December 2020 – Loïc Dachary

December 26, 2020December 26, 2020

libvirt functions discovery in python

The C API of libvirt is well documented and one can easily understand how the virNetworkGetDHCPLeases function should be called. However, it is less straightforward with the python libvirt module despite the libvirt development guide. The example from the sources shows the corresponding python method is DHCPLeases

import libvirt
conn = libvirt.open("qemu:///system")
net = conn.networkLookupByName("default")
leases = net.DHCPLeases()

But how did virNetworkGetDHCPLeases become DHCPLeases?

December 24, 2020December 24, 2020

Volunteer work is not worth a dime

Even when nonprofit organizations publish their financial records (such as the mediawiki foundation), the work done by volunteers has an estimated financial value of zero. These organizations will however unanimously claim that volunteers are an essential part of society and have a very special place in their heart. While most of them are sincere, observation tells us a different story:

In the context of fundraising, volunteers are second class citizens compared to organizations who donate money
A lack of transparency excludes volunteers from decisions and day to day work

How is it that one year of a volunteer who is worth $60,000 on the market is considered less valuable than a $60,000 grant used to pay the salary of the same person?

December 23, 2020December 23, 2020

virt-resize applied to Debian GNU/Linux cloud images

The Debian GNU/Linux cloud images can conveniently be used out of the box with the following:

$ wget -O debian.qcow2 https://cloud.debian.org/images/cloud/buster/20201214-484/debian-10-generic-amd64-20201214-484.qcow2
$ virt-sysprep -a debian.qcow2 --run-command 'dpkg-reconfigure --frontend=noninteractive openssh-server' --ssh-inject debian:file:$HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
$ virt-install --connect qemu:///system --boot hd --name debian --memory 1024 --vcpus 1 --cpu host --disk path=$(pwd)/debian.qcow2,bus=virtio,format=qcow2 --os-type=linux --os-variant=debian10 --graphics vnc --noautoconsole
$ virsh  --connect qemu:///system domifaddr debian
 Name       MAC address          Protocol     Address
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 vnet0      52:54:00:3e:6f:1a    ipv4         192.168.122.84/24
$ ssh debian@192.168.122.84 df -h /
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda1       1.9G  1.3G  481M  73% /

However, 2GB for the root file system may not be enough: virt-resize and virt-rescue should be used to expand it.

December 21, 2020December 24, 2020

Onboarding devops with infrastructure as code

Enough is a software released as a pypi package and a docker image to maintain an infrastructure composed of multiple machines, physical or virtual. In other words, it is an infrastructure as code based on Ansible and OpenStack. In addition it is built exclusively on Free Software, primarily because it helps with backdoors and viruses. These two properties combined create a unique opportunity to onboard volunteers devops willing to help nonprofit organizations defending whistleblowers.

December 19, 2020September 13, 2021

Looking for a Free Software vegetarian developer position

After four years volunteering for non-profits (from the Freedom of the Press Foundation working on SecureDrop to the Maison des Lanceurs d’Alerte working on Enough), I find myself looking for paid work. It is a challenge, mainly because I do my best to only use Free Software and only write Free Software. The last part (writing Free Software) has become increasingly easier in the past twenty years: there are hundreds of companies willing to pay a full time developer to exclusively contribute to a Free Software code base. The first part (using Free Software) is still very difficult.