Category Archives: general

Second impressions of Guix 1.4

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While my first impression of Guix 1.4rc2 on NV41PZ was only days ago, the final Guix 1.4 release has happened. I thought I should give it a second try, although being at my summer house with no wired ethernet I realized this may be overly optimistic. However I am happy to say that a guided graphical installation on my new laptop went smooth without any problem. Practicing OS installations has a tendency to make problems disappear.

My WiFi issues last time was probably due to a user interface mistake on my part: you have to press a button to search for wireless networks before seeing them. I’m not sure why I missed this the first time, but maybe the reason was that I didn’t really expect WiFi to work on this laptop with one Intel-based WiFi card without firmware and a USB-based WiFi dongle. I haven’t went back to the rc2 image, but I strongly believe it wasn’t a problem with that image but my user mistake. Perhaps some more visual clues could be given that Guix found a usable WiFi interface, as this isn’t completely obvious now.

My main pet problem with the installation is the language menu. It contains a bazillion languages, and I want to find Swedish in it. However the list is half-sorted so it looks like it is alphabetized but paging through the list I didn’t find ‘svenska’, but did notice that the sorting restarts after a while. Eventually I find my language of chose, but a better search interface would be better. Typing ‘s’ to find it jumps around in the list. This may be a user interface misunderstanding on my part: I may be missing whatever great logic I’m sure there is to find my language in that menu.

I did a simple installation, enabling GNOME, Cups and OpenSSH. Given the experience with sharing /home with my Trisquel installation last time, I chose to not mount it this time, fixing this later on if I want to share files between OSes. Watching the installation proceed with downloading packages over this slow WiFi was meditative, and I couldn’t help but wonder what logic there was to the many steps where it says it is going to download X MB of software, downloads a set of packages, and then starts another iteration saying it is going to download Y MB and then downloads another set of packages. Maybe there is a package dependency tree being worked out while I watch.

After logging into GNOME I had to provide the WiFi password another time, it seems it wasn’t saved during installation, or I was too impatient to wait for WiFi to come up automatically. Using the GNOME WiFi selection menu worked fine. The webcam issue is still present, the image is distorted and it doesn’t happen in Trisquel. Other than that, everythings appear to work, but it has to be put through more testing.

Upgrading Guix after installation is still suffering from the same issue I noticed with the rc2 images, this time I managed to save the error message in case someone wants to provide an official fix or workaround. The initial guix pull command also takes forever, even on this speedy laptop, but after the initial run it is faster. Here are the error messages (pardon the Swedish):

jas@kaka ~$ sudo -i
...
root@kaka ~# guix pull
...
root@kaka ~# guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm 
guix system: fel: aborting reconfiguration because commit 8e2f32cee982d42a79e53fc1e9aa7b8ff0514714 of channel 'guix' is not a descendant of 989a3916dc8967bcb7275f10452f89bc6c3389cc
tips: Use `--allow-downgrades' to force this downgrade.

root@kaka ~#

I’ll avoid using –allow-downgrades this time to see if there is a better solution available.

Update: Problem resolved: my muscle memory typed sudo -i before writing the commands above. If I stick to the suggested ‘guix pull‘ (as user) followed by ‘sudo guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm‘ everything works. I’ll leave this in case someone else runs into this problem.

I’m using the Evolution mail/calendar/contacts application, and it was not installed via GNOME so I had to manually install it using ‘guix package -i evolution‘. Following the guided setup worked remarkable well (it auto-detects all my email settings after giving it my email address), although at the end I get a surprising error message:

Puzzling error message from Evolution

If I didn’t know a bit about how Evolution works internally, I would have been stuck here – the solution is to install the evolution data server package. This should probably be a dependency from the main package? Fix it by ‘guix package -i evolution-data-server‘. It works directly, no need to even restart Evolution or go through the configuration dialog again. After this, I’m happily using email against my Dovecot server and contacts/calendars against my Nextcloud server via GNOME’s builtin Nextcloud connector which was straight-forward to setup.

Trisquel 11 on NV41PZ: First impressions

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My NovaCustom NV41PZ laptop arrived a couple of days ago, and today I had some time to install it. You may want to read about my purchasing decision process first. I expected a rough ride to get it to work, given the number of people claiming that modern laptops can’t run fully free operating systems. I first tried the Trisquel 10 live DVD and it booted fine including network, but the mouse trackpad did not work. Before investigating it, I noticed a forum thread about Trisquel 11 beta3 images, and being based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and has Linux-libre 5.15 it seemed better to start with more modern software. After installing through the live DVD successfully, I realized I didn’t like MATE but wanted to keep using GNOME. I reverted back to installing a minimal environment through the netinst image, and manually installed GNOME (apt-get install gnome) since I prefer that over MATE, together with a bunch of other packages. I’ve been running it for a couple of hours now, and here is a brief summary of the hardware components that works.

