Blinkenblog

Buildservices

sten — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:30:50 +0000

In preparation for the next ladvd release I decided to investigate automated software builds, to make sure that it will work on as many platforms / distributions as possible. I’d like to avoid having to release a .1 version just to fix silly configure on RHEL X.Y Building the virtual machines to do this myself seemed like a lot of work, so I decided to investigate online software compile farms.
The first one I looked at was Launchpad. I started out by adding ladvd as a project to Launchpad, the whole gpg signing and upload dance is very neat. This however doesn’t allow you to actually build software, for that you need to start a PPA, which luckily also is pretty easy. However Launchpad doesn’t provide a lot of control over the compile process, and only Ubuntu is supported.
So I started playing around with the second option, the OpenSUSE Build Service. The initial signup was similar to launchpad, except no gpg this time. Which is a shame because it makes signing the packages impossible. But the amount of distributions supported (RHEL, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora) is great, and I especially like the buildlogs which show you exactly what is going on. Getting the packages built for Debian and Ubuntu was trivial, and even the specfile for RPM distributions was done in a few hours. After that I realized that it would be even better to run unit-tests during the package build. Then I ran into a bug which sadly makes this impossible (check’s pkg-config is missing). But there was a bugzilla link where I’ve reported the issue so hopefully it will be solved soon.

Ladvd 0.8.5

sten — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:02:22 +0000

Last week I’ve released ladvd 0.8.5, a bugfix / cleanup release which solves all known issues. The next release will include a cli and possibly SNMP support.

* use wireless interfaces when the -w option is set
* disable auto-enabled protocols when peers expire
* add port-name to -z ifdescr support
* improved ifdescr supprt (only if needed, multiple peers, etc)
* used strnvis to sanitize strings for ifdescr
* fixed FreeBSD lagg ioctl
* RHEL4 compatlity fixes
* chroot the child, not the master
* use setresuid/setresgid for dropping privileges
* move the child code to child.c an refactor the eventloop
* refactored socket handling in master.c
* sockets are now fully dynamic and always have filters
* bsd vlan detection
* remove multicast registrations on shutdown
* even better unit-tests

This release has been (unit-)tested on Linux (amd64, arm), FreeBSD (i386, amd64) and OpenBSD (sparc64). I’d like to thank Paul de Weerd, Jacek Masiulaniec, Stephan A. Rickauer, David Gwynne and Mattieu Baptiste who have helped to uncover bugs and even submitted patches.

Tarballs and Debian sources are available.

Ladvd 0.8

sten — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:13:15 +0000

I’ve just released ladvd 0.8, which supports receive mode and a host of other features resulting from that.

privilege separation
SIOCSIFDESCR support (the -z option)
Automatic protocol enablling based on received packets (-a)
syslog notifications for new/removed peers (-r)
EDP support
FDP support
NDP / SoNMP support
abstracted protocol support
rewritten netif and message lists
some strict alignment fixes
unit-tests including extensive protol tests

This release has been (unit-)tested on Linux (amd64, arm), FreeBSD (i386, amd64) and OpenBSD (amd64, sparc64, vax).
Tarballs and Debian sources are available.

Qnap TS-219 Serial

sten — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:55:01 +0000

I’ve recently bought a QNAP nas and wanted to make a serial cable for it. The Debian QNAP guru Martin Michlmayr informed me that the connector used is a JST PHR-4. So I ordered some connectors and pins. The second part needed was a ttl-serial convertor. The cheapest solution is a regular old GSM data-cable, I bought 4 Siemens C/S/M 25-45 cables. The pinout required some research, but I settled on:

GND – Black
RX – Yellow
VCC – Red
TX – Green

And lo and behold it worked first time round:

Port /dev/ttyS1 __ __ _ _ | \/ | __ _ _ ____ _____| | | | |\/| |/ _` | '__\ \ / / _ \ | | | | | | (_| | | \ V / __/ | | |_| |_|\__,_|_| \_/ \___|_|_| _ _ ____ _ | | | | | __ ) ___ ___ | |_ | | | |___| _ \ / _ \ / _ \| __| | |_| |___| |_) | (_) | (_) | |_ \___/ |____/ \___/ \___/ \__| ** LOADER ** ** MARVELL BOARD: DB-88F6281A-BP LE


U-Boot 1.1.4 (Feb  9 2009 - 11:13:32) Marvell version: 3.4.4
U-Boot code: 00600000 -> 0067FFF0  BSS: -> 00690DCC                             
Soc: 88F6281 A0 (DDR2)

CPU running @ 1200Mhz L2 running @ 400Mhz

SysClock = 400Mhz , TClock = 200Mhz                                             
DRAM CAS Latency = 5 tRP = 5 tRAS = 18 tRCD=6

DRAM CS[0] base 0x00000000   size 256MB

DRAM CS[1] base 0x10000000   size 256MB

DRAM Total size 512MB  16bit width

[16384kB@f8000000] Flash: 16 MB

Addresses 8M - 0M are saved for the U-Boot usage.

