Bubulle's weblog

Mon, 22 Aug 2016

[LIFE] Running activities - Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc

Hello dear readers,

It's been ages since I last blogged. Being far less active in Debian than I've been in the past, I guess this is a logical consequence.

However, I'm still active as you may witness if you read the debian-boot mailing list : I still consider myself part of the D-I team and I'm maintaining a few sports-related packages.

Most know what has taken precedence over Debian development, namely trail and ultra-trail running. And, well, it hasn't decreased, far from that : I ran about 10 races already this year....6 of them being above 50km and I ran my favourite 100km moutain race in early July for the second year in a row.

So, the upcoming week, I'll be trying to reach what is usually considered as the Grail of ultra-trail runners : the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc race in Chamonix.

The race is fairly simple : run all around the Mont-Blanc summits, for a 160km race with a bit less than 10,000 meters positive climb. The race itself takes place between 800 and 2700 meters (so no "high mountain") and I expect to complete it (if I succeed) in about 40 hours.

I'm very confident (maybe too much?) as I successfully completed a much more difficult race last year (only 144km, but over 11,000 meters positive climb and a much more difficult path...it took me over 50 hours to complete it).

You can follow me on the live tracking site. The race starts on Friday August 26th, 18:00 CET DST.

I everything goes well, I have great projects for next year, including a 100-mile race in Colorado in August (we'll be traveling in USA for over 3 weeks, peaking with the solar eclipse of August 21st in Kansas City).

posted at: 07:47 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Fri, 25 Sep 2015

Bugs #780000 - 790000

Thorsten Glaser reported Debian bug #780000 on Saturday March 7th 2015, against the gcc-4.9 package.

Bug #770000 was reported as of November 18th so there have been 10,000 bugs in about 3.5 months, which was significantly slower than earlier.

Salvatore Bonaccorso reported Debian bug #790000 on Friday June 26th 2015, against the pcre3 package.

Thus, there have been 10,000 bugs in 3.5 months again. It seems that the bug report rate stabilized again.

Sorry for missing bug #780000 annoucement. I'm doing this since....November 2007 for bug #450000 and it seems that this lack of attention is somehow significant wrt my involvment in Debian. Still, this involvment is still here and I'll try to "survive" in the project until we reach bug #1000000...:-)

See you for bug #800000 annoucement and the result of the bets we placed on the date it would happen.

posted at: 12:36 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Bug #800000 has been reported...Tomasz Muras wins a 2.5-year-old bet..:-)

Here it is.

Debian had eight hundred thousand bugs reported in its history.

Tomasz Muras guessed, more than 2 years ago, that it would be reported on September 24h, and it has been reported on 25th. Good catch!

Chris Lamb is the happy bug submitter for this release critical bug against the vdr-plugin-prefermenu package.

Of course, I will soon open the wiki page for the bug #900000 bet, which will again include a place where you can also bet for bug #1000000. Be patient, the week-end is coming..:-)

It took two years, 7 months and 18 days to report 100,000 bugs in Debian since bug #700000 was reported.

posted at: 11:51 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 22 Aug 2015

[LIFE] Running activities - Echappee Belle next week

Hello dear readers,

Next week, I'll be running the "Echappee Belle" race : 144km and 10.000 meters positive climb, in French Alps (Belledonne range, this time).

That will be, by far, my longest race ever and indeed a great challenge for me with very difficult tracks (when there are tracks).

I expect to run for about 48 hours, or even up to 55, two nights out.....or maybe less as I'm in very good shape.

You can follow me on the live tracking site. The race starts on Friday August 28th, 06:00 CET DST.

posted at: 07:47 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 01 Jul 2015

[LIFE] Running activities

Hello dear readers,

It has been quite some time since I blogged on Planet Debian,so today, I just want to give some news to fellow Debian pals.

My involvment in Debian is still there. I'm probably less visible nowadays, but I'm still actively working on some packages, monotiring some i18n activities and doing work on D-I.

But, as you know, running has taken precedence nowadays and is still becoming a growing part of my life (along with my family, of course).

This year, I had a first "summit" running the "Vulcain" trail race in French "Massif Central" (mountains in Central France), which was 80km and 3000m positive climb race. It was run mostly in snow and with quite bad weather conditions, a good training for more difficult races. I completed it in about more than 12 hours, for a race that finally had less than 60% finishers.

Later on, most races were preparation races for the summer moutain races : I mostly ran three 50km trail races in the Paris and neighbourhood area. All of them were very good results with a good feeling. Some were run along with friends from the Kikourou.net web community, where I am now very active.

My training was also strongly increased wrt former years (yes that *is* possible), peaking at more than 500km during May, where I was mostly on holidays all month long (lucky man).

And now, the first Great Great Thing of the year is coming : La Montagn'hard, 110 kilometers, about 9000 meters positive climb, around Les Contamines, close to Mont-Blanc in French Alps.

That is a Big One, indeed. Technically more difficult than the TDS race I ran last August, during DebConf (120km, but "only" 7000 meters climb). Montagn'hard is indeed known as one of the most difficult moutain trail races in France.

I plan to complete it in about 29 hours....but that can indeed be 30, 32 or even 35, who knows what can happen? Given the very high temperatures over Europe this week (they'll peak at about 38°C on Saturday in the Alps), that will be an incredibly difficult challenge and we expect about only 40% finishers.

A live tracking will be available for thos who care at http://chrono.geofp.com/montagnhard2015/v3/. Wish me luck !

Next challenge will be end of August, with the "Echappee Belle" race : 144km and 10.000 meters positive climb, still in French Alps (Belledonne range, this time). About 48 hours, or even up to 55, two nights out.....harder and hopefully better, faster, stronger...:-)

posted at: 06:37 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Thu, 12 Feb 2015

Bug #777777

Who is going to report bug #777777? :-)

posted at: 06:57 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 18 Nov 2014

Bug #770000

Martin Pitt reported Debian bug #770000 on Tuesday November 18th, against the release.debian.org pseudo-package.

Bug #760000 was reported as of August 30th: so there have been 10,000 bugs reported in 3 months minus 12 days. The bug rate increased quite significantly during the last weeks. We can suspect this is related to the release and the freeze (that triggers many unblock requests)

I find it interesting that this bug is directly related to the release, directly related to systemd and originated from one of the systemd packages maintainers, if I'm right.

So, I'll take this opportunity to publicly thank all people who have brought the systemd packages to what they are now, whether or not they're still maintaining the package. We've all witnessed that Debian if facing a strong social issue nowadays and I'm very deeply sad about this. I hope we'll be able to go through this without losing too many brilliant contributors, as it happened recently.

Please prove me right and do The Right Thing for me to be able to continue this silly "round bug number" contest and still believe that, some day, bug #1000000 will really happen and I'm still there to witness it.

Ah, and by the way, systemd bloody works on my system. I can't even remember when I switched to it. It Just Worked.

posted at: 19:13 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 01 Sep 2014

Bug #760000

René Mayorga reported Debian bug #760000 on Saturday August 30th, against the pyfribidi package.

Bug #750000 was reported as of May 31th: nearly exactly 3 months for 10,000 bugs. The bug rate increased a little bit during the last weeks, probably because of the freeze approaching.

We're therefore getting more clues about the time when bug #800000 for which we have bets. will be reported. At current rate, this should happen in one year. So, the current favorites are Knuth Posern or Kartik Mistry. Still, David Prévot, Andreas Tille, Elmar Heeb and Rafael Laboissiere have their chances, too, if the bug rate increases (I'll watch you guys: any MBF by one of you will be suspect...:-)).

posted at: 08:02 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 26 Aug 2014

[life] Follow bubulle running adventures....

Just in case some of my free software friends would care and try understanding why I'm currently not attending my first DebConf since 2004...

Starting tomorrow 07:00am EST (so, 22:00 PST for Debconfers), I'll be running the "TDS" race of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc races.

Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) is one of the world famous long distance moutain trail races. It takes places in Chamonix, just below the Mont-Blanc, France's and Europe's highest moutain. The race is indeed simple : "go around the Mont-Blanc in a big circle, 160km long, with 10,000 meters positive climb cumulated on the climb of about 10 high passes between 2000 and 2700 meters altitude".

"My" race is a shortened version of UTMB that does half of the full loop, from Courmayeur in Italy (just "the other side" of Mont-Blanc, from Chamonix) and goes back to Chamonix. It is "only" 120 kilometers long with 7200 meters of positive climb. Some of these are however know as more difficult than UTMB itself.

Many firsts for me in this race : first "over 100km", first "over 24 hours running". Still, I trained hard for this, achieved a very though race in early July (60km, 5000m climb) with a very good result, and I expect to make it well.

