Start an AppImage

When there is no Crux ports, and the application is complex to build I like to use AppImages. To make the the use of them easier I make these two things:

• download all of them to selected place (in my case '${HOME}/bin/AppImage')
• creates a launcher script in my home bin directory.

The scripts are all based on the following template:

#!/bin/bash

name={THE_NAME_OF_THE_APP_HERE}

appPath=${HOME}/bin/AppImage
cd $appPath
binary=$(ls -r1t ${name}*|tail -1)
./$binary

The only thing I need to adjust in there is the name of the application, as it is used i the image filename. The scripts scans the content of the selected folder for all of files containing the define string/name. From them selects the latest (combination of ls and tail) and start is.

To avoid defining the name inside of the I could use the filename of the script as the pattern 'name=$(basenmae ${0})'. However, the name has to the launcher would need to match exactly the name in app image including capitalization.

Final step is to crate the the desktop entry. That's an example for the Inkscape (the file is located in '${HOME}/.local/share/applications/appimage-inkscape.desktop'). I add the appimage prefix to a filename to easily find my appimage applications among other entries.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Inkscape
GenericName=Vector graphic editor
Exec=inkscape
Icon=inkscape
Comment=Application for drawing
Type=Application
Categories=Graphics;
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=false
StartupWMClass=Inkscape
DBusActivatable=false

Of courese an image file (e.g. png or svg) with the right name has to be stored in the on standard directories (e.g '${HOME}/.local/share/icons/'). Worth to note, that I have a problem with the "RunEverything" (Enligthenment application launcher) entries, if the Exec is just a script name, rather than the whole path.

Cruxpy as an example of the python package release process

As mentioned before, CruxPy helped me to automate the process of keeping the repository of my Crux ports rolling. It also gave me a chance to prepare a pipeline for a Python package with GitHub Action (GHA) workflows.

On every commit the GHA runs 2 jobs. First, pytest. When the tests pass, it checks the version stored in the pyproject.toml file, and compares it to the latest tag. If the version from the file is higher than the current tag, the new one is pushed. These jobs are stored in the commit.yaml file.

When there is a new tag pushed to the code, another workflow, from the release.yaml file, kicks off. It has only one job - to create a GitHub release.

The completion of the "New Release" job triggers the third workflow saved in the deploy.yaml file. It is responsible for publishing the python package to the pypi repository.

If you are just starting your adventure with GHA, you might want to check triggers to understand them better.  This pipeline uses three distinct types:

• commit is defined as push to every branch (excluding tags)
• release uses a push of a tag, that matches 3-number semantic version
• deployment relays on the internal GitHub workflow dependencies.

This structure allows me to push changes directly to the main branch safely. Nothing becomes visible outside of repository until the version is bumped!

Crux cnijfilter2 package (Canon cups drivers)

I don't longer have a Canon printer, so I remove the cnijfilter2 package from my repo. To help any potential Canon printer user the Pkgfile is below. There is also a patch required by the build process.

Pkgfile

# Description: Drivers for Canon printers
# URL: https://www.canon-europe.com/support/consumer_products/operating_system_information/#linux
# Maintainer: Wawrzek Niewodniczanski, main at wawrzek dot name
# Depends on: cups

name=cnijfilter2
version=6.80-1
release=1
source=(https://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/2/0100012302/02/$name-source-$version.tar.gz
	add-missing-import.patch
	)

dirs="cmdtocanonij2 cmdtocanonij3 cnijbe2 lgmon3 rastertocanonij tocanonij tocnpwg"
build() {
	patch -p0 -i add-missing-import.patch
	cd $name-source-$version
	sed -i '/po\/Makefile.in/d' lgmon3/configure.in
	sed -i /SUBDIRS/s/po// lgmon3/Makefile.am
	sed -i '/GET_PROTOCOL/s/^int /static int/' lgmon3/src/cnij{lgmon3,ifnet2}.c
	export LDFLAGS="-L../../com/libs_bin_x86_64"
	for dir in $dirs
	do
	        cd $dir
	        ./autogen.sh \
		                --prefix=/usr \
		                --enable-progpath=/usr/bin \
		                --datadir=/usr/share
	        make
	        make DESTDIR=$PKG install
	        cd ../
	done
	rm -rf $PKG/usr/share/locale
	cd com/libs_bin_x86_64/
	rm lib*.so
	install -c lib*.so* $PKG/usr/lib
	declare -a libs
	libs=$(ls -1 lib*.so.*)
	for baselib in $libs
	do
	        shortlib=$baselib
	        while extn=$(echo $shortlib | sed -n '/\.[0-9][0-9]*$/s/.*\(\.[0-9][0-9]*\)$/\1/p')
	        [ -n "$extn" ]
	        do
		                shortlib=$(basename $shortlib $extn)
		                ln -s $baselib $PKG/usr/lib/$shortlib
	        done
	done
	cd -
	mkdir -p $PKG/usr/lib/bjlib2
	install -c -m 644 com/ini/cnnet.ini $PKG/usr/lib/bjlib2
	mkdir -p $PKG/usr/share/ppd/$name
	install -c -m 644 ppd/*.ppd $PKG/usr/share/ppd/$name
}

