I didn’t manage to get the setup fully working so far but I wanted to share my experience in case anyone tries the same!

The basic setup of mini-buildd is quiet easy. I’ve decided for a setup with three versers, one for the repository, one buildd for amd64 and ond buildd for i386.

vs-buildd-rep - 192.168.10.1
vs-buildd-amd64 - 192.168.10.2
vs-buildd-i386 - 192.168.10.3

First we need to create these vservers:

newvserver --ip 192.168.10.1/24 --domain localdomain --hostname vs-buildd-rep --vsroot /srv/vserver/ --mirror http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian --interface eth0 --dist lenny --arch amd64
newvserver --ip 192.168.10.2/24 --domain localdomain --hostname vs-buildd-amd64 --vsroot /srv/vserver/ --mirror http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian --interface eth0 --dist lenny --arch amd64
newvserver --ip 192.168.10.3/24 --domain localdomain --hostname vs-buildd-i386 --vsroot /srv/vserver/ --mirror http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian --interface eth0 --dist lenny --arch i386

After installing the vservers we need make some adjustments for LVM and set some capabilities:

cp -a /dev/loop* /srv/vserver/vs-buildd-amd64/dev/
cp -a /dev/mapper/control /srv/vserver/vs-buildd-amd64/dev/mapper/
echo "SECURE_MOUNT" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-amd64/ccapabilities
echo "SECURE_REMOUNT" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-amd64/ccapabilities
echo "ADMIN_CLOOP" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-amd64/ccapabilities
echo "ADMIN_MAPPER" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-amd64/ccapabilities
echo "MKNOD" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-amd64/bcapabilities
echo "SYS_RESOURCE" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-amd64/bcapabilities
echo "SYS_ADMIN" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-amd64/bcapabilities
cp -a /dev/loop* /srv/vserver/vs-buildd-i386/dev/
cp -a /dev/mapper/control /srv/vserver/vs-buildd-i386/dev/mapper/
echo "SECURE_MOUNT" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-i386/ccapabilities
echo "SECURE_REMOUNT" >>  /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-i386/ccapabilities
echo "ADMIN_CLOOP" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-i386/ccapabilities
echo "ADMIN_MAPPER" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-i386/ccapabilities
echo "MKNOD" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-i386/bcapabilities
echo "SYS_RESOURCE" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-i386/bcapabilities
echo "SYS_ADMIN" >> /etc/vserver/vs-buildd-i386/bcapabilities

Please note that these capabilities give the vs-buildd guests pretty much control over the host, so be careful how far you trust your buildds!

Now start the vservers, fix some broken defaults, upgrade to squeeze and install the requried packages.

When editing the sources.list you should replace all occurences of lenny by squeeze like so:

:%s/lenny/squeeze/g

The reason for not installing squeeze directly with newvserver is that, at the time of this writing, newvserver can not handle squeeze.

For the repository vserver:

vserver vs-buildd-rep start
vserver vs-buildd-rep enter
update-rc.d cron defaults; /etc/init.d/cron start; vi /etc/apt/sources.list; aptitude update && aptitude install aptitude apt && aptitude updgrade; aptitude dist-upgrade; aptitude install mini-buildd-rep vim htop screen ssh exim4
a2endmod userdir
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
dpkg-reconfigure locales
dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

The Vservers need some way of sending mail, so the best would be to setup a mailserver somewhere, e.g. in the host, and then confiure it as a smarthost inside the vservers.

The next one is the amd64 buildd:

vserver vs-buildd-amd64 start
vserver vs-buildd-amd64 enter
dpkg-reconfigure locales; update-rc.d cron defaults; /etc/init.d/cron start; vi /etc/apt/sources.list; aptitude update && aptitude install aptitude apt && aptitude updgrade; aptitude dist-upgrade; aptitude install mini-buildd-bld vim htop screen ssh exim4
a2endmod userdir
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

And the same for i386:

vserver vs-buildd-i386 start
vserver vs-buildd-i386 enter
dpkg-reconfigure locales; update-rc.d cron defaults; /etc/init.d/cron start; vi /etc/apt/sources.list; aptitude update && aptitude install aptitude apt && aptitude updgrade; aptitude dist-upgrade; aptitude install mini-buildd-bld vim htop screen ssh exim4
a2endmod userdir
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

The setup of the mini-buildd is a bit tricky since the repository and the buildds depend on each other. So after performing the above steps you’ll probably need to reconfigure each.

• in vs-buildd-rep: dpkg-reconfigure mini-buildd-rep
• in vs-buildd-amd64 and vs-buildd-i386: dpkg-reconfigure mini-buildd-bld

To be continued!

Thats it for now. Howevery, so far I didn’t manage to get the buildds working. There are still some issues with the LVs. I’ll update this post as soon as I figure out how to fix this.

It’s easy to fix this:

akonadictl stop
mysql_install_db  --datadir=$HOME/.local/share/akonadi/db_data
akonadictl start

And don’t forget to install akonadi-kde-resource-googledata. Thanks to Trumpton.

The installation of voyage linux itself is covered in detail in the Getting Started guide.

Very usefull information can be found at networksoul and this chaos wiki.