Top runners complete this in 17 hours.....last arrivals are expected after 33 hours "running" (often fast walking, indeed). I plan to achieve the race in 28 hours but, indeed, I have no idea..:-)

So, in case you're boring in a night hacklab, or just want to draw your attention out of IRC, or don't have any package to polish...or just want to have a thought for an old friend, you can try to use the following link and follow all this live : http://utmb.livetrail.net/coureur.php?rech=6384⟨=en

Race start : 7am EST, Wednesday Aug 27th. bubulle arrival: Thursday Aug. 28th, between 10am and 4pm (best projection is 11am).

And there will be cheese at pit stops....

posted at: 08:09 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 29 Jul 2014

Developers per country (July 2014)

This is time again for my annual report about the number of developers per country.

This is now the sixth edition of this report. Former editions:

So, here we are with the July 2014 version, sorted by the ratio of *active* developers per million population for each country.

Act: number of active developers
Dev: total number of developers
A/M: number of active devels per million pop.
D/M: number of devels per million pop.
2009: rank in 2009
2010: rank in 2010
2011: rank in 2011 (June)
2012: rank in 2012 (June)
2013: rank in 2012 (July)
2014: rank now
Code Name Population Act Dev Dev Act/Million Dev/Million 2009 2010 June 2011 June 2012 July 2013 July 2014
fi Finland 5259250 19 31 3,61 5,89 1 1 1 1 1 1
ie Ireland 4670976 13 17 2,78 3,64 13 9 6 2 2 2
nz New Zealand 4331600 11 15 2,54 3,46 4 3 5 7 7 3 *
mq Martinique 396404 1 1 2,52 2,52

3 4 4 4
se Sweden 9088728 22 37 2,42 4,07 3 6 7 5 5 5
ch Switzerland 7870134 19 29 2,41 3,68 2 2 2 3 3 6 *
no Norway 4973029 11 14 2,21 2,82 5 4 4 6 6 7 *
at Austria 8217280 18 29 2,19 3,53 6 8 10 10 10 8 *
de Germany 81471834 164 235 2,01 2,88 7 7 9 9 8 9 *
lu Luxemburg 503302 1 1 1,99 1,99 8 5 8 8 9 10 *
fr France 65350000 101 131 1,55 2 12 12 11 11 11 11
au Australia 22607571 32 60 1,42 2,65 9 10 12 12 12 12
be Belgium 11071483 14 17 1,26 1,54 10 11 13 13 13 13
uk United-Kingdom 62698362 77 118 1,23 1,88 14 14 14 14 14 14
nl Netherlands 16728091 18 40 1,08 2,39 11 13 15 15 15 15
ca Canada 33476688 34 63 1,02 1,88 15 15 17 16 16 16
dk Denmark 5529888 5 10 0,9 1,81 17 17 16 17 17 17
es Spain 46754784 34 56 0,73 1,2 16 16 19 18 18 18
it Italy 59464644 36 52 0,61 0,87 23 22 22 19 19 19
hu Hungary 10076062 6 12 0,6 1,19 18 25 26 20 24 20 *
cz Czech Rep 10190213 6 6 0,59 0,59 21 20 21 21 20 21 *
us USA 313232044 175 382 0,56 1,22 19 21 25 24 22 22
il Israel 7740900 4 6 0,52 0,78 24 24 24 25 23 23
hr Croatia 4290612 2 2 0,47 0,47 20 18 18 26 25 24 *
lv Latvia 2204708 1 1 0,45 0,45 26 26 27 27 26 25 *
bg Bulgaria 7364570 3 3 0,41 0,41 25 23 23 23 27 26 *
sg Singapore 5183700 2 2 0,39 0,39


33 33 27 *
uy Uruguay 3477778 1 2 0,29 0,58 22 27 28 28 28 28
pl Poland 38441588 11 15 0,29 0,39 29 29 30 30 30 29 *
jp Japan 127078679 36 52 0,28 0,41 30 28 29 29 29 30 *
lt Lithuania 3535547 1 1 0,28 0,28 28 19 20 22 21 31 *
gr Greece 10787690 3 4 0,28 0,37 33 38 34 35 35 32 *
cr Costa Rica 4301712 1 1 0,23 0,23 31 30 31 31 31 33 *
by Belarus 9577552 2 2 0,21 0,21 35 36 39 39 32 34 *
ar Argentina 40677348 8 10 0,2 0,25 34 33 35 32 37 35 *
pt Portugal 10561614 2 4 0,19 0,38 27 32 32 34 34 36 *
sk Slovakia 5477038 1 1 0,18 0,18 32 31 33 36 36 37 *
rs Serbia 7186862 1 1 0,14 0,14



38 38
tw Taiwan 23040040 3 3 0,13 0,13 37 34 37 37 39 39
br Brazil 192376496 18 21 0,09 0,11 36 35 38 38 40 40
cu Cuba 11241161 1 1 0,09 0,09
38 41 41 41 41
co Colombia 45566856 4 5 0,09 0,11 41 44 46 47 46 42 *
kr South Korea 48754657 4 6 0,08 0,12 39 39 42 42 42 43 *
gt Guatemala 13824463 1 1 0,07 0,07



43 44 *
ec Ecuador 15007343 1 1 0,07 0,07
40 43 43 45 45
cl Chile 16746491 1 2 0,06 0,12 42 41 44 44 47 46 *
za South Africa 50590000 3 10 0,06 0,2 38 48 48 48 48 47 *
ru Russia 143030106 8 9 0,06 0,06 43 42 47 45 49 48 *
mg Madagascar 21281844 1 1 0,05 0,05 44 37 40 40 50 49 *
ro Romania 21904551 1 2 0,05 0,09 45 43 45 46 51 50 *
ve Venezuela 28047938 1 1 0,04 0,04 40 45 50 49 44 51 *
my Malaysia 28250000 1 1 0,04 0,04

49 50 52 52
pe Peru 29907003 1 1 0,03 0,03 46 46 51 51 53 53
tr Turkey 74724269 2 2 0,03 0,03 47 47 52 52 54 54
ua Ukraine 45134707 1 1 0,02 0,02 48 53 58 59 55 55
th Thailand 66720153 1 2 0,01 0,03 50 50 54 54 56 56
eg Egypt 80081093 1 3 0,01 0,04 51 51 55 55 57 57
mx Mexico 112336538 1 1 0,01 0,01 49 49 53 53 58 58
cn China 1344413526 10 14 0,01 0,01 53 53 57 56 59 59
in India 1210193422 8 9 0,01 0,01 52 52 56 57 60 60
sv El Salvador 7066403 0 1 0 0,14

36 58 61 61































969 1561 62,08%







A few interesting facts:

posted at: 18:34 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

[life] Running update July 26th 2014

Dog, long time since I blogged about my running activities. Apparently, I didn't since.....I posted a summary for 2013.

So, well, that will be a long update as many things happened during the first half of 2014 when it comes at running, for me.

January: I was recovering from a fatigue fracture injury inherited from last races in 2013. As a consequence, I resumed running only on Jan 7th. Therefore I cancelled my participation to the "Semi Raid 28", an night orienteering raid of about 50-60km in southern neighbourhood of Paris. Instead, I actually offerred my help to organizers in collecting orienteering signs after the race (the longest one : 120km). So, I ended up spending over 24 hours running in woods and hunting down hidden signs with the same information than runners. My only advantage was that I was able to use my car to go from one point to another. Still, I ended up running over 70km in many small parts, often alone in the dark woods with my headlamp, on very muddy areas...and collecting nearly 80 huge signs.

February: Everything was going well and I for instance ran a great half-marathon in Bullion (south of Paris) in 1h3821" (great for a quite hilly race)....until I twisted my left ankle while running back from work. A quite severe twist, though no bone damage, thankfully. I had to stop running, again, for 3 years. Biking to/from work was the replacement activity....

March: I resumed running on March 10th, one week before a quite difficult trail race in my neighbourhood (30km "only" but up to 800 meters positive climb). That race was a preparation (and a test after the injury) for my 3rd participation to "Paris Ecotrail", a 80km trail race in woods of the South-West area of Paris, ending in the Eiffel Tower area. Indeed, both went very well, though I was very careful with my ankle. I finally broke my record at Ecotrail, finishing the race in 9h08 (to be compared to 9h36 last year and 11h15 the year before).

April: Paris marathon was scheduled one week after Ecotrail. Everybody will tell you that running a marathon one week after a 80km race is kinda crazy.....which is why I made it..:-). That was my 3rd Paris marathon and my 12th marathon overall. However, this year, no record in sight. The challenge was running the marathon....dressed as SpongeBob (you know me, right?). I actually had great fun doing that and was happy to get zillions of cheering all over the race, from the crowd. I finally completed the race in 4h30, which is, after all, not that far from the time of my very first marathon (4h12). The only drawback was that the succession of quite very long distance runs made my left knee suffer as it never happened before. As a consequence, I (again) had to stop running for nearly one month before we found that I was quite sensitive to pronation, which the succession of long and slow races made worse.

