blog/tags/english/index.html

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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         12th September 2012
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
  32 publication of of
  33 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
  34 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
  35 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
  36 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
  37 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
  38 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
  39 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
  40 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
  41 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
  42 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
  43
  44 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
  45 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
  46 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
  47 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
  48
  49 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
  50 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
  51
  52       </div>
  53       <div class="tags">
  54
  55
  56         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
  57
  58
  59       </div>
  60     </div>
  61     <div class="padding"></div>
  62
  63     <div class="entry">
  64       <div class="title">
  65         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
  66       </div>
  67       <div class="date">
  68          7th September 2012
  69       </div>
  70       <div class="body">
  71         <p>As I
  72 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
  73 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
  74 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
  75 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
  76 repository for the project</a>.</p>
  77
  78 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
  79 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
  80 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
  81 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
  82
  83 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
  84 PostScript formats at
  85 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
  86 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
  87
  88       </div>
  89       <div class="tags">
  90
  91
  92         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
  93
  94
  95       </div>
  96     </div>
  97     <div class="padding"></div>
  98
  99     <div class="entry">
 100       <div class="title">
 101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
 102       </div>
 103       <div class="date">
 104         23rd August 2012
 105       </div>
 106       <div class="body">
 107         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
 108 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
 109 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
 110 revisit the great site
 111 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
 112 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
 113 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
 114
 115       </div>
 116       <div class="tags">
 117
 118
 119         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 120
 121
 122       </div>
 123     </div>
 124     <div class="padding"></div>
 125
 126     <div class="entry">
 127       <div class="title">
 128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
 129       </div>
 130       <div class="date">
 131         17th August 2012
 132       </div>
 133       <div class="body">
 134         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
 135 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
 136 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
 137 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
 138 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
 139 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
 140 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
 141 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
 142 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
 143 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
 144 summer I
 145 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
 146 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
 147 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
 148
 149 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
 150 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
 151 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
 152 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
 153 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
 154 progress:</p>
 155
 156 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
 157
 158 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
 159 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
 160 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
 161 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
 162 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
 163 english version of the docbook source.</p>
 164
 165 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
 166 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
 167 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
 168 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
 169 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
 170 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
 171 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
 172 project files currently available from <a
 173 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 174
 175 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
 176 the updated
 177 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
 178 and
 179 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 180 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
 181 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
 182 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
 183
 184       </div>
 185       <div class="tags">
 186
 187
 188         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 189
 190
 191       </div>
 192     </div>
 193     <div class="padding"></div>
 194
 195     <div class="entry">
 196       <div class="title">
 197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
 198       </div>
 199       <div class="date">
 200         10th August 2012
 201       </div>
 202       <div class="body">
 203         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
 204 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
 205 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
 206 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
 207 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
 208 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
 209 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
 210 case for the language
 211 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
 212 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
 213
 214 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
 215 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
 216 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
 217 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
 218 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
 219
 220 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
 221 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
 222 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
 223 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
 224 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
 225 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
 226 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
 227 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
 228 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
 229 alias for 'nb'.</p>
 230
 231 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
 232 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
 233 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
 234 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
 235 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
 236 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
 237 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
 238 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
 239 at the same time. :(</p>
 240
 241 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
 242 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
 243 processors. :(</p>
 244
 245 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
 246
 247       </div>
 248       <div class="tags">
 249
 250
 251         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 252
 253
 254       </div>
 255     </div>
 256     <div class="padding"></div>
 257
 258     <div class="entry">
 259       <div class="title">
 260         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
 261       </div>
 262       <div class="date">
 263         31st July 2012
 264       </div>
 265       <div class="body">
 266         <p>I tried to send this text to the
 267 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
 268 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
 269 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
 270 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
 271 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
 272 out.</p>
 273
 274 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
 275 learning curve at the moment.</p>
 276
 277 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
 278 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
 279 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
 280 available from
 281 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
 282 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
 283 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
 284 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
 285 Squeeze.</p>
 286
 287 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
 288 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
 289 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
 290 problems.</p>
 291
 292 <ul>
 293
 294 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
 295    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
 296    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
 297    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
 298    index references spanning several pages (See
 299    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
 300    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
 301    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
 302
 303 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
 304    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
 305    #683163</a>).</li>
 306
 307 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
 308    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
 309    footnote and text body, see
 310    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
 311    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
 312    refs listed are not right).</li>
 313
 314 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
 315
 316 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
 317    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
 318
 319 </ul>
 320
 321 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
 322 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
 323 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
 324
 325 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
 326
 327       </div>
 328       <div class="tags">
 329
 330
 331         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 332
 333
 334       </div>
 335     </div>
 336     <div class="padding"></div>
 337
 338     <div class="entry">
 339       <div class="title">
 340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
 341       </div>
 342       <div class="date">
 343         21st July 2012
 344       </div>
 345       <div class="body">
 346         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
 347 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
 348 norwegian version</a> of the book
 349 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
 350 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
 351 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
 352 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
 353 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 354
 355 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
 356 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
 357 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
 358 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
 359 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
 360 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
 361 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
 362 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
 363 print. :)</p>
 364
 365 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
 366 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
 367 language.</p>
 368
 369       </div>
 370       <div class="tags">
 371
 372
 373         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 374
 375
 376       </div>
 377     </div>
 378     <div class="padding"></div>
 379
 380     <div class="entry">
 381       <div class="title">
 382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
 383       </div>
 384       <div class="date">
 385         16th July 2012
 386       </div>
 387       <div class="body">
 388         <p>I am currently working on a
 389 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
 390 to translate</a> the book
 391 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
 392 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
 393 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
 394 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
 395 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
 396 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
 397 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 398
 399 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
 400 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
 401 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
 402 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
 403 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
 404 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
 405 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
 406 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
 407 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
 408
 409       </div>
 410       <div class="tags">
 411
 412
 413         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 414
 415
 416       </div>
 417     </div>
 418     <div class="padding"></div>
 419
 420     <div class="entry">
 421       <div class="title">
 422         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
 423       </div>
 424       <div class="date">
 425          9th July 2012
 426       </div>
 427       <div class="body">
 428         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 429 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
 430 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
 431 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
 432 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
 433 to adjust and scale the just released
 434 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
 435 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
 436 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
 437
 438 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 439
 440 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
 441 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
 442 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
 443 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
 444 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
 445 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
 446 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
 447 perspective when working with IT.</p>
 448
 449 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
 450 project?</strong></p>
 451
 452 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
 453 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
 454 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
 455 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
 456 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
 457 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
 458
 459 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 460 Edu?</strong></p>
 461
 462 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
 463 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
 464 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
 465 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
 466 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
 467 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
 468 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
 469 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
 470 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
 471 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
 472 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
 473 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
 474 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
 475 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
 476 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
 477 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
 478 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
 479 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
 480 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
 481 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
 482 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
 483 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
 484 quicker to update.
