Build ppa package

November 26, 2014 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Debian, Development, Linux, Ubuntu 

To build a package for ppa distribution, you need some tools. To “cross compile” for releases, for example i386 and amd64 packages on the same machine, takes some more work with schroot, dchroot etc. I’ll start with explaining how to create a “local” package for your own host, I’ll add another entry on how to do an i386 package from amd64. Everything is done on ubuntu 14.04 amd64 machine in this case, and I’m rebuilding dbus.

In short you need:

  1. apt-get install build-essentials dpkg-buildroot schroot gpg
  2. gpg –gen-key
  3. apt-get build-dep dbus
  4. mkdir dbus-amd64 && cd dbus-amd64
  5. apt-get source dbus
  6. export DEB_SIGN_KEYID=
  7. cd dbus-directory
  8. make changes.
  9. dch -i
  10. dpkg-source –commit
  11. dpkg-buildroot -i -I

If you plan on publishing your deb packages to launchpad or some such, you need to create an account and add a ppa. This is simple and done via the http://www.launchpad.net webpage. The webpage also gives you good upload information. Note that they require signed files, so signing must work for you first.

8. Create account on launchpad.
9. Export the gpg generated key to hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371 (easiest to do via Passwords and Keys tool
10. Import the key to launchpad using the key fingerprint.
11. Create a new PPA from the launchpad dashboard
12. dput ppa: dbus_1.6.18-0ubuntu4.4_source.changes

The package will be built by launchpad on its own, this may take some time..

Remote DBus continued (using your own program)

November 7, 2014 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Communications, Development, Linux 

Continuing the previous thought on running DBus remotely using d-feet to check how it looks etc, this time, I wanted to call the DBus from my own program. Just write the DBus code as you would to query the DBus interface locally.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import dbus
import dbus.service
from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop

BUS_NAME="org.freedesktop.DBus"
OPATH="/"

bus = dbus.SessionBus()
obj = bus.get_object(BUS_NAME, OPATH)
iface = dbus.Interface(obj, BUS_NAME)
lala = iface.GetId()
print lala

Then the magic comes in running the application.

DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="tcp:host=192.168.X.Y,port=Z" ./dbus-hello.py

DBus remote connection

November 5, 2014 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Communications, Development, General, Linux 

In a project I’m working on at the moment we wanted to remotely monitor a DBus session bus. The system in question has several buses available using different users and systemd. d-feet can connect and monitor remotely via TCP.  The following code will allow you to connect to a remote DBus on a target development board for example.

First copy the original session.conf to separate configuration files for each user.

cp /etc/dbus-1/session.conf /etc/dbus-1/session.conf.<username>
cp /etc/dbus-1/session.conf /etc/dbus-1/session.conf.<username2>

Then for each of the newly created configuration file, add the following configuration but with different port numbers and correct username director in /run/user. The ip address should be the IP of the connecting host, not the server. Edit session.conf.<username> and add:

<listen>tcp:host=<ip>,bind=*,port=<port>,family=ipv4</listen>
<listen>unix:path=/run/user/<username>/dbus/user_bus_socket</listen>
<listen>unix:tmpdir=/tmp</listen>

<auth>ANONYMOUS</auth>
<allow_anonymous/>

The systemd script is rewritten to use a specific conf file for the specific user trying to start the DBus.

Edit  /lib/systemd/system/dbus-session@.service and rewrite the ExecStart line as follows.

ExecStart=/usr/bin/dbus-daemon --config-file /etc/dbus-1/session.conf.%i --nofork

This allows you to connect using d-feet or other dbus applications (potentially, you should be able to connect for example other services over the network to the new DBus….).

Choose “connect to other bus” and use as bus address:

tcp:host=<targetIp>,port=<port>

Done. Hopefully.