Andree's Debian & General Musings

Main changes are:

• mindi: fix for #354145 so that VIA chipsets do DMA but non-VIA still works
  
• mindi: syslinux configuration files are now created on the fly; this is basically to ramp things up for including this upstream
• mondo: document the need for VFAT in the running kernel closes #315733
• mondo: removed potentially threatening and intimidating sequence of questions asked after restore; Bruno agrees with this change and it find its way into upstream one way or the other
• some more little cleanups

That's it for the next three weeks - as mentioned before I'll be on vacation - yah!!!

In other news, my motherboard arrived and I'm back to normal with my firewall - also yah! ;-)

I really meant to have new packages out by now. It hasn't happened yet. Here is why:

• I electrocuted my firewall. Embarrassing, I know, but I did: I've got a little box based on a VIA Epia-PD6000E motherboard. Small, unobtrusive, black and acting as a file and print server and as a firewall (via separate UML). A few weeks ago, it got struck by lightning (well not really, just a surge, I suppose, during a thunderstorm), which took out the ethernet ports both in my cable modem and on the board. Last Thursday, I decided to put in a second fan serialised with the first one to reduce noise but keep airflow up. While I was putting it in, I fumbled around with a life 12V wire and touched one of the connectors of the single PCI slot - there was the tiniest of sparks and me going f@#$%%&ck. After that, the board was history... My dealer tells me I can pick up a new one tomorrow.
  
• I am getting the most spectacular crashes when using (as I have now narrowed down to) linux-image-2.6.15-1-amd64-generic (on amd64). Pretty much towards the end of a restore run, something segfaults and causes the init script to get respawned indefinitely - impressive but annoying. I have decided, though, that this is not related to my packages. Unfortunately, one can't yet report bugs against amd64 packages as the architecture is not yet integrated into the Debian infrastructure. Oh well.

Apart from that, I'll try to get new mindi and mondo packages out before the week is over as (a) I have at least two bugs fixed and some improvements put in and (b) I'll be on vacation from coming Saturday until the end of March (no Internet as I'll mostly be in the Outback) - yah!