 485
 486 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 487 Edu?</strong></p>
 488
 489 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
 490 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
 491 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
 492 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
 493 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
 494 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
 495
 496 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
 497 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
 498 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
 499 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
 500 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
 501 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
 502 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
 503 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
 504 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
 505 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
 506 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
 507 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
 508 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
 509 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
 510 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
 511
 512 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
 513 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
 514 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
 515 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
 516 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
 517 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
 518 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
 519 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
 520
 521 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
 522 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
 523 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
 524 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
 525 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
 526 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
 527 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
 528 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
 529 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
 530 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
 531 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
 532 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
 533 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
 534 sound file.</p>
 535
 536 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
 537 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
 538 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
 539 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
 540 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
 541 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
 542 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
 543 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
 544 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
 545
 546 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 547
 548 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
 549 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
 550 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
 551 )</p>
 552
 553 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 554 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 555
 556 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
 557 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
 558 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
 559 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
 560 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
 561 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
 562 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
 563 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
 564 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
 565 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
 566 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
 567 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
 568 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
 569 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
 570 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
 571
 572 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
 573 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
 574 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
 575 management with Airtime</a>,
 576 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
 577 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
 578 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
 579 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
 580 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
 581
 582       </div>
 583       <div class="tags">
 584
 585
 586         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 587
 588
 589       </div>
 590     </div>
 591     <div class="padding"></div>
 592
 593     <div class="entry">
 594       <div class="title">
 595         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
 596       </div>
 597       <div class="date">
 598          8th July 2012
 599       </div>
 600       <div class="body">
 601         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
 602 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
 603 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
 604 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
 605 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
 606 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
 607 Steinberg in his blog post
 608 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
 609 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
 610 spending of your tax money.</p>
 611
 612 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
 613 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
 614 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
 615 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
 616 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
 617 purchases.</p>
 618
 619       </div>
 620       <div class="tags">
 621
 622
 623         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 624
 625
 626       </div>
 627     </div>
 628     <div class="padding"></div>
 629
 630     <div class="entry">
 631       <div class="title">
 632         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
 633       </div>
 634       <div class="date">
 635          7th July 2012
 636       </div>
 637       <div class="body">
 638         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 639 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
 640 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
 641 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
 642 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
 643 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
 644 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
 645 receive.  The software is
 646
 647 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
 648 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
 649 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
 650 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
 651 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
 652 Windows</a>.</p>
 653
 654 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
 655 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
 656
 657 <p><ul>
 658
 659   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
 660     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
 661
 662   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
 663     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
 664     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
 665     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
 666     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
 667     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
 668     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
 669     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
 670     </li>
 671
 672   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
 673     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
 674
 675   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
 676     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
 677
 678   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
 679     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
 680
 681   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
 682
 683   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
 684     formats </li>
 685
 686   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
 687     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
 688     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
 689     (as separate sets)</li>
 690
 691   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
 692     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
 693     percentage)</li>
 694
 695   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
 696     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
 697     memory):
 698     <ul>
 699       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
 700       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
 701       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
 702       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
 703       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
 704       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
 705       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
 706       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
 707       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
 708       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
 709           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
 710           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
 711           activity)</li>
 712       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
 713       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
 714     </ul></li>
 715
 716   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
 717     <ul>
 718       <li>Break periods</li>
 719       <li>For teacher(s):
 720         <ul>
 721           <li>Not available periods</li>
 722           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
 723           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
 724           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
 725           <li>Min hours daily</li>
 726           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
 727
 728           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
 729             days per week</li>
 730         </ul></li>
 731       <li>For students (sets):
 732         <ul>
 733           <li>Not available periods</li>
 734           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
 735           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
 736           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
 737           <li>Min hours daily</li>
 738           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
 739
 740           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
 741             days per week</li>
 742         </ul></li>
 743       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
 744         <ul>
 745           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
 746           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
 747           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
 748           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
 749           <li>End(s) students day</li>
 750           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
 751           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
 752             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
 753           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
 754           <li>Not overlapping</li>
 755           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
 756           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
 757         </ul></li>
 758     </ul></li>
 759
 760   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
 761     <ul>
 762       <li>Room not available periods</li>
 763       <li>For teacher(s):
 764         <ul>
 765           <li>Home room(s)</li>
 766           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
 767           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
 768         </ul>
 769       </li>
 770
 771       <li>For students (sets):
 772         <ul>
 773           <li>Home room(s)</li>
 774           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
 775           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
 776         </ul>
 777       </li>
 778       <li>Preferred room(s):
 779         <ul>
 780           <li>For a subject</li>
 781           <li>For an activity tag</li>
 782           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
 783           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
 784         </ul>
 785       </li>
 786
 787       <li>For a set of activities:
 788         <ul>
 789           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
 790         </ul>
 791       </li>
 792     </ul>
 793   </li>
 794 </ul></p>
 795
 796 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
 797 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
 798 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
 799 manually, check it out.