I recommend picocom to connect to the serial console:

picocom –baud 38400 –flow n –databits 8 /dev/ttyUSB0

If your computer doesn’t have a serial port anymore, like mine, I recommend the LogiLink “USB2.0 to Serial Adapter” (UA0043 v.2.0). It’s cheap and works flawlessly. Another great LogiLink product I can reommend in this context is the LogiLink “USB2.0 Aluminum All-in-one Card Reader” (CR0001B v.2.0). Why I mention these two here? I find it hard to find cheap linux compatible adapters of which I know that they work on linux, so here is the information I would have like had before I bought those. The USB-Serial-Adapter is recognized as “Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port”. The Card-Reader is shown as four separate drives.

CRC Failed. CRC is 63 instead of 0×00

The reason was just that, after running the first two for a while, I did just disconnect them and attached the thrid one. My mistake was not to delete/re-initialize the .digitemprc. After moving the .digitemprc out of the way and re-initializing the new one the thrid one did also work.

Show all devices on the 1-wire bus:

digitemp_DS2490 -sUSB -w

Initialize the .digitemprc:

digitemp_DS2490 -sUSB -i

Read all sensors:

digitemp -sUSB -a -r750

Thanks to Marc for the hint.

Some usefull links:

• RRDTool
• Temperaturmessung mit Linux (German)

Here are some pictures of my 1-wire bus:

So, what do you have to do? First you’ll have to create your RAID, luks Volume and LVM on top of each other. See the Gentoo tutorial above for these steps. This should be pretty straight forward. The interesting part starts as soon as you try to boot from your new root. If you did follow the tutorial you should have a working Grub but it won’t be able to boot your system since it can’t unlock your root fs.

So, after you’re back into your good ol’ system setup the chroot. This includes assembling the RAID, unlocking your luks Volume and mounting the LV. So these are the steps, assuming sane defaults for folders, partitions and device names:

mdadm --assemble /dev/md2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/md2 cryptoroot
pvscan
vgchange -ay vg
mount -t ext3 /dev/mapper/vg-root /mnt
mount -t ext2 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/boot
mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
LANG=C chroot /mnt /bin/bash

So, now you’re inside your proper chroot. You could just run update-initramfs, but that’ll probably fail. You need to setup mdadm first and create your crypttab.

Your /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf should at least contain the partitions to scan and your array.

The command mdadm –detail –scan >>  /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf should do it. But verify the file yourself!

Next you have to tell the mdadm-initramfs-script to start this array on boot. This is set in the file /etc/default/mdadm. Insert the full name of your array (e.g. /dev/md2) into the INITRDSTART variable in this file.

Now define a proper crypttab and you should be ready to create a working initrd. Make your crypttab look something like this:

cryptoroot   /dev/md2  none  luks,tries=3

Just generate a new initramfs, update grub (if necessary) and reboot.

update-initramfs -k all -u
update-grub

In case you encounter any error let me know, I’ll try to help.

Let’s see which other features will be presented in the release notes.

Update: The Announcement on dot.kde.org is out:  KDE Software Compilation 4.4.0 Introduces Netbook Interface, Window Tabbing and Authentication Framework

Fortunately most of these are very well usable even without a Kolab server.

Unfortunately these are not so well documented (or the documentation is not very easy to find).

When trying out these features in noticed that the groupware features will only work properly (at least with Kontact from KDE 4.3) if you access your mailbox via “Disconnected IMAP”. If you fail to do so you’ll probably get an “Write access denied” error.

Please note, that Kontact is very unstable sometimes, but again, this depends heavily on the version of Kontact/KDE you use. My experience is based on KDE 4.3 from Debian unstable.

Right, it is called unstable for a reason …

There are several way of getting your Netbook “on-the-air”:

• pppd / Kppp / wvdial – I didn’t succeed with those. But the best choice seems to be wvdial which almost got me connected. PPPd failed without given any helpful output.
• UMTSMon – This looks like a great tool, but it didn’t manage to get the connection running. It seemed to PPPd’s fault, though.
• Network-Manager 0.7 and newer – Many people report to have no Problem whatsoever with this application, but it was not available for my system. Update: I did just verify my assumption: The Stick works flawlessly on Ubuntu with the Network Manager 0.7.0.100. It took less than 30 seconds to get a working connection.
• Vodafone Mobile Connect – This is very nice tool which works great. Not only is it able to detect the E160 Stick, it also has a very nice UI.

Here is a quick step-by-step instruction how to get online with your “Fonic Surf-Stick” on Debian lenny:

• Boot your system, don’t connect the Stick yet.
• When logged in connect the Stick.
• Start Vodafone Mobile Connect, grab it from betavine before.
• It will recognize your Stick as an Huawei E220 although it is a E160, but this doesn’t seem to matter.
• Enter pinternet.interkom.de as APN, Username and Password can be left empty or use “fonic” for both. You should set the preferend connection type to “3G prefered” and use static DNS (195.182.96.28 and 195.182.96.61).
• Mobile Connect will ask for your PIN it is needed.
• Get a sufficient connection strength and click “Connect” in the UI. You should be online within a few seconds. If the connection fails, first try to get a better connection (just move the UMTS-Stick a bit around).

Please note that I’m running a custom Kernel (2.6.30) and thus didn’t need to use usb_modeswitch. If you’re running an older Kernel you’ll probably need to install an configure usb_modeswitch to get access to the modem part of the stick.