CPUAlder Lake Intel i7-1260P
Memory2x32GB Kingston DDR4 SODIMM 3200MHz
StorageSamsung 980 Pro 2TB NVME
BIOSDasharo Coreboot
GraphicsIntel Xe
Screen (internal)14″ 1920×1080
Screen (HDMI)Connected to Dell 27″ 2560×1440
Screen (USB-C)Connected to Dell 27″ 2560×1440 via Wavlink port extender
WebcamBuiltin 1MP Camera
MicrophoneIntel Alder Lake
KeyboardISO layout, all function keys working
MouseTrackpad, tap clicking and gestures
Ethernet RJ45Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 with r8169 driver
Memory cardO2 Micro comes up as /dev/mmcblk0
Docking stationWavlink 4xUSB, 2xHDMI, DP, RJ45, …
ConnectivityUSB-A, USB-C
AudioIntel Alder Lake
Hardware components and status

So what’s not working? Unfortunately, NovaCustom does not offer any WiFi or Bluetooth module that is compatible with Trisquel, so the AX211 (1675x) Wifi/Bluetooth card in it is just dead weight. I imagine it would be possible to get the card to work if non-free firmware is loaded. I don’t need Bluetooth right now, and use the Technoetic N-150 USB WiFi dongle when I’m not connected to wired network.

Compared against my X201, the following factors have improved.

  • Faster – CPU benchmark suggests it is 8 times faster than my old i7-620M. While it feels snappier it is not a huge difference. While NVMe should improve SSD performance, benchmark wise the NVMe 980Pro only seems around 2-3 faster than the SATA-based 860 Evo. Going from 6GB to 64GB is 10 times more memory, which is useful for disk caching.
  • BIOS is free software.
  • EC firmware is free.
  • Operating system follows the FSDG.

I’m still unhappy about the following properties with both the NV41PZ and the X201.

  • CPU microcode is not available under free license.
  • Intel Mangement Engine is still present in the CPU.
  • No builtin WiFi/Bluetooth that works with free software.
  • Some other secondary processors (e.g., disk or screen) may be running non-free software but at least none requires non-free firmware.

Hopefully my next laptop will have improved on this further. I hope to be able to resolve the WiFi part by replacing the WiFi module, there appears to be options available but I have not tested them on this laptop yet. Does anyone know of a combined WiFi and Bluetooth M.2 module that would work on Trisquel?

While I haven’t put the laptop to heavy testing yet, everything that I would expect a laptop to be able to do seems to work fine. Including writing this blog post!

On language bindings & Relaunching Guile-GnuTLS

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The Guile bindings for GnuTLS has been part of GnuTLS since spring 2007 when Ludovic Courtès contributed it after some initial discussion. I have been looking into getting back to do GnuTLS coding, and during a recent GnuTLS meeting one topic was Guile bindings. It seemed like a fairly self-contained project to pick up on. It is interesting to re-read the old thread when this work was included: some of the concerns brought up there now have track record to be evaluated on. My opinion that the cost of introducing a new project per language binding today is smaller than the cost of maintaining language bindings as part of the core project. I believe the cost/benefit ratio has changed during the past 15 years: introducing a new project used to come with a significant cost but this is no longer the case, as tooling and processes for packaging have improved. I have had similar experience with Java, C# and Emacs Lisp bindings for GNU Libidn as well, where maintaining them centralized slow down the pace of updates. Andreas Metzler pointed to a similar conclusion reached by Russ Allbery.

There are many ways to separate a project into two projects; just copying the files into a new git repository would have been the simplest and was my original plan. However Ludo’ mentioned git-filter-branch in an email, and the idea of keeping all git history for some of the relevant files seemed worth pursuing to me. I quickly found git-filter-repo which appears to be the recommend approach, and experimenting with it I found a way to filter out the GnuTLS repo into a small git repository that Guile-GnuTLS could be based on. The commands I used were the following, if you want to reproduce things.

$ git clone https://gitlab.com/gnutls/gnutls.git guile-gnutls
$ cd guile-gnutls/
$ git checkout f5dcbdb46df52458e3756193c2a23bf558a3ecfd
$ git-filter-repo --path guile/ --path m4/guile.m4 --path doc/gnutls-guile.texi --path doc/extract-guile-c-doc.scm --path doc/cha-copying.texi --path doc/fdl-1.3.texi

I debated with myself back and forth whether to include some files that would be named the same in the new repository but would share little to no similar lines, for example configure.ac, Makefile.am not to mention README and NEWS. Initially I thought it would be nice to preserve the history for all lines that went into the new project, but this is a subjective judgement call. What brought me over to a more minimal approach was that the contributor history and attribution would be quite strange for the new repository: Should Guile-GnuTLS attribute the work of the thousands of commits to configure.ac which had nothing to do with Guile? Should the people who wrote that be mentioned as contributor of Guile-GnuTLS? I think not.

