Grants for Operating Systems

Over the past years I have written (unsuccessful) funding applications for free software projects, associated with the Arch Linux Operating System. This article is about my experiences with applying for numerous funds and my advice for people trying to get their work funded. TL;DR: Writing funding applications is extremely tedious and the selection process mostly intransparent and discouraging. Depending on what you apply for and who you apply with, you may never get funding due to other, additional factors. Read more… (8 min remaining to read)

https://sleepmap.de/2023/grants-for-operating-systems/

#planetarch

Operating System Bias in Next Generation Internet and NLnet

In Grants for Operating Systems I discussed my journey through the grant application writing business since beginning of last year. To keep things light and somewhat focused, I left out a topic, that I would like to write about in more detail in the following sections. It's about selection bias in grants provided by Next Generation Internet (NGI), that can be applied for directly or through NLnet. Read more… (11 min remaining to read)

https://sleepmap.de/2023/operating-system-bias-in-next-generation-internet-and-nlnet/

#planetarch

Bugtracker migration to GitLab completed

We are happy to announce that the migration of the bugtracker to GitLab is done! 🥳

Thanks to everyone who has helped during the migration!

This means the issue tracker and merge requests on the GitLab package repos are now enabled.

The old bugtracker will subsequently be closed down. For archiving reasons there will be a static copy so that links (for example the randomly picked Task #56716) are still stable, migrated bugs have a closing comment pointing to the new URL on GitLab.

Packaging bugs are now opened on the repo hosting the corresponding packaging sources, the "Add a new Bug" button on the package page on archlinux.org will automatically direct you to the correct place to open the issue. The workflow afterwards is mostly the same, first our Bug Wranglers will have a look at the issues and triage them, and then they will be handed over to the respective Package Maintainers to fix. A list of all issues can be found here.

If you do not have an account for GitLab already (which authenticates against our SSO service), please write us a mail with your desired username to accountsupport@archlinux.org as advised in the banner.

https://archlinux.org/news/bugtracker-migration-to-gitlab-completed/

#news

November

Arch Linux in November 2023 # Arch Summit 2023 # The Arch Summit took place in Hamburg, Germany, on November 4th and 5th, bringing together Arch Linux staff and invited guests. The summit provided an opportunity for the staff to connect, socialize, and delve into discussions regarding various aspects of our distro. A range of topics were explored including but not limited to infrastructure and mirror management, rebuilders for packages, signing enclave, mkinitcpio, packaging tooling improvements, and community building.

https://monthly-reports.archlinux.page/2023/11/

#planetarch

Reflecting on my 2023

I figured I’d write a post about this last year, maybe to crystalize thoughts I’ve been having, and to help figure some things out for the times ahead.

https://rubin55.org/blog/reflecting-on-my-2023/

#planetarch

Stream to chromecast with resolved, vlc and bash

Chromecast is one of those devices I just generally use a lot. They are small practical and enables me to stream video or music to my TV from multiple devices. But it also requires you to have a supported browser or video player. This is obviously a bit boring. There has been multiple command line chromecast streamers through the years. But their ffmpeg usage has been shoddy at best with no hardware decoding support and usually quite bad implementations.

https://linderud.dev/blog/stream-to-chromecast-with-resolved-vlc-and-bash/

#planetarch

Plans and ideas for 2024

A follow-up to my reflections on 2023, my plans and ideas for 2024.

https://rubin55.org/blog/plans-and-ideas-for-2024/

#planetarch

Making dbus-broker our default D-Bus daemon

We are making dbus-broker our default implementation of D-Bus, for improved performance, reliability and integration with systemd.

For the foreseeable future we will still support the use of dbus-daemon, the previous implementation. Pacman will ask you whether to install dbus-broker-units or dbus-daemon-units. We recommend picking the default.

For a more detailed rationale, please see our RFC 25.

https://archlinux.org/news/making-dbus-broker-our-default-d-bus-daemon/

#news

Why stdout is faster than stderr?

