Subversion 1.6 supports caching of user passwords/passphrases in encrypted form using KWallet. I tried to get a feel of this feature, so started compiling the subversion sources with KWallet support. The following assume you already have kde desktop packages installed in your ubuntu/debian box. In order to get KWallet support in subversion we need to pass "--with-kwallet" option to the configure script. While configuring subversion if you get the following error

checking whether to look for KWallet... yes
checking for QtCore, QtDBus, QtGui... yes
checking for kde4-config... yes
  

If you concerned about Repetitive strain injury - RSI and would like something in your desktop which will poke you at constant intervals to take rest before you start starring the monitor continuously "workrave" will be a good tool to consider. In Debian/Ubuntu you install it by the following command:

sudo apt-get install workrave

In order to change the default web browser of Debian GNU/Linux you can use the update alternatives as follows:

$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

There are 4 alternatives which provide `x-www-browser'.

  Selection    Alternative
-----------------------------------------------
          1    /usr/bin/epiphany
          2    /usr/bin/iceweasel
*+        3    /usr/bin/konqueror
          4    /usr/bin/epiphany-gecko

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: 2
Using '/usr/bin/iceweasel' to provide 'x-www-browser'.

NOTE: The abo

In machines where we have two interfaces say eth0 and eth1, for which you have specified static ip in /etc/network/interfaces, after a reboot the static ip which we have assigned gets screwed among these interfaces ie., the physical interfaces to which eth0 and eth1 must be mapped may change after a reboot, which creates problem when both these networks are entirely different in your servers. This happens with Debian etch. The following could be done in order to overcome this. In your /etc/network/interfaces give names like eth-pvt, eth-pub, eth-dep, etc and assign the static ip addresses.

This document explains the step by step procedure in configuring SSL based apache server (https) which servers subversion repositories and authenticates the clients using a PKCS#12 (http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2138) based certificate provided by the client, when challenged by the server.

Components required

- apache 2.0 or greater - openssl 0.9 or greater

Compiling apache

 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/httpd-2.2.9 --enable-ssl
 --enable-dav=shared --enable-dav-fs=shared --enable-dav-lock=shared
 --enable-rewrite=shared

Create certificate authority

I hit this problem when I was adding code to support storing encrypted passphrases in gnome-keyring for subversion. When we add a new key to the default keyring we are prompted for a password for locking/unlocking the default keyring. Sometimes I forget the password which I gave to this default keyring, which prevents me from viewing the default keyring and the keys associated with them, using the gnome-keyring-manager.

I found out that these encrypted passwords all those associated information about the keyrings are stored in the file '~/.gnome2/keyrings/default.keyring' in Debian based distros.

In Debian it is sometimes possible to have different alternatives for the same program. One such is 'java'. We have the GNU gcj and Sun provided java compilers available in Debian etch. I had the following java installed in my box as default

java version "1.4.2"
gij (GNU libgcj) version 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-20)

Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

I wanted to switch to Sun provided java version.