Hurricane Electrics IPv6 Certification

Willing to test the latest revision of the Internet Protocol on your Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora machines? Here’s how:

1. Register yourself at Hurricane Electrics by visiting tunnelbroker.net.

2. Create a new tunnel and make sure to use your public IP address as your IPv4 Endpoint.

3. Write down the relevant details of your tunnel, specifically:

1. Server IPv6 Address: 2001:470:1f0a:a6f::1 /64
2. Server IPv4 Address: 216.66.84.46 (this actually depends on which server did you choose on the previous step)
3. Client IPv6 Address: 2001:470:1f0a:a6f::2/64

4. Create a little script that will update your IPv4 tunnel endpoint every time your internet IP changes. (this step is not needed if you have an internet connection with a static IP):

Your Tunnel configuration details at tunnelbroker.net

#!/bin/bash
USERNAME=yourHEUsername
PASSWORD=yourHEPassword
TUNNELID=yourHETunnelID
GET "https://$USERNAME:$PASSWORD@ipv4.tunnelbroker.net/ipv4_end.php?tid=$TUNNELID"

5. Create the networking configuration files on your computer:

Debian / Ubuntu, on the /etc/network/interfaces file:

auto he-ipv6
iface he-ipv6 inet6 v4tunnel
address 2001:470:1f0a:a6f::2
netmask 64
endpoint 216.66.80.30
local 192.168.X.X (Your PC's LAN IP address)
ttl 255
gateway 2001:470:1f0a:a6f::1
pre-up /home/user/bin/update_tunnel.sh

Fedora, on the  /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-he-ipv6 file:

DEVICE=he-ipv6
TYPE=sit
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6TUNNELIPV4="216.66.80.30"
IPV6TUNNELIPV4LOCAL="192.168.X.X" (Your PC's LAN IP address)
IPV6ADDR="2001:470:1f0a:a6f::2/64"

and on the /etc/sysconfig/network file, add:

NETWORKING_IPV6=yes
IPV6_DEFAULTGW="2001:470:1f0a:a6f::1"
IPV6_DEFAULTDEV="he-ipv6"

You can then set up a little /sbin/ifup-pre-local script to update the IPv4 tunnel endpoint when your dynamic IP changes or simply add the script on the /etc/cron.daily directory and have it executed when you turn up your computer.

6. Change the DNS servers on /etc/resolv.conf:

OpenDNS:

A sample image taken from ipv6-test.com.

nameserver 2620:0:ccc::2
nameserver 2620:0:ccd::2

Google DNS:

nameserver 2001:4860:4860::8888
nameserver 2001:4860:4860::8844

7. Restart your network and enjoy IPv6!

8. If you want to know more about IPv6 take some time for the HE Certification program, you will learn a lot and eventually win a sponsored t-shirt, I just finished mine :-)

EDIT: Be aware of the fact that as soon as the tunnel is up, your computer will be exposed to to the internet without any kind of firewall (the tunnel sets up a direct connection to the internet, even bypassing your router’s firewall), you can secure your machine by using ip6tables. Thanks Michael Zanetti for pointing this out!

Deb-o-Matic is an easy to use build machine for Debian source packages based on pbuilder, written in Python.

It provides a simple tool to automate build of source packages with limited user interaction and a simple configuration. It has some useful features such as automatic update of pbuilder, automatic scan and selection of source packages to build and modules support.

The setup.

1. Download the package.

apt-get install debomatic

2. Modify the main configuration file as follows:

[default]
builder: pbuilder
packagedir: /home/john/debomatic # Take note of the following path since we'll need it for later use.
configdir: /etc/debomatic/distributions
pbuilderhooks: /usr/share/debomatic/pbuilderhooks
maxbuilds: 3 # The number of builds you can perform at the same time.
inotify: 1
sleep: 60 # The sleep time between one build and another.
logfile: /var/log/debomatic.log

[gpg]
gpg: 0 # Change to 1 if you want Deb-O-Matic to check the GPG signature of the uploaded packages.
keyring: /etc/debomatic/debomatic.gpg # Add the GPG Keys you want Deb-O-Matic to accept in this keyring.

