Last year, I wrote about beginning to learn Python, and a utility I was writing back then called PolicyKit Editor.

I was using the Gtk toolkit at that time, and then there’s been a bit of a hiatus because I moved from Japan to Scotland.

I recently decided to have a look at that program again, and decided to change from Gtk to the Qt toolkit.

After a week or so of learning how Qt4 and Python fit together, and coding, I have produced Polkit Explorer.

What is it?

Polkit Explorer allows a user to view the default Polkit system policies as set by any package which makes use of Polkit (older name PolicyKit) for user permissions to perform tasks.

Why is it?

I wrote it because;

• I wanted to learn Python,
• Wading through the raw XML for each policy is an awful, awful thing,
• It’s handy to see what default permissions your system has for certain tasks.

Polkit? PolicyKit?

See here :  http://scarygliders.net/2012/06/20/a-brief-guide-to-policykit/

Basically, my program turns this:

Eww, XML!

Into this :

Much nicer ;)

Obtaining the program

You can obtain it from the repository at GitHub…

git clone git://github.com/scarygliders/Polkit-Explorer.git PolkitEditor

You can download it as a zip file from GitHub at https://github.com/scarygliders/Polkit-Explorer

Read the README.md file.

If it’s useful to you please consider sending a donation.

Feedback is welcome.

Instant InnoDB – click picture to take you to the Packt page.

Instant InnoDB from Packt Publishing and written by Matt Reid is, as its title suggests, intended to be an easy to read and understand reference guide rather than a weighty tome covering every painful aspect of InnoDB in excruciating detail. Does it fit this description and aim? Read on to find out…

Chapter Summaries

Once you get past the table of contents, the book starts off with a Preface summarizing its aims, briefly describing each chapter, and tells you what you’ll require to have, to play around with the examples in the book.

The first chapter is all about getting started with InnoDB, and lists its basic features with helpfully short descriptions of each. Then tells you how to install MySQL with InnoDB, and verifying that the database engine is set up and running properly. It’s all very straightforward and easy to understand, and if  like me you weren’t knowledgeable on stuff like ACID compliance, for example, then you learn a great deal from the down to earth text. The chapter ends with creating your first InnoDB table, informing you of further considerations in database creation.

The second chapter takes you through the basic InnoDB configuration parameters – a topic important to understand and to get right. In my own dealings with InnoDB in the past, I’ve managed to inadvertently cause MySQL to either not start or to slow down – all because I wasn’t knowledgeable enough on the subject. This chapter gives you the ammunition you need to Get Things Right, explaining how MySQL allocates memory, what the different buffers are and do, and calculating if you have enough RAM for your configuration. It then goes through some of the basic parameters with helpful explanations on all.

Chapter 3 covers advanced configuration parameters, building on what you learned previously when you created a stable database configuration. It informs you of the pitfalls of incorrectly configuring the tuning parameters of InnoDB, how to measure the I/O performance of your storage system, and recommendations for what storage system to use. After this there are descriptions of the static and dynamic InnoDB variables and how you can use them to optimize your database.

Chapter 4 is all about load testing the InnoDB engine for performance, once again explaining in as simple way as possible how to go about such testing, and valuably walks you through an example of how to ask the right questions in the first place in order to achieve proper testing. You get to learn of the various MySQL load testing and benchmarking utilities/applications, filesystem benchmarking,  and InnoDB flush methods.

Chapter 5′s first topic is short but sweet, talking about maintenance procedures in the form of adding/resizing InnoDB log files, adding tablespaces, and using RAW tablespaces – a feature I didn’t know existed until now. After that comes equally valuable information on InnoDB Monitoring, with descriptions of various INFORMATION_SCHEMA database values, how to show the MySQL global status variables, details on third party monitoring resources, plus some handy equations for analyzing InnoDB stats.

Strangely enough arrives Chapter 6, and that’s all about digging yourself out of any trouble you might have with InnoDB, whether it be systems crashes, performance issues, and viewing the status variables, followed by explanations of various InnoDB error codes, ending with a list of troubleshooting and backup applications.

The final Chapter 7 is a brief listing of references and links to documentation, reference books, links to various terminology you should know when using MySQL and InnoDB, and handy links to articles on tuning InnoDB.

Conclusion

Instant InnoDB is an invaluable book if you plan to or are running MySQL with the InnoDB database engine. It doesn’t go in-depth into many subjects, but that’s not its purpose. As a quick reference guide it contains everything you need to know or remind yourself of running InnoDB at a glance, and for that purpose it fits the bill nicely, and should be part of the MySQL/InnoDB administrator’s bookshelf – real or virtual. It is well worth the very reasonable asking price.

Click this link to go to the Packt page for this book : http://bit.ly/VGm9o1

Rating : 10/10

There may be interruptions in service, or something not working properly, apologies in advance.

