Maintainer's notes: resurrection

In 2010, I became a maintainer for ALT Linux : I went through all the steps of accepting to Team : I received the status of a candidate, made a test build of the package under the supervision of the damir @ mentor (Damir Shaikhutdirov), received my nickname (lamp @), mail, generated and registered gpg keys to sign packages and ssh keys to access git.alt .

How did it happen? It all started with my first introduction to Debian Linux in 2005. Then there were experiments with Ubuntu , merry linux local LUG and Napoleonic plans to promote Linux across the country and in Rostov-on-Don. Meanwhile, in 2007, ALT Linux won the All-Russian Open Competition for the development and delivery of a free software package for schools . The ALT Linux school distribution has been released. Began pilot implementation of open source software in schools in three Russian regions. And Rostov LUG decided to take an active part in all this. We began to collaborate with ALT Linux, attend schools as official representatives and help implement the school distribution. They even organized a training seminar for teachers. Read more about this in our blog . Of course, all this was done free of charge and in his free time (usually on Saturdays).

I also thought about what students can offer as a tool for initial learning programming. And I found the basic256 package in ALT Linux. I wrote off with author-developer James Renault (James Reneau) and became for some time a co-developer (interface translation, references, minor improvements in the code). Needless to say - became a maintainer. Almost year (from April 2010 to January 2011) diligently accompanied the basic256 and released 7 assemblies. Also participated in the translation of the book of James, “ Do you want to learn how to program? ".

Unfortunately, after the stormy 2010th school project in Rostov-on-Don (and not only), it actually disappeared. More urgent tasks came to the fore and I abandoned my job as a maintainer. However, the last couple of years was thinking about returning. Finally, the reflections were transformed into concrete steps. I got in touch with the guys from ALT, got the go-ahead, got the support of the glebfm @ mentor (Gleb Fottenhauer-Malinovsky) and got down to business.
')

1. My new old iron

Unfortunately, the old eMachines M6810 laptop, specially purchased for use with ALT Linux in March 2010 for 6 thousand rubles, has long been dead. Fortunately, a Samsung P28 (Celeron 1.5Ghz) laptop with 512Mb RAM, without a hard disk and power supply, was found on my farm, which I got for free on the occasion. I bought a power supply to it and rearranged 60Gb hard c of the late eMachines. I installed Simply Linux 7.0.5 - and the workhorse was ready. Yes, I also purchased a TP-LINK TL-WN723N USB WiFi with a good discount (150 rubles), since there was no WiFi module in my Samsung.

2. Go to the 8th branch

The first thing that the mentor advised was to upgrade to the p8 branch. What I did, with some adventures that are hardly worth special attention. I visited https://www.altlinux.org/Update and executed a series of commands:

$ sudo apt-repo rm all
$ sudo apt-repo add p8
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
$ sudo update-kernel

Rebooted and - voila, I have a fresh version:

$ cat / etc / altlinux-release
Simply Linux 7.95.0 (Dory)

As a bonus - earned USB WiFi TP-LINK. In general, by the way, Simply Linux makes a very pleasant impression. The system is well balanced, acceptably responding even to my weak gland. Xfce is configured Window-like (personally, I do not care, but only come with Windows conveniently). The color scheme is pleasing to the eye. Plus a cool picture on your desktop.

3. Restore Access

The key question is what is with my keys? Clearly, they were on eMachines, but that hard was reformatted. However, even then, on the advice of my first mentor, I saved two folders (.gnupg and .ssh) on another laptop.

Let's start with gpg keys. These are two files (pubring.gpg and secring.gpg) from my old .gnupg folder. These keys are needed to sign srpm and tags in git. I copy them from the password-protected archive into the home folder and execute the command:

$ gpg —with-fingerprint secring.gpg

And then I show the result to the mentor (via telegram). He compares the fingerprint of my key with that in the keyring of the Team member keys. The fingerprint matches. Yes, the keys are the same.

I import:

$ gpg --import pubring.gpg
$ gpg --import secring.gpg
$ rm * .gpg

It's time to remember the password. I create an empty file and try to sign it:

$ touch test_file
$ gpg -ab test_file

In response, gpg asks me for a passphrase. This is already a serious problem. What password could I use back in 2010? I make several attempts, the result is one: Invalid passphrase; try again ... " Forgetting a password is like losing your keys, " the mentor writes in the meantime. And then it dawns on me! I try my guess - it works. The file is signed and I remembered my password!

It's time for ssh keys (from my old .ssh folder). They are needed to connect to the build servers (gyle.altlinux.org) and synchronize the git repository (gitery.altlinux.org). I again appeal to my password-protected archive, extracting two files from there (id_dsa and id_dsa.pub). And then:

$ ssh-add id_dsa
$ cp id_dsa .ssh
$ cp id_dsa.pub .ssh
$ rm id_dsa *

In addition, I create a .ssh file ( vim ~ / .ssh / config ) with the following content:

Host git.alt HostName gitery.altlinux.org Port 222 User git_lamp Host gyle.alt HostName gyle.altlinux.org Port 222 User git_lamp 

After several unsuccessful access attempts, I add to ~ / .ssh / config in the first line:

PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes + ssh-dss

This has to be done because modern openssh-clients consider (fairly) DSA a bad algorithm, its use must be explicitly allowed. And my keys are DSA (in the near future they need to be updated to RSA on the advice of a mentor). I check access with a command:

$ ssh git.alt help
Enter passphrase for key '/home/lamp/.ssh/id_dsa':

I enter the password and get a list of available commands. Access restored, I am again in the ALT Linux Team . The next step is to build the package. But it will be a new story ...