Archive for September, 2008

Debian Mirror – HowTo

I was reading on Debian News how Ravishankar Haranath setup his mirror, and therefore decided to share how I did mine, (I’m not trying to say my way is better, but it does suite my needs and is easily extendable)

To download the mirrors I use this script:
<script sync_mirror.sh>

#!/bin/bash
OPTIONS="--nosource --progress --postcleanup --ignore-release-gpg --ignore-small-errors --pdiff=none";
MIRROR=`basename ${0} | cut -f2 -d "_"`
DEST="/home/debian-mirror"
case "${MIRROR}" in
        "debian" )
                METHOD="--method=http"
                HOST="--host=ftp.de.debian.org"
                ROOT="--root=debian"
                DIST="--dist=etch,etch-proposed-updates"
                ARCH="--arch=i386"
                SECTION="--section=main,contrib,non-free"
                DEST="${DEST}/debian/"
                ;;
       "security" )
               METHOD="--method=ftp"
               HOST="--host=security.debian.org"
               ROOT="--root=/debian-security/"
               DIST="--dist=etch/updates"
               ARCH="--arch=i386"
               SECTION="--section=main,contrib,non-free"
               DEST="${DEST}/debian-security/"
               ;;
        "volatile" )
                METHOD="--method=http"
                HOST="--host=volatile.debian.org"
                ROOT="--root=debian-volatile"
                DIST="--dist=etch/volatile"
                ARCH="--arch=i386"
                SECTION="--section=main,contrib,non-free"
                DEST="${DEST}/debian-volatile/"
                ;;
        "multimedia" )
                METHOD="--method=http"
                HOST="--host=www.debian-multimedia.org"
                ROOT="--root=/"
                DIST="--dist=etch"
                ARCH="--arch=i386"
                SECTION="--section=main"
                DEST="${DEST}/debian-multimedia/"
                ;;
        "backports" )
                METHOD="--method=http"
                HOST="--host=www.backports.org"
                ROOT="--root=debian"
                DIST="--dist=etch-backports"
                ARCH="--arch=i386"
                SECTION="--section=main,contrib,non-free"
                DEST="${DEST}/debian-backports/"
                ;;
        * )
                echo "${0} called incorrectly"
                exit
                ;;
esac
debmirror ${OPTIONS} ${METHOD} ${HOST} ${ROOT} ${DIST} ${ARCH} ${SECTION} ${DEST}

</script sync_mirror.sh>

To setup the permissions I use this script:
<script permissions.sh>

#!/bin/bash
MIRROR=`basename ${0} | cut -f2 -d "_"`
DEST="/home/debian-mirror"
case "${MIRROR}" in
        "debian" )
                DEST="${DEST}/debian/"
                ;;
        "security" )
                DEST="${DEST}/debian-security/"
                ;;
        "volatile" )
                DEST="${DEST}/debian-volatile/"
                ;;
        "multimedia" )
                DEST="${DEST}/debian-multimedia/"
                ;;
        "backports" )
                DEST="${DEST}/debian-backports/"
                ;;
        * )
                echo "${0} called incorrectly"
                exit
                ;;
esac
echo "Setting Ownership"
chown -R www-data:www-data ${DEST}
echo "Setting File Permissions"
chmod -R 660 ${DEST}
echo "Setting Folder Permissions"
find ${DEST} -type d -exec chmod 770 {} \;

</script permissions.sh>

And then to pull it all together I have thefollowing directory structure (mirrors left out as it’s a ling list of files)

/home/debian-mirror/
|-- debian
|-- debian-backports
|-- debian-multimedia
|-- debian-security
|-- debian-volatile
|-- scripts
|   |-- permissions.sh
|   `-- sync_mirror.sh
`-- scripts.d
    |-- mirror_backports -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- mirror_debian -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- mirror_multimedia -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- mirror_security -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- mirror_volatile -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- permissions_backports -> ../scripts/permissions.sh
    |-- permissions_debian -> ../scripts/permissions.sh
    |-- permissions_multimedia -> ../scripts/permissions.sh
    |-- permissions_security -> ../scripts/permissions.sh
    `-- permissions_volatile -> ../scripts/permissions.sh

And then I just setup a cronjob:

0 0     * * 0   root    /bin/run-parts --verbose /home/debian-mirror/scripts.d | /usr/bin/mailx -s "`uname -n` - Debian mirror sync completed" root

This was to disable the mirroring of one of the repositories I just need to remove the symlink from the scripts.d folder

The Germans are invading

Ok so it’s not actual Germans but rather German Measels, and it’s Catelyn that has them.