May: so finally afterthese (very) long weeks, I could gradually resume running, which finally culminated in mid-May with the 50km race "trail des Cerfs", in the Rambouillet Forest, closed to our place. This quite long but not too difficult trail race ("only" 800 meters positive climb overall) was completed in 5h16, which was completely unexpected, given the low training during the previous weeks.

June: no race during that month. The entire month was focused on preparing the Montagn'hard race of July 5th: so several training sessions with a lot of climbing either by running or by fast walking (nordic style) as well as downhill run training (always important for moutain trail).

July: the second "big peak" of my 2014 season was scheduled for July 5th: "La Montagn'hard", a moutain trail race close to Les Contamines in the neighbourhood of Chamonix, the french moutaineering Mekkah. "Only" 60 kilometers....but close to 5000 meters positive climb. Montagn'hard is among the thoughest moutain trail races in France and therefore a "must do" for trail runners. This race week-end includes also a 105km ultra-race, which is often said to be as hard, even maybe harder, than the very famous "Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc" trail in Chamonix. Still, for my second only season in moutain trail running, I decided to be "wise" and stick with the "medium" version (after all, my experience, as of now with moutain trails were only two quite "short" ones). Needless to say, it has indeed been a GREAT race. The environment is wonderful ("Miage" side of the Mont-Blanc range), the race goes through great place (Col de Tricot, noticeably) and I made a great result by finishing80th out of 325+ runners, in 12h18, while my target time was around 13 hours.

This is where I am now. Nearly one month after Montagn'hard, I'm deeply training for my next Big Goal: The "Sur la Trace des Ducs de Savoie" or "TDS", one of the 4 races of the Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc week, in end August (during DebConf): 120km, nearly 7500m positive climp, between Courmayeur and Chamonix, through several passes, up to 2600m height. Yet another challenge: my first "over 24h" race, with a full night out in the moutains.

You'll certainly hear again from me about that...:-)

posted at: 06:46 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Fri, 18 Jul 2014

OpenAmbit now in Debian (for owners of Suunto Ambit sport watches)

I recently bought a Suunto Ambit 2 sport watch for my running activities, replacing my good old Garmin ForeRunner 405 whose battery life wasn't longer in sync with the length of some of my runs...

Ambit 2 watches have up to 50 hours autonomy, which is great for long races, as well as a barometric altitude recording, which is way more precise that GPS-based altitude recording. Both these are keys for mountain running, indeed...

Sadly, Suunto only provides software for Windows and the software is mandatory to use in order to sync the watch logs and settings with Movescount.com, the Suunto web site. Even more: any change to the watch settings has to be done through Movescount, which means that without software, you can't really use the watch....:-(

Thankfully, a few people have worked on an "OpenAmbit" project (www.openambit.org) that's aimed at dealing with this and provide Linux users with a way to sync their watches without requiring a Windows computer.

And, as you may imagine, I wanted to package it for Debian. Indeed, some packaging work had already been done for Ubuntu, in a PPA, by Dominik Stadler at https://launchpad.net/~dominik-stadler/+archive/dsta-trusty-ppa. Still, I wanted this to go the preferred way of the official archive for the software to get more visibility.

Finally, after a few failures (doh, how picky are our FTPmasters about licenses.....which is a Good Thing!), OpenAmbit landed in unstable one week ago. This is as of now the 0.2 version, that doesn't work with the most recent versions of Suunto firmwares. However, a 0.2+20140606 version is on its way and....it works with my watch..:-)

So, Yet Another Success for the pkg-running-devel packaging team in Debian, once again proving that Debian developers are also deeply interested in physical activities..:-)

And, also, this is a proof that I'm not yet only running and no longer working for Debian....

posted at: 00:00 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 04 Jun 2014

I survived....

Last Sunday, I rebooted my (daily apt-upgraded) laptop which hadn't been rebooted for weeks and I noticed the boot was not looking as usual...then I opened my session as usual....then I started working as usual. Then I forgot about all this for 3 days.

Today, out of curiosity, I ran 'pstree':

systemd,1
  |-ModemManager,17039
  |   |-{gdbus},17042
  |   `-{gmain},17040
  |-NetworkManager,2109 --no-daemon
  |   |-{NetworkManager},2245
  |   |-{gdbus},2368
  |   `-{gmain},2329
  |-accounts-daemon,2122
  |   |-{gdbus},2312
  |   `-{gmain},2214
  |-acpi_fakekeyd,2488
  |-agetty,2202 --noclear tty1 38400 linux
  |-at-spi-bus-laun,3999
  |   |-{dconf worker},4003
  |   `-{gdbus},4005
  |-atd,2090 -f
  |-avahi-daemon,2062
  |   `-avahi-daemon,2163
  |-bluetoothd,2053 -n
  |-colord,2320
  |   |-{gdbus},2385
  |   `-{gmain},2401
  |-console-kit-dae,2693 --no-daemon
  .../... bunch of stuff....
  |-kdeinit4,2876                  
  |   |-dolphin,3801 -session 10152e2d9d4000140135639800000050560170_1401731749_275029
  .../... bunch of KDE stuff....
  .../... bunch of other stuff....

So, well, it seems that I apparently survived the whole systemd kaboom. I don't know how, I don't know why and because of what.....but it apparently worked.

\o/ /me happy.

posted at: 00:00 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sun, 01 Jun 2014

Bug #750000

Holger Levsen reported Debian bug #750000 on Saturday May 31th, against the console-setup package. A small reward for a longstanding Debian contributor (I still remember Holger's green hair which has been one of my first "live" sights of Debian in Porto Alegre airport, back in 2004).

Bug #750000 was reported as of February 24th: 3 months and 7 days for 10,000 bugs. A bit slowed down since 730000-740000.

We're now halfway to bug #800000 for which we have bets.

posted at: 00:00 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 25 Feb 2014

Bug #740000

Miguel Landaeta reported Debian bug #740000 on Monday February 24th, against the checkstyle package.

Bug #730000 was reported as of November 20th: 3 months and 4 days for 10,000 bugs. Nearly exactly same bug reporting rate than 720000-730000.

And, of course, we're still on our way to bug #800000 and bug #1000000.

posted at: 07:23 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 01 Jan 2014

[life] [running] 2013 summary

Yet another yearly summary of my running activities. As I already explained, now running took precedence over free software activities as you'll notice below...

So, what happened on that front in 2013 for running bubulle?

I finally managed to run 4603 km during the year, which is 1700km more than 2012. Definitively an explosion as I actually ran over 12.5km every day.

I added to this 206km with my moutain bike, all of them achieved during December while I was (and still am) suffering from an injury (fatigue fracture).

These 4603km were covered in 458 hours, so a bit over 19 days running and very very slightly over 10km/h.

It seems that my favourite race type choice is obvious, here: I'm, by very far, privileging, trail races, either in the country or forests in my neighbourhood....or in moutains.

As a result, also, the combined positive climb is faily high, too. Though harder to estimate than distance and time, I end up with about 72,900 meters positive climb (to be compared to last year's 33,000 meters...:-)). Clearly, my summer in moutains made the difference, here....

The longest time period without running, this year, has been 3 days. That's really insane...:-). Particularly when one notices that I happened to run *every day* during 40 consecutive days at one moment, between August and September. Who says that running is indeed a full part of my life? To be honest, I actually didn't run since December 11th (while writing this on January 1st) because of my tibia injury...but I did bike, so that's still some kind of sports, right?

Indeed, there have been 282 days in this year where I ran (or biked) at least once. Last year was 205 so....drug addiction is still increasing.

Most active month: November with 471km. Less active month: February with 334km (which is indeed more than 2012 most active month..:-))

This year was also a year of records:

I ran 14 official races during the year :

How about next^W this year? Well, my season's peaks are currently being secured:

No marathon as of now...:-). Or, indeed one (Paris in April), but more for fun : I hope to complete it in....less than 5 hours...but still in Spongebob Squarepants suit. You may want to watch TV on April 6th..:-)

As I wrote last year : all this of course is assuming that no injury comes up. I currently need to recover from the current one, though it doesn't seem as bad as it seemed a few weeks ago. We'll see on January 1st 2015...:-)

posted at: 15:14 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian/running | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 30 Dec 2013

[running] New about my injury

Latest news about my recent injury after last race: the fatigue fracture was really a small one and is not visible on radiography, even after 3 weeks.

