2012-04-05: Miscellaneous haul
I've been avoiding buying books, since I have a staggering number of them
that I've not read and I got a lot of books last year, but small purchases
accumulate. Here's the stuff I've picked up recently so that I don't
forget and buy it again.
L. Frank Baum — The Complete Wizard of Oz (sff)
Susan Cain — Quiet (non-fiction)
Susanna Clarke — Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (sff)
John Kenneth Galbraith — The Affluent Society (non-fiction)
Mira Grant — Deadline (sff)
Robert E. Howard — Red Nails (sff)
C.M. Kornbluth — His Share of Glory (sff)
Seanan McGuire — A Local Habitation (sff)
Seanan McGuire — Discount Armageddon (sff)
Richelle Mead — Storm Born (sff)
Richelle Mead — Thorn Queen (sff)
Richelle Mead — Iron Crowned (sff)
Bertrand Russell — Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
(non-fiction)
Bertrand Russell — Political Ideals (non-fiction)
Bertrand Russell — Proposed Roads to Freedom (non-fiction)
John Scalzi — 24 Frames into the Future (non-fiction)
John G. Slater (ed.) — The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell
(non-fiction)
Catherine M. Wilson — The Warrior's Path (mainstream)
All of these except the Kornbluth and the Scalzi are on the Kindle.
The Bertrand Russell were largely free. I've already read the Clarke, but
it was on sale, and it's a book that I think I'd like to read again
sometime. Similarly, I already have paper copies of all the Wizard
of Oz books and wouldn't give up those copies, but the complete original
series was only 99 cents, which was too good of a deal to pass up.
2012-04-25: WebAuth 4.1.1
This release is just a bug-fix release for the WebKDC and WebLogin
components. There are no changes to the mod_webauth or mod_webauthldap
modules; only those maintaining a central WebAuth system will be
interested.
The primary fixes in this version correct problems processing timestamps
associated with login history. The timestamp wasn't being correctly
parsed from the user information service in the WebKDC, and then wasn't
being correctly read by the WebLogin code. WebLogin now also suppresses
the time if there is no timestamp information.
Also in this release are several fixes for the sample templates to
suppress optional sections if the data is missing and to ensure that all
attributes that contain any external data are put through an HTML filter
by Template Toolkit.
The generated HTML version of the mod_webkdc manual has also been updated,
and some of the build and test machinery has been improved.
You can get the latest release from the official WebAuth site or from my
WebAuth release page.
Next step will be Apache 2.4 support, which I hope to start working on
next week.
2012-04-25: C TAP Harness 1.11
Since I synchronized the latest WebAuth release with this, I should
actually release it, although there may be some follow-on changes and
another release from some other things in progress.
The biggest change in this release is that I redid the source organization
so that everything is under tests, and I redid the includes in the TAP
library so that they assume they're under tests/tap and not just a
directory named tap.
I have mixed feelings about this, since it forces a particular code layout
on users of the library unless they patch the TAP library. However, I
wanted to introduce a macros.h header that was used by other TAP headers,
and if I stayed with having the TAP library reference headers under a tap
directory and then users add a -I flag to find the headers, every test
program that used the library would have to have a -I flag to pick up the
nested includes. With non-recursive Automake, that's horribly painful
unless you build the entire project with a -I flag pointing to the TAP
directory (which also seems wrong). The only other alternative was to use
#include "", but I find that very fragile.
Also in this release are various portability fixes. Feature-test macros
were an interesting experiment, but they make everything difficult on
Solaris, so now feature-test macros are only used if specifically
requested or when built with gcc -ansi (or similar flags). I also
avoided using local in the TAP shell library (not supported by Solaris) in
favor of regular global variables with a tap_ prefix. Finally, the
is_double function and all the floating point code is now in separate
files that can be copied in as desired, avoiding the need to link with -lm
on Solaris systems if is_double is not used anywhere in the test suite.
You can get the latest version from the
C TAP Harness distribution page.
