"Drive-by-bugfixing" and why I might not bother anymore

I like to call this "drive-by-bugfixing" and this is how it usually happens:

• I have a problem with e.g. xfce4-power-manager, which I'm unable to fix right now


• I check out some random other package (let's call it "yerba-power-manager") to check if it can replace xfpm for me


• I find it has a bug. Or two. Actually caused by broken openSUSE patches trying to implement new APIs


• Because it is "an interesting problem", I fix it them just for fun


• Later I find that I have no use for this package as (for unreated reasons), it does not fix any of my original problems

So far so good. Now I have a fixed package lying around in my home:seife buildservice repository. Trying to be a good cititzen, I submit it back to the original YERBA desktop project.
Can you imagine what happens next?
Correct! It gets rejected. Why? Because I did not mention all my patches in the changelog.

Come on guys. Policies etc. are all fine, but if you want people helping maintain your broken packages, then don't bullshit them with policy crap, period.
I had done the heavy lifting last sunday and fixed the bugs, now all that the desktop maintainer would have needed to do would have been to amend the changelog.

Well, I am not that interested in that particular desktop and its problems, so I just revoked the submitrequest and am done with it. I fixed XFPM instead :-)

And yes, I understand very well that such policies are a good thing to have, and necessary, and if I'm contributing to some subproject on a regular basis, then I of course make sure that I'm following these rules. On the other hand, it's really easy to discourage the occasional one-time contributor from helping out.

(Names changed to protect the guilty)

FreeDNS update mit FRITZ!Box

(This post is in german, since the router is commonly used in german-speaking countries)

Ich benutze seit längerem FreeDNS anstelle von Dyn.com oder ähnlichen Diensten, hauptsächlich weil das Update so einfach ist: einfach einen personalisierte URL per "wget" oder "curl" aufrufen und schon ist die eigene IP geändert, es wird keine spezielle Software benötigt. Dieser URL enthält eine Zeichenkette die den eigenen Account identifiziert, sie enthält aber nicht den Usernamen oder das Passwort. Somit ist es relativ ungefährlich, diesen URL in z.B. einem cronjob einzutragen: sollte jemand diesen String mitlesen, so kann er im schlimmsten Fall die IP falsch updaten, was zwar lästig aber relativ harmlos ist.

Nachdem Dyn.com küzlich die kostenlosen Accounts gekündigt hat, war das Thema FreeDNS für einige Bekannte auch aktuell, die größten Bedenken kamen allerdings daher, daß der in die FRITZ!Box eingebaute Dynamic DNS Unsterstützung FreeDNS nicht unterstützen würde. Das ist so nicht richtig:

Im Webfrontend, unter "Dynamic DNS" einfach "Benutzerdefiniert" auswählen, als "Update-URL" dann den URL einsetzen, die man in der Accountverwaltung auf http://freedns.afraid.org/dynamic/ als "Direct URL" bekommt.
Als "Domainname" wird der angemeldete Domainname eingetragen. Die FRITZ!Box prüft nach ob sich dieser auflösen lässt und meldet einen Fehler, wenn das nicht funktioniert.
Leere "Username" und "Passwort" akzeptiert die FRITZ!Box nicht, also habe ich in die Felder einfach "x" eingetragen. Fertig.

Getestet hier auf einer FRITZ!Box 7390 mit FRITZ!OS 06.03.

(Update 13.4.2014: "Domainname" ergänzt)

VDR updated to 2.0.x

I finally got around to update VDR to version 2.0.x
I'm using this version since some time and it is working fine for me. However, I'm quite sure that there are some kinks to be ironed out.
I'm not sure if updating from an old openSUSE VDR installation is a good idea or if it would be better to start from scratch. Personally, I'd do the latter and only keep my channels.conf.

The recommended way for starting VDR from systemd is now the runvdr-extreme-systemd package, the old runvdr init script is still available from the vdr-runvdr package, but is completely untested.

Configuration now happens in /etc/runvdr.conf, the old /etc/sysconfig/vdr is no longer read at all.

Normally, only the used plugins need to be added to runvdr.conf like

AddPlugin streamdev-server
AddPlugin epgsearch --logfile=/var/log/epgsearch/log --verbose=3
AddPlugin xineliboutput --local=none --remote=37890

This should be the equivalent of old sysconfig values

VDR_PLUGINS="streamdev-server epgsearch xineliboutput"
VDR_PLUGIN_ARGS_streamdev_server=""
VDR_PLUGIN_ARGS_epgsearch="--logfile=/var/log/epgsearch/log --verbose=3"
VDR_PLUGIN_ARGS_xineliboutput="--local=none --remote=37890"

The settings in runvdr.conf are commented, so the config file should be easy to understand.

If you are using vdradmin-am and are importing the old vdradmin.conf (I'd actually advise to start from scratch there, too) then you need to change the SVDR port setting to the new default of 6419 (or change the SVDRPORT variable for VDR to the old value).

The "supported" plugins are maintained in the "vdr" repository of the openSUSE Buildservice. I'm collection "unsupported" additional plugins in "vdr:plugins". The definition of "supported" right now is "the stuff that I use", simply because I cannot really test stuff that I don't use on a daily basis. Of course if someone wants to help maintain these things, I'm more than willing to move things into the main "vdr" repository.
Stuff that is in the supported repository will most likely end up in Factory and thus in openSUSE 13.2.

Bugreports via bugzilla or the opensuse-factory mailinlist, please ;-)