I'm waiting for the sports doctor advice next week before resuming running...or still wait for a few weeks and still stick to mountain biking. I can tell that not running for more than a few days is really frustrating, particularly when visiting my relatives in St-Etienne, where there are moutains and great trails.

posted at: 16:38 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian/running | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 21 Dec 2013

[life] Running update December 21st 2013

Last time I blogged about my running activities was after DebConf 13 in Switzerland, back in August.

At that time, I just completed two great moutain races in one month (Mont-Blanc Marathon, then EDF Cenis Tour, one being 42km and 2500m positive climb and the other one being 50km and 2700m). EDF Cenis Tour was my best result overall in a trail race, being ranked 40th out of more than 300 runners and 3rd in my age category (men 50-59).

So, in late August, I was preparing for my "autumn challenge", a succession of 3 long distance races in a row:

Quite a challenge, indeed, to run 3 long distance events in a row, with only 3 weeks between them.

Preparation for all this was mostly piling up kilometers over kilometers. First in road and flat training, when the goal was the marathon. So, after piking to 471 kilometers in August (more than 15km/day), I ran 452 in September and again 420 in October. During that preparation, I also broke my personal best in half-marathon, down to 1h34.

I therefore was perfectly fit for the Toulouse Marathon and, indeed, unsurprisingly, I achieved my first goal by breaking my personal best down to.....3h25' and a few seconds. Really a great achievement and something that gives me a little hope of being able to qualify for Boston Marathon (though chances are a bit low again: I can apply because I'm below 3h30 but the chances that I get a seat are not very big).

Recovery from the marathon was easy, thanks to the big preparation and then the second race came very quickly: Le Puy-Firminy. My third participation to this night race, organised by a cousin of mine. I completed the first one in 9h15....then, last year, the second one in 8h25. And, this year, well......7h15 and 26th out of over 200 runners. Huge, great and stunning performance for me, really. Everything went so well that I can't remember any moment where I had any doubt. And I will indeed remember the last kilometer ran along with my sister (who is also a runner) and where she.....couldn't follow me while I was sprinting at about 14km/h after 68 kilometers. Definitely my best race this year.

And then came the last challenge: Saintélyon. If you never saw it, you have no idea. While Le Puy-Firminy features 200 runners and 150 walkers over 68 kilometers, this one features 6000 runners for 75 kilometers. Six THOUSAND. The vision of a light snake, kilometers long, over the hills in St-Etienne neighbourhood, was stunning. Moreover, we ran that one, with snow, ice and cold (down to -10°C at the highest point of the race). So, here, the goal was running with my friend and share the joy of the race with her, all along...and eventually beat her personal best on this race (11h15 last year, while the race was 5km shorter).

We made it really well, despite the crowd and the fact that it doesn't allow running one's real speed. Despite the ice and snow that makes downhills really.....interesting. Despite dolors I had in my legs at the end of the race. We completed the race in 10h38, quite away from our secret goal (9h30) but that one was really ambitious...:-).

And we crossed the finish line together, hand in hand, for the third time of our running life. And we shared tears at the end of the race. And we shared many great moments over that week-end. Moments that let one remember what the definition of "friendship" is. I found my "running sister" in Sabine and this is something we really appreciate and is hard to explain.

All this would make a great conclusion if.....I hadn't injured my leg with this accumulation. Indeed, as one might expect after such a hard challenge, I discovered during the days that followed the last race, that I have a fatigue fracture on my left tibia. As a consequence, I need to stop running for about 6 weeks....which you can understand is kinda hard for me.

But, guess what? I'm allowed to bike...:-). So, well, I repaired my old moutain bike and now, I'm biking instead of running...:-)

Finally, 2013 has been my greatest running year, again. 4700 kilometers ran over the year, nearly 13km/day in average. 14 races (3 road races and 11 trail races). 463 hours spent running and 72,000meters climbed (about 8 Sagarmatha, aka Everest, climbed). 2 Personal Best performances. 2 long distance races which I ran in more than 1 hour less then last year. 2 new moutain races. And first running injury...:-)

2014 will be different. I will run again some races I alreay ran such as Paris 80km Ecotrail or Le Puy Firminy (4th time in a row). But I also hope to be able to run one of the Ultra Tour du Mont-Blanc races in late August in Chamonix (need to be picked up at the bib lottery for this to happen). And probably some other interesting challenges such as running the Paris Marathon dressed as SpongeBob....one week after running the 80km Ecotrail....:-)

But you'll see that in my next running update, of course. Merry New Year and Happy Christmas!

posted at: 17:18 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian/running | permanent link to this entry

So, what's up with bubulle in Debian?

This is the end of the year and time for me to look back and summarize what happened to my Debian life during 2013.

In short, it clearly seems that this year is the "year after peak of involvment" year. Up to 2010 included, my involvment in Debian constantly increased. 2011 and 2012 have seen some kind of stagnation with still some high involvment in some areas (i18n obviously, DebConf-related stuff, font packaging...) but already some reduction in others (D-I for instance...where the overall involvment of Debian developers is nos quite low, Kibi excepted).

But, clearly, in 2013, something changed.

And, indeed, it's easy to see what happened. In 2007, I started to motivate myself to resume my practice of sports (I used to be a well-trained volleyball player back in 80's) and I started running. More and more and more and more. 992km in 2008, 1700km in 2009 (and my first marathon), 2200km in 2010 (and my first ultras), 2500km in 2011 (and my first 80km), 2900km in 2012 (and more ultras) and....about 4700km in 2013 (with many many firsts).

What changed is now obvious. Running and sports (and related activites such as a lot of socializing with other runners) took over free software activities.

Last summer and autumn made it clear, indeed. While I was attending my 10th DebConf in a row (I think we're very few people to have achieved this), it was not my summer's "peak". I spent some great time in Switzerland, still enjoyed a lot meeting again with old and new friends from all over the world. I did some good hacking and achived quite some good things over there. But, still, that was not what I will keep from this summer because.....I had two great moutain races in July and August and *this* is what I'll keep.

So, here we are: I'm reducing my involvment in Debian, obviously. Some things are handed over to other people, formally or informally. Some other things will indeed wait for someone to pick them up....or might slowly die as it sometimes happens in this project.

I will very probably not attend DebConf14 in Portland even though I have been among the people who were enthusiastic when we picked that bid. But the dates conflict with the Ultra Tour du Mont-Blanc races in Chamonix, where I'll hopefully try to complete my first "over 100km" race in moutains. I will probably decline being part of the Debconf bids team for DC15 as well as the sponsoring team. I nearly stopped working on Samba packages and will not attend SambaXP in May.

That's my challenge now. I don't want to completely quit this project and it's indeed harder than it seems, when one's involvment is going down. I'm currently trying to find the right balance to still stay involved in what has been a great part of my life in the last 15-20 years. For instance, I'll try to successfully mentor two applicants from the Outreach Program for Women. Or still continue to work occasionnally on font packages. Or still continue to manage D-I i18n.

But you'll be seeing (and hearing) me less. The challenge is to still continue seeing and hearing me about Debian and free software and it's indeed less easy than it seems.

I hope I'll succeed.

posted at: 09:28 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sun, 24 Nov 2013

Less IRC...

Over last months, I notice I'm not that active on IRC. Still, my always connected IRSSI client was constantly connected to 12+ channels.

I just decided to reduce this to channels where I'm still (loosely) active and maybe less likely to miss highlights (or answer then 3 days later).

So, I'll stick to the following:

And that's all. So, well, if you want to catch me, you know where to go. But, really, mail is much more preferrable to reach me out nowadays.

posted at: 16:49 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 20 Nov 2013

Bug #730000

Yet another round number for a translator..:-)

Américo Monteiro reported Debian bug #730000 on Wednesday November 20th, against the bilibop package. One of our recurrent debconf translations bug report

Bug #720000 was reported as of August 17th: 3 months and 3 days for 10,000 bugs. Slight slowdown in the bug reporting rate after a small acceleration last time.

So, we're still on our way to bug #800000 and bug #1000000.

posted at: 07:04 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 31 Aug 2013

DebConf 13: running outcome

This DebConf has been the first one where I ran every day. That proved to be kinda hard on some mornings, but I found a way to circumvent that by proposing group runs at the end of the relevant days.

In total, I managed to run 12 days in a row, for a grand total of 186.88km, in 21h22', for a total height difference of 6972m. In short, I nearly climbed Mount Aconcagua, Americas highest peak..:-)

Most of these runs were quite slow ones and rather "short" ones (around 15km), because of the nature of the paths around (nearly impossible to find something flat except by running around the football field).