2012-04-26: rra-c-util 4.3
The major change in this release is a reworking of the GSS-API configure
probes. They now check for headers with file existence checks if told to
use a specific install root or include path, since otherwise configure
could incorrectly detect properties of the system GSS-API include files
instead of the ones it was told to use. While I was at it, I also moved a
bunch of the standard GSS-API checks into the Autoconf macro instead of
requiring they be done separately in configure.ac, and I added a new
RRA_INCLUDES_GSSAPI macro to make it easier to write checks.
Following a recommendation in
Effective Java
(which applied equally well to other programming languages), I modified
buffer_sprintf and buffer_vsprintf to no longer take a boolean argument
saying whether to append the information, and instead added two new
functions. The meaning of boolean arguments is often very opaque at the
call site.
There's also another fix for RRA_LIB_REMCTL_OPTIONAL (setting a shell
variable that it was documented to set), and the PAM test script parser
now supports parameter expansion in the PAM arguments.
You can get the latest version from the rra-c-util distribution page.
2012-04-26: Hugo nominee haul
I'm finally home again for a while after a lot of travel that was
unexpectedly extended. It's so very nice to be home and to have a chance
to settle in and not go anywhere for at least a month.
It's also rather nice to come home to toys, which in this case means more
books. The
Hugo
nominees were announced while I was gone, which of course meant a book
order. And I've been picking up a few other things along the way.
Daniel Abraham — The Dragon's Path (sff)
C.L. Anderson — Bitter Angels (sff)
Elizabeth Bear — Range of Ghosts (sff)
Suzanne Collins — Catching Fire (sff)
Suzanne Collins — Mockingjay (sff)
James S.A. Corey — Leviathan Wakes (sff)
Lev Grossman — The Magicians (sff)
Alisa Harris — Raised Right (non-fiction)
Michael Flynn — The January Dancer (sff)
N.K. Jemisin — The Broken Kingdoms (sff)
N.K. Jemisin — The Kingdom of Gods (sff)
Paul Lafargue — The Right to be Lazy (non-fiction)
Marc Levison — The Box (non-fiction)
George R.R. Martin — A Dance with Dragons (sff)
Jack McDevitt — Echo (sff)
China Miéville — Embassytown (sff)
Mark Monmonier — Air Apparent (non-fiction)
Bill Moyers — Bill Moyers Journal (non-fiction)
Mary Norton — The Borrowers (children)
Mary Norton — The Borrowers Afield (children)
Mary Norton — The Borrowers Afloat (children)
Mary Norton — The Borrowers Aloft (children)
Mary Norton — The Borrowers Avenged (children)
Hannu Rajaniemi — The Quantum Thief (sff)
It's Hugo reading season, which means priority goes to the Corey, the
Miéville, and the Martin, which are nominees. I've already read
Leviathan Wakes and just need to write the review. I'm currently
reading Deadline by Mira Grant, which I bought a while back (and
which is also a nominee).
I'm still trying to decide, for A Dance with Dragons, whether to go
back and re-read the previous four books in the series. It will make a
lot more sense if I do, but that's a lot of reading. I'll read the other
nominees and then see how inspired I feel.
So much great stuff to read. This order was particularly rich with it.
I'm getting back into reading regularly, which is making me very happy,
but also means I need to carve out more time to read. I'm six reviews
behind again!
And, of course, being home means that video games are an option again, to
cut into my reading time. So many fun things to do!
2012-04-30: Debian private repositories
Earlier this year, I switched Stanford's internal repositories from an old
debarchiver setup that didn't do repository signing to something more
modern and secure built on top of reprepro.
While we're not doing anything particularly exciting at a technical level,
I thought it might be interesting for people to see how a large site with
heavy Debian usage divides up and manages its internal repositories.
I put up a first draft of a writeup at
Debian private repositories.
This is currently fairly incomplete. One obvious thing that's missing is
a pointer to the wrapper script that we use, but I know there's more. I'm
happy to prioritize additional documentation based on what people would
find interesting. Send me email (or mention on debian-enterprise, to
which I'll also send a pointer to this) if there's anything in particular
you want to hear about.
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