Patch

--- cnijfilter2-source-6.80-1/lgmon3/src/keytext.c	2024-09-20 07:28:40.000000000 +0100
+++ cnijfilter2-source-6.80-1/lgmon3/src/keytext.c.fix	2025-06-11 23:21:28.361664234 +0100
@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@
 #include <unistd.h>
 #include <libxml/parser.h>  /* Ver.2.80 */
 #include <string.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>

 #include "keytext.h"

Crux Port Automation

Crux ports 

To simplify keeping my Crux port repository up to date, I set GitHub Actions. There are 2 at the moment. The first one is the simple check of basic rules (trailing white spaces, lack of big files etc.) implemented with pre-commit.

The second one provides the crucial automation. The script takes the repository code, downloads the cruxpy library (see below for details). Then it gets Crux httpup-repgen script from the private s3 bucket. (Stored there to avoid 3rd party dependencies). It uses a very simple python script (portspage.py) to create a page for ports and then port-sync.sh to create the REPO file and upload the whole repo to the server. The SSH keys required to log in to the remote machine are stored in GitHub secret.

CruxPy

Initially, my automation based on standard Crux scripts. I was copying the repository from my desktop, even if the source code was stored in GitHub. Then I introduced GitHub Actions. The automation kept working from the remote machine fine. But there was a small issue. The last update date of ports in web UI was populated with the timestamp of the last file update on the GHA runner. They all were the same, because the code was downloaded every time. To fix it, I decide to prepare the CruxPy, a simple Python module.

Initially, I thought of preparing an equivalent of portspage.sh script, but with ports update date using git file metadata. Drafting the solution, I decided that the object-oriented approach suites the problem well; a port is an object, the repository website is as well. And in the future, the port class can be also used to prepare a repo one, and write CLI tools.

Having basic classes, I thought that it would be a great opportunity to prepare my first Crux package and add some automation. Which deserve a separate article.

Links

• https://github.com/wawrzek/crux-ports
• https://github.com/wawrzek/crux-ports/blob/master/.github/workflows/pre-commit.yml
• https://github.com/wawrzek/crux-ports/blob/master/.github/workflows/deployment.yml
• https://pypi.org/project/cruxpy/

Logitech MX Keys S on macOS and Linux (Crux)

 Before I forget again.

- On macOS, the UK keyboard is recognised as the ISO (International) one. That maybe causes the problem with the location of the ['`','~'] key. It's mixed up with the ['§','±'] one. I wrote maybe, because today I manually set it up to the ANSI option. That fixed the problem. But then, for a test, switched back to ISO, and it still works fine. Maybe my problem is because I connected the keyboard to a USB switch, rather than directly.

- Officially, Logitech supports Logi Option + software on Windows and Mac, but on Linux we have Solaar. It works, and if you are a Crux user, I created a port for it.

ABCDE in Crux

After my OS update to Crux 3.6 (3.6.1 to be precise) I cleaned non-main (core, opt, xorg) packages. One of the side effects is that I lost abcde. It was removed from the contrib collection, because of inactive maintainer. Along abcde, the cd-discid was also deleted from the same reason. I decided to add them to my port collections (https://wawrzek.name/crux/repo/). I started from the old contrib ports. Looking at sources I noticed that there is a recent patch for cd-discid. I included it into my port. I also encounter problems in running abcde with my config. There were missing musicbrainz Perl modules, so I added ports for them as well.

Pulse and default sound card

For some reason PulseAudio wants to send sounds from my computer to the HDMI monitor, with rather crappy speakers, rather than to my headphones.