Well she’s home early from creche and sleeping, hopefully she gets better soon…

Happy Birthday Cecilia

I hope you have a lekker day…

Love you…

That is all :)

Installing Jabber on Debian Etch

Well I just finished getting Jabber installed and working on my local network.

Thanks go here and here.

Basically I just followed the first link to get the server up, and the second to get a web client running.

I did have a couple of issues with the web client, but I will try to document them at another date… (well I need to reinstall the server soon)

Now just to get jabber to talk to the outside world :)

Washing day blues

So silly (or stupid) me goes and leaves my phone (Nokia E51) in my pyjama pants and they ended up going through the wash…

Thankfully I have insurance, but what an annoying inconvenience…

oh and luckely I managed to save the Sim card, and I have a spare phone…

sigh… that is all…

Happenings in Cape Town

Cecilia just sent out an email with the latest news, and so I don’t get anything wrong I’m gonna paste it here:

Hi All

Just a quick email to let all the family/friends know what is happening
on this side.

1. Clifford and myself are still going to get married, and have decided
that we want a big wedding with all our family and friends. Wedding will
be next year and definately late in the year, around September or
October 2009. Once we have decided on a date later this year, we will
inform most of the people that is from Jhb, so they can tell us if they
will be able to fly down to Cpt. We want to get married on a beautiful
wine farm and have already started looking for some venues.

2. We have decided to put the plans for the UK on hold first. We first
want to get married, pay debt ect. It definately is still there, just
put it on hold first.

3. Another reason for point number 2 above here. We have decided to
first "study" a little more so that we can have more behind our name.
Lucky me are first in line. I'm going to start probably beginning on
October with a course through Intec so that I can obtain my Hotel
Management Diploma. They say it usually takes up to three years to
study, but if I put about three hours or more a day into my studying, I
can do it in just over a year. So please be patient with me for the next
year, I will probably be spending more time behind the books than
anything else. At least I can say it for the best.

Well that the only news currently I can think of. Other than my birthday
is in exactly one week, and I am looking forward to having a quiet and
relaxing birthday.

Hope all are well and enjoying the strange weather.

Love,
Cecilia, Clifford and Catelyn
xxxx

And for those of you that don’t know, Cecilia’s birthday is the 29th September. And if you want to know which year, it’s every year :p

Taking a stand to promote OpenID

I’ve been using OpenID for a while now, and have it enabled it on this site…

I was reading a post on Planet Debian and that is why I’m writing this ;)

As Aaron B. Hockley said in this blogentry: It’s a win for the blog owner, since it means the comments have a “real” identity behind them.

I’ve been quite happy so far with it, it also helps with usernames, for example I only need to remember one URL and a password, no more trying to think of new usernames when the one you always use is taken.

If more websites would start using OpenID the world would be a better place, well my world at least :p

Well if you need help setting up an OpenID account drop me a message :)

Farewell Cara

So it’s family–, earlier today Cara’s new owners came and took her, it was a sad and happy occasion…

We are gonna miss you Cara (Yes I know she won’t ever read this).

100_1446.JPG 100_1445.JPG 100_1444.JPG 100_1443.JPG

New Harddrive

So I’ve now gotten a new HDD, it’s an Toshiba External 500GiB drive, and connects via USB…

Thank you Cecilia

Well hopefully gonna get the rest of the Debian mirror (maybe also Ubuntu, but I dunno…) copied onto it in the next couple of weeks. Lucky for me, Johann Spies from the University of Stellenbosch, has agreed to help me get the initial mirror setup. This will save _alot_ of bandwidth, for both me and the mirror I am going to mirror from in the future.

Well more on that later, just need to try sort out where I’m going to put it, and how it’s going to be used. Mostly NFS, but I will probably have to share it via SAMBA as well, since Cecilia’s laptop has windows on it, blegh…

Machine names

Not that I’m on any of the planets I read (Planet Debian, Planet Ubuntu), but there was a MEME about the names you give machines.

Well the company I currently work for, I’ve named all the machines after greek gods. zeus, ares, apollo (more to come we hope)

And at home I’ve started naming machines after TTMNT (The teenage mutant ninja turtles) and other characters. bebop, shredder (more to come, as I have the names for proposed machines, these machines already exist). and then there are the personal machines wich are just called mainuser-machinetype. eg clifford-laptop. I know it’s unoriginal, but anyways… :p