urpmi: /bin/mv: cannot stat `/var/cache/urpmi/partial/descriptions': No such file or directory

If you got this problem (or something like it) while updating packages with urpmi.update -a or urpmi --auto-updates :

/bin/mv: cannot stat `/var/cache/urpmi/partial/descriptions': No such file or directory

Can't move file /var/cache/urpmi/partial/descriptions to /var/lib/urpmi/Main Updates (Cooker2011.0-2)/descriptions

Then the solution is by removing the file /var/cache/urpmi/mirrors.cache for urpmi to use different mirror. This is because the mirror has problem. So issuing this command should solve the problem:

rm -fv /var/cache/urpmi/mirrors.cache

That's all there is to it. Have fun!

Solving squid's pinger error: IcmpSquid.cc(155) Recv: recv: (111) Connection refused

I've installed latest squid (3.2.0.3) recently from source. I configured it with --with-icmp to enable incoming icmp request. After compiling and installing it, it's time to run it. From the log I noticed that the pinger program produced an error like this:

IcmpSquid.cc(155) Recv: recv: (111) Connection refused

and filtering the log of the word pinger (using grep) :

pinger: Initialising ICMP pinger ...

2010/12/18 10:57:16| pinger: Unable to start ICMP pinger.

2010/12/18 10:57:16| pinger: Unable to start ICMPv6 pinger.

2010/12/18 10:57:16| FATAL: pinger: Unable to open any ICMP sockets.

From the errors above, I knew that they were related to permission problem (connection refused, unable to open socket). It solved when I setuid the pinger program to enable it to open the required socket :

chmod 4755 pinger (run this as root of course)

This pinger program is usually located in the bin directory of squid path e.g /usr/local/squid/bin (this is the default if you compile from source). Please consult your distro if you install it using package manager.

After restarting squid, I could see in the log as below:

pinger: Initialising ICMP pinger ...

2010/12/18 16:58:48| pinger: ICMP socket opened.

2010/12/18 16:58:48| pinger: ICMPv6 socket opened

That I think solved the problem. Have fun.

What's coming in Mandriva 2011

After the wonderful news that Mandriva would be continuing as usual despite financial difficulties and an exodus of developers comes the technical specifications and other tidbits for Mandriva 2011. There are quite a few exciting changes ahead, many of which prove that Mandriva is still a cutting edge distribution.

With 2011, Mandriva will be switching to RPM5. This news was announced by Per Øyvind Karlsen last week and is the first item in the list. RPM5 is actually a fork of RPM with the main goals of supporting XAR, an XML based archiving format, and featuring an integrated dependency resolver. This move has been in the works for quite some time but Mandriva 2011 will be the first release fully committed. Per Øyvind Karlsen said RPM5, "is the only sensible choice." Relatedly, their software center is scheduled a face-lift for a "more modern and simple to use interface."

Mandriva 2011 will be using the Galbraith Latency patch whether the kernel that will be used has it or not - meaning they will backport it if necessary. This latency patch, first brought to wide attention by Phoronix.com, is said to help speed up desktop processes especially in the areas of graphic and video rendering.

It is listed that Mandriva would be adopting systemd for the boot process. Several other distributions started out trying to move to systemd, but so far, they have changed their minds due to difficulties associated with such a major subsystem replacement. But Mandriva is going to give it the ole college try for 2011. The advantages of systemd are faster boots for some setups because of parallel, early background, and dependency booting of processes.

Like several other distributions have done, most of Mandriva's configuration tools will be integrated into the KDE Control Center (System Settings) in 2011.

All the logins and desktops are getting new a new look and improved resource consumption. No further details on any of these items are given at this time, but it's always exciting to see what the new releases will look like.

The installer is supposed to be simplified in order to be more new user-friendly. Desktop selection and installation summary steps will be removed, meaning those will personal preferences or cranky hardware will have to wait until after the install.

During this cycle, Cooker will no longer be frozen before release and instead continue to be developed in parallel. The release code will be branched off and Cooker will proceed as a rolling release.