 800
 801 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
 802 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
 803 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
 804 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
 805 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
 806 section</a>.</p>
 807
 808       </div>
 809       <div class="tags">
 810
 811
 812         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 813
 814
 815       </div>
 816     </div>
 817     <div class="padding"></div>
 818
 819     <div class="entry">
 820       <div class="title">
 821         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
 822       </div>
 823       <div class="date">
 824          3rd July 2012
 825       </div>
 826       <div class="body">
 827         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
 828 project (Norwegian version of
 829 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
 830 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
 831 a problem with the municipalities using
 832 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
 833 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
 834 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
 835 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
 836 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
 837 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
 838 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
 839 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
 840 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
 841 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
 842 the From: header.</p>
 843
 844 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
 845 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
 846 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
 847 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
 848 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
 849 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
 850 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
 851 behaviour.</p>
 852
 853 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
 854 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
 855 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
 856 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
 857 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
 858 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
 859 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
 860
 861       </div>
 862       <div class="tags">
 863
 864
 865         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 866
 867
 868       </div>
 869     </div>
 870     <div class="padding"></div>
 871
 872     <div class="entry">
 873       <div class="title">
 874         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
 875       </div>
 876       <div class="date">
 877         26th June 2012
 878       </div>
 879       <div class="body">
 880         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
 881 another interview with the people behind
 882 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
 883 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
 884 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
 885 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
 886 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
 887 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
 888 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
 889
 890 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 891
 892 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
 893 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
 894 ICT in schools</p>
 895
 896 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
 897 project?</strong></p>
 898
 899 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
 900 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
 901 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
 902 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
 903
 904 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 905 Edu?</strong></p>
 906
 907 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
 908 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
 909 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
 910 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
 911
 912 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 913 Edu?</strong></p>
 914
 915 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
 916 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
 917 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
 918 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
 919 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
 920 technologies in school.</p>
 921
 922 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 923
 924 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
 925 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
 926 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
 927
 928 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 929 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 930
 931 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
 932 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
 933 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
 934 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
 935
 936 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
 937 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
 938 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
 939
 940 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
 941 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
 942 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
 943 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
 944 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
 945 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
 946 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
 947 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
 948 working there.</p>
 949
 950       </div>
 951       <div class="tags">
 952
 953
 954         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 955
 956
 957       </div>
 958     </div>
 959     <div class="padding"></div>
 960
 961     <div class="entry">
 962       <div class="title">
 963         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
 964       </div>
 965       <div class="date">
 966         24th June 2012
 967       </div>
 968       <div class="body">
 969         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
 970 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
 971 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
 972 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
 973 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
 974 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
 975 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
 976 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
 977 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
 978 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
 979 missing in my book.</p>
 980
 981 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
 982 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
 983 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
 984 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
 985 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
 986 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
 987 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
 988
 989       </div>
 990       <div class="tags">
 991
 992
 993         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
 994
 995
 996       </div>
 997     </div>
 998     <div class="padding"></div>
 999
1000     <div class="entry">
1001       <div class="title">
1002         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
1003       </div>
1004       <div class="date">
1005         11th June 2012
1006       </div>
1007       <div class="body">
1008         <p>During my work on
1009 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
1010 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
1011 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
1012 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
1013 explanation.</p>
1014
1015 <p><ul>
1016
1017 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
1018 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
1019 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
1020 system depend on tasksel tasks in
1021 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
1022 installation.</li>
1023
1024 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
1025 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
1026 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
1027 at least try to enable it for these services:
1028 <ul>
1029
1030   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
1031     quotas.</li>
1032   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
1033   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
1034   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
1035   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
1036   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
1037
1038 </ul></li>
1039
1040 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
1041 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
1042 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
1043 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
1044
1045 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
1046 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
1047 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
1048
1049 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
1050 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
1051 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
1052 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
1053 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
1054 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
1055
1056 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
1057 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
1058 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
1059 in Wheezy.
1060
1061 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
1062 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
1063 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
1064
1065 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
1066 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
1067 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
1068 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
1069
1070 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
1071 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
1072 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
1073 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
1074
1075 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
1076 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
1077 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
1078
1079 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
1080 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
1081 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
1082
1083 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
1084 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
1085 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
1086 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
1087 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
1088
1089 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
1090 <ul>
1091
1092 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
1093 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
1094 <li>and probably more?</li>
1095 </ul></li>
1096
1097 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
1098 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
1099 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
1100 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
1101 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
1102 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
1103 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
1104 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
1105
1106
1107 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
1108 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
1109 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
1110 use.</li>
1111
1112 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
1113 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
1114 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
1115 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
1116 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
1117
1118 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
1119 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
1120 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
1121 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
1122 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
1123 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
1124
1125 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
1126 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
1127 There are at least three implementations,
1128 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
1129 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
1130 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
1131 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
1132 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
1133 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
1134 given room.</li>
1135
1136 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
1137 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
1138 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
1139 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
1140 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
1141 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
1142 investigated.</li>
1143
1144 </ul></p>
1145
1146 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
1147 version.</p>
1148
1149       </div>
1150       <div class="tags">
1151
1152
1153         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1154
1155
1156       </div>
1157     </div>
1158     <div class="padding"></div>
1159
1160     <div class="entry">
1161       <div class="title">
1162         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
1163       </div>
1164       <div class="date">
1165          9th June 2012
1166       </div>
1167       <div class="body">
1168         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
1169 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
1170 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
1171 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
1172 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
1173 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
1174 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
1175 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
1176 be willing to pay for.</p>
1177
1178 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
1179 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
1180 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
1181 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
1182 Orwell</a>.</p>
1183
1184       </div>
1185       <div class="tags">
1186
1187
1188         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1189
1190
1191       </div>
1192     </div>
1193     <div class="padding"></div>
1194
1195     <div class="entry">
1196       <div class="title">
1197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
1198       </div>
1199       <div class="date">
1200          6th June 2012
1201       </div>
1202       <div class="body">
1203         <p>A few days ago
1204 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
1205 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
1206 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
1207 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
1208 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
1209 code for HP, Dell and IBM
1210 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
1211 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
1212 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
1213 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
1214 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
1215
1216 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
1217 output:
1218
1219 <blockquote><pre>
1220 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
1221 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
1222 %
1223 </pre></blockquote>
1224
1225 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
1226 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
1227 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
1228
1229       </div>
1230       <div class="tags">
1231
1232
1233         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1234
1235
1236       </div>
1237     </div>
1238     <div class="padding"></div>
1239
1240     <div class="entry">
1241       <div class="title">
1242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
1243       </div>
1244       <div class="date">
1245          2nd June 2012
1246       </div>
1247       <div class="body">
1248         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
1249 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
1250 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
1251 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
1252 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1253 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
1254
1255 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1256
1257 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
1258 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
1259 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
1260 by Angela).</p>
1261
1262 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
1263 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
1264 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
1265 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
1266 becoming an osteopath.</p>
1267
1268 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
1269 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
1270 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
1271 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
1272 skills with communication skills.</p>
1273
1274 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1275 project?</strong></p>
1276
1277 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
1278 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
1279 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
1280 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
1281 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
1282
1283 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
1284 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
1285 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
1286 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
1287 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
1288 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
1289 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
1290 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
1291 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
1292
1293 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
1294 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
1295 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
1296
1297 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
1298
1299 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
1300 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
1301 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
1302 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
1303 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
1304 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
1305 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
1306 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
1307 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
1308 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
1309 point.</p>
1310
1311 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
1312 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
1313 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
1314 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