I recently realized stdout is much faster than stderr for Rust. Here are my findings after diving deep into this rabbit hole.

https://blog.orhun.dev/stdout-vs-stderr/

#planetarch

GNOME battery charge control

As someone who has to use a laptop for work, I keep my laptop plugged in 8 hours or more a day, 7 days a week. The laptop's battery during these days would discharge and charge, slowly degrading the battery because only the last ~ 20% would be charged and discharged …

https://vdwaa.nl/gnome-upower-charge-thresholds.html

#planetarch

My FOSDEM 2024 Experience

Sharing my experience after giving a talk at FOSDEM 2024!

https://blog.orhun.dev/fosdem-2024-experience/

#planetarch

Uninterupted desktop streaming vs. NetworkManager

For maybe more than a year (maybe two) I’ve been struggling with getting desktop streaming from Linux desktop client to a Windows or Linux host system working flawlessly. I mean without interruptions in video frame speed (60fps) or audio drop-outs.

https://rubin55.org/blog/uninterupted-desktop-streaming-vs-network-manager/

#planetarch

mkinitcpio hook migration and early microcode

With the release of mkinitcpio v38, several hooks previously provided by Arch packages have been moved to the mkinitcpio upstream project. The hooks are: systemd, udev, encrypt, sd-encrypt, lvm2 and mdadm_udev.

To ensure no breakage of users' setup occurs, temporary conflicts have been introduced into the respective packages to prevent installing packages that are no longer compatible.

The following packages needs to be upgraded together:

* mkinitcpio 38-3
* systemd 255.4-2
* lvm2 2.03.23-3
* mdadm 4.3-2
* cryptsetup 2.7.0-3

Please note that the mkinitcpio flag --microcode, and the microcode option in the preset files, has been deprecated in favour of a new microcode hook. This also allows you to drop the microcode initrd lines from your boot configuration as they are now packed together with the main initramfs image.

https://archlinux.org/news/mkinitcpio-hook-migration-and-early-microcode/

#news

Join the Arch Testing Team - Call for participation

We hope y'all had a good start in the new year of 2024 — With the new year usually come new resolutions. If you don't have any so far, we have one for you: What if you decided to give Arch a bit of help with testing package updates this year? Arch uses testing repositories as a buffer for core/critical package updates (or any other package updates that would benefit from being tested first) before entering the stable repositories. Testing these package updates helps us to catch more bugs upfront and ensures flawless updates for the stable repos, and that is where you can help! By joining the official Arch Linux Testing Team, you'll get the ability to "sign off" packages in testing after vouching for their correctness (or reporting a bug otherwise). This helps Arch Package Maintainers catching eventual bugs upfront and helps to move packages out of the testing repositories faster and more efficiently. We are not necessarilly looking for in depth testing. Verifiying that a program launches correctly and that you're able to perform your usual routine with it is already a good test on its own. You can also check the general testing guidelines. This is a very effective and rather easy way to contribute to Arch Linux. The more testers we have, the more reliable packages updates will be. We hope to see some of you there, also join us on IRC on Libera in #archlinux-testing!

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=293464

#planetarch

Changes to Moderation Staff

Please join me in extending our profound "Thank you"s to 2ManyDogs who has hung up their ban hammer and now joins other former moderators in the infamous Fellows Taco Lounge. In addition, it is my extreme pleasure to welcome Schard as our newest moderation team member.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=294359

#planetarch

xz Package Backdoor

Please see the Arch main page announcement and take appropriate action. https://archlinux.org/news/the-xz-packa … ackdoored/

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=294363

#planetarch

NixOS is not reproducible

Okay, sorry for the clickbait. NixOS is not reproducible according to the Reproducible Builds definition. I keep reading people making this claim repeatedly on orange-site, even LWN.net made a similar claim when writing about Nix and Guix earlier this week.1 Along with their recently launched wiki. So, what is the Reproducible Builds definition?2 When is a build reproducible? A build is reproducible if given the same source code, build environment and build instructions, any party can recreate bit-by-bit identical copies of all specified artifacts.

https://linderud.dev/blog/nixos-is-not-reproducible/

#planetarch

Ratatui Received Funding: What's Next?