To stop it I set up a default output by editing /etc/pulse/default.pa. In my case the right configuration was:

set-default-sink alsa_output.pci-0000_38_00.6.analog-stereo

Enforce module load in CRUX

At the moment, my Linux (CRUX 3.5) does not load a kernel module for the my mainboard monitoring chipset. The mainboard is GigaByte GA-M68MT-S2 and the chip is Nuvoton NCT6775F. I need data from that chip for Conky or LM Sensors. To ensure it's available I've modified the /etc/rc.modules file, by adding

modprobe nct6775

Kernel module info

A few commands to help in checking and adjusting kernel module options: 

1. Display information about kernel module, including all options
   
   modinfo $KERNEL_MODULE
   
   
2. Display information about current value for each option
   
   for i (/sys/module/$KERNEL_MODULE/parameters/*) {\
     echo $(basename $i);\
     cat $i\
   }
   
   
3. Change kernel module option without restart (temporary)
   
   echo "$NEW_VALUE" > /sys/module/$KERNEL_MODULE/parameters/$OPTION
   
   
4. Load module with an option set to value
   insmod $PATH_TO_MODULE/$KERNEL_MODULE.ko\ $OPTION1=$VALUE1 \
   $OPTION2=$VALUE2
   
   
5. Ensure kernel module option is set during boot up with grub
1. Open /etc/default/grub
2. Add/edit following line
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX='$KERNEL_MODULE.$OPTION=$VALUE'
   

Of course $KERNEL_MODULE, as well as all other strings with "$" at the beginning, has to be replaced by appropriate value.

In CRUX /etc/default/grub does not exist, so it has to be created.

 Useful links

• https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-to-display-or-show-information-about-a-linux-kernel-module-or-drivers.html
• https://devarea.com/linux-kernel-development-kernel-module-parameters/
• https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/kernel-boot-parameter-edit/
• https://www.linuxsecrets.com/1455-adding-kernel-boot-parameters-using-grub-on-linux
  

Shell script to setup system with new kernel

 

This is a small script helping in setting up a new kernel. It copies files from the Linux kernel source directory and builds the matching initramfs file.

 

#!/bin/sh
#
set -x
if [ $(dirname $PWD) != '/usr/src' ]
then
	echo ""
	echo "Please change directory to a one with Linux kernel sources"
	exit 1
fi

version=$(basename $PWD |awk -F\- '{print $2}')


ls boot/vmlinuz-${version}-* 2> /dev/null && \
	build=$(ls -1 /boot/vmlinuz-${version}-*| sort -n | awk -F\- '{print $3}') || \
	build=1

release=${version}-${build}
cp System.map /boot/System.map-${release}
cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-${release}
mkinitrd /boot/initramfs-${release}.img ${version}

grub-mkconfig > /boot/grub/grub.cfg

prt-get/pkgmk adjustments

If I'm ever going to lose my current Crux config. I need to remember, to adjust following files for Crux:

• /etc/prt-get.conf to ensure that scripts as executed:
  
  

  runscripts yes            # (no|yes)

  
  
  
• /etc/pkgmk.conf to ensure that md5sums are ignored:
  
  

  PKGMK_IGNORE_MD5SUM="yes"

  
  

AMDGPU firmware and homebuild kernel

Not sure how it happens in less DIY type distributions, but in Crux I struggled to add firmware of AMDGPU drivers to a initrmfs. Maybe I haven't tried long enough, but without firmware in the initial ramfs, I could not properly start my desktop.

I learnt that drivers are on a disk, in what looked like the right directory (/lib/firmware/amdgpu/). They just were not loaded. After passing a few times the directory name via a CLI option I figured out that the path could be added to the dracut config.

Now, I have following config file on which make rebuilding kernel much easier.

cat /etc/dracut.conf.d/wawrzek.conf
install_items+=/lib/firmware/amdgpu/*

Thanks to that I can simple run command like that to add ramfs to:

mkinitrd /boot/initramfs-5.4.0-1.img 5.4.0

Firefox update in Crux

Updating Firefox, without rebuilding all other ports in Crux, is not the easiest task. Quite often you need to update one of packages Firefox depends one, but not all of them.

In my case, limited space on root partition is an additional problem. In the same time I have another, much bigger partition attached.

To address both issues I prepared this small script. It updates require dependencies (autoconf, sqlite, libpng, nspr, nss) and then updates Firefox, but with working directory in no default location (PKGMK_WORK_DIR).

prt-get update autoconf
prt-get update sqlite3
prt-get update libpng
prt-get update nspr
prt-get update nss
PKGMK_WORK_DIR=/media/pictures prt-get update firefox

Bringing my Crux Enligthement+ repo back to live [Part I]

I wasn't doing anything with my home Linux machines for some time and recently decided to change it a bit. There are quite a few projects I hope to push a  forward. For example put all my pictures from CDROMs/DVDs into Dropbox, enable internal streaming from my RPi, install Linux on my Dell laptop.To achieve the last one I tried Kubuntu, but it's not so easy properly configure KDE nowadays (KDE5). I tried Enlightenment from Ubuntu PPA, but it connman seemed to be broken. So it seemed that I had to use Crux. Another option could be Arch, but I had already spent quite a lot of time configuring Enlightenment for Crux.