The longest run was for the DayTrip, with about 25km in about 4 hours (including some pauses) and 1600m height difference. I'm definitely working on my moutain running skills more than marathon and other kind of "speed" races.

That followed a great results for my last race, the "EDF Cenis Tour" 50km trail race in Lanslebourg, French Alps, where I completed the race in 6h38, nearly the sametime than Mont-Blanc marathon, 1 month earlier....which was 8 kilometers shorter.

I'm apparently ready for very long distance mountain races, now, as it seems. Thanks you DebConf 13 organizers for choosing such a great locations for us, crazy runners.

And, despite that, my next running goal is a "classical" marathon, the Toulouse marathon in late October, where I expect breaking the 3h30 barrier, that would indeed be a qualifier for the Boston Marathon, one of my dreams for the future (and, yes, it is still a dream, despite this year's events).

posted at: 16:43 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

DebConf 13: hacking outcome

I *did* some hacking at DebConf, as usual. For once, I had no TODO list: after all, I never complete these, so why make one?

Still, I participated to discussions around samba packaging, mostly animated by Ivo De Decker and I think we're making good progress towards samba 4.x packages. The road is long, quite complicated, but we now have a stronger team, with a very active Ivo, Jeroen Dekkers who officially joined, Steve Langasek who still cherishes one of his pet packages (and even branched in our git with the Ubuntu packages). Great work and thanks to Ivo for pushing this forward.

I also worked quite actively on the migration of fonts packages to git (I now reached the point where I'm more comfortable with git than SVN, yes, everything can happen). These packages were modernized at the same time and checked for new upstream versions (I have to say that few of these fonts had new upstream versions, indeed). We unfortunately found no time to have a good font BoF in Vaumarcus, indeed...but I'm not sure we would have many things to say. The work is done and done well, in this team.

Some progress was made, also, for restoring a working "monolithic" build of D-I. This build gathers together all udebs from unstable, which means it offers a D-I image that uses ALL udebs from nustable.....which is not the default of other images. This would be very helpful for translators who want to check their work as soon as possible. In the future, with a Jenkins task that would build each package at each commit and then build a monolithic image, we could have a way to provide a tes snapshot of D-I git repos.....which could help catching more bugs (or more of my stupid mistakes).

So, in general, I consider this a quite successful DebConf when it comes at "real" production.

posted at: 16:41 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 17 Aug 2013

More French pages than English pages on Debian web site

As of today, thanks to the tremendous work of the French localization team in Debian, there are more web pages in French than there are in English, on Debian web site.

How can this happen?

Indeed, the Debian web site is not always made of pages primarily written in English. There are some French, Spanish, Chinese pages. These are not translated into English because.....there is no translation team for English (the debian-l10n-english mailing list more acts as a review board).

So, given that French translators nearly translated ALL English web pages and because there are quite a few French pages, we currently have 5802 web pages in French, while there are only 5801 in English.

The French Cabal definitely reached its goal: we have the DPL, we have the web site. Toutes vos possessions nous appartiennent désormais.

I'm now preparing a GR in order to turn French into the official communication language in Debian.

PS: merci à Thomas Vincent qui a largement contribué à ce succès ces derniers jours !

posted at: 20:50 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Bug #720000

Laurent Bigonville reported Debian bug #720000 on Saturday August 17th 2013, against the drizzle package. This bug is already marked pending by Tobias Frost, the package maintainer.

Bug #710000 was reported as of May 27th: 2 months and 21 days for 10,000 bugs. For once, this is a rate acceleration which we can probably explain by the release of wheezy and the work strongly resumed by many maintainers for the release of jessie.

It is indeed interesting to see that this 720000th bug report happened nearly on Debian's 20th birthday. To make it short, we could then say that Debian had 36,000 bug reports every year in average (which is not exactly true as the BTS records start in 1996).

Funnily also, this is the first time since I'm doing this recurrent post every 10,000 bugs that one happens *during* a DebConf, a few hours before DebConf 13 officially ends up.

posted at: 18:53 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 27 Jul 2013

[life] Running update July 27th 2013: Bubulle now runs in moutains

My last running update was sent after I had a great April month with two successful trail races (35km then 44km).

The next target was Mont-Blanc marathon in Chamonix valley in early July, so it's time for me to send a new update before summer.

May and June was mostly training. Huge training. Very long distances with 375km in May and over 430 in June (breaking my former monthly record by over 50 kilometers). Yes, that means over 14 kilometers every day..:-)

I indeed achieved that with my "go to work partly by running" habits, which are now deeply included in my daily schedule. Much more convenient than bus ride (with the typical random schedules of RATP, which French people translate by "Rentre Avec Tes Pieds" or "Come back home by walking"....which is exactly what I'm doing).

With such training (sometimes including extra rides in the forests, with short but steep ups and downs)....I was well prepared for THE early summer goal : Marathon du Mont-Blanc in Chamonix (not Ultra Trail du Mont-blanc : this one, I'm not ready for....yet)..

My first mountain trail race, and what race! Imagine 42km in the moutain lovers heaven, namely the Chamonix Valley, with the Mont-Blanc, Aiguille Verte, Aiguille du Midi, Aiguilles Rouges, etc. above your head. Of course, not only in the valley but goind up and down "slightly"....in short 2200 meters positive climb..:-)

I ran it with a female friend of mine, who I met in local races and through runners web forums. Sabine has about the same running skills than me and we developed a good and nice friendship, sharing our love for running in the nature. So, during May and June, we decided to run this race together as we were both registered for it.

A first trial in a local 35km trail race two weeks before the MMB was very successful. We ended up in 3h40 and Sabine was ranked 5th female runner. And, moreover, we had a tremendous pleasure by crossing the finishing line together.

So, we did it again in Chamonix. And, hell, we did it well: I had set the goal to 6 hours and 30 minutes and we completed the race in..... 6 hours and 34 minutes. Much much better than I and she would have expected. And, believe me, crossing the finishing line was again a special moment, particularly because the crowd at the end of this race make it look like l'Alpe d'Huez on the Tour de France. And, this on a wonderful sunny day, arriving at Planpraz, facing the Mont-Blanc. If you've ever been to Chamonix, you know what I mean.

So, first moutain trail and, hell, not the last one! For those of you who can read French...or just want to see some pictures of a running bubulle, here is the link to the story.

And these 42 kilometers were indeed so well done that the day after, while coming down from the famous Aiguille du Midi with Elisabeth (who came with me to Chamonix, of course)...I decided to run down from the cable car intermediate stop (2300m altitude) to Chamonix (1050m). Over 1200 meters down in 48 minutes... :-). Just a bit slower than the cable car....:)

The remaining of July saw me again running back and forth to work and I'm indeed about to break my monthly record, eventually reaching 450 kilometers in one month and only two days NOT running in the whole month. Yeah, crazy.

The upcoming Sunday, August 4th, just before going to Debconf 13, I'll spend a few days in Lanslebourg and will be running the EDF Cenis Tour trail, for 50 kilometers and 2600 meters positive climb. This time, a very "small" race, with no more than 150 runners. So, that will be another experience by running nearly entirely alone between 1400 and 2700 meters altitude. I'll post the outcome (or you'll probably hear about it at DC13....).

See you, hopefully not in 3 months, for another update about running Bubulle.

posted at: 17:33 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian/running | permanent link to this entry

Developers per country (July 2013)

This is time again for my annual report about the number of developers per country.

This is now the fifth edition of this report, after the 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009 editions.

So, here we are with the July 2013 version, sorted by the ratio of *active* developers per million population for each country.