The next step was to get a reasonable GitLab CI/CD pipeline up, to make sure the project builds on some free GNU/Linux distributions like Trisquel and PureOS as well as the usual non-free distributions like Debian and Fedora to have coverage of dpkg and rpm based distributions. I included builds on Alpine and ArchLinux as well, because they tend to trigger other portability issues. I wish there were GNU Guix docker images available for easy testing on that platform as well. The GitLab CI/CD rules for a project like this are fairly simple.

To get things out of the door, I tagged the result as v3.7.9 and published a GitLab release page for Guile-GnuTLS that includes OpenPGP-signed source tarballs manually uploaded built on my laptop. The URLs for these tarballs are not very pleasant to work with, and discovering new releases automatically appears unreliable, but I don’t know of a better approach.

To finish this project, I have proposed a GnuTLS merge request to remove all Guile-related parts from the GnuTLS core.

Doing some GnuTLS-related work again felt nice, it was quite some time ago so thank you for giving me this opportunity. Thoughts or comments? Happy hacking!

Offline Ed25519 OpenPGP key with subkeys on FST-01G running Gnuk

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Below I describe how to generate an OpenPGP key and import its subkeys to a FST-01G device running Gnuk. See my earlier post on planning for my new OpenPGP key and the post on preparing the FST-01G to run Gnuk. For comparison with a RSA/YubiKey based approach, you can read about my setup from 2014.

Most of the steps below are covered by the Gnuk manual. The primary complication for me is the use of a offline machine and storing GnuPG directory stored on a USB memory device.

Offline machine

I use a laptop that is not connected to the Internet and boot it from a read-only USB memory stick. Finding a live CD that contains the necessary tools for using GnuPG with smartcards (gpg-agent, scdaemon, pcscd) is significantly harder than it should be. Using a rarely audited image begs the question of whether you can trust it. A patched kernel/gpg to generate poor randomness would be an easy and hard to notice hack. I’m using the PGP/PKI Clean Room Live CD. Recommendations on more widely used and audited alternatives would be appreciated. Select “Advanced Options” and “Run Shell” to escape the menus. Insert a new USB memory device, and prepare it as follows: 

pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ sudo wipefs -a /dev/sdX
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdX
# create a primary partition of Linux type
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX1
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ sudo mkdir /mnt/gnupghome
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ sudo chown pgp.pgp /mnt/gnupghome
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ sudo chmod go-rwx /mnt/gnupghome

GnuPG configuration

Set your GnuPG home directory to point to the gnupghome directory on the USB memory device. You will need to do this in every terminal windows you open that you want to use GnuPG in. 

pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ export GNUPGHOME=/mnt/gnupghome
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$

At this point, you should be able to run gpg --card-status and get output from the smartcard.

Create master key

Create a master key and make a backup copy of the GnuPG home directory with it, together with an export ASCII version. 

pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg --quick-gen-key "Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>" ed25519 sign 216d
gpg: keybox '/mnt/gnupghome/pubring.kbx' created
gpg: /mnt/gnupghome/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key D73CF638C53C06BE marked as ultimately trusted
gpg: directory '/mnt/gnupghome/openpgp-revocs.d' created
gpg: revocation certificate stored as '/mnt/gnupghome/openpgp-revocs.d/B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE.rev'
pub   ed25519 2019-03-20 [SC] [expires: 2019-10-22]
      B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE
      B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE
uid                      Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>

pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg -a --export-secret-keys B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE > $GNUPGHOME/masterkey.txt
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ sudo cp -a $GNUPGHOME $GNUPGHOME-backup-masterkey
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$

Create subkeys

Create subkeys and make a backup of them too, as follows.

pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg --quick-add-key B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE cv25519 encr 216d
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg --quick-add-key B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE ed25519 auth 216d
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg --quick-add-key B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE ed25519 sign 216d
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg -a --export-secret-keys B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE > $GNUPGHOME/mastersubkeys.txt
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg -a --export-secret-subkeys B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE > $GNUPGHOME/subkeys.txt
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ sudo cp -a $GNUPGHOME $GNUPGHOME-backup-mastersubkeys
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$

Move keys to card

Prepare the card by setting Admin PIN, PIN, your full name, sex, login account, and key URL as you prefer, following the Gnuk manual on card personalization.