I have installed Varnish in front of the web server, and and W3 Total Cache in WordPress, and making sure they’re playing nice.

I just noticed and fixed a problem with downloading the scarymatic utilities from the site – this should be working again as of now.

If you notice any other problems, please let me know here.

Regards!

Important features at-a-glance:

Now creates packages! After compiling on one machine you can bundle the packages up and install on another system of the same arch (e.g. amd64, i686)

No longer uses old source code! Uses the shiny, up to date source!

Here’s the Changelog for v3.0b1 …

–= v3.0-BETA1 =–
[X11rdp-o-Matic]
————————

. changed the git download to the main repository
. removed the writing of an edited xrdp.ini configuration file – the “modern” version supplied upstream has x11rdp as default
and also has additional options configured
. added checkinstall to create an xrdp package for handling by a distro’s package manager
. Use the Xorg 7.6 build script as supplied with the xrdp tree (Hurrah!)
. Updated the editing of buildx.sh by using a patch, instead of editing it directly via sed
. The patch file will be edited instead then used to patch buildx.sh
. Patched buildx.sh will use checkinstall to build the Xorg packages (Hurrah!)
. Added update-rc.d command so that xrdp will start on next boot
. All created packages and the X11rdp binary copied into a final packages dir for easy copying and transfer to
another system for installation – now you can compile on just one system and install on another without
compiling on the other system ;)
. Patches xrdp Makefile in order to generate a package
. Patches X11rdp Makefile in order to generate a package
. Removed Zenity front-end entirely! The text/dialog front-end for rdp-o-matic is good enough. Less to maintain, too.
. cleaned up the script to remove cruft from previous versions
. Changed CHANGELOG order to “latest to earliest” ;)

[RDPsesconfig]
————————-
. Included MATE for various versions of Ubuntu – will automatically add the repository according to which Ubuntu version.
. Removed Zenity front-end entirely! The text front-end is good enough. Zenity was a pain and it means less to maintain.
. cleaned up the script somewhat to remove some cruft

…..ooOOOOOoo…..

Still to do:

• Write a script which will bundle everything together into a selft-extracting script which will unbundle, install, and set up an xrdp init script to start on bootup
• ???? 

Want to try it out?

If you wish to try out v3.0 Beta1, then it’s available under my git repository, in the “devel” branch.

Note it’s advisable to run it in a “disposable” virtual machine running your debian-based distro of choice. It is Beta quality after all ;)

Install git beforehand if you haven’t already! (sudo apt-get install git)

Then in a terminal window issue;

git clone -b devel git://github.com/scarygliders/X11RDP-o-Matic.git

This will download v3.0-Beta1 into the usual X11rdp-o-Matic directory.

EDIT:

Just a quick note to those beta-testing it : use the --justdoit option when starting the X11rdp-o-Matic.sh script, and that way you will see the scroll properly – the default is to use dialog as a “tidy” way of viewing what’s going on. So that’d be:

sudo ./X11rdp-o-matic.sh --justdoit

Please test this out on a distro of choice and report back the Distro name/version, and how it worked out for you.

Once I get any wrinkles ironed out, I’ll make a full official release and merge it to the master branch and have it as a downloadable on the Central Downloads page.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR RUNNING : DO NOT RUN IT BY DRAGGING THE SCRIPT ONTO A TERMINAL ICON – it won’t work!

Instead, just open a terminal window, cd to the X11rdp-o-matic directory, and run it using sudo. (Yes, I actually spotted someone on a forum saying they tried running it by dragging the script onto a terminal window! [ Perhaps that's my fault for not explaining how to run the scripts explicitly enough and for that I apologise. ] )

Happy testing!

Read-only access is via : git://github.com/scarygliders/X11RDP-o-Matic.git

As it stands there is only the master branch which is based on Version 2.5

I am now beginning work on V3.0, which hopefully will start using the latest git versions of X11rdp and will include support for the latest iterations of Debian, Ubuntu. I also intend to start including support for RPM based distributions in the future.

Now begins the hunt for a new home, and all the other stuff.

Blogging is still going to be light to non-existant for now, until such time as I find a new place to live, we recieve all the Stuff we shipped from Japan, and I can get my PC's and servers and home network up and running again – oh, and of course internet ;)

We're currently staying at my folk's home for now, and I'm just maintaining the site and approving comments as and when they arrive.

Normal awesome service will be resumed at some point in the hopefully near future ;)

I've been living and working in Japan for over 5.5 years. It's had its ups and downs. I've enjoyed life here lots, and I've sometimes hated life here lots.

