package broke the application, today apt(8) fetched a new package, and the complete changelog reads:
signal-desktop (1.27.2) whatever; urgency=medium * Package created with FPM. -- Open Whisper Systems <support@signal.org> Fri, 06 Sep 2019 15:36:44 -0700
That is useless. The changelog should provide, at minimum, a summary of the changes between this version and the previous one.
Thank you.
Hosts sending 2 or 6 NULL bytes #net
Recently, like the last month or so, my server has been receiving packets from various, seemingly arbitrary, hosts, containing either 2 or 6 NULL bytes.
They hit mostly port 22 (ssh), 53 (dns), 80 (http), 443 (https) and imaps (993). I only have a very limited number of ports open in the router, so they might be hitting more ports.
Looking at them with ngrep(8), it looks like this:
$ sudo ngrep -x -q '^\x00\x00*$' interface: enp4s0 (192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0) filter: ((ip || ip6) || (vlan && (ip || ip6))) match: ^\x00\x00*$ T 88.208.41.159:42560 -> 192.168.1.101:22 [S] #32 00 00 .. T 78.140.142.55:44230 -> 192.168.1.101:80 [S] #41 00 00 .. T 78.140.141.247:47152 -> 192.168.1.101:53 [S] #46 00 00 .. T 5.11.81.197:48256 -> 192.168.1.101:443 [S] #62 00 00 .. T 54.36.150.116:41070 -> 192.168.1.101:443 [R] #404 00 00 00 00 00 00 ......
I'm not quite sure to make of it. The sources seem to change, sometimes they're mostly from Japan, sometimes from China, sometimes from AWS, other times from various hosting companies.
Anyone know what this is?
rdiff-backup backport to Debian 11 (buster) #debian
A new version of rdiff-backup, 1.3.3, has been added to Debian unstable.
When that is used to backup to a machine running Debian 11 (buster), you get errors, because it has version 1.2.8.
As a work-around, I have backported librsync-dev and rdiff-backup from unstable to Debian 11 (buster), packages are in my local repository. Use at your own peril.
Making subprocess.Popen in Python 3 play nice with "elaborate" output #programming #python
docker-compose produces "elaborate" output when run, making use of carriage returns and ANSI CSI codes to move the cursor about.
A wrapper script written in Python 3 tried to handle the output - printing a '.' for each line usually, and actually printing the lines if given a --verbose option.
Unfortunately the output with --verbose got mangled, which really annoyed me. So I tried to find a solution.
Here is a small script that does some output, mimicking the stuff that docker-compose outputs. Note that we want the lines printed as they are produced, and not all at once at the end of the script.
#!/usr/bin/python3
from time import sleep
print("1", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("2", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("3", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("\x1b[2A\x1b[K\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("2 - let's go\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("2 - lookin' good\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("\x1b[1A\x1b[K\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("1 - abba\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("\x1b[2B\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("\r3 - flappa\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("\x1b[1A\x1b[K\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("2 - done\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("\x1b[1A\x1b[K\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("1 - done\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("\x1b[2B\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("3 - done\x1b[K\r", end="", flush=True)
sleep(1)
print("\nFinito", flush=True)
Try running it:
The original code wrapping it, was like this (slightly simplified):
#!/usr/bin/python3
import subprocess
def run_command():
p = subprocess.Popen("./command.py",
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
universal_newlines=True) # this converts \r into \n #fail
for line in iter(p.stdout.readline, ""):
yield line, p.poll()
yield "", p.wait()
for l, rc in run_command():
print(l, end="", flush=True)
If you run this, you'll see how the output it mangled:
So why does this happen? Well, the first culprit is universal_newlines=True. That means that any combination of carriage return and/or line feed is interpreted as and converted to a line feed. Uh-oh, definitely not what we want, if the fancy output it to be reproduced as intended.
If set to False, the situation improves, carriage returns are no longer converted. Unfortunately the p.stdout.readline() function only interprets line feeds as end of line and not carriage returns, so all the fancy stuff piles up, and is only shown at the very end. Not what we want.
Looking at the documentation of open() reveals that it has an option called newline, which is used to control how universal newlines are handled, and that if set to '' it actually does what we want: carriage returns are not converted, and they are recognized and line endings.
Unfortunately the documentation of subprocess.Popen() only documents universal_newlines taking two values, True and False, and '' doesn't work. I tried.
Fortunately Klaus had a tip - if you use os.dup(), you can open the file handle again, and - hey - now I can give it the option to open() we need, newline=''.
Lo and behold, it works!
#!/usr/bin/python3
import subprocess
import os
def run_command():
p = subprocess.Popen("./command.py",
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
universal_newlines=False) # \r goes through
nice_stdout = open(os.dup(p.stdout.fileno()), newline='') # re-open to get \r recognized as new line
for line in nice_stdout:
yield line, p.poll()
yield "", p.wait()
for l, rc in run_command():
print(l, end="", flush=True)
It is kind of kludgy to have to do that, but it does work:
I wonder why subprocess.Popen() in Python 3 does not have the same options for handling newlines as open() has. It feels like open() has moved on (to the newline parameter), but subprocess.Popen() hasn't followed yet.
SanDisk Ultra Flair 64GB USB flash drive #hardware
Useful consumer review: The SanDisk Ultra Flair 64GB USB flash drive I bought last summer survived less than 1 year of rattling around in my bag.
Basically it has been on a keyring with a Yubikey Neo the whole time, and it just stopped working. As in nothing shows up in syslog or dmesg, and the USB device gets very hot quickly when inserted into a USB-port.
I tried prying it apart, to see if something was shorting and that was why it didn't work, but even inserting just the "core" of the device, without the casing yields nothing registered by the computer and a very hot device.
While it worked, it worked fine - but less than a year until catastrophical failure, without any warning, I give it 1 star.
So, what should I get instead? The Samsung BAR Plus Titan 128GB seems to have nice specs (300 MB/s).