Hello
Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of February 13 to 20, 2007.
If you are a student, you want to apply to OCaml Summer Project
(http://osp2007.janestcapital.com/) but you don't have a subject at
hand, we have a project for you: ;-)
*Write an OCaml web interface for the demexp software*
Demexp is an electronic voting software designed for direct democracy
with special features (Condorcet voting algorithm, vote delegation,
vote change at any time, ...). More information at https://demexp.org/
I personally hope that one day people are going to come to OCaml
because of demexp. :-)
Currently, the demexp software is a client/server application,
entirely written in OCaml. We use LablGTK for the client which is
supported on Windows and Linux. But in order to ease deployment of our
software, we need a web interface that could be accessed through a
regular web browser. We have a very rudimentary prototype of such a
web interface (written with WDialog) but a more elaborate and
maintainable interface is heartily needed.
A first draft of things to implement is given in those messages:
http://www.mail-archive.com/demexp-dev%40nongnu.org/msg00932.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/demexp-dev%40nongnu.org/msg00940.html
Such an interface could be implemented with a modern OCaml web
framework like Ocsigen. Our software is generally under GNU GPL
license but we can use another one if desired (BSD like for example).
Feel free to ask questions or comments, but preferably on
demexp-dev@mailing list or directly to myself to avoid polluting
caml-list.
> I have a main program in C, and some ocaml code. I usually compile to > native code using ocamlopt -output-obj and then have XCode compile the > C and link the whole together. This works well. > > However, due to a bug which prevents my using natively compiled code at > the moment, I'm trying to replicate the situation with bytecode. > > So now, I use ocamlc -output-obj, and link camlrun instead of asmrun. > > This compiles and links but, when run, gives "No bytecode file specified". > > The executable is not being stripped. I'm using Ocaml 3.09.3 on > OSX 10.4/ppc. > > Can anyone suggest what may be wrong? What parameters are you passing in you caml_startup call? I usually do the following char * argv1[2]; argv1[0]="--"; argv1[1]=NULL; caml_startup(argv1);
There is a new version of SQLite3-bindings for OCaml available as a Godi-package now. The initial version was written by Christian Szegedy about two years ago, but does not seem to have been maintained since then. I have improved the C-stubs to fix a few things and make the library work better in multi-threaded environments, cleaned up the API, and documented it. The library is not quite backwards compatible to Christian's version, but it should take very little effort only to update applications using it. Just select the package "godi-sqlite3" in Godi to install the library. You can then link with the findlib package "sqlite3", and access the library through module "Sqlite3". The source code is available here: http://ocaml.info/home/ocaml_sources.html#ocaml-sqlite3 Best regards, Markus P.S.: I haven't managed to get feedback from Christian yet so I don't know whether he's fine with my changes, but it is likely that the current API will remain stable.
Release 1.3 of LSD mount utilities with mkfs, fsck and LUKS support
___________________________________________________________________
A new version (1.3) of the LSD mount utilities has been released.
- LUKS support has been tested (by Alexander Ulrich) and seems to be OK.
- Basic versions of mkfs.lcrypt and fsck.lcrypt have been added:
You can now use mkfs to create a file system on your encrypted
device and fsck to check your file system.
- The file USAGE (see below) is intended to be the beginning of
a user manual.
LSD mount utilities are written in OCaml.
Regards -- M E Leypold, 16 Feb 2007.
* About
=====
The LSD mount utilities assist in setting up (creating) and
mounting of encrypted loopback file systems in Linux 2.4 and 2.6.
They also enable users (not only root) to mount encrypted
file systems if appropriate entries have been added to /etc/fstab.
The LSD mount utilities are licensed/distributed under the the
terms of the GPL Version 2 (no later version). We'll usually be
happy though to relicense under other OS licenses, but you have to
ask and get the licensing change from us in writing.
The LSD mount utilities are available from
http://software.m-e-leypold.de. Read the README file from the
distribution before using the software!
* How to get more information and help
====================================
Information on recent development and plans and updated
documentation will be posted at
http://www.etc-network.de/blog/mel/projects/lsd-mount-utilities
If you need help, have questions concerning the LSD mount
utilities or have suggestions for further implementation you can
write the developer at
development-2006-8ecbb5cc8a-REMOVE-THIS@AND-THAT-m-e-leypold.de
I don't guarantee support, but will usually do my best to help.
* How to use (excerpt from USAGE)
===============================
PLEASE DO READ the file USAGE in the distribution. The following
excerpt is only intended to give you a basic idea how things work
with LSD mount utilities (i.e. that the hide all losetup and
cryptsetup stuff from the user).
** Creating an encrypted file system
---------------------------------
Before you can make an encrypted file system you need to create an
image file and preferably fill it with random noise:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/secret/image
Given an image files a encrypted file systems can be initialized
with plain mkfs:
mkfs -t lcrypt /secret/image 10000
The 'blocks' number is optional (you usually can leave it
out). You'll be asked for the passphrase twice.
** Checking an encrypted file system
---------------------------------
An encrypted file system can be checked passing '-t lcrypt' to fsck.
fsck -t lcrypt /secret/image
You will, of course be asked for the passphrase.
If there is an entry in /etc/fstab (see the next sections) which
already gives the type of /secret/image as lcrypt, the '-t lcrypt'
might be omitted:
fsck /secret/image
** Mounting an encrypted file system
----------------------------------
To mount an encrypted file system you can pass '-t lcrypt' to
mount:
mount -t lcrypt /data/encrypted-image /mnt
You'll be asked for the passphrase.
If there is an entry in /etc/fstab (see the next sections) which
already gives the type of /secret/image as lcrypt, the '-t lcrypt'
and the mount point might be omitted.
mount /data/encrypted-image
** Setting up encrypted file systems in /etc/fstab
-----------------------------------------------
Use lcrypt as file system type. Use the option 'user', if
non-privileged users should be able to mount the device:
/etc/fstab:
|
...
|
| /data/encrypted-image /secret-mnt lcrypt rw,noauto,user,exec 0 0
|
** Loclean: Clean up loopback devices
----------------------------------
Loclean can only be used by root:
loclean
and will try to remove all associations with files from loopback
devices (/dev/loop*) that are not currently in use.
Here is a quick trick to help you read this CWN if you are viewing it using vim (version 6 or greater).
:set foldmethod=expr
:set foldexpr=getline(v:lnum)=~'^=\\{78}$'?'<1':1
zM
If you know of a better way, please let me know.
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