Move the subkeys from your GnuPG keyring to the FST01G using the keytocard command.

Take a final backup — because moving the subkeys to the card modifes the local GnuPG keyring — and create a ASCII armored version of the public key, to be transferred to your daily machine. 

pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg --list-secret-keys
/mnt/gnupghome/pubring.kbx
--------------------------
sec   ed25519 2019-03-20 [SC] [expires: 2019-10-22]
      B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE
uid           [ultimate] Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>
ssb>  cv25519 2019-03-20 [E] [expires: 2019-10-22]
ssb>  ed25519 2019-03-20 [A] [expires: 2019-10-22]
ssb>  ed25519 2019-03-20 [S] [expires: 2019-10-22]

pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg -a --export-secret-keys B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE > $GNUPGHOME/masterstubs.txt
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg -a --export-secret-subkeys B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE > $GNUPGHOME/subkeysstubs.txt
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ gpg -a --export B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE > $GNUPGHOME/publickey.txt
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$ cp -a $GNUPGHOME $GNUPGHOME-backup-masterstubs
pgp@pgplive:/home/pgp$

Transfer to daily machine

Copy publickey.txt to your day-to-day laptop and import it and create stubs using --card-status. 

jas@latte:~$ gpg --import < publickey.txt 
gpg: key D73CF638C53C06BE: public key "Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1
jas@latte:~$ gpg --card-status

Reader ...........: Free Software Initiative of Japan Gnuk (FSIJ-1.2.14-67252015) 00 00
Application ID ...: D276000124010200FFFE672520150000
Version ..........: 2.0
Manufacturer .....: unmanaged S/N range
Serial number ....: 67252015
Name of cardholder: Simon Josefsson
Language prefs ...: sv
Sex ..............: male
URL of public key : https://josefsson.org/key-20190320.txt
Login data .......: jas
Signature PIN ....: not forced
Key attributes ...: ed25519 cv25519 ed25519
Max. PIN lengths .: 127 127 127
PIN retry counter : 3 3 3
Signature counter : 0
Signature key ....: A3CC 9C87 0B9D 310A BAD4  CF2F 5172 2B08 FE47 45A2
      created ....: 2019-03-20 23:40:49
Encryption key....: A9EC 8F4D 7F1E 50ED 3DEF  49A9 0292 3D7E E76E BD60
      created ....: 2019-03-20 23:40:26
Authentication key: CA7E 3716 4342 DF31 33DF  3497 8026 0EE8 A9B9 2B2B
      created ....: 2019-03-20 23:40:37
General key info..: sub  ed25519/51722B08FE4745A2 2019-03-20 Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>
sec   ed25519/D73CF638C53C06BE  created: 2019-03-20  expires: 2019-10-22
ssb>  cv25519/02923D7EE76EBD60  created: 2019-03-20  expires: 2019-10-22
                                card-no: FFFE 67252015
ssb>  ed25519/80260EE8A9B92B2B  created: 2019-03-20  expires: 2019-10-22
                                card-no: FFFE 67252015
ssb>  ed25519/51722B08FE4745A2  created: 2019-03-20  expires: 2019-10-22
                                card-no: FFFE 67252015
jas@latte:~$

Before the key can be used after the import, you must update the trust database for the secret key.

Now you should have a offline master key with subkey stubs. Note in the output below that the master key is not available (sec#) and the subkeys are stubs for smartcard keys (ssb>). 

jas@latte:~$ gpg --list-secret-keys
sec#  ed25519 2019-03-20 [SC] [expires: 2019-10-22]
      B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE
uid           [ultimate] Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>
ssb>  cv25519 2019-03-20 [E] [expires: 2019-10-22]
ssb>  ed25519 2019-03-20 [A] [expires: 2019-10-22]
ssb>  ed25519 2019-03-20 [S] [expires: 2019-10-22]

jas@latte:~$

If your environment variables are setup correctly, SSH should find the authentication key automatically. 

jas@latte:~$ ssh-add -L
ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAILzCFcHHrKzVSPDDarZPYqn89H5TPaxwcORgRg+4DagE cardno:FFFE67252015
jas@latte:~$

GnuPG and SSH are now ready to be used with the new key. Thanks for reading!

OpenPGP 2019 Key Transition Statement

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I have created a new OpenPGP key and will be transitioning away from my old key. If you have signed my old key, I would appreciate signatures on my new key as well. I have created a transition statement that can be downloaded from https://josefsson.org/key-transition-2019-03-20.txt.

Below is the signed statement.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

OpenPGP Key Transition Statement for Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>

I have created a new OpenPGP key and will be transitioning away from
my old key.  The old key has not been compromised and will continue to
be valid for some time, but I prefer all future correspondence to be
encrypted to the new key, and will be making signatures with the new
key going forward.

