Sbuild list-missing hook

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:47:24 +0100

Time for some random content, as it's been almost a year since I last put something uninteresting here. When I switched from pbuilder to sbuild to build debian packages, what I missed most is the little hook script I used to list missing files - files in debian/tmp that are not part of any package. As some google digging didn't work out so weel to find its sbuild-compatible equivalent, I've finally written a hook script for schroot that does this.
A couple notes on it though:

You need to set $purge_build_directory="never"; in your ~/.sbuilrc for this to work, or otherwise the build directory will get deleted, and the script won't work (this doesn't matter much if you're using lvm snapshots, however that might end up eating up a lot of space if you're using the file-based method)
You need to put it in /etc/schroot/setup.d, and as it runs fakeroot and uses cdbs' utils.mk file, you'll need both of those packages installed.

Well, that's pretty much it. You weren't expecting some real content, were you?

Enlightened boot

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:48:27 +0100

Some time ago, Rasterman wrote Exquisite, a pretty neat EFL-based, drop-in usplash replacement. After some efforts, I got it working at startup on my computer, and packaged it so that people can enjoy it painlessly.
However, many people don't use packages, and I've been asked several time to write a how-to make it work, so here it is :)

Note: All the links below are links to scripts, don't forget to make them executable. A lot of them are based on scripts from the usplash and initramfs-tools debian/ubuntu packages, thanks to their maintainer for the great work :)
First off, if you're an ubuntu user you need to work around the framebuffer bug (see the previous post), as exquisites requires vesafb. Basically, if you have a sotck Ubuntu install, you need to:
- Edit /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/kernelextras, and add the two following lines at the end:
  force_load fbcon
  force_load vesafb
- Edit /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-top/framebuffer and remove the '-b' option passed to the 2 modprobe calls in the middle of the script.
As said above, you need to use the framebuffer to have exquisite working. That means you have to append (if not already present) a 'vga=' option in you kernel startup command-line in /boot/grub/menu.lst, and then run sudo update-grub. More information concerning the vga modes can be found on Wikipedia
Then, grab exquisite from CVS, compile and install it. I'll assume that the binaries are installed in /sbin (if it's not, adapt the path with the one where you installed exquisite, but keep in mind that exquisite-write has to be installed in a location available at the ealiest stage of the boot, so avoid /usr/* if it's on a different partition)
Symlink the binary so that calls to 'upslash' actually call exquisite: sudo ln -s /sbin/exquisite /sbin/usplash
You now need to create some wrapper scripts so that it replaces usplash the proper way:
- Put the following code in /sbin/usplash_write:
  #!/bin/sh
  EXQUISITE_IPC="/dev/.initramfs/exquisite" exquisite-write "$@"
  
  This allows exquisite to survive the root filesystem change that happens when /sbin/init is called from within the initramfs.
- You also need exquisite-down, which is called from the init scripts at shutdown to launch exquisite. Either save it as /sbin/exquisite-down and symlink /sbin/usplash_down to it, or name it /sbin/usplash_down directly.
Next, some initramfs-tools magic:
- /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/exquisite. Don't forget to replace @ARCH@ with the correct value. You can run ls /usr/lib/evas/modules/engines/fb to find out the right name (of course, replace /usr/lib with your actual installation path if it's different).
- /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-top/exquisite
- sudo update-initramfs -u
Finally, we need an init script for it. Save it to /etc/init.d/usplash, and run the following command to add it to /etc/rc*.d:
sudo update-rc.d usplash start 98 2 3 4 5 . stop 01 0 1 6 .
Reboot
w00t.

Thou Shalt Not Use The Framebuffer

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:03:28 +0100

Let's talk about a Gutsy feature I particularly (dis)like

echo 'Hello, World!'

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:49:34 +0200

Hello, World! Well, some people have been telling me for a while that I should have a blog....Let's try :)

Lutin's Homepage

Sbuild list-missing hook

Enlightened boot

Thou Shalt Not Use The Framebuffer

echo 'Hello, World!'