19 Nov 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Providing a license for package sources

Arch Linux hasn't had a license for any package sources (such as PKGBUILD files) in the past, which is potentially problematic. Providing a license will preempt that uncertainty. In RFC 40 we agreed to change all package sources to be licensed under the very liberal 0BSD license. This change will not limit what you can do with package sources. Check out the RFC for more on the rationale and prior discussion. Before we make this change, we will provide contributors with a way to voice any objections they might have. Starting on 2024-11-19, over the course of a week, contributors will receive a single notification email listing all their contributions.

If you contributed to Arch Linux packages before but didn't receive an email, please contact us at package-sources-licensing@archlinux.org.

19 Nov 2024 12:00am GMT

16 Oct 2024

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Can't trust any VPN these days

After Turkey banned Discord, I had to jump through some hoops, fix my VPN, and learn a bit about how DNS works.

16 Oct 2024 12:00am GMT

04 Oct 2024

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Facts

A collection of facts about yours truly. Guaranteed to be as accurate as my memory.

04 Oct 2024 12:00am GMT

03 Oct 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Optimized cloud-init templates on Proxmox

There are already quite a few resources out there demonstrating how to create a cloud-init enabled VM template in Proxmox. Here are the ones I mainly used to discover the topic, and which I suggest you go through because what follows depends on them:

What those and many similar resources give are step-by-step instructions divided in as many commands to facilitate understanding. What I haven't seen so far though, is an all-in-one, optimized command to …

03 Oct 2024 12:00am GMT

30 Sep 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Optimized cloud-init template on Proxmox

There are already quite a few resources out there demonstrating how to create a cloud-init enabled VM template in Proxmox. Here are the ones I mainly used to discover the topic, and which I suggest you go through because what follows depends on them:

What those and many similar resources give are step-by-step instructions divided in as many commands to facilitate understanding. What I haven't seen so far though, is an all-in-one, optimized command to do the same thing, …

30 Sep 2024 12:00am GMT

14 Sep 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Manual intervention for pacman 7.0.0 and local repositories required

With the release of version 7.0.0 pacman has added support for downloading packages as a separate user with dropped privileges. For users with local repos however this might imply that the download user does not have access to the files in question, which can be fixed by assigning the files and folder to the alpm group and ensuring the executable bit (+x) is set on the folders in question. $ chown :alpm -R /path/to/local/repo Remember to merge the .pacnew files to apply the new default. Pacman also introduced a change to improve checksum stability for git repos that utilize .gitattributes files. This might require a one-time checksum change for PKGBUILDs that use git sources.

14 Sep 2024 12:00am GMT

06 Sep 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Why I started livestreaming as a Rust developer?

Some thoughts on why I started livestreaming my open-source development sessions and my future plans.

06 Sep 2024 12:00am GMT

31 Aug 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

SSH CA with device and identity attestation: ssh-tpm-ca-authority

The past year I have been hacking around on tools utilizing TPMs, and one of the features I have been interested to learn more about is the device attestation features. After being a bit inspired by some ideas from people at work, the hackerspace and toots on mastodon, I figure out a SSH certificate authority would be a cool small project to hack on. Last year I wrote an SSH agent with TPM bound keys so this would nicely fit into the existing tooling.

31 Aug 2024 12:00am GMT

Reproducible Arch images with mkosi

In the previous article I investigated how to create a reproducible image but ended up with only managing to create two identical image directories. In this article we'll end up with a fully bit-by-bit reproducible filesystem image! Some things have changed since the last post, mkosi now no longer creates …

31 Aug 2024 12:00am GMT

29 Aug 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

August

Arch Linux in August 2024 # Staff # We would like to welcome Quentin Michaud as part of the Arch Linux Package Maintainer team. RFC # A previously proposed Distribution Developer Manual RFC has been accepted with the intention to document how to run the distribution while leveraging GitLab's collaboration features and streamlined workflows for maintaining and evolving the resulting specifications. We have proposed an RFC to license all Arch Linux package sources under the terms of the Zero-Clause BSD license.

29 Aug 2024 12:00am GMT

24 Aug 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Deleting emails will not save the planet

A while ago I saw a post on LinkedIn that piqued my interest, not because it was any good, but because it was impressively wrong. It claimed that, to quote, "if every email user deleted just 10 emails, it would save enough electricity to power millions of households each year". This is not only wrong, it is obviously wrong. In this post, I'd like to dive into why it's wrong, how one might come to think it's right, and perhaps what better message you could put out there to save the planet.

24 Aug 2024 12:00am GMT

18 Aug 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Investigating creating reproducible images with mkosi

I've blogged before about creating vagrant images using mkosi as part of an investigation to move image creation to mkosi but also as I will be giving a talk at All Systems Go about Arch Linux images mkosi and reproducibility. With reproducible images in this article I mean that anyone …

18 Aug 2024 12:00am GMT

29 Jul 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

July

Arch Linux in July 2024 # Pacman # Pacman v7.0.0 has been released as a major feature version. A new DownloadUser configuration option allows for dropping privileges when downloading files to a temporary directory. On top of this security measure, the new Landlock sandbox also prevents writing outside the restricted download directory. Additionally, makepkg removes GITFLAGS support, as it required breaking changes to git source handling. Furthermore this release addresses unstable git checksumming influenced by specific user configuration. On top, it now prevents PKGBUILD from overriding BUILDENV to avoid undesired side effects.

29 Jul 2024 12:00am GMT

27 Jul 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Building vagrant images with mkosi

Last FOSDEM, there where some talks around mkosi using it for kernel hacking and systemd integration tests. These talks got me interested in mkosi, a systemd project for building OS images. After chatting some more with the maintainers, I considered the idea of moving the arch-boxes project to mkosi. (note …

27 Jul 2024 12:00am GMT

01 Jul 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

The sshd service needs to be restarted after upgrading to openssh-9.8p1

After upgrading to openssh-9.8p1, the existing SSH daemon will be unable to accept new connections (see https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/openssh/-/issues/5). When upgrading remote hosts, please make sure to restart the sshd service using systemctl try-restart sshd right after upgrading. We are evaluating the possibility to automatically apply a restart of the sshd service on upgrade in a future release of the openssh-9.8p1 package.

01 Jul 2024 12:00am GMT

29 Jun 2024

feedPlanet Arch Linux

June

Arch Linux in June 2024 # archinstall # The archinstall v2.8.1 update has been released, featuring several bug fixes and improvements to partitioning and desktop profiles, along with the introduction of experimental LVM support and the addition of Finnish translation. ArchWeb # ArchWeb 2024-06-12 has been rolled out, which includes an update to Django's latest major version, Django 5.0 as well as small improvements within our Ruff configuration used as our Python linter.

29 Jun 2024 12:00am GMT