I would like this new key to be re-integrated into the web of trust.
This message is signed by both keys to certify the transition.  My new
and old keys are signed by each other.  If you have signed my old key,
I would appreciate signatures on my new key as well, provided that
your signing policy permits that without re-authenticating me.

The old key, which I am transitioning away from, is:

pub   rsa3744 2014-06-22 [SC]
      9AA9 BDB1 1BB1 B99A 2128  5A33 0664 A769 5426 5E8C

The new key, to which I am transitioning, is:

pub   ed25519 2019-03-20 [SC]
      B1D2 BD13 75BE CB78 4CF4  F8C4 D73C F638 C53C 06BE

The key may be downloaded from: https://josefsson.org/key-20190320.txt

To fetch the full new key from a public key server using GnuPG, run:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net \
      --recv-key B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE

If you already know my old key, you can now verify that the new key is
signed by the old one:

  gpg --check-sigs B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE

If you are satisfied that you've got the right key, and the User IDs
match what you expect, I would appreciate it if you would sign my key:

  gpg --sign-key B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE

You can upload your signatures to a public keyserver directly:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net \
      --send-key B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE

Or email simon@josefsson.org (possibly encrypted) the output from:

  gpg --armor --export B1D2BD1375BECB784CF4F8C4D73CF638C53C06BE

If you'd like any further verification or have any questions about the
transition please contact me directly.

To verify the integrity of this statement:

  wget -q -O- https://josefsson.org/key-transition-2019-03-20.txt | gpg --verify

/Simon
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=r0qK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Let’s Encrypt Clients

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As many others, I have been following the launch of Let’s Encrypt. Let’s Encrypt is a new zero-cost X.509 Certificate Authority that supports the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol. ACME allow you to automate creation and retrieval of HTTPS server certificates. As anyone who has maintained a number of HTTPS servers can attest, this process has unfortunately been manual, error-prone and differ between CAs.

On some of my personal domains, such as this blog.josefsson.org, I have been using the CACert authority to sign the HTTPS server certificate. The problem with CACert is that the CACert trust anchors aren’t shipped with sufficient many operating systems and web browsers. The user experience is similar to reaching a self-signed server certificate. For organization-internal servers that you don’t want to trust external parties for, I continue to believe that running your own CA and distributing it to your users is better than using a public CA (compare my XMPP server certificate setup). But for public servers, availability without prior configuration is more important. Therefor I decided that my public HTTPS servers should use a CA/Browser Forum-approved CA with support for ACME, and as long as Let’s Encrypt is trustworthy and zero-cost, they are a good choice.

I was in need of a free software ACME client, and set out to research what’s out there. Unfortunately, I did not find any web pages that listed the available options and compared them. The Let’s Encrypt CA points to the “official” Let’s Encrypt client, written by Jakub Warmuz, James Kasten, Peter Eckersley and several others. The manual contain pointers to two other clients in a seamingly unrelated section. Those clients are letsencrypt-nosudo by Daniel Roesler et al, and simp_le by (again!) Jakub Warmuz. From the letsencrypt.org’s client-dev mailing list I also found letsencrypt.sh by Gerhard Heift and LetsEncryptShell by Jan Mojžíš. Is anyone aware of other ACME clients?

By comparing these clients, I learned what I did not like in them. I wanted something small so that I can audit it. I want something that doesn’t require root access. Preferably, it should be able to run on my laptop, since I wasn’t ready to run something on the servers. Generally, it has to be Secure, which implies something about how it approaches private key handling. The letsencrypt official client can do everything, and has plugin for various server software to automate the ACME negotiation. All the cryptographic operations appear to be hidden inside the client, which usually means it is not flexible. I really did not like how it was designed, it looks like your typical monolithic proof-of-concept design. The simp_le client looked much cleaner, and gave me a good feeling. The letsencrypt.sh client is simple and written in /bin/sh shell script, but it appeared a bit too simplistic. The LetsEncryptShell looked decent, but I wanted something more automated.

What all of these clients did not have, and that letsencrypt-nosudo client had, was the ability to let me do the private-key operations. All the operations are done interactively on the command-line using OpenSSL. This would allow me to put the ACME user private key, and the HTTPS private key, on a YubiKey, using its PIV applet and techniques similar to what I used to create my SSH host CA. While the HTTPS private key has to be available on the HTTPS server (used to setup TLS connections), I wouldn’t want the ACME user private key to be available there. Similarily, I wouldn’t want to have the ACME or the HTTPS private key on my laptop. The letsencrypt-nosudo tool is otherwise more rough around the edges than the more cleaner simp_le client. However the private key handling aspect was the deciding matter for me.