Act: number of active developers
Dev: total number of developers
A/M: number of active devels per million pop.
D/M: number of devels per million pop.
2009: rank in 2009
2010: rank in 2010
2011: rank in 2011 (June)
2011: rank in 2012 (June)
2013: rank now
Code Name Population Act Dev Dev Act/Million Dev/Million 2009 2010 June 2011 June 2012 July 2013
fi Finland 5259250 19 31 3,61 5,89 1 1 1 1 1
ie Ireland 4670976 12 15 2,57 3,21 13 9 6 2 2
ch Switzerland 7870134 20 27 2,54 3,43 2 2 2 3 3
mq Martinique 396404 1 1 2,52 2,52

3 4 4
se Sweden 9088728 22 37 2,42 4,07 3 6 7 5 5
no Norway 4973029 12 15 2,41 3,02 5 4 4 6 6
nz New Zealand 4331600 10 15 2,31 3,46 4 3 5 7 7
de Germany 81471834 165 235 2,03 2,88 7 7 9 9 8 *
lu Luxemburg 503302 1 1 1,99 1,99 8 5 8 8 9 *
at Austria 8217280 16 26 1,95 3,16 6 8 10 10 10
fr France 65350000 100 130 1,53 1,99 12 12 11 11 11
au Australia 22607571 31 59 1,37 2,61 9 10 12 12 12
be Belgium 11071483 14 17 1,26 1,54 10 11 13 13 13
uk United-Kingdom 62698362 73 114 1,16 1,82 14 14 14 14 14
nl Netherlands 16728091 19 40 1,14 2,39 11 13 15 15 15
ca Canada 33476688 32 61 0,96 1,82 15 15 17 16 16
dk Denmark 5529888 5 10 0,9 1,81 17 17 16 17 17
es Spain 46754784 35 56 0,75 1,2 16 16 19 18 18
it Italy 59464644 36 51 0,61 0,86 23 22 22 19 19
cz Czech Rep 10190213 6 6 0,59 0,59 21 20 21 21 20 *
lt Lithuania 3535547 2 2 0,57 0,57 28 19 20 22 21 *
us USA 313232044 173 378 0,55 1,21 19 21 25 24 22 *
il Israel 7740900 4 6 0,52 0,78 24 24 24 25 23 *
hu Hungary 10076062 5 10 0,5 0,99 18 25 26 20 24 *
hr Croatia 4290612 2 2 0,47 0,47 20 18 18 26 25 *
lv Latvia 2204708 1 1 0,45 0,45 26 26 27 27 26 *
bg Bulgaria 7364570 3 3 0,41 0,41 25 23 23 23 27 *
uy Uruguay 3477778 1 2 0,29 0,58 22 27 28 28 28
jp Japan 127078679 35 50 0,28 0,39 30 28 29 29 29
pl Poland 38441588 10 14 0,26 0,36 29 29 30 30 30
cr Costa Rica 4301712 1 1 0,23 0,23 31 30 31 31 31
by Belarus 9577552 2 2 0,21 0,21 35 36 39 39 32 *
sg Singapore 5183700 1 1 0,19 0,19


33 33
pt Portugal 10561614 2 4 0,19 0,38 27 32 32 34 34
gr Greece 10787690 2 3 0,19 0,28 33 38 34 35 35
sk Slovakia 5477038 1 1 0,18 0,18 32 31 33 36 36
ar Argentina 40677348 6 8 0,15 0,2 34 33 35 32 37 *
rs Serbia 7186862 1 1 0,14 0,14



38 *
tw Taiwan 23040040 3 3 0,13 0,13 37 34 37 37 39 *
br Brazil 192376496 21 23 0,11 0,12 36 35 38 38 40 *
cu Cuba 11241161 1 1 0,09 0,09
38 41 41 41
kr South Korea 48754657 4 6 0,08 0,12 39 39 42 42 42
gt Guatemala 13824463 1 1 0,07 0,07



43 *
ve Venezuela 28047938 2 2 0,07 0,07 40 45 50 49 44 *
ec Ecuador 15007343 1 1 0,07 0,07
40 43 43 45 *
co Colombia 45566856 3 4 0,07 0,09 41 44 46 47 46 *
cl Chile 16746491 1 2 0,06 0,12 42 41 44 44 47 *
za South Africa 50590000 3 10 0,06 0,2 38 48 48 48 48
ru Russia 143030106 7 8 0,05 0,06 43 42 47 45 49 *
mg Madagascar 21281844 1 1 0,05 0,05 44 37 40 40 50 *
ro Romania 21904551 1 2 0,05 0,09 45 43 45 46 51 *
my Malaysia 28250000 1 1 0,04 0,04

49 50 52 *
pe Peru 29907003 1 1 0,03 0,03 46 46 51 51 53 *
tr Turkey 74724269 2 2 0,03 0,03 47 47 52 52 54 *
ua Ukraine 45134707 1 1 0,02 0,02 48 53 58 59 55 *
th Thailand 66720153 1 2 0,01 0,03 50 50 54 54 56 *
eg Egypt 80081093 1 3 0,01 0,04 51 51 55 55 57 *
mx Mexico 112336538 1 1 0,01 0,01 49 49 53 53 58 *
cn China 1344413526 10 14 0,01 0,01 53 53 57 56 59 *
in India 1210193422 9 9 0,01 0,01 52 52 56 57 60 *
sv El Salvador 7066403 0 1 0 0,14

36 58 61 *





























957 1535 62,35%






A few interesting facts:

posted at: 15:46 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 28 May 2013

Bug #710000

Alexander Reichle-Schmehl created Debian bug #710000 on Monday May 27th 2013, against the ftp.debian.org pseudo-package, by cloning a bug report by Rene Engelhard. So, technically speaking, Rene reported this bug....but Tolimar is responsible for that.

Bug #700000 was reported as of February 7th: 3 months and 20 days for 10,000 bugs. This is again a VERY significant drop in the bug reporting rate in Debian. Is that related to the release of jessie? We'll see that in the upcoming 4 months.

posted at: 19:19 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 06 May 2013

Wheezy is out: my main box upgraded the same day

As you may have noticed, Debian 7.0 wheezy was released yesterday.

And, well, for the first time ever, I upgraded my main server (kheops....running Debian since buzz is out) to the finest and latest release the same day it was released.

I didn't run into many problems, just a few glitches (some of them might still get some of our users angry, though).

Most noticeably, I couldn't easily update two key packages on this serveer (where I receive all my incoming mail) : roundcube and dovecot.

Roundcube indeed lost support for SQLite backend and that was probably the reason for which I falled into the "Could not perform immediat econfiguration" trap for it. The workarounds mentioned in the release notes did not work and the only solution was to remove the Roundcobe packages then re-add them later on. Not a big deal, as Roundcube is only used by my son (who will attend Debconf again, by the way) for the few mail he still receives on kheops.

Dovecot was more tricky and my mail server temporarily stopped working for my lapto pto grab mail from it. OK, admitedly, I should have read NEWS.Debian that was explaining all problems one might have, particularly problems related to SSL certificates and the use of the "mail" group. But, indeed, that should have deserved a note in the release notes. After all, we're talking there about an obscure php5-suhosin package, right? :-)

Finally, it took me less than 3 hours to upgrade everything with no service interruption for users on my local network, except a 30-minute stop of the IMAP server.

I still have to reboot to get the new kernel in operation and voilà.

Let's now go on our way to jessie!

posted at: 04:50 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sun, 28 Apr 2013

[life] Running update: January-April...and more.

It seems that I didn't send any update to my international friends for quite a while, at least when it comes at my running activities.

So, in short, I ran A LOT during the first months of April 2013. I mean it. As of now (April 28th), I cumulated 1424 kilometers, with a peak in March up to 375 kilometers. So, that's an average 12 kilometers per day.

How did I achieve this? Among many other things, by doing part of my commute to work by running, which means 14 kilometers in one day, with a backpack containing everything needed to be dressed "normally" while working, plus my laptop, my rain jacket, etc....so up to 4 kilograms on my shoulders. And, yes, I can use a shower at work and I don't stink all day long!

This alone already makes a fairly good training. Of course, all alone, it wouldn't be really funny, so I, of course, add some runs during the week-end, mostly trail running, enjoying the nature around our place.

Official races have been mostly trail races during these months. The only road race has been an half-marathon in Bullion, back in February (4th year in a row I'm running this one, which is traditionnaly the "resume road races" competition in the area). I completed it in 1h39, quite close to my PB, even if....that was meant to be a training only.

In February, still as a preparation race for Paris Ecotrail, I ran a 20km trail in Auffargis (a neat small village in the neighbourhood of our place), again completing it with great success, with a big negative split (for non hard-core runners, a negative split happens when one runs the second half of a race faster than the first one).

All this was in preparation for Paris Ecotrail race, my second time on this 80km race that ends up at Eiffel Tower. Last year, being my first attempt on such distance,, I completed it in 11 hours 5 minutes. To make it short, this year, I finished 579th out of more than 2000 runners, in 9h36. That was indeed a really great result, in line with my 8h15 time back in November for the 70km "Le Puy-Firminy" night race.

Moreover, I could indeed recover very quickly : the race was run on a Saturday and I resumed my "commute runs" on Wednesday.

The next target were two trail races in April : I originally planned a 44km race on April 21st and finally ended up adding to it a 35km trail race on April 7th (the day of Paris Marathon), only 3 weeks after Ecotrail..:-)

And I completed both these with a huge success. Indeed my best trail races ever, again with two negative splits and also a very good place. Indeed, I now usually complete races close to the very first women...:-).

So, on April 7th, the trail du Josas (35km, 800m positive climb... which means about the equivalent of a marathon) was completed in 3h40....and last Sunday, the trail des Lavoirs (44km, 1100m positive climb) was completed in 4h40, with the last 2 kilometers being run above 13km/h. Describing how one can feel when "flying" in the very last kilometers of such a long run is just....impossible. Great, great, great memories.

