Userrepository-Eu

For a few months, I considered using the mirror service from Fosshost in userrepository.eu. The service results from a partnership between Fosshost and Fastly, giving projects access to several PoP’s around the globe. Finally, a few days ago, I enabled the service. I also created a package with the mirror’s list, userrepository-mirrors, available in my repository and AUR. The package has all the instructions for enabling the mirrors and what to do if you already have userrepository in your /etc/pacman.conf configuration. ...

Since the 24th of January, the date of the last blog post, I’ve added a shitload of new packages to userrepository.eu. Some highlights are sonobus, media-downloader-git, baru, dotgit, timeshift, filmulator and tramp. Expect more packages, as I’m adding new ones frequently. The focus on new packages will probably be scientific tools and maybe a kernel. With that, I’ll probably have to increase the full build frequency from 8h to at least 9 hours. ...

Hello, folks. It has been a while since I last wrote about my AUR-based Arch Linux repository. To be precise, four months and twelve days. A lot has happened since then. One of the main changes was the removal of several packages no longer present in AUR or really outdated. Some examples are peafox, marp and gimp-dbp. Another important change was the addition of several new packages, as usual. If I find it may be useful for someone, I add it. ...

You might have noticed that Userrepository uses Cloudflare. I chose it for two main reasons: their ability to help mitigate (D)DoS attacks and to help hiding the IP address for the VM from script kiddies. It’s not that I think Userrepository will ever be a target for a (D)DoS attack, but better safe than sorry. Also, I have more than enough automated failed SSH authentication attempts without revealing the IP: 441 blocked _IP_s and counting for one fail2ban ssh rule and 2 for another fail2ban ssh rule. I intend to tighten these rules in the near future. ...

It took me a while to update you about the latest changes to my Arch and Arch-compatible Linux distributions repository. But first, let me apologize for the delay: work, personal life and, for about 3 weeks now, a horrible back pain (that just doesn’t stop, even with an handful of medication) have kept me from doing this in the time frame I expected. First on the “agenda”, I experimented with increasing the zstd compression level for the packages like I said I would do in my last post about the repository. The trade-off was not worth it: the increase in packaging time was far superior to the small decrease in package size. So, I’ll keep the zstd compression level to “-12” in the foreseeable future. ...

Since the last post about my Arch (and Arch-compatible distributions) binary repository, I’ve added a few more packages. Some examples are the Mullvad VPN desktop client and nimdow, a window manager written in the Nim programming language. Or Emptty, an amazing display manager that I encourage you to try. Despite adding more packages, the compilation and compression time only had a small increase and I’m still below the 5 hour mark. And I’ve kept the zstd “-12” compression level. ...

In the previous post, I wrote about how I changed the virtual machine provider from Scaleway to Hetzner. In the days following the transition, I timed how much it took to build all the packages and sync them to the webserver, so I could compare the new provider with the previous one. The specs are very similar: 4 vCPUs and 8GB of RAM. There is one difference, however: with Scaleway, the vCPUs were some Intel low-end ones (although they’ve upgraded to AMD EPYC very recently) and with Hetzer they are AMD EPYC. And what a difference this makes. ...

After a small forced hiatus, userrepository.eu is back. The Covid-19 pandemic made a hit in my income and the wife’s income, so I had to temporarily suspend non-priority expenses. During this period, I had time to consider a few things about the future of the project and decided to change the provider from Scaleway to Hetzner, mostly because the Arch image they’re using is essentially abandonware. If you’re reading this, you’ll probably know that Arch Linux changed the default package compression to ZSTD. In order to update or install any package, you’ll need a pacman version that supports this compression and up-to-date libraries. These requirements aren’t met in older Arch images, like the one used by Scaleway, so the only two solutions were installing another distribution, chrooting into it and hack an Arch install (the solution presented to me by Scaleway support) or change provider. The second option was the less time-consuming one. ...

Lately, the repository has been taking +10 hours to compile all the packages. I think that’s a lot for a little more than 250 packages, most of them small utilities and/or _-bin_ files from AUR, built in a DEV1-L (4 cores, 8 Gb RAM) virtual machine from Scaleway. After investigating the matter, I found out that 12 of the packages took four hours and sixteen minutes to build. Pkg Hours Minutes ./pueue/makepkg.log 0 12 ./ffsend/makepkg.log 0 15 ./joplin/makepkg.log 0 15 ./bandwhich/makepkg.log 0 16 ./session-desktop/makepkg.log 0 17 ./mindforger/makepkg.log 0 17 ./giada-git/makepkg.log 0 17 ./brackets/makepkg.log 0 21 ./newbreeze-git/makepkg.log 0 24 ./falkon-git/makepkg.log 0 24 ./newsflash-git/makepkg.log 0 31 ./firefox-kde-opensuse/makepkg.log 0 47 256 I decided to give it a go at reducing the packages build time. The first set of changes I made were: ...

Ainda hoje, no máximo amanhã, devo disponibilizar a aplicação para autenticação nas plataformas do Estado com o Cartão de Cidadão. Assim que estiver disponível, basta usares o comando sudo pacman -Syyuv autenticacao-gov-pt para ser feita a instalação. Não te esqueças de adicionar o repositório primeiro, caso ainda não o tenhas feito. Fica atent@.