Move along, nothing to read

If you use 'PermitRootLogin no' in your sshd_config and a locked-down sudo (requiring a password to upgrade powers), logging in to a machine as root is not allowed. This can be a pain when you want to rsync files between two machines, as root on both sides to preserve permissions and ownership. There is a fun little hack that you can use to get around this, that I'll document here.

1. Ensure your SSH agent is running and has a key present.
2. Open two shells, we will call them A and B (instructions prefixed with either or 'Both' below)
3. We will use A to connect to the source, and B to connect to the destination.
4. Both: SSH to the relevant machines, forwarding your agent, using 'ssh -A hostname'
5. Both: Run 'sudo su', authenticating to sudo. Do not use 'sudo su -', as we need to preserve our SSH agent information.
6. B: Run your rsync command as normal, but include the following option: --rsync-path='sudo rsync'

You should not get a password prompt! If you do get one, your sudo authentication did not propagate on the source machine properly. You cannot enter a password at this prompt either, it will never reach sudo, as rsync does not pass your input to it.

Alternatively, if your rsync version does not have a usable 'rsync-path' option (non-existant or wants a full path to a single program), you can use the -e option as: -e 'ssh user@source sudo /usr/local/bin/ignorefirst'. /usr/local/bin/ignorefirst is the following tiny script:

#!/bin/sh
shift
exec "$@"

The '-e' method is a lot more flexible, you can chain SSHs in it for example. You only need the 'ignorefirst' script because rsync puts the the hostname as the immediate next argument to the contents of '-e' commands.

On one of my machines with a PCI-express Intel e1000 network controller, I get some weird behavior during startup. The driver loads, but the link lights are not lit until such time as I cycle the administrative link status. I did complain to the e1000 upstream folk about it months ago, but I still haven't seen a solution, as they seemed to bicker about it with Linus, in the name of power-saving.

The following is a snipped for /etc/conf.d/net that combines the solution with this problem with the more common check for link status check before trying to get a DHCP address.

check_link() {
  ethtool "${1}" | grep -q 'Link detected: yes'
}

preup() {
  # Try to force link up first, for e1000 special case
  i=0 
  while [ "${IFACE}" != "lo" ] && [ $i -lt 3 ] && ! check_link "${IFACE}"; do
    [ $i -gt 0 ] && sleep 1
    ip link set "${IFACE}" up  
    i=$(($i+1))
  done
  # Then check for actual link
  if ! check_link "${IFACE}"; then
    ewarn "No link on ${IFACE}, aborting configuration"
    ip link set "${IFACE}" down
    return 1
  fi  
}

2007/10/23: anon comments locked due to spam

For all those Gentoo developers and readers out there, I'd like the answer to a perception question. Without looking at any data source, do you know roughly how many active (non-retired) developers there are? Do you know where they are distributed around the world?

We presently have 319 developers that are not marked as retired. I hear that Developer Relations have a pile of folks to mark as slackers, so this number will appear lower soon, but more accurately reflect how many developers in the distribution.

Here's the summary of the breakdown:

Here is a breakdown by group groups of timezones, but it's made moot by the point that some people are normally early-morning people, while others are night-owls:

Source data that I based this data was originally LDAP, partially processed and made available here.

I should be writing the book I'm working on, but M bugged with an eviliness quiz...

How evil are you?

For those Gentoo developers and users listening here, the Bugzilla migration is now completed.
For more details (incl how to report problems), see the post to the -dev mailing list.
Some nice users asked if I had wishlists, so here they are.

1. Gentoo Adopt-A-Dev (see my entry for PCI-E SCSI OR an iSCSI to SCSI converter)
2. ThinkGeek Wishlist
3. Amazon WishList (Actually my wedding registry list, but still suitable for this purpose)