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Daniel Kahn Gillmor | 19 Aug 08:11

Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg-debian.org <at> fifthhorseman.net>

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* Package name    : libfaketime
  Version         : 0.7
  Upstream Author : <wolf <at> code-wizards.com>
* URL             : http://www.code-wizards.com/projects/libfaketime/index.html
* License         : GPL-2+
  Programming Lang: C
  Description     : report faked system time to programs

libfaketime intercepts various system calls which programs use to
retrieve the current date and time. It can then report faked dates and
times (as specified by you, the user) to these programs. This means
you can modify the system time a program sees without having to change
the time system-wide. FTPL allows you to specify both absolute dates
(e.g., 01/01/2004) and relative dates (e.g., 10 days ago).

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (200, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

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Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
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Peter Palfrader | 19 Aug 09:27
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Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:

> libfaketime intercepts various system calls which programs use to
> retrieve the current date and time. It can then report faked dates and
> times (as specified by you, the user) to these programs. This means
> you can modify the system time a program sees without having to change
> the time system-wide. FTPL allows you to specify both absolute dates
> (e.g., 01/01/2004) and relative dates (e.g., 10 days ago).

How does this differ from datefudge?

--

-- 
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      Peter Palfrader      | : :' :      The  universal
 http://www.palfrader.org/ | `. `'      Operating System
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Daniel Kahn Gillmor | 19 Aug 18:41
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Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs

(CC'ing upstream for both datefudge and libfaketime)

This is in reference to my proposal to package libfaketime for debian,
found here:

  http://bugs.debian.org/495630

On Tue 2008-08-19 03:27:47 -0400, Peter Palfrader wrote:

> How does this differ from datefudge?

On Tue 2008-08-19 05:41:31 -0400, Guus Sliepen wrote:

> There is already another package in Debian that provides similar
> functionality: datefudge. Perhaps you can get both upstreams to
> merge there efforts?

Ah, i'd missed datefudge.  Thanks for pointing it out, Peter and Guus.
Actually, datefudge will do what i need for my purposes, so i'm going
to back off from this ITP for now.

The packages are slightly different, though:

libfaketime appears to be capable of intercepting stat() calls while
datefudge is not.

And libfaketime is capable of setting absolute times (i.e. making the
wall clock appear completely stopped for the client).

datefudge appears to use what libfaketime calls "start at" dates:
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Matthias Urlichs | 19 Aug 18:55

Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs

Hi,

Daniel Kahn Gillmor:
> 
> libfaketime appears to be capable of intercepting stat() calls while
> datefudge is not.
> 
That's been intentional. (One of the uses of datefudge was to test tools
like "make", when they run on a file system whose times are skewed.)

> And libfaketime is capable of setting absolute times (i.e. making the
> wall clock appear completely stopped for the client).
> 
That's ugly. ;-)

> [Datefudge] can't "stop the clock" the way that libfaketime can:
> 
There are a few programs out there which misbehave (i.e. hang)
if you do that, so I saw no reason to implement this ...

> Both tools seem to be GPL-2 or later, so i see no reason why upstream
> couldn't join forces if they wanted to.  Wolfgang?  Matthias?  Do you
> guys have any preferences for how to proceed?  What do you think of
> Guus' suggestion?
> 
If you want to enhance my datefudge code with whatever features
libfaketime has that I haven't, be my guest.

--

-- 
Matthias Urlichs   |   {M:U} IT Design @ m-u-it.de   |  smurf <at> smurf.noris.de
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Wolfgang Hommel | 19 Aug 19:33

Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs

Daniel, Matthias,

admittedly I haven't been aware of datefudge so far; seems to me like 
both mini-tools have been developed independent of each other since 
around 2003.

 From looking at datefudge 1.14 (is that the most recent version?), I'd 
claim that libfaketime currently provides a superset of the 
functionality, but as you already wrote, datefudge will do for many 
purposes.