1315 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
1316 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
1317
1318 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
1319 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
1320 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
1321 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
1322 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
1323 spare time.</p>
1324
1325 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
1326 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
1327 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
1328 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
1329 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
1330
1331 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
1332 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
1333 avoidance do exist.</p>
1334
1335 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
1336 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
1337 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
1338 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
1339 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
1340 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
1341 and probably a gain for all.</p>
1342
1343 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1344 Edu?</strong></p>
1345
1346 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
1347 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
1348 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
1349 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
1350 project communication, honest communication within the group of
1351 developers, etc.</p>
1352
1353 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1354 Edu?</strong></p>
1355
1356 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
1357
1358 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
1359 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
1360 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
1361 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
1362 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
1363 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
1364 contribute).</p>
1365
1366 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
1367 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
1368 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
1369 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
1370 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
1371 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
1372 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
1373 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
1374 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
1375 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
1376
1377 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1378
1379 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
1380
1381 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
1382 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
1383 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
1384
1385 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
1386 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
1387 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
1388 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
1389
1390 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
1391 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
1392 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
1393 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
1394 whiteboard.</p>
1395
1396 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
1397
1398 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1399 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1400
1401 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
1402 enrol people.</p>
1403
1404       </div>
1405       <div class="tags">
1406
1407
1408         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1409
1410
1411       </div>
1412     </div>
1413     <div class="padding"></div>
1414
1415     <div class="entry">
1416       <div class="title">
1417         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
1418       </div>
1419       <div class="date">
1420          1st June 2012
1421       </div>
1422       <div class="body">
1423         <p>A few years ago I wrote
1424 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
1425 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
1426 I have learned from colleges here at the
1427 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
1428 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
1429 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
1430 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
1431 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
1432
1433 <p><pre>
1434 use strict;
1435 use warnings;
1436 use SOAP::Lite;
1437 use Data::Dumper;
1438 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
1439 my $App = 'test';
1440 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
1441 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
1442 my $s = SOAP::Lite
1443     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
1444     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
1445     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
1446     ;
1447 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
1448     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
1449     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
1450     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
1451 );
1452 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
1453 </pre></p>
1454
1455 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
1456
1457 <p><pre>
1458 $VAR1 = {
1459           'Asset' => {
1460                      'Entitlements' => {
1461                                        'EntitlementData' => [
1462                                                             {
1463                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
1464                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
1465                                                               'Provider' => '',
1466                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
1467                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
1468                                                             },
1469                                                             {
1470                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
1471                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
1472                                                               'Provider' => '',
1473                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
1474                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
1475                                                             },
1476                                                             {
1477                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
1478                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
1479                                                               'Provider' => '',
1480                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
1481                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
1482                                                             }
1483                                                           ]
1484                                      },
1485                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
1486                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
1487                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
1488                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
1489                                           'Buid' => '2323',
1490                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
1491                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
1492                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
1493                                         }
1494                    }
1495         };
1496 </pre></p>
1497
1498 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
1499 service outside the
1500 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
1501 documentation</a>, and according to
1502 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
1503 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
1504 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
1505
1506 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
1507 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
1508
1509       </div>
1510       <div class="tags">
1511
1512
1513         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1514
1515
1516       </div>
1517     </div>
1518     <div class="padding"></div>
1519
1520     <div class="entry">
1521       <div class="title">
1522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
1523       </div>
1524       <div class="date">
1525         31st May 2012
1526       </div>
1527       <div class="body">
1528         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
1529 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
1530 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
1531 running Debian Squeeze, where
1532 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
1533 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
1534 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
1535 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
1536 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
1537 another day.</p>
1538
1539 <p>After calibration, I get a
1540 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
1541 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
1542 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
1543 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
1544 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
1545 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
1546 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
1547 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
1548 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
1549 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
1550 and a simple</p>
1551
1552 <p><pre>
1553 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
1554 </pre></p>
1555
1556 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
1557 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
1558 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
1559 enough for now.</p>
1560
1561       </div>
1562       <div class="tags">
1563
1564
1565         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1566
1567
1568       </div>
1569     </div>
1570     <div class="padding"></div>
1571
1572     <div class="entry">
1573       <div class="title">
1574         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
1575       </div>
1576       <div class="date">
1577         27th May 2012
1578       </div>
1579       <div class="body">
1580         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
1581 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
1582 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
1583 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
1584 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
1585 since then, helping to make sure the
1586 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1587 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
1588
1589 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1590
1591 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
1592 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
1593 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
1594 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
1595 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
1596 our computer network.</p>
1597
1598 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
1599 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
1600 (4 months).</p>
1601
1602 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1603 project?</strong></p>
1604
1605 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
1606 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
1607 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
1608 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
1609 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
1610 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
1611 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
1612 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
1613 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
1614 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
1615 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
1616 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
1617 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
1618 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
1619
1620 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1621 Edu?</strong></p>
1622
1623 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
1624 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
1625 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
1626 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
1627 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
1628 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
1629 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
1630 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
1631
1632 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1633 Edu?</strong></p>
1634
1635 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
1636 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
1637 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
1638 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
1639 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
1640 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
1641 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
1642 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
1643 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
1644 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
1645 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
1646 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
1647
1648 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1649
1650 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
1651 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
1652 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
1653
1654 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1655 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1656
1657 <p><ol>
1658
1659 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
1660 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
1661 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
1662 developing.</li>
1663
1664 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
1665 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
1666 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
1667 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
1668 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
1669
1670 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
1671 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
1672 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
1673
1674 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
1675 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
1676 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
1677 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
1678
1679 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
1680 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
1681 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
1682
1683 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
1684
1685 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
1686 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
1687 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
1688 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
1689
1690 </ol></p>
1691
1692       </div>
1693       <div class="tags">
1694
1695
1696         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1697
1698
1699       </div>
1700     </div>
1701     <div class="padding"></div>
1702
1703     <div class="entry">
1704       <div class="title">
1705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
1706       </div>
1707       <div class="date">
1708         26th May 2012
1709       </div>
1710       <div class="body">
1711         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
1712 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
1713 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
1714 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
1715 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
1716
1717 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
1718 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
1719 comment:</p>
1720
1721 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
1722 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
1723 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
1724 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
1725 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
1726 </blockquote></p>
1727
1728 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
1729 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
1730 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
1731 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
1732 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
1733 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
1734 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
1735 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
1736 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
1737 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
1738 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
1739 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
1740 of wasted effort.</p>
1741
1742 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
1743 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
1744 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
1745
1746 <p>See
1747 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
1748 and
1749 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
1750 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
1751 </blockquote></p>
1752
1753       </div>
1754       <div class="tags">
1755
1756
1757         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1758
1759
1760       </div>
1761     </div>
1762     <div class="padding"></div>
1763
1764     <div class="entry">
1765       <div class="title">
1766         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
1767       </div>
1768       <div class="date">
1769         18th May 2012
1770       </div>
1771       <div class="body">
1772         <p>In january, I
1773 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
1774 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
1775 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
1776 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
1777 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
1778 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
1779 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
1780 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
1781 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
1782 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
1783
1784 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
1785 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
1786 drivers. :)</p>
1787
1788       </div>
1789       <div class="tags">
1790
1791
1792         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1793
1794
1795       </div>
1796     </div>
1797     <div class="padding"></div>
1798
1799     <div class="entry">
1800       <div class="title">
1801         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
1802       </div>
1803       <div class="date">
1804         13th May 2012
1805       </div>
1806       <div class="body">
1807         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
1808 publish another interview with the people behind
1809 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
1810 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
1811 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
1812 details get right before release.