Then, during the week following the trail des Lavoirs, I ran 101km in 6 days, confirming that recovery is perfect.

So, definitely, I am stunned by what I could achieve during these months, without injury, without big pain. Just good training and good results, without suffering and a giant pleasure.

Yes, running is definitely a drug and I'm deeply addicted. Well, the result is, in short, that I feel good and well, so I think I won't stop soon...:-)

Next challenge : Mont-Blanc marathon, in Chamonix : 42.195km....and 2500meters positive climb, with 1500 meters negative. Start in Chamonix at 1050m high and end at Planpraz (2050m), facing the Mont-Blanc, with a maximum altitude of 2267m during the race. Quite an interesting "marathon", isn't it? That will be my first race in real mountains...and, I guess not the last one. Target time: 6 hours. Secret wish: 5h30.

During summer, I will mostly be preparing for the second part of the year....but I'll certainly enjoy the neighbourhood of Vaumarcus, Switzerland, where I'll attend DebConf. Challenge : combine running, hacking, cheese eating and fit all this in 24 hours every day.

For the end of the year, challenges should peak between October and December:

So, well, see you soon on this blog for another update after Mont-Blanc marathon. Let's hope I'll give you good news.

posted at: 00:00 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian/running | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 16 Feb 2013

DPL game or why I'm not your man

I am in some way flattered (en_FR?) that some people think that I should stand as DPL candidate (here, or there, or there). Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your confidence, it's appreciated.

Still, I won't stand and I feel like I should explain why.

Yes, I now have some experience in the Debian Project after more than 11 years as DD. Yes, I like to represent the project and I think I don't do that so badly when I do it (which is not as often as one might imagine).

Yes, I feel like I have some experience in acting as a "leader" though I often have doubts about this, probably just like many people who have management duties in their professional life.

Yes, I often define myself as a non-technical person which helps in dealing with problems and projects with different perspectives. Still, this is often not so true and that extends to my professionnal activity. I *am* indeed a technical person but I'm more a "specialist of everything and nothing" in this aspect. That's probably good for a DPL.

But, still I won't stand. There are indeed many reasons for this and I'll try to give them here.

First of all, Debian has always been a hobby for me. A hobby that sometimes ate several hours a day and still eats part of my time. But still a hobby. It can't become the major part of my life. And I think that someone spending one year as DPL "has" to do it as the major part of her|his life.

I can't free time from my work schedule. My work, though being in IT, has few to relate with Free Software, and I can't divert part of it with Debian duties...or merge it with Debian duties. For about 3 years, I compensate the loss of two people in my team by working hard and VERY fast, in a constant stress....connecting with Onera nearly all time long and maintaining the level of services our users deserve as high as I can. And I like it.

I can't free time from my family schedule. Of course, my children don't request much attention right now, they all live their own lives. Jean-Baptiste is now having a full-time paid job and does great things in a geeky style I recognize very well. Sophie will soon be a great graduated social worker and will start working in next Summer. And Magali is studying physical therapy so that she can later help me recovering after too hard running races..:-). However, last and definitely not least, I have a wonderful wife who I want to share as much as I can with. And I can't share Debian with her. Indeed, Elizabeth is the very first reason for my reasoning.....because she is the center of my life for more than 30 years now.

You also know that I happen to run a little bit..:-)...and that requires time too. Something I won't sacrifice as it brought more equilibrium in my life (and a great health, at an age where one has to care about one's health, now).

All this doesn't leave much room. And I indeed noticed that my involvement in Debian has reduced noticeably in the past months. That is indeed the most important point: I'm "slowing down" in Debian...or, at least, I'm trying to find an equilibrium where it represents only a part of my hobbies....and not an ever-growing one.

Last...maybe not least, I'm somehow pessimistic about the future of the project. You may have read that subtly in my writings, here or there. I feel like we are slowing down in innovation and are slowly feeling short of resources. Renewal in project members doesn't come as fast as it used to. You are free to disagree with me and I hope you'll be right to. But, still, that won't remove my pessimism. And, well, it's hard to lead a project when you're partly pessimistic about it, isn't it?

In short, all in all, I'm currently "fighting" in some way to keep motivation for something I deeply love being involved in. And that's really important. And that's why I can't stand: it wouldn't be a good service to the project. It would be good for my ego, certainly (yes, I have one....and sometimes not a small one)....but it wouldn't be a good service to the project, and I also feel it could very well lead me to burnout.

And, if you "nominated" me...or think I would candidate for DPL, you don't want me to burnout and vanish from Debian, right? So, this is why I won't stand.

And this is why you'll continue to have great Cheese and Wine parties at Debconfs....or boring l10n reports....or, here or there, some broken uploads in the archive..:-)....but not another French DPL, at least not /me.

PS: by the way, I have my own list of preferred candidates. Not sure I want it to be public, though...:-)...you'll see soon if I change my mind!

posted at: 22:20 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sun, 10 Feb 2013

Bet for Debian bug #800000

Yesterday, I launched the contest for prediction of the day Debian bugs #800000 and #1000000 will be reported.

For bug #1000000, this is the second set of bets after those we placed back in 2008 when bug #500000 was reported. I then proposed that we have different bets, refined each time. That gives an interesting light on how people estimate the bug report rate (and, to some extent, the project's life).

Have you bet already?

You don't need to be a DD or a DM in order to bet. Just someone wanting to have some fun with Debian contributors. Easy and costless.

posted at: 14:21 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 09 Feb 2013

Bug #700000 has been reported...and I won the bet..:-)

Here it is.

Debian had seven hundred thousand bugs reported in its history.

Yet another French winner, indeed two, this time:

The French gang already got #200000 (by Michel Grentzinger) and #400000 (by /me), and #600000 by Cyril "KiBi" Brulebois. We're good at stupid games, as it seems.

Of course, I will soon open the wiki page for the bug #800000 bet, which will again include a place where you can also bet for bug #1000000. Be patient, the week-end is coming..:-)

posted at: 06:52 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 01 Jan 2013

[life] [running] 2012 summary

Yet another yearly summary of my running activities. It seems, indeed, that running has now slightly taken precedence over free software activities in my life and priorities for my free time.

To my fellow free software friends: don't worry, I'm not on my way to stop investing my time in Debian. It's quite clear that I'm reducing my involvement, mostly because days only have 24 hours...not because I'm bored or tired by free software development.

But, certainly, it became an important thing that running currently has a small priority over Debian nowadays, for me.

So, what happened on that front in 2012 for running bubulle?

I finally managed to run 2900 km during the year, which is over 400km more than 2011. This is mostly due to the increasing part of running in my daily commute : a typical work week can now be something like this:

With such an organization, I can end up with weeks where I run up to 50-60 kilometers in 5 days, with peaks that may include 26km in one *work* day. I also end up having room in trains between the runs, I wonder why..:-)

And, of course, during week-ends, I spend some parts of my time running too..:-). Indeed, just like for many drugs, I feel sad during days where I haven't run at all and it's usually hard for me to spend more than 2 days without.

Indeed, the longest time period without running, this year, has been 9 days, just after the Caen marathon, in June. Mostly because, at that time, I reached a moment where training (and believe me, very boring and hard training) consumed all my motivation.

But these moments are indeed very rare and training is mostly *never* boring for me. Mostly because I like running in the nature, in forests, woods, fields, country. Never wearing an MP3 player or any kind of such device toplay music, but just enjoying the outside, whether it's raining, winding, sunny hot. Running (particularly my daily commute) is also the moment where I *think* about my work, my technical activities, my own life, whatever. I think I even sometimes translated some software, mentally, while running..:)

Indeed, there have been 205 days in this year where I ran at least once. Last year was 181 so....drug addiction is increasing.

So, 2900 kilometers. That's about the distance from my place to Moscow in Russia. 282 hours (11 days18 hours.....9d21h last year). Average speed: 10,3km/h (10,5km/h last year). Cumulated height difference: 33,400 meters (27700m last year).

More distance, more time, a bit slower: this is an obvious consequence of more trail running (which includes more difficulties, such as running on volcanoes!).

Most active month: November with 331km. Less active month: June with 141km.

This year was also a year of records:

I ran 10 official races during the year : two "ultra" races (70km Le Puy-Firminy in November, by night and 80km Paris Ecotrail in March), two marathons (Caen and Val de Rueil), four half-marathons and two "short" (less than 30km) trail races.

How about next^W this year? Well, my goals are currently being secured:

All this of course is assuming that no injury comes up (my ankles are sometimes yelling outbut I'm fortunate enough to not have articulation problems that many runners have, particularly in knees). We'll see on January 1st 2014...:-)

posted at: 00:00 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian/running | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 11 Dec 2012

Celebrate Samba!