After the Magnitude 9 earthquake hit on 2011-03-11, things kind of went downhill. A couple of months later, the company I worked for – $WeMakeExpensiveNetworkingEquipmentLtd (name withdrawn to protect the guilty) – decided to close down the entire Japan Failure Analysis Dept. – guess who was working in that dept. ? That's right, I was!

Since then it has been quite difficult for me with no job on the horizon. That was a big factor in what's happening now.

Another factor is that as a non-Japanese living in Japan – I simply will not be able to thrive here, regardless of whether I could speak Japanese like a native or not. There will always be a certain amount of obstacles in the way – some of them insurmountable. I won't go into what they are for fear of upsetting some folks. Lets just say I personally don't find Japan as a whole to be particularly foreigner-friendly if you are actually living there as opposed to being just a tourist who'll eventually be leaving. Sure, I know an awful lot of great Japanese people here and like them loads, but as a Nation… well what I said before, I find to be the case. No offense, Japan is what Japan is, and to be honest I completely accept that it is that way. No grudges here. I've not managed to learn the language after all these years of living here, and frankly, I've lost interest in any further attempt. Japan is quite unforgiving if you can't speak the lingo – again, I completely understand that and even agree with the attitude! I think the same thing about people coming to the UK – if you can't speak the language then you're in trouble.

Another factor is – I question the wisdom of me keeping my wife and son here in Japan, what with all the natural disasters that happen here every year. After the March 11th megaquake, and the Fukushima nuclear plant explosions, I asked my son if he felt safe living here. We actually live in Koriyama city, Fukushima prefecture. My house is just 33 miles (54km) due West of the Fukushima dai-ichi nuclear power plant. When all the drama was happening at the time and the reactors were exploding, it was looking quite grim. The food and fuel supply chain was broken, due to damage to roads and the rail network. That wasn't so bad for us, as I'd for some reason gotten into Prepping (preparing for a disaster) about a year beforehand, so we had about 2 months of supplies to hand – the only thing which got me was I had stopped bothering with fuel storage and rotation before the quake, so the only gasoline we had was whatever was in the 2 cars we had. I can tell you now that going underneath a Honda Orthia and draining the gasoline from the tank via a bolt at the bottom of the tank, into a metal bowl, meanwhile worrying about what radiation may be falling around you outide, is NOT fun. I used the gas I drained from the tank to fill up the tank of our Suzuki Wagon R. I wanted a full tank of gas in case we needed to bail out of Koriyama and head for somewhere where a radioactive cloud could not reach us.

It turned out that we were lucky. The plume from the nuke plant explosions travelled north-west towards Fukushima city, then turned round and got blown south. Whilst it did reach Koriyama city, it just so happened that it didn't quite come over my area, which lies on the far eastern outskirts of the city. In April of that year I managed to purchase a geiger-counter which at that time cost WAY over the odds (because EVERYONE wanted to buy one), and at its peak, I measured about 0.28uSv/hr around my house. Currently it's about 0.24uSv/hr – so I presume what's left is radioactive Cesium (and other more long half-life materials). In the center of Koriyama about 2 months after the nuclear disaster I was measuring between 5 to 8 uSv/hr outside a friend's house.

Back to my question to my 10 year old son, and did he feel safe living in Japan – the answer I got back was an emphatic "No".

The lastest factor is that there's a 70% chance of a huge quake occurring in or near Tokyo within the next 4 years or so. Once that happens then life in Japan will become especially difficult – I think after an event like that there will be a HUGE collapse of the economy, which is already bad enough here already, plus other effects from that I can't even begin to imagine.

Anyway, the bottom line is that late last year I decided that I'd had enough of Japan, due to the above main factors, and that the best course of action for me and mine, was to sell up and move back to my home country, Scotland.

We have now found buyers for my house, and contracts have been signed, and I'm now quite busy preparing for that move.

This means that I'm going to be extremely busy with Real Life, meaning that my online projects are going for a bit of a break for now. Blogging will be VERY light from now on until me and mine get ourselves sorted out in Scotland. I'll keep an eye on the blog and will approve comments, do site maintenance etc. If anything really urgent comes by, I'll see what I can do.

So, with a bit of luck, and fortune favouring the foolish ;) I'll be fully back up and running before the end of the year :)

Thanks to everyone who have brought suggestions and improvements to the software, and to those people who have made donations!

Don't abandon the site just yet – like Arnie, I'LL BE BACK!

Regards to everyone :) and see you on the other side!

Kevin.

So now I have the beginnings of a Python-based GUI utility which reads in a PolicyKit XML policy file, and you can select each action from a drop-down combobox. Upon selection, the window will display the Description, and current settings of the selected action…

Run the program...

Run the utility…

Select the policy file...

Select the policy file…

Select action to examine

And selecting the actions within the policy shows the default actions for it.

That's how things have progressed so far.

Next up is to be able to change the default options and then save the XML policy file back. Shouldn't be long now.