1813
1814 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1815
1816 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
1817 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
1818 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
1819 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
1820 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
1821 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
1822 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
1823 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
1824
1825 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
1826 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
1827 home since 2006.</p>
1828
1829 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1830 project?</strong></p>
1831
1832 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
1833 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
1834 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
1835 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
1836 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
1837 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
1838
1839 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
1840 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
1841 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
1842 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
1843 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
1844 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
1845 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
1846 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
1847 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
1848 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
1849 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
1850 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
1851 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
1852 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
1853 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
1854 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
1855
1856 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1857 Edu?</strong></p>
1858
1859 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
1860 for me as today.</p>
1861
1862 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
1863
1864 <p><ul>
1865
1866 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
1867 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
1868
1869 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
1870 cost.</li>
1871
1872 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
1873 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
1874 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
1875 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
1876 server</li>
1877
1878 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
1879 school.</li>
1880
1881 </ul></p>
1882
1883 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
1884 came up in this way:</p>
1885
1886 <p><ul>
1887
1888 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
1889 now.</li>
1890
1891 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
1892 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
1893 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
1894
1895 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
1896 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
1897 interfaces used in the past.</li>
1898
1899 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
1900 different needs.</li>
1901
1902 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
1903
1904 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
1905 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
1906 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
1907
1908 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
1909 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
1910
1911 </ul></p>
1912
1913 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1914 Edu?</strong></p>
1915
1916 <p><ul>
1917
1918 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
1919 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
1920 whole municipality areas.</li>
1921
1922 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
1923 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
1924 politicians.</li>
1925
1926 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
1927
1928 </ul></p>
1929
1930 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1931
1932 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
1933 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
1934 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
1935 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
1936 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
1937 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
1938
1939 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
1940 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
1941 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
1942 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
1943 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
1944
1945 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1946 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1947
1948 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
1949 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
1950 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
1951
1952       </div>
1953       <div class="tags">
1954
1955
1956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1957
1958
1959       </div>
1960     </div>
1961     <div class="padding"></div>
1962
1963     <div class="entry">
1964       <div class="title">
1965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
1966       </div>
1967       <div class="date">
1968         30th April 2012
1969       </div>
1970       <div class="body">
1971         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
1972 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
1973
1974 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
1975 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
1976 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
1977 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
1978 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
1979 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
1980 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
1981 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
1982 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
1983 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
1984 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
1985 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
1986 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
1987 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
1988 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
1989 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
1990
1991 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
1992 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
1993 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
1994 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
1995 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
1996 finally found a Danish supplier
1997 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
1998 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
1999 days ago.</p>
2000
2001 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
2002 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
2003 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
2004 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
2005 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
2006 toys.</p>
2007
2008       </div>
2009       <div class="tags">
2010
2011
2012         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2013
2014
2015       </div>
2016     </div>
2017     <div class="padding"></div>
2018
2019     <div class="entry">
2020       <div class="title">
2021         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
2022       </div>
2023       <div class="date">
2024         26th April 2012
2025       </div>
2026       <div class="body">
2027         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
2028 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
2029 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
2030 that the video editor application included with
2031 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
2032 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
2033 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
2034
2035 <p><blockquote>
2036 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
2037 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
2038 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
2039 </blockquote></p>
2040
2041 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
2042
2043 <p><blockquote>
2044 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
2045 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
2046 </blockquote></p>
2047
2048 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
2049 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
2050 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
2051 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
2052 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
2053 video.  AMR is
2054 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
2055 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
2056 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
2057 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
2058 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
2059 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
2060 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
2061
2062 <p>I know why I prefer
2063 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
2064 standards</a> also for video.</p>
2065
2066       </div>
2067       <div class="tags">
2068
2069
2070         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2071
2072
2073       </div>
2074     </div>
2075     <div class="padding"></div>
2076
2077     <div class="entry">
2078       <div class="title">
2079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
2080       </div>
2081       <div class="date">
2082         19th April 2012
2083       </div>
2084       <div class="body">
2085         <p>Here in Norway, the
2086 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
2087 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
2088 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
2089 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
2090 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
2091 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
2092 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
2093 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
2094 on the same level.</p>
2095
2096 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
2097 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
2098 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
2099 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
2100 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
2101 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
2102 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
2103 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
2104 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
2105 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
2106 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
2107 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
2108 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
2109 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
2110 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
2111 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
2112 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
2113 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
2114
2115 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
2116 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
2117 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
2118 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
2119 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
2120 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
2121 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
2122 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
2123
2124 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
2125 from Simon Phipps
2126 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
2127 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
2128
2129 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
2130 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
2131 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
2132 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
2133 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
2134 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
2135 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
2136 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
2137 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
2138
2139       </div>
2140       <div class="tags">
2141
2142
2143         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2144
2145
2146       </div>
2147     </div>
2148     <div class="padding"></div>
2149
2150     <div class="entry">
2151       <div class="title">
2152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
2153       </div>
2154       <div class="date">
2155         15th April 2012
2156       </div>
2157       <div class="body">
2158         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2159 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
2160 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
2161 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
2162 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
2163 up in the recently released
2164 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
2165 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
2166
2167 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2168
2169 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
2170 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
2171 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
2172 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
2173 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
2174 information technology and science/technology.</p>
2175
2176 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2177 project?</strong></p>
2178
2179 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
2180 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
2181 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
2182 contributing.</p>
2183
2184 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2185 Edu?</strong></p>
2186
2187 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
2188 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
2189 Debian Project!</p>
2190
2191 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2192 Edu?</strong></p>
2193
2194 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
2195 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
2196 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
2197 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
2198 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
2199 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
2200 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
2201
2202 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
2203 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
2204
2205 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2206
2207 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
2208 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
2209 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
2210 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
2211