Finally, something originally asked for over three years ago is finally being implemented. A new user Welcome application will be added in order to help new and migrating users to acclimate to Mandriva. Again, no further details what will exactly be included, but one can speculate it will give links to online resources such as forums and documentation; perhaps a tour of the desktop, menu, and applications; and maybe offer to install popular applications, codecs, and drivers.

And unfortunately, there are still no plans posted about a 64-bit One release. One has the advantage of being shipped with proprietary codecs and drivers that aren't available in the other versions, so a 64-bit version would be extremely handy.

Of course, there are lots of other highly technical deep code improvements ahead as well. But just looking at the items that users will notice easily, Mandriva 2011 certainly sounds very exciting. A release candidate is scheduled for April 25 and final is planned for May 30.

Source

Firefox 4 Beta and Greasemonkey Add-on

If you are using Firefox 4 Beta (i'm using Beta 6) and want to install Greasemonkey add-on through Tools --> Add-ons, you're out of luck. But there's a website that provides nightly build Greasemonkey:

https://arantius.com/misc/gm-nightly/

Click Allow if prompted before installing. This add-on is for testing purposes and may not stable. Please remember that you're also using Firefox Beta.

Have fun!

A preview of next flash player released

A preview release of the next Flash Player released. Codenamed as Square, designated as version 10.2.161.22) and available for download right from Adobe Labs. It is not only available in 32-bit but also in 64-bit for Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems. For the 64-bit release,this is the first time preview for Mac and Windows OS users.

This release has an advantage for IE9 Beta users where it has been enhanced to directly support the hardware-accelerated graphics capabilities in the newest version of IE. Flash Player "Square" leverages the new GPU support available with IE 9 Beta to deliver a faster and more responsive user experience (more than 35% improved performance).

Users are encouraged to test this release especially for the 64-bit. If you encounter any issues, please file a bug report here: https://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/

KDE 4.5 stable released

KDE 4.5 stable released. For Mandriva users, please add KDE 4.5 repo (as root):

64-bit:

urpmaddmedia kde-4.5 http://ftp.twaren.net/Unix/X/KDE/stable/4.5.0/Mandriva/2010.1/x86_64/

32-bit:

urpmi.addmedia kde-4.5 http://ftp.twaren.net/Unix/X/KDE/stable/4.5.0/Mandriva/2010.1/i586/

You may want to remove the old KDE repo first.

or if you prefer KDE server as your repo thusly:

64-bit:

urpmi.addmedia kde-4.5 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.5.0/Mandriva/2010.1/x86_64

32-bit:

urpmi.addmedia kde-4.5 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.5.0/Mandriva/2010.1/i586

Have fun!

KDE 4.5 RC3 released for Mandriva

KDE 4.5 Release Candidate 3 is released for Mandriva users. The final version will be available next week. This last RC is intended for verifying no showstoppers will creep into the final release of 4.5.0. It will also interest those who want an early look at what is coming to their desktops and netbooks this summer.

To install, please add KDE 4.5RC3 repo first:

urpmi.addmedia kde-4.5rc3 http://ftp.twaren.net/Unix/X/KDE/unstable/4.4.95/Mandriva/2010.1/x86_64/

I use above mirror for my repo for faster access. You may want to use main KDE server for your repo thus:

urpmi.addmedia kde-4.5rc3 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/4.4.95/Mandriva/2010.1/x86_64/

For x86 (32-bit) users, please change the path x86_64 to i586. Then run urpmi --auto-select to update your KDE packages.

Have fun with your new KDE!

Mandriva Linux Spring 2010 released

Mandriva Linux 2010.1 aka Mandriva Linux Spring 2010 code named Farman released. For more information please check out Mandriva's Blog and website especially the new features in this release. You can download it here. Please also read the errata page for know bugs and other issues.

Have fun with this latest Mandriva offering.