After fixing some hard-coded limitations on RSA key sizes, getting the cert was as simple as following the letsencrypt-nosudo instructions. I’ll follow up with a later post describing how to put the ACME user private key and the HTTPS server certificate private key on a YubiKey and how to use that with letsencrypt-nosudo.

So you can now enjoy browsing my blog over HTTPS! Thank you Let’s Encrypt!

Offline GnuPG Master Key and Subkeys on YubiKey NEO Smartcard

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I have moved to a new OpenPGP key. There are many tutorials and blog posts on GnuPG key generation around, but none of them matched exactly the setup I wanted to have. So I wrote down the steps I took, to remember them if I need to in the future. Briefly my requirements were as follows:

  • The new master GnuPG key is on an USB stick.
  • The USB stick is only ever used on an offline computer.
  • There are subkeys stored on a YubiKey NEO smartcard for daily use.
  • I want to generate the subkeys using GnuPG so I have a backup.
  • Some non-default hash/cipher preferences encoded into the public key.

Continue reading Offline GnuPG Master Key and Subkeys on YubiKey NEO Smartcard→

OpenPGP Key Transition Statement

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I have created a new OpenPGP key 54265e8c and will be transitioning away from my old key. If you have signed my old key, I would appreciate signatures on my new key as well. I have created a transition statement that can be downloaded from https://josefsson.org/key-transition-2014-06-22.txt.

Below is the signed statement.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

OpenPGP Key Transition Statement for Simon Josefsson

I have created a new OpenPGP key and will be transitioning away from
my old key.  The old key has not been compromised and will continue to
be valid for some time, but I prefer all future correspondence to be
encrypted to the new key, and will be making signatures with the new
key going forward.

I would like this new key to be re-integrated into the web of trust.
This message is signed by both keys to certify the transition.  My new
and old keys are signed by each other.  If you have signed my old key,
I would appreciate signatures on my new key as well, provided that
your signing policy permits that without re-authenticating me.

The old key, which I am transitioning away from, is:

pub   1280R/B565716F 2002-05-05
      Key fingerprint = 0424 D4EE 81A0 E3D1 19C6  F835 EDA2 1E94 B565 716F

The new key, to which I am transitioning, is:

pub   3744R/54265E8C 2014-06-22
      Key fingerprint = 9AA9 BDB1 1BB1 B99A 2128  5A33 0664 A769 5426 5E8C

The entire key may be downloaded from: https://josefsson.org/54265e8c.txt

To fetch the full new key from a public key server using GnuPG, run:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 54265e8c

If you already know my old key, you can now verify that the new key is
signed by the old one:

  gpg --check-sigs 54265e8c

If you are satisfied that you've got the right key, and the User IDs
match what you expect, I would appreciate it if you would sign my key:

  gpg --sign-key 54265e8c

You can upload your signatures to a public keyserver directly:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --send-key 54265e8c

Or email simon@josefsson.org (possibly encrypted) the output from:

  gpg --armor --export 54265e8c

If you'd like any further verification or have any questions about the
transition please contact me directly.

To verify the integrity of this statement:

  wget -q -O- https://josefsson.org/key-transition-2014-06-22.txt|gpg --verify

/Simon
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

iLwEAQEKAAYFAlOnV+AACgkQ7aIelLVlcW89XgUAljJgYfReyR9/bU+Om6UHUttt
CAOgSRqdcQSQ2hT69vzuhb/bc8CslIQcBtGqTgxDFsxEFhbm5zKn+tSzy5MHNHqt
MsqHcZjlYuYVhMXDhka+cfyhtd9zIxjVE5vk8v+GqEGoh8DGYq0vPy3VfvcSz5Z3
MSUpSj8gN00jlU1z4nad3maEq0ApvsLr8EsLZmtxF5TNFvzJ8mmwY+gHBGHjVYkB
8AQBAQoABgUCU6dX4AAKCRAGZKdpVCZejD1eDp46XGL2puMp0le2OF75WIUW8xqf
TMiZeB99ruk3P/jvuLnGPP2J5o7SIKE50FkMEss0yvxi6jBlHk+cJeKWGXVjBpxU
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TjlAbvbxpQsls/JPbbporK2gbAtMlzJPD8zC8z/dT+t0qjlce8fADugblVW3bACC
Kl53X4XpojzNd/U19tSXkIBdNY/GVJqci+iruiJ1WGARF9ocnIXVuNXsfyt7UGq4
UiM/AeDVzI76v1QnE8WpsmSXzi2zXe3VahUPhOU2nPDoL53ggiVsTY3TwilvQLfX
Av/74PIaEtCi1g23YeojQlpdYzcWfnE+tUyTSNwPIBzyzHvFAHNg1Pg0KKUALsD9
P7EjrMuz63z2276EBKX8++9GnQQNCNfdHSuX4WGrBx2YgmOOqRdllMKz6pVMZdJO
V+gXbCMx0D5G7v50oB58Mb5NOgIoOnh3IQhJ7LkLwmcdG39yCdpU+92XbAW73elV
kmM8i0wsj5kDUU2ys32Gj2HnsVpbnh3Fvm9fjFJRbbQL/FxNAjzNcHe4cF3g8hTb
YVJJlzhmHGvd7HvXysJJaa0=
=ZaqY
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Replicant 4.2 on Samsung S3