Let's delve into the realm of open source funding along with Ratatui's journey.

https://blog.orhun.dev/open-source-funding-with-ratatui/

#planetarch

The Name Quest

I went on a trip to Mongolia to find out the meaning behind my name.

https://blog.orhun.dev/mongolia-trip/

#planetarch

The xz package has been backdoored

Update: To our knowledge the malicious code which was distributed via the release tarball never made it into the Arch Linux provided binaries, as the build script was configured to only inject the bad code in Debian/Fedora based package build environments. The news item below can therefore mostly be ignored.

We are closely monitoring the situation and will update the package and news as neccesary.



TL;DR: Upgrade your systems and container images now!

As many of you may have already read ([one](https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4)), the upstream release tarballs for `xz` in version `5.6.0` and `5.6.1` contain malicious code which adds a backdoor.

This vulnerability is tracked in the Arch Linux security tracker ([two](https://security.archlinux.org/ASA-202403-1)).

The `xz` packages prior to version `5.6.1-2` (specifically `5.6.0-1` and `5.6.1-1`) contain this backdoor.

The following release artifacts contain the compromised `xz`:

installation medium 2024.03.01
virtual machine images `20240301.218094` and `20240315.221711`
container images created between and including 2024-02-24 and 2024-03-28

The affected release artifacts have been removed from our mirrors.

We strongly advise against using affected release artifacts and instead downloading what is currently available as latest version!

## Upgrading the system

It is strongly advised to do a full system upgrade right away if your system currently has xz version 5.6.0-1 or 5.6.1-1 installed:

pacman -Syu

## Upgrading container images

To figure out if you are using an affected container image, use either

podman image history archlinux/archlinux

or

docker image history archlinux/archlinux

depending on whether you use podman or docker.

Any Arch Linux container image older than 2024-03-29 and younger than 2024-02-24 is affected.

Run either

podman image pull archlinux/archlinux

or

docker image pull archlinux/archlinux

to upgrade affected container images to the most recent version.

Afterwards make sure to rebuild any container images based on the affected versions and also inspect any running containers!

## Regarding sshd authentication bypass/code execution

From the upstream report (one):

> openssh does not directly use liblzma. However debian and several other distributions patch openssh to support systemd notification, and libsystemd does depend on lzma.

Arch does not directly link openssh to liblzma, and thus this attack vector is not possible. You can confirm this by issuing the following command:

ldd "$(command -v sshd)"

However, out of an abundance of caution, we advise users to remove the malicious code from their system by upgrading either way. This is because other yet-to-be discovered methods to exploit the backdoor could exist.

https://archlinux.org/news/the-xz-package-has-been-backdoored/

#news

Increasing the default vm.max_map_count value

The vm.max\_map\_count parameter will be increased from the default 65530 value to 1048576.

This change should help address performance, crash or start-up issues for a number of memory intensive applications, particularly for (but not limited to) some Windows games played through Wine/Steam Proton. Overall, end users should have a smoother experience out of the box with no expressed concerns about potential downsides in the related proposal on arch-dev-public mailing list.

This vm.max_map_count increase is introduced in the 2024.04.07-1 release of the filesystem package and will be effective right after the upgrade.

Before upgrading, in case you are already setting your own value for that parameter in a sysctl.d configuration file, either remove it (to switch to the new default value) or make sure your configuration file will be read with a higher priority than the /usr/lib/sysctl.d/10-arch.conf file (to supersede the new default value).

https://archlinux.org/news/increasing-the-default-vmmaxmapcount-value/

#news