Batch resize your images using mogrify

Let's say you have lots of images and want to upload them to Facebook or to your website but you have to resize or edit all the images to suitable size for faster web access without losing too much of the quality of them. One tool to help you in this situation is mogrify.

mogrify is in imagemagick package. So you just need to install the package to get it. How to use it? Let's see some examples below:

1. mogrify -resize 320x240 *.jpg

This command will resize all files ending with .jpg (jpeg image) to resolution of 320x240 and replace all the files with the same name. mogrify may not produce the exact resolution to preserve aspect ratio.

2.mogrify -path Image-Small/ -resize 800x600 -density 25x25 *.gif

This command will resize all images ending with .gif to 800x600 with density 25x25. The resized images will be saved in Image-Small directory. So the original files is unmodified.

3. mogrify -resize 50% rose.jpg
This will resize the image to 50% and the original file replaced.

4. mogrify -format jpg *.png
This will convert all png files in currect directory to jpeg.

mogrify has many options for you to explore. Just man mogrify to read the manual or go to http://www.imagemagick.org/www/mogrify.html. For more command-line examples, go here.

Mandriva 2010 Spring RC released

The Mandriva developers have announced the arrival of a release candidate (RC) for Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring (2010.1). This is to be the last development release for Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring and the final version is scheduled for release on the 3rd of June, 2010.

Building on the previous beta releases, the RC is based on the 2.6.33.4 Linux kernel and features the latest GNOME 2.30.1 and KDE 4.4.3 desktops. A number of changes have been implemented in the Nautilus file manager in anticipation of the GNOME 3.0 release with the GNOME Shell. Built-in desktop applications include version 3.2 of OpenOffice.org, Firefox 3.6.3, the Chromium web browser and version 1.92 of the Transmission BitTorrent client. Other changes include use of the Nouveau driver for NVIDIA graphics hardware and improvements to the Mandriva tools, such as data encryption, parental control and network profiles.

As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter. It's not for the faint of heart.

More info can be read here: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2010.1_RC

Current Mandriva situation

These last days, numerous rumors have been spread about Mandriva’s situation. Out of respect for our clients and community, we want to clear the situation.

Mandriva has always been involved in investment and aquisition processes. Over the past years, Mandriva bought Edge-IT, Conectiva and Linbox FAS. Today, Mandriva is in takeover talks with various investors. These discussions concerning new investments in Mandriva are not new, they have happened all throughout the life of the company, and there are still going on today. We want to stress out the fact that Mandriva has not been bought by anybody.

Like many other companies, Mandriva has been impacted by the economic slow-down and took advantage of this period to develop and improve its products: an operating system dedicated to a uniquely ergonomic server (MES5.1), the most reliable free machine-management software on the market (Pulse2), Mandriva Smart Desktop to simplify the use of office desktops, education-dedicated distribution. Mandriva is also involved in many research projects, and is constantly working with the community to increase the efficiency and ease-of-use of its distribution.

We are beginning to harvest the results of this development work with hundreds of thousands of PCs using the Mandriva OS sold in South America, Asia and rapid sales of Pulse2 and MES5 in Europe. So it is unsurprising that Mandriva has once again attracted the interest of industry decision-makers.

Arnaud Laprévote
Mandriva’s CEO

Source

Mandriva is up for sale - The Inquirer

Mandriva is up for sale - The Inquirer

imapproxy will find a new home

This is a message sent out to imapproxy-info mailing list by the maintainer Dave McMurtrie:

Good morning,

I'm writing today to let you know that I'm officially retiring from my duties as, well, the sole keeper of all things imapproxy.

You've probably noticed that over the past year I haven't exactly been lighting this project on fire. In fact, I've been doing pretty much the bare minimum I had to do to keep it alive. Patches have come in and I've ignored them. Questions have been raised to me and I've ignored them, too. I can assure you all that it's been a matter of laziness and not hubris. Well, it's been a mixture of laziness and the fact that I've been extremely busy in my day job. I never took the time to make imapproxy into a "real" project with a real team of people working on it
and it suffered because of that.

I had considered just shutting the whole thing down, but there are still a couple people who run it so I embarked on a quest to find a new home for the software. The first group I thought of was the Squirrelmail team. imapproxy and Squirrelmail are a great complement to each other, and the Squirrelmail team is actually a team and not one guy like I am, so they're much more likely to be responsive to patch review and putting out new releases. Also, I've been running Squirrelmail myself for many years at more than one place of employment and I've been very impressed with their level of user support. They're a fine group, and I felt they would make for a much better caretaker of imapproxy than I have been.

