Prompted by Tollef, moving to Hugo, I investigated a replacement blog engine. The former site used Wordpress which is just overhead - my blog doesn't need to be generated on every view, it doesn't need the security implications of yet another website login and admin interface either.

The blog is static …

With thanks to Iain Learmonth for the hardware, there is now a Debian instance of LAVA available for use and the Debian wiki page has been updated.

LAVA is a continuous integration system for deploying operating systems onto physical and virtual hardware for running tests. Tests can be simple boot …

LXQt is a Qt lightweight desktop - the Qt port of LXDE. Packages exist in Debian - albeit without a top level metapackage or task package to make installing it easier. So I wrote up a simple-ish vmdebootstrap call:

$ sudo vmdebootstrap --image lxqt.img --size=5G --package=lxqt-panel \
--package=libqt5xcbqpa5 --package=qterminal …

Just in case someone else finds these useful, some bash functions I've got into the habit of having in ~/.bashrc:

mcd(){ mkdir "$1"; cd "$1"; }

gum(){ git checkout "$1" && git rebase master && git checkout master; }

gsb() { LIST=`git branch|egrep -v '(release|staging|trusty|playground|stale …

At the miniDebConfUK in Cambridge, November 2015, there was a vmdebootstrap sprint vmdebootstrap is written in python and the sprint built on the changes I made during DebConf15. The primary aim was to split out the code from a single python script and create modules which would be useful to …

I keep being asked about automated bootloader testing and the phrase which crops up is “SD mux” – hardware to multiplex SD card access (typically microSD). Each time, the questioner comes up with a simple solution which can be built over a weekend, so I’ve decided to write out the …

In my previous post, I covered how to extend an initramfs to serve as a basis for tests and other purposes. In that example, the initramfs was simply copied off a device after installation. It occurred to me that python-guestfs would be a useful tool to make this step easier …

Whilst the rest of Debian was very busy actually making the Jessie release, I was trying to prepare the ground to test the armhf installer images.

Cubietruck is fine, it's a nice install and the documentation on the wiki works nicely. I tried to automate it (as it would be …

The Debian ARMMP kernel can be used for multiple devices, just changing the DTB. I've already …