Actually, if you could point out in more detail how you'd like 
libfaketime to be enhanced, e.g. how the time specification syntax could 
be improved from your perspective, I'm certainly interested in working 
on that. I didn't find libfaketime's syntax so different from your 
datefudge example call, but maybe I'm missing something here.

On the other hand, this means that I would stick to libfaketime as my 
code base, and I think that matches Matthias' preferences as well. It 
certainly shouldn't hurt to have more than one tool to choose from (of 
course, that's my personal opinion, and might not match Debian's package 
policies).

Best regards,
Wolfgang

Daniel Kahn Gillmor schrieb:
> This is in reference to my proposal to package libfaketime for debian,
> found here:
>
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Daniel Kahn Gillmor | 19 Aug 21:06
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Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs

On Tue 2008-08-19 13:33:06 -0400, Wolfgang Hommel wrote:

> Actually, if you could point out in more detail how you'd like
> libfaketime to be enhanced, e.g. how the time specification syntax
> could be improved from your perspective, I'm certainly interested in
> working on that. I didn't find libfaketime's syntax so different from
> your datefudge example call, but maybe I'm missing something here.

my datefudge example used regular syntax, but it also accepts
"friendlier", human-readable (and generatable) syntax to a rather
extreme degree:

[0 dkg <at> squeak ~]$ datefudge "3 days ago last thursday" date
Mon Aug 11 00:00:00 EDT 2008
[0 dkg <at> squeak ~]$ 

I think it's taking advantage of GNU's getdate(), but i haven't
checked the source.

> On the other hand, this means that I would stick to libfaketime as
> my code base, and I think that matches Matthias' preferences as
> well. It certainly shouldn't hurt to have more than one tool to
> choose from (of course, that's my personal opinion, and might not
> match Debian's package policies).

i don't currently need the stat() wrappers, but that's the big win
that libfaketime has over datefudge, afaict.  Does that all handle the
newer statat() calls as well?  There were problems with the *at()
calls for fakechroot recently [0].  IMHO, libfaketime does suffer from
not having a convenient way to invoke it from the command line (by
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Daniel Kahn Gillmor | 26 Aug 22:06
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Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs

retitle 495630 ITP: faketime: report faked system time to programs
thanks

As of version 0.8, upstream is now providing a wrapper script
(/usr/bin/faketime), so the package can be built along the lines of
fakeroot and fakechroot.  Upstream has also provided a man page, which
is quite nice.

   --dkg
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Debian Bug Tracking System | 26 Aug 22:09

Processed: Re: Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs

Processing commands for control <at> bugs.debian.org:

> retitle 495630 ITP: faketime: report faked system time to programs
Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs
Changed Bug title to `ITP: faketime: report faked system time to programs' from `ITP: libfaketime --
report faked system time to programs'.

> thanks
Stopping processing here.

Please contact me if you need assistance.

Debian bug tracking system administrator
(administrator, Debian Bugs database)
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Guus Sliepen | 19 Aug 11:41
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Bug#495630: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 02:13:44AM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:

> * Package name    : libfaketime
>   Description     : report faked system time to programs

There is already another package in Debian that provides similar functionality:
datefudge. Perhaps you can get both upstreams to merge there efforts?

--

-- 
Met vriendelijke groet / with kind regards,
      Guus Sliepen <guus <at> debian.org>
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Debian Bug Tracking System | 24 Oct 21:27

Bug#495630: marked as done (ITP: faketime -- report faked system time to programs)


Your message dated Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:12:33 +0000
with message-id <E1KtS5J-0004jW-Iq <at> ries.debian.org>
and subject line Bug#495630: fixed in faketime 0.8-1
has caused the Debian Bug report #495630,
regarding ITP: faketime -- report faked system time to programs
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact owner <at> bugs.debian.org
immediately.)

--

-- 
495630: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=495630
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner <at> bugs.debian.org with problems
From: Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg-debian.org <at> fifthhorseman.net>
Subject: ITP: libfaketime -- report faked system time to programs
Date: 2008-08-19 06:13:44 GMT
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