2212 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2213 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2214
2215 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
2216 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
2217 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
2218 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
2219 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
2220 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
2221 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
2222
2223 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
2224 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
2225 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
2226 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
2227 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
2228 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
2229 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
2230 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
2231
2232       </div>
2233       <div class="tags">
2234
2235
2236         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2237
2238
2239       </div>
2240     </div>
2241     <div class="padding"></div>
2242
2243     <div class="entry">
2244       <div class="title">
2245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
2246       </div>
2247       <div class="date">
2248          8th April 2012
2249       </div>
2250       <div class="body">
2251         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
2252 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
2253 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
2254 contributor to the
2255 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
2256 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
2257
2258 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2259
2260 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
2261 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
2262
2263 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2264 project?</strong></p>
2265
2266 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
2267 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
2268 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
2269 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
2270 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
2271 "localisation".</p>
2272
2273 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2274 Edu?</strong></p>
2275
2276 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2277 Edu?</strong></p>
2278
2279 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
2280 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
2281 education system.</p>
2282
2283 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
2284 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
2285 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
2286 money on the latest hardware.</p>
2287
2288 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2289
2290 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
2291 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
2292 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
2293
2294 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2295 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2296
2297 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
2298 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
2299 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
2300
2301       </div>
2302       <div class="tags">
2303
2304
2305         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2306
2307
2308       </div>
2309     </div>
2310     <div class="padding"></div>
2311
2312     <div class="entry">
2313       <div class="title">
2314         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
2315       </div>
2316       <div class="date">
2317          6th April 2012
2318       </div>
2319       <div class="body">
2320         <p>Recently I have spent time with
2321 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
2322 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2323 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
2324 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
2325 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
2326 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
2327 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
2328 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
2329
2330 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
2331 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
2332 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
2333 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
2334 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
2335 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
2336 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
2337 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
2338
2339 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
2340 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
2341 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
2342 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
2343 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
2344 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
2345 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
2346 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
2347
2348 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
2349 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
2350 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
2351 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
2352 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
2353 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
2354 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
2355 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
2356 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
2357 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
2358
2359 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
2360 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
2361 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
2362 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
2363
2364 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
2365 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
2366
2367       </div>
2368       <div class="tags">
2369
2370
2371         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2372
2373
2374       </div>
2375     </div>
2376     <div class="padding"></div>
2377
2378     <div class="entry">
2379       <div class="title">
2380         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
2381       </div>
2382       <div class="date">
2383          5th April 2012
2384       </div>
2385       <div class="body">
2386         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
2387 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
2388 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
2389 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
2390 for schools.  Check out his article
2391 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
2392 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
2393
2394       </div>
2395       <div class="tags">
2396
2397
2398         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2399
2400
2401       </div>
2402     </div>
2403     <div class="padding"></div>
2404
2405     <div class="entry">
2406       <div class="title">
2407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
2408       </div>
2409       <div class="date">
2410          1st April 2012
2411       </div>
2412       <div class="body">
2413         <p>Germany is a core area for the
2414 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2415 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
2416 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
2417
2418 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2419
2420 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
2421 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
2422 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
2423 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
2424 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
2425 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
2426 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
2427 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
2428
2429 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
2430 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
2431 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
2432 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
2433 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
2434 the end of April this year.</p>
2435
2436 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2437 project?</strong></p>
2438
2439 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
2440 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
2441 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
2442 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
2443 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
2444 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
2445 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
2446 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
2447 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
2448 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
2449 Skolelinux.</p>
2450
2451 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
2452 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
2453 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
2454 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
2455 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
2456 the admin teachers.</p>
2457
2458 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2459 Edu?</strong></p>
2460
2461 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
2462 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
2463 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
2464
2465 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
2466 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
2467 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
2468 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
2469 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
2470
2471 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2472 Edu?</strong></p>
2473
2474 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
2475
2476 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2477
2478 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
2479 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
2480 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
2481 LibreOffice.</p>
2482
2483 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2484 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2485
2486 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
2487 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
2488 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
2489
2490       </div>
2491       <div class="tags">
2492
2493
2494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2495
2496
2497       </div>
2498     </div>
2499     <div class="padding"></div>
2500
2501     <div class="entry">
2502       <div class="title">
2503         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
2504       </div>
2505       <div class="date">
2506         25th March 2012
2507       </div>
2508       <div class="body">
2509         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
2510
2511 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
2512 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
2513 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
2514 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
2515 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
2516 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
2517 and download as a
2518 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
2519 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
2520
2521 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
2522   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
2523     <p>Download video as
2524       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
2525 </video></p>
2526
2527       </div>
2528       <div class="tags">
2529
2530
2531         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2532
2533
2534       </div>
2535     </div>
2536     <div class="padding"></div>
2537
2538     <div class="entry">
2539       <div class="title">
2540         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
2541       </div>
2542       <div class="date">
2543         19th March 2012
2544       </div>
2545       <div class="body">
2546         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2547 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
2548 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
2549 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
2550 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
2551
2552 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2553
2554 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
2555 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
2556 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
2557 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
2558 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
2559 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
2560 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
2561 installations.</p>
2562
2563 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2564 project?</strong></p>
2565
2566 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
2567 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
2568 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
2569 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
2570 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
2571 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
2572 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
2573 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
2574 these things we decided to try it.</p>
2575
2576 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2577 Edu?</strong></p>
2578
2579 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
2580 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
2581 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
2582 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
2583 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
2584 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
2585 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
2586 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
2587
2588 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2589 Edu?</strong></p>
2590
2591 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
2592 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
2593 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
2594 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
2595 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
2596
2597 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2598
2599 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
2600 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
2601 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
2602 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
2603 that counts...)</p>
2604
2605 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2606 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2607
2608 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
2609 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
2610 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
2611 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
2612 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
2613 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
2614 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