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Since November 2013 I have been using Replicant on my Samsung S3 as an alternative OS. The experience has been good for everyday use. The limits (due to non-free software components) compared to a “normal” S3 (running vendor ROM or CyanogenMod) is lack of GPS/wifi/bluetooth/NFC/frontcamera functionality — although it is easy to get some of that working again, including GPS, which is nice for my geocaching hobby. The Replicant software is stable for being an Android platform; better than my Nexus 7 (2nd generation) tablet which I got around the same time that runs an unmodified version of Android. The S3 has crashed around ten times in these four months. I’ve lost track of the number of N7 crashes, especially after the upgrade to Android 4.4. I use the N7 significantly less than the S3, reinforcing my impression that Replicant is a stable Android. I have not had any other problem that I couldn’t explain, and have rarely had to reboot the device.

The Replicant project recently released version 4.2 and while I don’t expect the release to resolve any problem for me, I decided it was time to upgrade and learn something new. I initially tried the official ROM images, and later migrated to using my own build of the software (for no particular reason other than that I could).

Before the installation, I wanted to have a full backup of the phone to avoid losing data. I use SMS Backup+ to keep a backup of my call log, SMS and MMS on my own IMAP server. I use oandbackup to take a backup of all software and settings on the phone. I use DAVDroid for my contacts and calendar (using a Radicale server), and reluctantly still use aCal in order to access my Google Calendar (because Google does not implement RFC 5397 properly so it doesn’t work with DAVDroid). Alas all that software is not sufficient for backup purposes, for example photos are still not copied elsewhere. In order to have a complete backup of the phone, I’m using rsync over the android debug bridge (adb). More precisely, I connect the phone using a USB cable, push a rsyncd configuration file, start the rsync daemon on the phone, forward the TCP/IP port, and then launch rsync locally. The following commands are used:

jas@latte:~$ cat rsyncd.conf
address 127.0.0.1
uid = root
gid = root
[root]
path = /
jas@latte:~$ adb push rsyncd.conf /extSdCard/rsyncd.conf
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
0 KB/s (57 bytes in 0.059s)
jas@latte:~$ adb root
jas@latte:~$ adb shell rsync --daemon --no-detach --config=/extSdCard/rsyncd.conf &
jas@latte:~$ adb forward tcp:6010 tcp:873
jas@latte:~$ sudo rsync -av --delete --exclude /dev --exclude /acct --exclude /sys --exclude /proc rsync://localhost:6010/root/ /root/s3-bup/
...

Now feeling safe that I would not lose any data, I remove the SIM card from my phone (to avoid having calls, SMS or cell data interrupt during the installation) and follow the Replicant Samsung S3 installation documentation. Installation was straightforward. I booted up the newly installed ROM and familiarized myself with it. My first reaction was that the graphics felt a bit slower compared to Replicant 4.0, but it is hard to tell for certain.

After installation, I took a quick rsync backup of the freshly installed phone, to have a starting point for future backups. Since my IMAP and CardDav/CalDav servers use certificates signed by CACert I first had to install the CACert trust anchors, to get SMS Backup+ and DAVDroid to connect. For some reason it was not sufficient to add only the root CACert certificate, so I had to add the intermediate CA cert as well. To load the certs, I invoke the following commands, selecting ‘Install from SD Card’ when the menu is invoked (twice).

adb push root.crt /sdcard/
adb shell am start -n "com.android.settings/.Settings\"\$\"SecuritySettingsActivity"
adb push class3.crt /sdcard/
adb shell am start -n "com.android.settings/.Settings\"\$\"SecuritySettingsActivity"

I restore apps with oandbackup, and I select a set of important apps that I want restored with settings preserved, including aCal, K9, Xabber, c:geo, OsmAnd~, NewsBlur, Google Authenticator. I install SMS Backup+ from FDroid separately and configure it, SMS Backup+ doesn’t seem to want to restore anything if the app was restored with settings using oandbackup. I install and configure the DAVdroid account with the server URL, and watch it populate my address book and calendar with information.

