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Last.fm for Rhythmbox – New Style

Just like a lot of other users I like to scrobble my played tracks to last.fm. Unfortunately Rhythmbox provides no way to love a track. The last.fm plug-ins for Windows and OS X have been modified to scrobble through the last.fm client some time ago but the Rhythmbox plug-in still submits directly. That is until now…

Rhythmbox and lastfm

I have written a new last.fm plug-in for Rhythmbox today. Instead of scrobbling directly like the old one, it submits tracks via the lastfm client application. The client displays additional information about the currently playing song and you can love and tag the song with it.

The source code is available as a patch against Rhythmbox 2.90.1 (git snapshot 20120108): scrobbler-v3t.patch
You can apply this patch with:

patch -NEp1 < ~/scrobbler-v3t.patch

Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot users can get precompiled packages from my APT repositories by running these commands in a terminal:

$ sudo add-apt-repository \
    '/static/debian/rhythmbox/ main'
$ wget /static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugins lastfm

To enable the new plug-in go to Edit » Plugins. Disable the “Last.fm” plug-in and enable the “New Style Last.fm Scrobbler”.
If you enable this scrobbler plug-in, you have to disable the old Last.fm plug-in! Otherwise you will have two plug-ins which will both submit to last.fm at the same time. Only use one at a time!

Note that this first version of the plug-in does not start the lastfm client automatically! It will scrobble only if you start the client manually. I will fix this in the next version.

Feedback, postive as well as negative, is very welcome. If you want to report a bug, please include the output of “rhythmbox -D rb-scrobbler-plugin” and the tags of the song you wanted to scrobble.
If you want to report a crash, providing a gdb backtrace would be nice.

You might also want to take a look at this thread on the last.fm development forum.

May 20th, 2007: v2 of the plug-in is available now. lastfm gets launched automatically now.
May 22nd, 2007: v3 is available. The patch and the Ubuntu package have been updated: Changes since v2
May 25th, 2007: v3a: Updated patch and deb for the new Ubuntu Gutsy version of Rhythmbox.
May 29th, 2007: v3b: Updated patch and deb for the new Rhythmbox release.
May 31st, 2007: Updated patch Ubuntu package.
June 1st, 2007: Added APT repositories for Ubuntu Feisty and Gutsy.
June 28th, 2007: v3c: Updated patch and debs for the new Rhythmbox release.
August 16th, 2007: v3d: Updated patch and debs for Rhythmbox 0.11.2.
November 14th, 2007: v3e: Updated patch and debs for Rhythmbox 0.11.3. Add Hardy repository.
November 30th, 2007:Updated gusty and hardy builds. Include fixed Croatian po file from Franko Burolo.
February 7th, 2008: v3f: Updated patch and debs for Rhythmbox 0.11.4. (Thanks to Iain Buchanan for notifying me of the missing patch!)
May 31st, 2008: v3g: Updated patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.11.5. (The debs for hardy have been at 0.11.5 for quite a while).
October 15st, 2008: v3h: Updated patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.11.6. Ubuntu packages are available for i386, amd64, and lpia now.
October 20st, 2008: v3i: Updated patch to apply cleanly to the real Rhythmbox 0.11.6 release. v3h was for a later version from SVN.
April 24th, 2009: v3j: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.0. Provide debs for Ubuntu Jaunty.
November 4th, 2009: v3k: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.5 and provide debs for Ubuntu Karmic.
November 29th, 2009: v3l: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.6 and provide debs for Ubuntu Lucid too.
April 25th, 2010: v3m: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.8. Provide debs for Ubuntu Lucid.
Jun 3rd, 2010: v3n: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.8git20100602. Provide debs for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10.
Jun 13th, 2010: v3o: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.8git20100611. Updated debs for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10.
October 10th, 2010: v3p: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.13.1. Provide updated debs for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10.
April 4th, 2011: v3p: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.13.3. Provide debs for Ubuntu Natty Narwhal 11.04.
October 16th, 2011: v3r: Updated patch for new plug-in infrastructure in Rhythmbox 2.90.1. Provide debs for Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot 11.10.
December 23rd, 2011: v3s: Updated patch. Provide debs for Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04.
January 14th, 2012: v3t: Update patch and debs for Ubuntu Precise.

WordPress SSL Patch Update

The recently released security update for introduced some changes that broke my HTTPS patch for it. I have updated the patch for WordPress 2.0.6 and 2.0.7-RC1 now: wp2-ssl.patch.

Read the complete SSL setup guide here: Securing WordPress 2 Admin Access With SSL

Regarding WordPress security, please note that there still is a possible exploit for 2.0.6: New WordPress exploit also affects version 2.0.6
Make sure you use safe a PHP version and set register_globals = off.