2615 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
2616 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
2617 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
2618 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
2619
2620 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
2621 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
2622 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
2623
2624       </div>
2625       <div class="tags">
2626
2627
2628         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2629
2630
2631       </div>
2632     </div>
2633     <div class="padding"></div>
2634
2635     <div class="entry">
2636       <div class="title">
2637         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
2638       </div>
2639       <div class="date">
2640         16th March 2012
2641       </div>
2642       <div class="body">
2643         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
2644 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
2645 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
2646 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
2647
2648 <ol>
2649
2650 <li>The documentation is written in a
2651 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
2652 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
2653 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
2654 docbook XML.</li>
2655
2656 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
2657 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
2658 with the translated text.</li>
2659
2660 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
2661 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
2662 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
2663 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
2664 images.</li>
2665
2666 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
2667 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
2668
2669 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
2670 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
2671
2672 </ol>
2673
2674 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
2675 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
2676 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
2677 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
2678 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
2679
2680 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
2681 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
2682 package</a>.</p>
2683
2684       </div>
2685       <div class="tags">
2686
2687
2688         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2689
2690
2691       </div>
2692     </div>
2693     <div class="padding"></div>
2694
2695     <div class="entry">
2696       <div class="title">
2697         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
2698       </div>
2699       <div class="date">
2700         11th March 2012
2701       </div>
2702       <div class="body">
2703         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
2704 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
2705 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
2706 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
2707 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
2708 you have not done so already.</p>
2709
2710 <p>I plan to present the new version at
2711 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
2712 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
2713 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
2714
2715       </div>
2716       <div class="tags">
2717
2718
2719         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2720
2721
2722       </div>
2723     </div>
2724     <div class="padding"></div>
2725
2726     <div class="entry">
2727       <div class="title">
2728         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
2729       </div>
2730       <div class="date">
2731          9th March 2012
2732       </div>
2733       <div class="body">
2734         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
2735 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
2736 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2737 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
2738 more international audience.</p>
2739
2740 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2741 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
2742 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
2743 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
2744 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
2745 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
2746 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
2747
2748
2749 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2750
2751 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
2752 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
2753 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
2754 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
2755 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
2756 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
2757 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
2758 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
2759 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
2760 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
2761 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
2762
2763 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2764 project?</strong></p>
2765
2766 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
2767 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
2768 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
2769 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
2770 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
2771 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
2772 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
2773 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
2774 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
2775 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
2776 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
2777 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
2778 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
2779
2780 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2781 Edu?</strong></p>
2782
2783 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
2784 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
2785 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
2786 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
2787 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
2788 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
2789 Japan.</p>
2790
2791 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2792 Edu?</strong></p>
2793
2794 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
2795 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
2796 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
2797 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
2798 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
2799 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
2800 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
2801 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
2802 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
2803 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
2804 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
2805 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
2806 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
2807 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
2808 help.</p>
2809
2810 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2811
2812 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
2813 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
2814 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
2815 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
2816 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
2817 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
2818 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
2819 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
2820 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
2821 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
2822 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
2823
2824 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2825 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2826
2827 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
2828 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
2829 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
2830 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
2831 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
2832 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
2833 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
2834 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
2835 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
2836 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
2837 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
2838 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
2839
2840       </div>
2841       <div class="tags">
2842
2843
2844         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2845
2846
2847       </div>
2848     </div>
2849     <div class="padding"></div>
2850
2851     <div class="entry">
2852       <div class="title">
2853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
2854       </div>
2855       <div class="date">
2856          7th March 2012
2857       </div>
2858       <div class="body">
2859         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
2860
2861 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
2862 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
2863 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
2864 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
2865 download as a
2866 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
2867 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
2868
2869 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
2870   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
2871     <p>Download video as
2872       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
2873 </video></p>
2874
2875       </div>
2876       <div class="tags">
2877
2878
2879         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2880
2881
2882       </div>
2883     </div>
2884     <div class="padding"></div>
2885
2886     <div class="entry">
2887       <div class="title">
2888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
2889       </div>
2890       <div class="date">
2891          4th March 2012
2892       </div>
2893       <div class="body">
2894         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
2895 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2896 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
2897 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
2898 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
2899 need a software solution for your school.</p>
2900
2901       </div>
2902       <div class="tags">
2903
2904
2905         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2906
2907
2908       </div>
2909     </div>
2910     <div class="padding"></div>
2911
2912     <div class="entry">
2913       <div class="title">
2914         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
2915       </div>
2916       <div class="date">
2917          3rd March 2012
2918       </div>
2919       <div class="body">
2920         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
2921 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
2922 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
2923 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
2924 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
2925 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
2926 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
2927 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
2928 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
2929 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
2930 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
2931 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
2932 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
2933 year...</p>
2934
2935 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
2936 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
2937 name,
2938 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
2939 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
2940 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
2941 mean). I've been following
2942 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
2943 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
2944 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
2945 Check it out. :)</p>
2946
2947       </div>
2948       <div class="tags">
2949
2950
2951         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2952
2953
2954       </div>
2955     </div>
2956     <div class="padding"></div>
2957
2958     <div class="entry">
2959       <div class="title">
2960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
2961       </div>
2962       <div class="date">
2963         27th February 2012
2964       </div>
2965       <div class="body">
2966         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
2967 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2968 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
2969 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
2970 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
2971 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
2972 need a software solution for your school.</p>
2973
2974       </div>
2975       <div class="tags">
2976
2977
2978         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2979
2980
2981       </div>
2982     </div>
2983     <div class="padding"></div>
2984
2985     <div class="entry">
2986       <div class="title">
2987         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
2988       </div>
2989       <div class="date">
2990         19th February 2012
2991       </div>
2992       <div class="body">
2993         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
2994 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
2995 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
2996 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
2997 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
2998 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
2999 solution for your school.</p>
3000
3001       </div>
3002       <div class="tags">
3003
3004
3005         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3006
3007
3008       </div>
3009     </div>
3010     <div class="padding"></div>
3011
3012     <div class="entry">
3013       <div class="title">
3014         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
3015       </div>
3016       <div class="date">
3017         14th February 2012
3018       </div>
3019       <div class="body">
3020         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
3021 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
3022 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
3023 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
3024 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
3025 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
3026 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
3027 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
3028 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
3029
3030 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
3031 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
3032 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
3033 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
3034 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
3035
3036 <blockquote><pre>