I'll release this after I extensively test it. Stay tuned ;)

Interesting concept.

I call this the “ssta release”, in honour of a pal of mine who made a request which I’ve now implemented. ( --justdoit option, see below).

I have sweated and toiled, lost sleep, learned a lot, re-learned a lot, tested, tested again, and ended up with something which should work for just about everyone – everyone that is, who’s users are local to the system – anyone using Active Directory to login still won’t be handled by the RDPsesconfig utility yet – if you really want this, please donate to encourage it! I am unemployed, living in Japan, waiting until my house/land are sold before I can move back to my native Scotland – in the meantime, I’m using this time to do useful and unpaid stuff, so what I’m asking is, if you like what I’m doing and want to show your appreciation, hit the donate button! You don’t need to be a Paypal member to do so :)

Did I mention the Donate button? Hit that thing Like A Boss, or The Fist Of An Angry God, or something, but just do it. Please B)

And I’d like to thank those who have sent a donation so far. I have received 2 “General” donations (from the button on the left hand sidebar) , and 1 specific donation from the donate button on the X11rdp-o-matic/RDPsesman V1 post. THANK YOU! You guys are awesome!

Anyway onto Version 2…

v2.5 Changelog

• dpkg-status response has changed in Debian Wheezy! Changed the package status test to reflect this, which will also work with older distros.

v2.4 Changelog

• set LANG so that dpkg etc. return the expected responses so the script is guaranteed to work under different locales – many thanks to reader Pedro Alves

v2.3 Changelog

• Now works and tested with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

v2.2 Changelog

RDPsesconfig

• fixed naïve grepping for username in /etc/passwd. (thanks to reader Jeroen!) Utility should now not confuse username “tim” with the entry “rtkit:x:110:119:RealtimeKit,,,:/proc:/bin/false” in /etc/passwd , for example, and should now place the correct .xsession in the correct place.

V2.1 Changelog….

X11rdp-o-Matic

• corrected error in package status test condition on line 166 – thanks to Daniel for pointing it out ;)

V2 Changelog…

X11rdp-o-Matic

• Added package repository update before checking for required packages
• Modularized for future multiple dialog front-ends
• Added a text dialog front-end
• Added a check for running on a non-X display terminal (will revert to text-only if so)
• Uses the text mode front-end by default – Zenity is limited and rubbish!
• Added command line parameters: --justdoit , --nocpuoptimize , --zenityfrontend , --keepsource , --nocleanup
• Now runs in a text only environment – suitable for “Server” distro variants with no Xorg installed as yet, or basically for anyone who prefers the text interface over the Zenity one.
• Added a non-interactive, “just do it” mode so script will run from start to end, with “sane” defaults
• Really tidied up the script, should make it easier to read and edit later
• Source code is downloaded to inside wherever the ScaryMatic directory is located
• Added alteration of xrdp source code Makefile.am so the PID file is now in /var/run/xrdp/
• Changed “PIDDIR=/var/run/” to “PIDDIR=/var/run/xrdp/” in the xrdp init script

RDPsesconfig

• Added package repository update before checking for required packages
• Modularized for multiple dialog front-ends
• Added a text dialog front-end
• Added a check for running on a non-X display terminal (will revert to text-only if so)
• Uses the text mode front-end by default – Zenity is limited and rubbish!
• Added command line parameter: –zenityfrontend – seriously? use the text front-end, it’s better.
• Really tidied up the script, should make it easier to read and edit later
• Source code is downloaded to inside wherever the ScaryMatic directory is located
• Removed the experimental PolicyKit rules generator. System admins should consider implementing their policies carefully.

What’s New

The Text Interface

Just Do It mode...

Cleanup of source code after installation…

Re-use source code

Source code download location…

xrdp source code automatically altered after download

Default system PolicyKit rules prevent users logged in via RDP from doing stuff locally logged in users can do

Screenshots

X11rdp-o-matic…

Debian Wheezy

Starting the utility

Automatically downloads required packages

The welcome page

 

 

 

 

 

 

Updating the package database

Installing required packages

Downloading the source

If you have more than 1 cpu it’ll make compilation quicker

 

 

 

 

 

 

Compiling X11rdp

Compiling xrdp

Installation complete!

Testing the xrdp connection

 

 

 

 

 

 

We haven’t ran RDPsesconfig yet!

Just Do It mode…

Just Do It mode…

RDPsesconfig

Select which desktop to use

Downloading desktop packages

Select which users to configure

Configuring selected user(s)

Completed!

KDE desktop configured

Selecting Gnome

Downloading desktop packages

Gnome desktop in RDP session

Customized Gnome desktop

Download

Download from the Central Download Page

Donate!

If you like these utilities, please make a donation :)

Provide feedback!