After organizing the icons on the launcher screen, and changing the wallpaper, I’m up and running with Replicant 4.2. This upgrade effort took me around two evenings to complete, with around half of the time consumed by exploring different ways to do the rsync backup before I settled on the rsync daemon approach. Compared to the last time, when I spent almost two weeks researching various options and preparing for the install, this felt like a swift process.

Continue reading Replicant 4.2 on Samsung S3→

Necrotizing Fasciitis

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Dear World,

On the morning of December 24th I felt an unusual pain in my left hand between the thumb and forefinger. The pain increased and in the afternoon I got a high fever, at some point above 40 degrees Celsius or 104 degree Fahrenheit. I went to the emergency department and was hospitalized during the night between the 24th and 25th of December. On the afternoon of December 26th I underwent surgery to find out what was happening, and was then diagnosed with Necrotizing Fasciitis (the wikipedia article on NF gives a fair summary), caused by the common streptococcus bacteria (again see wikipedia article on Streptococcus). A popular name for the disease is flesh-eating bacteria. Necrotizing Fasciitis is a rare and aggresive infection, often deadly if left untreated, that can move through the body at speeds of a couple of centimeters per hour.

I have gone through 6 surgeries, leaving wounds all over my left hand and arm. I have felt afraid of what the disease will do to me, anxiety over what will happen in the future, confusion and uncertainty about how a disease like this can exist and that I get the right treatment since so little appears to be known about it. The feeling of loneliness and that nobody is helping, or even can help, has also been present. I have experienced pain. Even though pain is something I’m less afraid of (I have a back problem) compared to other feelings, I needed help from several pain killers. I’ve received normal Paracetamol, stronger NSAID’s (e.g., Ketorolac/Toradol), several Opioid pain-killers including Alfentanil/Rapifen, Tramadol/Tradolan, OxyContin/OxyNorm, and Morphine. After the first and second surgery, nothing helped and I was still screaming with pain and kicking the bed. After the first surgery, I received a local anesthetic (a plexus block). After the second surgery, the doctors did not want to masquerade my pain, because sign of pain indicate further growth of the infection, and I was given the pain-dissociative drug Ketamine/Ketalar and the stress-releasing Clonidine/Catapresan. Once the third surgery removed all of the infection, pain went down, and I experienced many positive feelings. I am very grateful to be alive. I felt a strong sense of inner power when I started to fight back against the decease. I find joy in even the simplest of things, like being able to drink water or seeing trees outside the window. I cried out of happiness when I saw our children’s room full of toys. I have learned many things about the human body, and I am curious by nature so I look forward to learn more. I hope to be able to draw strength from this incident, to help me prioritize better in my life.

My loving wife Åsa has gone through a nightmare as a consequence of my diagnosis. At day she had to cope with daily life taking care of our wonderful 1-year old daughter Ingrid and 3-year old boy Alfred. All three of them had various degrees of strep throat with fever, caused by the same bacteria — and anyone with young kids know how intense that alone can be. She gave me strength over the phone. She kept friends and relatives up to date about what happened, with the phone ringing all the time. She worked to get information out from the hospital about my status, sometimes being rudely treated and just being hanged up on. After a call with the doctor after the third surgery, when the infection had spread from the hand to the upper arm (5cm away from my torso), she started to plan for a life without me.

My last operation were on Thursday January 2nd and I left hospital the same day. I’m writing this on the Saturday of January 4rd, although some details and external links have been added after that. I have regained access to my arm and hand and doing rehab to regain muscle control, while my body is healing. I’m doing relaxation exercises to control pain and relax muscles, and took the last strong drug yesterday. Currently I take antibiotics (more precisely Clindamycin/Dalacin) and the common Paracetamol-based pain-killer Alvedon together with on-demand use of an also common NSAID containing Ibuprofen (Ipren). My wife and I were even out at a restaurant tonight.

Fortunately I was healthy when this started, and with bi-weekly training sessions for the last 2 years I was physically at my strongest peak in my 38 year old life (weighting 78kg or 170lb, height 182cm or 6 feet). I started working out to improve back issues, increase strength, and prepare for getting older. Exercise has never been my thing although I think it is fun to run medium distances (up to 10km).

I want thank everyone who helped me and our family through this, both professionally and personally, but I don’t know where to start. You know who you are. You are the reason I’m alive.

Naturally, I want to focus on getting well and spend time with my family now. I don’t yet know to what extent I will recover, but the prognosis is good. Don’t expect anything from me in the communities and organization that I’m active in (e.g., GNU, Debian, IETF, Yubico). I will come back as energy, time and priorities permits.