The package repository is located at wawrzek.name/crux/wawrzek/, and I keep my work in github wawrzek/crux-ports repository.

The first problem I encountered was issues with access to some .httpup related info:

Connecting to http://wawrzek.name/crux/wawrzek/
Updating collection wawrzek
 Edit: wawrzek/.httpup-repo.current
Failed to download http://wawrzek.name/crux/wawrzek/.httpup-repo.current: The requested URL returned error: 403 Forbidden
 Edit: wawrzek/.httpup-urlinfo
Failed to download http://wawrzek.name/crux/wawrzek/.httpup-urlinfo: The requested URL returned error: 403 Forbidden
Finished successfully

I host my repo on Linux virtual machine and I could easily confirm that all files has right access privileges, so I eliminated OS level problem. All other files in the same directory were properly accessible, so I started to suspect Apache configuration and that was a case. Apache Debian/Ubuntu configuration has block preventing web clients accessing .htaccess and .htpasswd, but definition is rather generous (^\.ht or everything what starts with string ".ht"). I decided that the simplist resolution is going to replace it with more specific rule (^\.ht(access|passwd)) what matches only ".htaccess" or ".htpasswd". Updated block of configuration is below:

#
# The following lines prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being
# viewed by Web clients.
#
<FilesMatch "^\.ht(access|passwd)">
        Require all denied
</FilesMatch>

Crux as a second system in GRUB2

I tried to install CRUX as a secondary system on a DELL XPS 13 (Ubuntu Edition). I run setup, configured fstab and rc.conf, compiled a kernel and then tried to add new system to the GRUB2 menu in Ubuntu. The update-grub script recognised the new Linux entry, added it, but CRUX didn't start — kernel panicked. It could not find root partition. I double checked my kernel and had all important options mentioned in CRUX installation compiled in.
Then I looked at menu entry created by os-prober for CRUX and noticed that it had following line:

        linux /boot/vmlinuz root=/#ROOT_DEVICE# ro quiet

I analysed what the probe script do and found that it checked boot loader configuration files from a new/additional Linux. Then I remembered that I had not bothered to configure LILO, because I had plan to use Ubuntu GRUB2 rather than it. I updated /etc/lilo.conf (without runing lilo command itself).
After that update-grub properly created CRUX entry in boot menu and I could start my CRUX installation.

zsh and ssh-agent

 INTRODUCTION

One of the post which gets some attention on this blog is My Way For Binding SSH Agent With Zshell. The method presented there is far from ideal and it stopped to work for me some time ago. After that I wrote a new version. I think it is much better and should work with bash or other shells. I tested it on Ubuntu and Crux.

ZSSH

I have the .zssh file in my home directory. It is sources by my .zshrc file. The .zssh consists of 3 functions.

SSHAGENT

The first function is responsible for starting ssh-agent.

sshagent () {
    SSHAGENT=$(ps ax|grep "[s]sh-agent"| grep -cv Z)
    if (( $SSHAGENT == 0 ))
    then
        sshupdate
    else
        SSHPID="$(ps -eo pid,command | awk '/ ssh-[a]gent/ {print $1}');"
        SSHPID_ENV=$(awk  '/Agent/ {print $NF}' ~/.ssh-env)
        if [[ $SSHPID == $SSHPID_ENV ]]
        then
            source ~/.ssh-env
        else
            killall ssh-agent
            sshupdate
        fi
    fi
}


It checks if a ssh-agent runs already and it isn't a zombie. (On one of my systems, after starting a desktop environment, I always had a zombie ssh-agent running.) If there is no ssh-agent running the function calls sshupdate, another function described below. If the agent is present and live in a system the function then compares ssh-agent pid with the information saved in the ~/.ssh-env file. (See sshupdate paragraph for more information.) If informations are consistence it sources .ssh-env.  If not it kills all ssh-agent and the calls sshupdate.