Chrooting Recent MySQL Versions on Debian and Ubuntu

I’ve posted a recipe for chrooting MySQL on Debian sarge a while ago. These instructions no longer work out of the box for newer MySQL packages from Debian and Ubuntu. The main problem is that the startup script added a few extra checks and script invocations that don’t understand the chroot environment. So here’s an updated plan:

  • Prepare the chroot directory. It’s recommended to use an extra partition/filesystem for it. I will use /srv/mysql (which is an LVM2 partition with an ext3 filesystem on my system) for the rest of the text.
  • Stop MySQL: 
    /etc/init.d/mysql stop
  • Copy the databases to new location: 
    mkdir -p /srv/mysql/var/lib
cp -a /var/lib/mysql /srv/mysql/var/lib
  • Copy this script to /etc/default/mysql-chroot
  • Edit /etc/init.d/mysql:
    • Source the mysql-chroot script somewhere at the top: 
      …
test -x /usr/sbin/mysqld || exit 0

. /etc/default/mysql-chroot

SELF=$(cd $(dirname $0); pwd -P)/$(basename $0)
…
    • Fix the disk space check: 
      …
# check for diskspace shortage
datadir=`mysqld_get_param datadir`
if LC_ALL=C BLOCKSIZE= df --portability $CHROOT_DIR$datadir/. | tail -n 1 | awk '{ exit ($4>4096) }'; then
  log_failure_msg "$0: ERROR: The partition with $datadir is too full!"
…
    • Run setup_chroot right in the start section: 
      …
if mysqld_status check_alive nowarn; then
  echo "...already running."
else
  setup_chroot
  /usr/bin/mysqld_safe > /dev/null 2>&1 &
…
    • Somehow /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid disappears after each start. We have to create it each time, otherwise the stop command won’t work properly: 
      …
if mysqld_status check_alive warn; then
  log_end_msg 0
  ln -sf $CHROOT_DIR/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid \
                 /var/run/mysqld
  # Now start mysqlcheck or whatever the admin wants.
  output=$(/etc/mysql/debian-start)
…
  • In /etc/mysql/debian.cnf, change the two socket lines to: 
    socket = /srv/mysql/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
  • In /etc/mysql/my.cnf:
    • Change the socket line in the [client] section to: 
      socket = /srv/mysql/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

      Don’t change the socket lines in the other sections!

    • Add 
      chroot = /srv/mysql

      to the [mysqld] section.

  • Prepend /srv/mysql to the log files listed in /etc/logrotate.d/mysql-server
  • Make /usr/bin/mysql_upgrade_shell use the chrooted socket. Note: Currently these changes must be made each time mysql gets upgraded because upgrades override this file! 
    …
--password=*) password=`echo "$arg" | sed -e 's/^[^=]*=//'` ;;
--socket=*) socket=`echo "$arg" | sed -e 's/^[^=]*=//'` ;;
--ldata=*|--data=*|--datadir=*) DATADIR=`echo "$arg" | sed -e 's/^[^=]*=//'` ;;
…
fi
$bindir/mysql_fix_privilege_tables --silent --user=$user --password=$password --socket=$socket $args
exit 0
…
check_args="--check-upgrade --all-databases --auto-repair --user=$user --password=$password --socket=$socket"
…
$bindir/mysql_fix_privilege_tables --silent --user=$user --password=$password --socket=$socket $args
…
  • Start MySQL: 
    /etc/init.d/mysql start
  • Check /var/log/syslog for errors ;-)

Sun Java Packages for Debian and Ubuntu

Sun now allows redistribution of Java by Linux and Open-Solaris distributions.

As a result of this move, there are now packages of Sun’s Java for Debian and Ubuntu.
The packaging code is largely based on the code we are using for Blackdown Java for some years. The code is available under the MIT license from the jdk-distros project on java.net. (More info on Tom Marble’s blog.)

I’m glad Sun finally opens Java up a bit after years of restrictive licensing.

LVM Snapshots With Debian Sarge and Linux 2.6.16

I have upgraded this server to kernel 2.6.16.2. The next backup cycle resulted in a minor disaster: The backup process deadlocked at removing the first LVM2 snapshot and the snapshot source volumes were blocking write accesses. A cleanup shutdown was impossible and I had to hard-reset the machine.

After some searching I found out that you apparently need lvm2 2.02.01 or later and devmapper 1.02.02 or later to successfully remove snapshot volumes now. Unfortunately neither of these versions is available for sarge from Debian or backports.org yet, so I had to make my own backports.
As it turned out (see below), it is also necessary to use 2.6.16.12 or to apply the patch from this email to older 2.6.16 versions in order to reliably remove snapshots.

If you are brave enough, you can get the backported packages by adding

deb http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/lvm/ sarge main
deb-src http://blog.blackdown.de/static/debian/lvm/ sarge main

to /etc/apt/sources.list.

The repository contains debs for devmapper, dlm, lvm2, and lvm-common. The Release files is signed with my GPG key. If you have a recent apt version, you can authenticate the packages after importing the key with apt-key:

wget http://blog.blackdown.de/static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -

April 15th, 2006: In about 40 backup cycles I’ve seen three lockups with 2.6.16.2 now. Until snapshots get fixed in 2.6.16, I’d recommend to stay with 2.6.15. I’m using 2.6.15.3 again now.

April 24th, 2006: Added note about “dm snapshot: fix kcopyd destructor” patch from Alasdair G Kergon. With this patch snapshots work fine for me again.

May 2nd, 2006: Alasdair G Kergon’s patch has been included in 2.6.16.12.

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