[modules]
modules: 1 # A list of all the available modules will follow right after.
modulespath: /usr/share/debomatic/modules

[runtime]
alwaysupdate: unstable experimental precise
distblacklist:
modulesblacklist: Lintian Mailer
mapper: {'sid': 'unstable',
'wheezy': 'testing',
'squeeze': 'stable'}

[lintian]
lintopts: -i -I -E --pedantic # Run Lintian in Pedantic mode.

[mailer] # You need an SMTP server running on your machine for the mailer to work. You can have a look at the 'Ssmtp' daemon which is a one-minute-setup MTA, check an example over here.
fromaddr: debomatic@localhost
smtphost: localhost
smtpport: 25
authrequired: 0
smtpuser: user
smtppass: pass
success: /etc/debomatic/mailer/build_success.mail-template # Update the build success or failure mails as you wish by modifying the relevant files.
failure: /etc/debomatic/mailer/build_failure.mail-template

[internals]
configversion = 010a

The available modules are:

1.  ”Contents“, which acts as a ‘dpkg -c’ over the built packages.
2. “DateStamp“, which displays build start and finish times into a file in the build directory.
3. “Lintian“, which stores Lintian output on top of the built package in the pool directory.
4. “Mailer“, which sends a reply to the uploader once the build has finished.
5. “PrevBuildCleaner“, which deletes all files generated by the previous build.
6. “Repository“, which generates a local repository of built packages.

2. Configure ‘dput‘ to upload package’s sources to your local repository, edit the /etc/dput.cf file and add this entry:

[debomatic]
method = local
incoming = /home/john/debomatic

or the following if you are going to upload the files to a different machine through SSH:

[debomatic]
login = john
fqdn = debomatic.example.net
method = scp
incoming = /debomatic

3. Add a new Virtual Host on Apache and access the repository / built packages directly through your browser:

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin john@example.net
ServerName debomatic.example.net
DocumentRoot /home/john/debomatic

<Directory /home/john/debomatic>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

4. Start the daemon:

sudo /etc/init.d/debomatic start

5. (Optional) Add your repository to APT‘s sources.list:

deb http://debomatic.example.net/ unstable main contrib non-free

6. (Optional) Start Deb-O-Matic at system’s startup by modifying the /etc/init.d/debomatic file at line 21:

- [ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
- [ "$DEBOMATIC_AUTOSTART" = 0 ] && exit 0

+ [ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
+ [ "$DEBOMATIC_AUTOSTART" = 1 ] && exit 0

and finally add it to the desired runlevels:

update-rc.d debomatic defaults

Enjoy!

Some days ago I had the great announcement that my Debian Maintainer‘s application was accepted and thanks to Jonathan McDowell my key is finally into the debian-maintainers keyring. (which is now part of the debian-keyring itself thanks to the ftp-masters / keyring maintainer work that made the changes on both DAK and keyring)

I applied on the 22th of August, and thanks to Reinhard’s advocation, everything went on the right side. Many thanks to all the people who made this possible.

Pkg-mozext:

Around 3 weeks ago I started being involved with the pkg-mozext team working on the new policy and to mozilla-devscripts transition for all iceweasel / icedove extensions. The work is going great so far and we managed to update several extensions that are now part of the team itself. For a fast look at our package list, feel free to browse pkg-mozext’s QA page. A lot of work needs to be done, so if anyone wanna jump in, I would suggest to read our guidelines / policy into the team’s Wiki Page.

Pkg-gnome:

GNOME 2.28 is now released, and the pkg-gnome team is now working hard to provide all the needed updates into unstable and experimental. Everything is going great and we are cleaning up everything listed on our schedule.

Ephipany is under transition (gecko –> webkit) so there are still some open issues / bugs, but now it looks fine so far and it can be used without any particular problem.