Mem malloc Initialization (8M - 7M): Done                                       
CPU : Marvell Feroceon (Rev 1)

Streaming disabled

fifo.sh -> fifo.nl

sten — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:07:08 +0000

Last december I obtained the fifo.nl domain, as a going-away present from my former boss. This made the fifo.sh domain obsolete, which was only ever used because the .nl was taken. The fact that .sh domains cost about 13 times more than .nl domains made the decision somewhat easier. However quite a few people were used to the fifo.sh name, and would have to be instructed to change their ways. Just removing the domain woudn’t work, it just leads to things like this:
is fifonet uit de lucht btw ? ken m nie resolven

As a first step a public notice was posted. Naturally nobody notices public notices, that would be like reading manpages. So I added http-redirects pointing to the new domain, which worked but nobody really noticed the change. Then it became time to post a similar notice via the fifo.sh rss-feeds, which some people noticed. A few days after that I added redirects to funny places which alerted people that something had changed:
waarom krijg ik shit op de fifo.nl feed? omdat je de fifo.sh rss feed hebt failblog krap

And:
en www.fifo.sh bood ook al geen uitkomst kittyhell.com wtf

Finally I needed to find a way communicate the same message for irc.fifo.sh, after some experimenting it turned out that sending ascii-art movies works quite well for most irc-clients. So I took the starwars asciimation, added some custom frames, and presto:
snore, wtf man, met je fifo.sh die irc.fifo.sh is grappig

BDFL – Snore

Ladvd for Cyclades ACS

sten — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:20:47 +0000

I recently bought an Cyclades ACS32 console server, and figured that because it runs Linux it should be able to run ladvd. This isn’t as easy as it seems because of the embedded PPC cpu used. I started by building a crosscompiler using crosstool, which succeeded after a few patches. Unfortunately the resulting binary didn’t work. It started ok, but couldn’t find any interfaces. After some headscratching it turns out that the glibc (2.3.2) used by Cyclades has an incomplete getifaddrs implementation (IPv4 only). The quick way to fix this is to use a C-library which does, uClibc seemed like a good choice. So I created another toolchain, GCC and uClibc, using buildroot. The resulting binary again didn’t work…. This time it was because ethtool support is either missing or broken on the Cyclades ACS, which results in ladvd not accepting the “eth0″ interface. After a small fix all is well and ladvd 0.6.1 runs on my ACS32:
Chassis id: 0060.2e01.cdf1 Port id: eth0 Port Description - not advertised System Name: zem System Description: Linux 2.6.22 #1 Tue Sep 30 11:12:38 PDT 2008 ppc

ladvd 0.6.1 released

sten — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:07:21 +0000

I’ve just released ladvd 0.6.1, which was destined to fix bugs found in 0.6.0, but a fair number of new features and improvements have crept in as well.

Fix for interfaces without link-layer addresses (ppp0/pptp0)
Reset (router/wlan/bridge) capabilities after each run
Improved the linux virtual interface detection
(the previous method only worked on 2.6.23+ kernels)
Add support for OpenBSD’s interface descriptions
Add support for TIA inventory management TLV set
using dmi information available on OpenBSD and Linux
Use an ISC-licensed strlcpy for certain string operations
Add -m/-M switches to specify management addresses
via the commandline
Add ioctl code to linux bonding/bridge detection which
works on hosts without sysfs
Add minimal LLDP civic location support using the LOC type
and the -C (country) switch
Add pcap headers to debug output to make it suitable for
piping to tcpdump.

This release owes a lot to Paul de Weerd and Alexander Ottl, their tests and patches have helped to make this release as stable as possible.

Tarballs and Debian sources are available.

ladvd 0.6.0

sten — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:23:02 +0000

I’ve just released a new version of ladvd, which brings a fair number of improvements:

rewritten memory allocation (no more memleaks)
autodetect all network interfaces
autodetect bonding, bridging and wireless interfaces (on Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD)
be clever about bonding/bridging sub-interfaces
use only one raw-socket for all interfaces
remove libnet dependency
improved OpenBSD support
autodetect router, wlan and bridge capabilities
support different available / enabled capabilities
use the first mac-address as chassis-id (which fixes HP-switch interoperability)
rewritten tlv macro’s to support strict alignment archs (sparc)

This release has been tested on a fair number of operating systems talking to various brand-name switches, Paul de Weerd deserves kudos for suggestions and OpenBSD improvements.

Tarballs and Debian sources are available.

ladvd 0.5.0

sten — Sun, 25 May 2008 22:45:47 +0000

I’ve just released a new version of ladvd, which brings a fair number of improvements:

Debian packaging
Linux ethtool ioctl support
Linux capabilities support (needed for unprivileged ethtool usage)
BSD ifmedia ioctl support
MTU TLV for CDP and LLDP
Autoneg TLV for CDP and LLDP
Duplex TLV for CDP
Media TLV for LLDP (BSD only)
Host capabilities selection (Bridge, Host, Router, Switch, WLAN AP)
Improved hostname detection
Improved OpenBSD support

This release has been tested on a fair number of operating systems talking to various brand-name switches. Which means that this code will probably still eat your kitten, but won’t burn down the house while doing so. The newly supported media/autoneg/duplex TLV’s should prove useful when solving connectivity issues.

Tarballs and Debian sources are available.

CDP / LLDP Daemon: ladvd

sten — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:27:41 +0000

The CDP and LLDP protocols make it possible to discover connected devices on managed switches, without having to rely on port descriptions. This functionality is quite useful when dealing with large numbers of rackmounted servers with varying network configurations (PXE).

After looking at the available unix CDP/LLDP daemons I’ve decided to write my own CDP / LLDP sender. It’s a small daemon which sends out link-layer advertisements on a list of interfaces, after dropping privileges. The code should work on Linux and FreeBSD. Future enchancements will include sending more network (IPv6 addresses, duplex, mtu) and system (LLDP-MED / DMI) information, due to the OS specific nature of these details support for these options will be platform dependent.

Download ladvd.