Hacking for Christ

Tracking Ubuntu Hardy

I update my Hardy beta installation on my laptop to the latest packages about once a week. The experience so far has been like blowing seeds off a dandelion and reciting "It boots... It boots not... It boots... It boots not..." Currently, I'm on "It boots not". I wonder which I'll be on when the last seed blows off on April 24th?

This sort of thing doesn't encourage one to be a beta tester. I'm glad they leave older kernels installed...

Verisign Wimpy Warnings

I was visiting some phishing sites (as you do) and came across this one. These things have short lifetimes; it may not be there when you check. It is/was an eBay spoof page, spam-advertised, which had a spiffy-looking Verisign Site Seal in the bottom corner, which was actually linked to the correct URL at Verisign! Perhaps this is a result of them just saving the eBay page to disk and whacking it up on the webserver. Anyway, I know no-one ever clicks on these things, but I thought I'd try it, to make sure I got a scary message from Verisign.

In fact, what I got was this:

Unable to validate this seal

We are unable to verify the status of this seal at this time. Please try again later.

Click here to learn more about SSL Certificates.

Wow, that has me scared. I'll be sure not to type my eBay credentials into the site now...

Free Our Bills

For readers in the UK: the excellent TheyWorkForYou has just launched a campaign, "Free Our Bills", to persuade Parliament to provide bills in a well-marked-up format rather than the mangled HTML they use now (technical details). They need this to provide useful services like email alerts, details of what amendments your MP is asking for or voting on, and so on.

If you think this is a good idea, please lend your support to the campaign.

For readers in the US: no, "Free Our Bills" is not a campaign for a massive tax reduction. Although it would be a good name for one.

Male Interests

Imagine for a moment what a Martian student would think if he took a trip to earth to research an essay on 'Men - what are they and what makes them tick?' What do we look like from the outside? What conclusions might be reach about us as a whole?

He might drop in to a local newsagent before doing some observational field research to look at some of the things men are interested in reading about. A quick trawl through the shelves for men reveals a complex variety of subjects. Men, it would seem, are interested in sex, cars, sex, computers, sex, body building, more sex and clothes... and did I mention sex?

But dig a little deeper, and the magazines would tell him that the only reason that men are interested in cars, body building and clothes is so that they can have more... you guessed it... sex!

I'm not quite sure where computers fit in.

-- Tim Thornborough, in chapter 2 of Man to Man... about God.

Upgrading to Hardy

I've just upgraded my desktop and laptop to the latest beta of Ubuntu Hardy Heron, 8.04. Not wanting to sound like a broken record, but this process is still confusing for the average user. I was asked a number of questions that most people would have no idea of the answers to.

The first popup I got was the this top one:

What is a user supposed to make of that? There's no "install x-ttcidfont-conf" button. Checking afterwards, it seems that the upgrade installs it anyway. So why bother telling me about it? Why not just do it?

The second popup told me it had to restart some services to use the new libSSL.

Then, I had a succession of five popups asking about replacing or keeping modified configuration files - smb.conf, bash_completion, cupsd.conf, ntp.conf and /etc/default/bluetooth. This bugs me for the following reasons:

• These popups appeared at various points in the long upgrade process and, given that my screen went into standby, it was easy to not notice them. Disabling screen standby, or beeping, would have been sensible.

• There were two different forms of popup (see pictures 2 and 3). Why?
• These config files were changed because I changed something in the GUI. If I'd edited the file by hand I'd have less cause for complaint but why can't the system know how to merge changes made through the GUI with new options? Most packages seem to manage this fine.

• Accepting the defaults on cupsd.conf disabled remote printer sharing, without telling me it had done so. Remote printing just stopped working. And ticking the "Shared" box next to the printer in the Printer Configuration applet isn't enough; you also need to tick "Share published printers connected to the system" in the Server Settings area. What's the difference between sharing and publishing? Why do I need to check two boxes? What's a print server anyway? Grr.

• Accepting the defaults on ntp.conf removed my configured ntp server, again without telling me it had done so.

• The bluetooth one was especially bizarre as my desktop doesn't have bluetooth.
  

Lastly, it asked me if I wanted to remove obsolete packages. If they are obsolete, remove them. If they aren't, keep them. How am I supposed to know?

When I'd finished, Gimp no longer had the useful "Gutenprint" print capability. No idea why. The package had just gone. This was standard in the last release, I think - I certainly don't remember installing it manually. I knew where to find it and reinstall it - but would an ordinary user know what was wrong?

The Ubuntu team needs to work on making packages which know how to merge in updates to their own configuration files - particularly updates made through the official configuration GUI for those packages.

Summer of Code Deadline (Again)

The Summer of Code application deadline (really, this time) is midnight tonight UTC/GMT, 5pm PST. Don't get left out :-) It is possible to update applications after you've filed them and before the deadline (and possible to add comments even after that) so, if in doubt, get something in.

Extending the deadline has, for us, only resulted in six or seven more applications, and the number of applications is about 50% of what it was last year. I'm not sure why that is - persuading people to apply is not really within my power, at least. In the next few days, I guess I'll find out whether we have quality rather than quantity :-)

Highly Hairy Heron

Ubuntu Hardy Heron is to be released soon. Last week, I upgraded my X40 laptop to the beta and found it wouldn't boot (at least, not the default kernel). I duly filed a bug with diagnostics, which has now been untouched for almost a week.

The low level of attention to "your OS hosed my machine" bugs, right before a release, is rather concerning...

SoC Application Deadline Extended

I'm clearly not on the right mailing lists. It seems that the SoC application deadline has been extended to the 7th of April.