With much trepidation, I contacted the Squirrelmail folks to gauge interest. I'm pleased to let you know that after much thought and discussion they're willing to take over the imapproxy project and keep it alive. Details of the transition are still being discussed, but it's already in the works. The imapproxy.org domain has been transferred over and they're now hosting the old website.

Many thanks go out to all the kind folks who have supported imapproxy (and indirectly, me) over the years.

Thanks!

Dave
--
Dave McMurtrie, SPE
Email Systems Team Leader
Carnegie Mellon University,
Computing Services

I myself, have been using imapproxy for 7 years and impressed with its performance. 4 years with squirrelmail and 3 years with roundcube. It helps a lot to enhance the performance of my mailserver. Hope the new maintainer will keep up the good job of Dave.

Thanks Dave. :)

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 2 available

Second Beta release of mandriva Linux is available for test now. Download the DVD iso for your architecture. You can also dump it on USB key as an installation media. This second beta release comes with many updates and improvements on major softwares. Mandriva tools have also been updated and propose new functionalities:

• data encryption: you want to protect your data. Encrypt your home directory or your system: it’s as easy as clic!
• parental control: many bug fixes, you can now control not only network access but also applications
• network profiles: add your network services in your network profiles.
• Mandriva Directory Server: this new release proposes new functionnalities to help you manage a LDAP directory (userquota module, massive users import, OpenSSH LDAP public keys management..)

More details on this Beta2 release can be read here. See here for download mirror.

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 1 available

First beta of Mandriva 2010 Spring Beta 1 released. Mandriva Spring final will be out on June 6th as planned by Mandriva Team. For those who want to test it, you can download it from your nearest mirror. For those who use Cooker like me, you don't need to download because you may get the upadates via drakrpm.

This release includes GNOME 2.30 (released on April 1st) and a preview edition of GNOME-Shell, which will be part of GNOME 3 (which is planned for release on september 2010). Of course, KDE 4.4.2 is also available, as well as various updates for many programs in the distribution.

As usual all your feedbacks are really important to help in improving global quality of distribution. You can report improvements proposals and/or bugs in Mandriva Bugzilla.

Mozilla 3.6.3 released. Fixed critical security hole.

Mozilla has just announced the release of Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3. It only fixed a critical security flaw that could potentially allow remote code execution (see bug 555109).

The memory corruption flaw, demonstrated by Nils of MWR Infosecurity at Pwn2Own 2010, is caused by moving DOM nodes between documents and triggering garbage collection at the right time, leaving an incorrectly retained node which would be used later. This, in turn, could be used to execute remotely injected code. Mozilla say the exploit only affects Firefox 3.6, but that it plans to patch Firefox 3.5 in a coming release "just in case there is an alternate way of triggering the bug".

There are no other changes in Firefox 3.6.3.

KDE 4.4 is ready for Mandriva

Run one of these to add KDE-4.4.0 repo (depending on your OS of course):

32 bits:

urpmi.addmedia kde-4.4.0 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.4.0/Mandriva/2010.0/i586

64 bits:

urpmi.addmedia kde-4.4.0 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.4.0/Mandriva/2010.0/x86_64

After adding the KDE 4.4. repository you will need to update, download and install all of KDE 4.4 packages. You can do all of this in one command, but, I, for safety, prefer to do it in two steps. First, update the repositories and download all the packages before installing them to make sure that the installation is possible:

urpmi --auto-update --auto-select --test

When all packages finish downloading and you see a message at the end saying that the installation is possible, you can run the same command without the --test parameter to now actually perform the installation:

urpmi --auto-update --auto-select

After the package installation finishes, logout and log back in, that's it !! you will have a brand new, shiny, awesome and rocking KDE 4.4 desktop :D

Enjoy!!

