flaticron: Send mail notifications for pending Flatpak updates

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Some software packages on a typical Linux desktop setup are no longer installed by the package manager of the distribution, but instead are managed with Flatpak. This approach has become more popular over the last years and allows for shorter release cycles in which updates reach users.

My problem with Flatpak was that I regularly did not benefit from these shorter release cycles, because I was not even aware of an available update. Users of desktop environments such as GNOME have Flatpak integrated into the usual graphical software updater. However, as a user of Xfce and strictly using the terminal for managing packages on my desktop systems, I never received any hint on available Flatpak updates.

For pending updates of distribution packages, I use apticron to receive such notifications automatically via mail. As I couldn’t find any existing solution to receive notifications about pending Flatpak updates via mail as well, I wrote flaticron.

GitHub: https://github.com/raimue/flaticron/

An example report sent by flaticron looks like this:

flaticron report [Thu, 28 Mar 2024 18:36:36 +0100]
========================================================================

flaticron has detected that some flatpaks need updating on:

  ferret

The following flatpaks are currently pending an update:

  org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default              22.08        flathub
  org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default              22.08-extra  flathub
  org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default              23.08        flathub
  org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default              23.08-extra  flathub
  org.freedesktop.Platform.VAAPI.Intel             22.08        flathub
  org.freedesktop.Platform.VAAPI.Intel             23.08        flathub
  org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full             23.08        flathub
  org.freedesktop.Platform                         23.08        flathub
  org.gnome.Platform                               44           flathub
  org.gnome.Platform                               45           flathub

========================================================================

You can perform the update by issuing the command:

  flatpak update

as raimue on ferret

-- 
flaticron

The format of the report is very similar to what is generated by apticron, so it should feel familiar for existing users. The prerequisite for mail notifications is that you have a working MTA on your system.

flaticron is available as a Debian package and can be downloaded and installed from the latest GitHub release. If flaticron gains at least some popularity, I might look into getting this into the official Debian repositories. Let me know if you would be interested.

If you are a Flatpak user, I hope flaticron will be a useful tool for you to get notified about pending updates via mail.

A story of Docker, QEMU, and memfd_create()

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Last year I stumbled across a problem with the execution of a Docker container in a CI environment. The interesting case was that this is a container for a foreign architecture, which is supported by the --platform option and there are even official images on Docker Hub for this.

Initially, the problem presented itself like this:

$ docker run -it --rm --platform linux/arm64 [...] arm64v8/ubuntu:jammy
root@d6fb5c478cb6:/# ps
Error, do this: mount -t proc proc /proc

This means the ps(1) command could not run in this Docker container. At first I trusted the error message and thought that /proc might really not be mounted. However, that is usually taken care of by Docker and this following check confirmed that it is in fact mounted:

root@d6fb5c478cb6:/# mount | grep proc | head -n1
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

Well, now what is actually the problem here with running a Docker container for a foreign architecture?

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New profile picture generated by AI

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A few weeks ago I decided to replace my profile picture. I use the same picture across almost all the social media sites. Now a part of the new profile picture is also the header image in this blog’s design. Here is this new profile picture:

My new profile picture. A description follows inline in the post.

It looks very stylish on the first glance, but if you look closer you will notice that it contains imperfections. The reason for this is that it was generated by AI without any further editing. While I did some basic design work in the past, I am not an illustrator and would never be able to come up with something like this myself. I do not even know how which tools to use these days.

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Follow this blog via ActivityPub on Mastodon

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All new posts on this blog are now published via ActivityPub to Mastodon and all other compatible decentralized social sites in the Fediverse. With the help of the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, this was a simple setup.

You can now follow the posts of this blog on the account @posts@raimue.blog. The widget below will help you to subscribe from your instance, but you could also just search for the address.

The ActivityPub plugin will only publish posts to this address, so do not expect any other interaction from this account. My personal account remains @raimue@hachyderm.io.

This is an experiment and I mainly enable it to play around with the new feature. Mastodon and the Fediverse still have their shortcomings due to the decentralized nature, but it also enables new ways to share content and interact.

The accounts below are already following the account of this blog. Follow now to add yours to the list!

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