SSHUPDATE

This is a very simply function calling ssh-agent and saving its output to a file.

sshupdate () {
    ssh-agent > ~/.ssh-env
    source ~/.ssh-env
}

The output then can be sourced by other functions or processes. Oh, and if you don't remember/know the output of ssh-agent looks like that:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-BnXafqRnOSHx/agent.1884;
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK;
SSH_AGENT_PID=1885; 
export SSH_AGENT_PID;
echo Agent pid 1885;

SSHADD

Finally the function responsible for adding your ssh key.

sshadd () {
    if (( $(ssh-add -l | grep -c $USER) == 0 ))
    then
        ssh-add
    else
        ssh-add -l
    fi
}

It checks the number of added keys. If a key from you home directory, or having your username in the path, is not present it adds it. Otherwise it lists all added keys.

USAGE

sshagent is called from your .zshrc, so it should be present during every session. sshadd need to be called by you, when you need it first time.

FURTHER UPDATES

What if you have more than one key and you would like ti add all of them in the same time. Then you could try to use the 'file' program to find ssh keys in the.ssh, or other, directory and source all of them.

Crux and Mercurial view

I've spent quite some time trying to make hg view to work on my Crux. All time I got error message:

hg view /bin/sh: hgk: command not found

I could not understand what going on. I enable hgk in /etc/mercurial/hgrc or ~/.hgrc. I specified the full path to hgk.py in there as well. I even modify default python path. It didn't work.

After some time of googling, changing various variables I found somewhere (probably on Mercurial page), that some Linux distro missing hgk even if they provide hgk.py. Now I know that Crux is one of them. I copied hgk from contrib directory in source package to /usr/bin and now hg view works fine.

The power of find - exec and friends (grep, sed)

This is quite old post. I started to write it in October 2010, but could not properly polish it for a long time.

Today I would like to present an example of usage of find (and grep) rooted in Crux. Let say that I want to find all packages in version 20100511 (this was true scenario when I wanted to update e17 related ports). Translating into less Crux specific language it means that I had to find all Pkgfile files (simple find), which had string 20100511 (simple grep). I needed only file names not a matching string so I used -l option for grep.

find . -name Pkgfile -exec grep -l 20100511 {} \;

I not only needed to find all old files but  to updated them as well (to version 1.0.0.beta that time). I used the same find but exchanged grep to sed (with option -i for  "in place").

find . -name Pkgfile -exec sed -i 's/20100511/1.0.0.beta/ {} \;

Let push our example one step further. I wanted to find dependence for packages, therefore I ran following command.

grep -i depen `find . -name Pkgfile -exec grep -l beta {} \;

What used  previous command to create a list of files to hunted through for word beta. (I wasn't sure if word "dependence" begun lower or upper case so used option -i for --ignore-case). 

In UNIX world there are always more than one way of doing things and in our scenario the find -exec can be replace with a separate command xargs. Xargs might be very useful in many cases because can be use to create unix command from standard input. Using xargs rather then find -exec my first example would be:

find . -name Pkgfile  | xargs grep -l beta $1 

Let use xargs for another task related to above example. In my scenario I had not only to update the version, but also to change the sources of the packages. To do that I used find, xargs and sed in a for loop.

for file in `find . -name Pkgfile  | xargs grep -l beta $1 2&> /dev/null` ; \
do \
 sed -i 's/pitillo.mine.nu\/crux\/distfiles/download.enlightenment.org\/releases/' $file; \
done

The above command might be one liner, but can be paste line by line. It used the command from the previous example to create the $file array consist of names of files with word "beta". Elements from $file were use as input for sed command.

Mcabber

I've found very nice, small but powerful console jabber client. It's name is Mcabber. I also created its port for Crux.

FujiFilm S5600 digital camera and [not only] Crux

My FujiFilm S5600 (S5200 in US) works out of box with my Crux. The only inconvenience is that the mount point can depend on presences of other usb stuff. I read the udev rules manual and wrote this rule.

BUS=="scsi", KERNEL=="sd*", SYSFS{vendor}=="FUJIFILM",  NAME="%k",SYMLINK="fuji"

It makes the /dev/fuji link, which use as mount point:

/dev/fuji /media/aparat vfat  user,noauto   0    0

To edit pictures from raw format im using UFRaw. It can be GIMP plugin, what is it's big advantage. But when I have more photos I'm using this small bash script to prepare preview in jpg:

#!/bin/sh
dcraw -w *.raf
for i in *.ppm
do
    j=`basename $i .ppm`.jpg
    echo $j
    convert $i $j
    mogrify -resize 800x600 $j
done
rm *.ppm

I found that it is very important to use dcraw with -w option.