Samba 4 is out.

That's just it. 21 years (same age than the Linux kernel, 2 years older than Debian) after a crazy australian student started it, Samba 4 is out. Doh.

posted at: 18:47 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 27 Nov 2012

Tristan da Cunha

I happen to be a great fan of ocean races, so like many, particularly here in France, I'm following the Vendée Globe ocean race, alone around the world on 60-feet IMOCA race ships, without stop or assistance.

In its early editions, Vendée Globe was easy to explain : start from Les Sables d'Olonne and come back there after going around Antarctica by leaving it to starboard. Period.

Now, it's a bit more complicated as, for security reasons, the sailors have to pass a few points meant to prevent them from going too south (during first editions, some sailors went as south as 65°S).

Sailors are currently heading "down" the Atlantic and will probably pass in the vicinity of the Tristan da Cunha island.

This island has always been fascinating to me. It is the remotest point inf the world with a permanent population. The closest inhabited land is over 2800km away. 271 people live there. No airport. No regular ship line. Only fishing boats from time to time and that's all. It's probably hard to imagine what is the life there....but I find this fascinating, in some way. Maybe one of these parts of the world where I would like to go and never will. And there's even a volcano (indeed, the island *is* a volcano) :

I wonder if there is a Linux user over there...

posted at: 21:06 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sun, 21 Oct 2012

[life] Running update: nearly qualified for Boston marathon...

That was not my target in today's marathon (my second one in the year). The target was breaking my 3h38'45" record, set on June 10th in Caen.

And, well, I did it. By more than 5 minutes \o/. Of course, the Seine-Eure marathon is the perfect place for this:

My target was running 5'06"/km, so 3h35'11" (but the target was running this as long as possible and see what happens after km 35). I did this nearly perfectly in the first half, reaching the half-marathon in 1h47'30". Double this and you get 3h35'..:-)

"However", I slightly accelerated in the second half, first without noticing, then because....I just could do it..:-). So I managed to run the second half at an average 5'/km, with even the last 2 kilometers around 4'50" and an amazing sprint at the end. Usain bubulle.

The outcome is 3h33'35". Doh. Never thought I could do this. It seems that my unusual preparation (remember the "let's run a marathon when coming back from work, at night", in September? or the 5 half-marathons in a row....culminating in a 3/4 marathon in the 6th week-end?)...was not so bad.

I'm now very close to qualifying times for Boston, my dream marathon (much more than NYC) as they are 3h30' for my age category. Well, another option is to wait turning 55, where the qualifying time is then 3h40..:-)...but it woudl be quite good to complete one under 3h30. Now, it doesn't look like a dream.

We'll see at the end of next year as I will only run one marathon, in autumn, more focusing Spring on ultra running (and, technically, a marathon, but that will be the Mont-Blanc marathon, just before Debconf13....and these 42.195km are quite different from those in Normandy!

posted at: 00:00 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian/running | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 09 Oct 2012

Long overdue 2012 update 30 for Debian Installer localization

It's quite some time since I didn't report about Debian Installer localization. Indeed, thanks to the tireless activity of Cyril Brulebois, we focused on releasing D-I and I indeed stopped harassing translators for updates around July 2012.

Why July? Well, you probably know we have "something" to release as soon as we can and most, if not all, Debian energies should be focused on this!

Or, more precisely speaking, I only focused on getting the newly introduced material translated: we had several changes recently in D-I, mostly focused on important features, such as IPv6 support (thanks to Phil Kern who worked on this), better wireless networking support (thanks to Sorina Sandu) and EFI boot support (thanks to Steve McIntyre).

And, of course, when people change code in D-I, they want to add questions to users, display error and informative messages, etc, etc. And these need translations..:-)

Most translators coped with all this (sometimes with /me hitting them hard on the head to get updates) and D-I beta2 was released with 37 complete translations out of 73 supported languages.

Yesterday, I just resumed the activity of trying to get more updates not only for those recent changes, but also for other older changes...or for languages that never got completed in the past.

As a result, we bumped from 37 compelte languages up to 45 this morning: look for level 1 here (level 2 has been hit by a change in iso-codes, but that change doesn't really affect D-I).

If you language is not 100% in the leftmost column on the stats page, you can probably help. Just get in touch with me and we'll check if somebody is already working on this or not.

posted at: 08:39 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Bug #690000

(doh, I nearly had it. I just got #690019, #690020 and #690022 for l10n stuff)

Bartek Krawczyk reported Debian bug #690000 on Monday October 8th, against guake. And my friend Sylvestre Ledru, the package maintainer, now has to fix it instead of trying to promote the use of Scilab over proprietary alternatives in the French aerospace research organizations..:-)

Bug #680000 was reported as of July 2nd: 3 months and 8 days for 10,000 bugs. This is a VERY significant drop in the bug reporting rate in Debian.

Last time, I wrote: "How will the wheezy freeze affect this? We'll see in two months!". We have the answer: the wheezy freeze triggerred an important drop in bug reporting rate in Debian. My general feeling is somehow different: for whatever reason, I feel like the *overall* activity in the project has dropped significantly. I seem to have less mails to read, less bugs reported against my packages, even less heated discussions here and there, as well as several very quiet channels on IRC.

Am I pessimistic when feeling that the overall momentum is sliding out of Debian? Maybe I am, so, folks, please make me optimistic and move you fingers out of the place where they are and help releasing that damn penguin.

Apart from that, our next milestone (apart from the wheezy release!) will be bug #700000. Remember the bet?. It looks like the probability of Kartik Mistry winning it is now away (he bet for Now 8th 2012) and the best position is hel by David Prévot (he bet for December 12th). On the other hand, my own chances are increasing if the bug rate drop is confirmed and if bug #700000 is reported in more than 3 months (I bet for February 14th 2013, guess why?). We'll see that in a few weeks!

posted at: 08:29 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 06 Oct 2012

[life] Running update

It's been some time since I didn't write in this blog about my running activities. So let's make an update for my international friends. If you don't care about running, you can move to the next post in your feed reader..:-)

After a quite busy running activity during DebConf 12 in Nicaragua, as well as during the touristic trip we did afterwards, I went back to my "regular" schedule.

Main objectives in September-December are roughly the following:

During August, I broke my monthly distance record by running nearly 300km in one month, even achieving 100km in only 5 days, around 24th. That was one of my goals: improve my overall resistance to run repetitions, which is one of the keys for ultra-running. These were achieved with many runs to/back work, with up to 13km in the morning and the same in the evening. Yes, running 26km at about 11km/h (and with some ups and downs in the woods to make it even worse) on a day where one has a normal work activity is quite a challenge.

September has been more focused on marathon preparation. This time, no complicated plan with interval running as the month was also a very busy work month, where fitting training sessions during the day would be hard. So, I made an easy plan : run a half-marathon every Sunday and run part of my work-home commute every day (So, 3km run to the train station, 30mn train ride, then 4km run to my work place, then shower....and the same back after work).

Out of the 5 half-marathons I ran during these 5 Sundays, two of them were official ones. On the first one, I finally managed to break my personal best on half, with 1h37'14". Only a 14 seconds improvement, but that one is certainly one of my best among personal bests....even better than 3h38'45" on marathon..

All other half-marathons were run at marathon speed, so targeting 5'06"/km, which will be my planned pace on October 21st. The one I ran on Sept. 16th, which was the other official race I ran was finally done quite significantly faster than this. First of all, because I had hard times to run "only" at 5'06"/km because of other runners emulation. And also, because I ran the last 3 kilometers up to nearly 14km/h (so, down to 4'15"/km), just for fun, because I could do it..:-)

With all this preparation, I think that I now manage to very well manage my marathon speed. I'll probably do a final test tomorrow by trying to keep running at this speed for 3 rounds of my favourite "Maurepas Marathon" circuit, which is just exactly 1/4 of a marathon.

More "funnily", I also did something I never did before during this really crazy month : simply said, I came back from work by running. All the way long. Through woods, forests, along some lakes and finally in the country. 42 kilometers (yes, a marathon). After a work day. Starting at 5:45pm and arriving home after 4h50 minutes. With 2 hours of heavy rain. With 2.5 hours running in the dark (with my headlamp of course). All alone. That was a crazy bet to do....but really great fun achieving this : the GPS trace is here. Really something I have to do again..:-)

So, well, now I'm more or less prepared and having fun is just a matter for time..:-). I'll keep you guys posted with those and, guess what? I'm already picking my target races for next year..:-)

posted at: 00:00 | path: /bubulle/planet-debian/running | permanent link to this entry

powered by blosxom