Eugeni's blog

chrome rpm

Aug 312009

For some time now I was using binary chrome files, as distributed by chromium web site. I tried building chrome from the source, but its requirements (a few GBs of free disk space + lots of time to compile everything) made me gave up from the idea. Instead, I wrapped up a simple script+spec file to convert binary chromium distribution to a mandriva RPM.

Please note that it is NOT the right way to do it, and it is in fact a big big hack – I simply grab the binary .zip from chromium site, repackage it as rpm, and define some rpm hacks to work around different shared library names. But it works fine for me (on i586), so I decided to share it in case someone else could be interested.

To install it with urpmi, the following would do the trick:

urpmi.addmedia --mirrorlist http://eugeni.dodonov.net/rpm eugeni i586
urpmi chrome

this will install the browser startup script in /usr/bin/chrome, and also add an entry to the menu. Please note that this is a dirty hack , but it makes it a bit easier to test new chromium packages without lots of manual tricks.

netprofile screencast

devel, english, mandriva 5 Responses »

Aug 172009

After a very helpful feedback on cooker mailing-list, I decided to post a more in depth screencast which illustrates how netprofile works.

Let’s think about a simple use case. You are using your notebook at home, and everything is fine. However, every time you have to go to work, you have to change several settings related to your network connection, proxy configuration and firewall. Of course, you can do it all manually, or even wrap out a script, but.. there is no need for it with the new netprofile!

So, the goal of this post is to illustrate how to accomplish this task with new netprofile and updated drakx-net applications.

The first thing you have to do is to go to draknetprofile application, and create a new network profile (Update: scroll down to the botton of the post to see the actual draknetprofile screenshots):

draknetprofile graphical interface

When you create a new profile, you have to give it a name (for example, work):

Creating new network profile

After you are finished, this new profile will be created and, automatically, activated:

New network profile was created and activated

From now on, whey you use other drakx-net application, they will detect that you have multiple network profiles, and show you some helpful text to let you know what profile you are using currently. So you can configure your firewall:

firewall configuration with new network profile

Your network connections:

Configuring network settings for new network profile

Your proxy settings:

proxy configuration for new network profile

And other network settings you want:

network center displaying currently used profile

When you go back home, you simply right-click on the net_applet tray icon and activate the default profile again:

net_applet switching profiles

And this will (almost) instantly restore your settings stored on the default profile:

draknetcenter with default profile

You can repeat this procedure for any other profile and configuration. Of course, if you do not want to use netprofile at all, everything will just work.

I hope this clarifies a bit the netprofile application, and how it can help you to simplify your life in different network environment.

EDIT: Updating this post, this is how draknetprofile looks in Mandriva 2010 Beta:

Default netprofile view, with modules details hidden in Advanced section

Advanced view of draknetprofile, showing modules configuration

netprofile 0.20: the empire strikes back

devel, english, mandriva 9 Responses »

Aug 142009

After the last-year msec rewrite for Mandriva 2009.1, my goal was to do something similar with netprofile, yet another Mandriva-specific tool, with lots of unique functionalities, but.. abandoned for about 4 years.

What is netprofile? The idea of this application is quite simple. For different network environments one requires different network settings. For example, you may use a fixed IP at home, with firewall disabled, and no proxy. At work, you must use a corporate proxy and a DHCP address for your ethernet connection. And while at a LAN house or Internet cafe, a full-featured firewall must be used, your ethernet connection disabled and a tor proxy (for example) to be in effect.

How to achieve this in a working system? Usually you must manually reconfigure the network settings, edit configuration files for network, firewall and proxy, and so on. And this is where netprofile comes into action.

The netprofile uses the concept of network profiles to represent different network environments. You start with the ‘default’ profile, and you may use your system normally. If you want to setup a different network environment, you may ‘switch’ to a different profile (a new profile will be created if necessary). Your current settings will be saved to your previous profile, and all changes to system configuration will now apply to your new profile.

To illustrate:

You configure your system to use fixed IP address and a specific firewall configuration.
You go to work, where different network environment takes place. You switch to the work profile (‘netprofile switch work’, or using net_applet gui), and if it is the first time you use this profile, it is created with base on your current settings.
You configure your network card to use DHCP, configure your corporate-specific proxy and firewall settings, and continue using your machine normally.
When you come back home, you switch the profile back to default, and your previous settings are restored.

You may also specify what network profile to use on boot, by passing the ‘PROFILE=‘ option to the boot loader. If you have multiple profiles, and no boot parameter was specified, a menu dialog will appear on boot asking you to select the profile to use.

The new netprofile is based on modular architecture. While we have a core application (netprofile), all functionality is performed by modules. Right now we have the following modules:

network – to store/restore network settings: ethernet, ppp, isdn, wireless and other connection settings.
firewall – to manage firewall (iptables and shorewall) settings
firewall6 – to manage firewall settings for IPv6 networks
proxy – to manage system-wide proxies.

Also, I am thinking on the following modules:

netfs – to manage remote shares and network file systems. For example, at work you may access a centralized NFS server, and at home a SMBFS/CIFS connection to your home server.
authentication – you may use local users at home, and ldap/yp authentication at work. Transparently. With one mouse click/command to switch between them .

The inevitable question: why do we need it if we have NetworkManager and similar apps? Well, I have a few arguments:

NetworkManager is great, has a modular design, and also supports network profiles. However, it is focused on network settings only, and not on proxy, firewall, authentication, and so on.
NetworkManager is also based on a pluggable architecture. However, it is not that easy to write plugins for it.
Not all distributions support NetworkManager. Netprofile, on its turn, will work on any unix system (or, even better, on anything that support running shell scripts. Yes, you can use it on windows too, with a few hacks ). Of course, it works better on Mandriva because it has drakxtools – Mandriva-specific scripts and applications. And we have draknetprofile as part of drakxtools, which works as shown on the following screenshot:

draknetprofile application to control netprofile profiles in Mandriva Linux

That’s it for now. If you want to experiment with netprofile, feel free to download it and play with it. It should be available on next Mandriva Linux 2010.0 release together with many other exciting new features !