Credit goes to Juan Luis Baptiste for the info.

originalip option in dansguardian

I upgraded my firewall on Mandriva 2009.1 to 2010 and got into problem with dansguardian. Client computers got DansGuardian 400 - Bad Request , url is malformed for certain sites such as google and facebook. I suspected it must be related to new option introduced by newly installed dansguardian (2.10.1.1). In changelog, I got this:


Jan 21 17:18:39 firewall6 dansguardian[1090]: Destination host of dnl-15.geo.kaspersky.com did not match the original destination IP of 95.211.85.42
Jan 21 17:18:40 firewall6 dansguardian[1111]: Destination host of www.google-analytics.com did not match the original destination IP of 72.14.213.113
Jan 21 17:18:40 firewall6 dansguardian[1074]: Destination host of us.bc.yahoo.com did not match the original destination IP of 216.252.124.30
Jan 21 17:18:40 firewall6 dansguardian[1072]: Destination host of dnl-11.geo.kaspersky.com did not match the original destination IP of 38.117.98.202
Jan 21 17:18:41 firewall6 dansguardian[1091]: Destination host of dnl-04.geo.kaspersky.com did not match the original destination IP of 38.117.98.199
Jan 21 17:18:42 firewall6 dansguardian[1083]: Destination host of dnl-07.geo.kaspersky.com did not match the original destination IP of 38.117.98.199
Jan 21 17:18:42 firewall6 dansguardian[1116]: Destination host of newsrss.bbc.co.uk did not match the original destination IP of 212.58.226.73
Jan 21 17:18:43 firewall6 dansguardian[1076]: Destination host of dnl-11.geo.kaspersky.com did not match the original destination IP of 38.117.98.202
Jan 21 17:18:43 firewall6 dansguardian[1086]: Destination host of dnl-02.geo.kaspersky.com did not match the original destination IP of 38.117.98.196
Jan 21 17:18:49 firewall6 dansguardian[1270]: Started sucessfully.


After diff'ing between previous dansguardian.conf (currently in use) and the current version of the file (not in use). It turned out that originalip option was the culprit. It was on by default if it wasn't in there. To turn it off, I must tell it off as below:

# Network Settings
#
# the IP that DansGuardian listens on. If left blank DansGuardian will
# listen on all IPs. That would include all NICs, loopback, modem, etc.
# Normally you would have your firewall protecting this, but if you want
# you can limit it to a certain IP. To bind to multiple interfaces,
# specify each IP on an individual filterip line.
filterip = 192.168.6.6

# the port that DansGuardian listens to.
filterport = 8080

# the ip of the proxy (default is the loopback - i.e. this server)
proxyip = 127.0.0.1

# the port DansGuardian connects to proxy on
proxyport = 3128

originalip = off

This is what changelog says about originalip option:

Fri 5th June 2009 - DansGuardian 2.10.1.1 - stable

Add "originalip" option to dansguardian.conf, for determining the original destination IP in transparent proxy set-ups, and ensuring that the destination domain of the request resolves to that IP. This can help to address a particular transparent proxy security vulnerability (US-CERT VU#435052), but because of certain limitations - only implemented on Linux/Netfilter; potential breakage of websites using round-robin DNS - the code is not enabled by default. Enable by passing "--enable-orig-ip" to the configure script. Fix a crash which could occur when dealing with simultaneous incoming connections in configurations using more than one listening socket. Fix a crash when checking time limits on item lists. Fix potential usage of uninitialised memory during phrase filtering.

Luckily, Mandriva package was built with --enable-orig-ip enabled.

Cheers.

Stripping comments from a file

You can run this command to strip comments (line starting with a #) and empty lines from a file in Linux:

cat /etc/squid/squid.conf | grep -v ^# | grep -v ^$

I usually run this command on squid.conf, a file heavily commented.

To save the lines to file squiD.conf, you can run:

cat /etc/squid/squid.conf | grep -v ^# | grep -v ^$ > squiD.conf

Have fun!...

Nat Friedman leaves Novell

Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza were the founders of Ximian project. They both were known for their famous GNOME project where Ximian bornt. You can read what Nat will do next in his blog.