3037 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
3038 do
3039     printf "Failed disk $d: "
3040     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
3041 done
3042 </blockquote></pre>
3043
3044 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
3045 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
3046
3047 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
3048
3049 <blockquote><pre>
3050 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
3051 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
3052 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
3053 </blockquote></pre>
3054
3055 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
3056 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
3057 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
3058 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
3059 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
3060 mounted inside my box.</p>
3061
3062 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
3063 Software RAID in the
3064 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
3065 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
3066 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
3067 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
3068 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
3069 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
3070
3071       </div>
3072       <div class="tags">
3073
3074
3075         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
3076
3077
3078       </div>
3079     </div>
3080     <div class="padding"></div>
3081
3082     <div class="entry">
3083       <div class="title">
3084         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3085       </div>
3086       <div class="date">
3087         13th February 2012
3088       </div>
3089       <div class="body">
3090         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
3091 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
3092 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
3093 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
3094 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
3095 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
3096 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
3097 change the global proxy setting by editing
3098 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
3099 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
3100
3101 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
3102 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
3103 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
3104
3105 <blockquote><pre>
3106 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
3107 {
3108    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
3109        isPlainHostName(host) ||
3110        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
3111       return "DIRECT";
3112    else
3113       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
3114 }
3115 </pre></blockquote>
3116
3117 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
3118
3119 <blockquote><pre>
3120 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
3121 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
3122 </pre></blockquote>
3123
3124 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
3125 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
3126 would be used for
3127 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
3128 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
3129 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
3130 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
3131 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
3132 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
3133 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
3134 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
3135 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
3136 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
3137
3138 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
3139 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
3140 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
3141 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
3142 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
3143 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
3144
3145 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
3146 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
3147 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
3148 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
3149 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
3150 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
3151 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
3152 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
3153 the network setup changes.</p>
3154
3155 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
3156 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
3157 draft</a> and a
3158 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
3159 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
3160
3161       </div>
3162       <div class="tags">
3163
3164
3165         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3166
3167
3168       </div>
3169     </div>
3170     <div class="padding"></div>
3171
3172     <div class="entry">
3173       <div class="title">
3174         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
3175       </div>
3176       <div class="date">
3177          5th February 2012
3178       </div>
3179       <div class="body">
3180         <p>Since the Lenny version of
3181 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
3182 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
3183 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
3184 in the morning.  This is done using the
3185 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
3186
3187 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
3188 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
3189 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
3190 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
3191 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
3192 the
3193 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
3194 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
3195 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
3196 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
3197 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
3198
3199 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
3200 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
3201 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
3202 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
3203 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
3204 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
3205 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
3206
3207 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
3208 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
3209 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
3210 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
3211 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
3212
3213       </div>
3214       <div class="tags">
3215
3216
3217         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3218
3219
3220       </div>
3221     </div>
3222     <div class="padding"></div>
3223
3224     <div class="entry">
3225       <div class="title">
3226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3227       </div>
3228       <div class="date">
3229          4th February 2012
3230       </div>
3231       <div class="body">
3232         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
3233 publish the third beta version of
3234 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
3235 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
3236 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
3237 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
3238 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
3239 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
3240 on the project announcement list.</p>
3241
3242 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
3243 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
3244
3245 <ul>
3246
3247 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
3248   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
3249   the installation.</li>
3250
3251 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
3252   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
3253
3254 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
3255   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
3256   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
3257
3258 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
3259   for the local system administrator is created during installation
3260   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
3261   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
3262   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
3263   up to date on the system.</li>
3264
3265 </ul>
3266
3267 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
3268 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
3269 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
3270 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
3271
3272 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
3273 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
3274 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
3275 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
3276 will see you there?</p>
3277
3278       </div>
3279       <div class="tags">
3280
3281
3282         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3283
3284
3285       </div>
3286     </div>
3287     <div class="padding"></div>
3288
3289     <div class="entry">
3290       <div class="title">
3291         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
3292       </div>
3293       <div class="date">
3294         27th January 2012
3295       </div>
3296       <div class="body">
3297         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
3298 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
3299 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
3300 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
3301 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
3302 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
3303 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
3304
3305 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
3306 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
3307 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
3308 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
3309 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
3310 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
3311 not taken care of by this.</p>
3312
3313 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
3314 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
3315 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
3316 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
3317 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
3318 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
3319 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
3320 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
3321 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
3322 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
3323 firmware packages.</p>
3324
3325 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
3326 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
3327 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
3328 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
3329 initrd with extra firmware, the
3330 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
3331 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
3332 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
3333
3334 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
3335 network cards working.  For this,
3336 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
3337 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
3338 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
3339
3340 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
3341 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
3342 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
3343
3344 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
3345 try.</p>
3346
3347       </div>
3348       <div class="tags">
3349
3350
3351         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3352
3353
3354       </div>
3355     </div>
3356     <div class="padding"></div>
3357
3358     <div class="entry">
3359       <div class="title">
3360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
3361       </div>
3362       <div class="date">
3363         25th January 2012
3364       </div>
3365       <div class="body">
3366         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
3367 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
3368 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
3369 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
3370 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
3371
3372 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
3373 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
3374 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
3375 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
3376 this is done, log on to the central server and run
3377 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
3378 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
3379 will look similar to this:</p>
3380
3381 <p><blockquote><pre>
3382 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
3383 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
3384 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
3385
3386 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
3387
3388 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3389 enter password: *******
3390 %
3391 </pre></blockquote></p>
3392
3393 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
3394 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
3395 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
3396 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
3397 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
3398 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
3399 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
3400 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
3401 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
3402 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
3403 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
3404 automatically.</p>
3405
3406 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
3407 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
3408
3409 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
3410 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
3411 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
3412
3413       </div>
3414       <div class="tags">
3415
3416
3417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
3418
3419
3420       </div>
3421     </div>
3422     <div class="padding"></div>
3423
3424     <div class="entry">
3425       <div class="title">
3426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
3427       </div>
3428       <div class="date">
3429         10th January 2012
3430       </div>
3431       <div class="body">
3432         <p>In the Squeeze version of
3433 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
3434 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
3435 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
3436 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
3437 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
3438 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
3439 first time.</p>
3440
3441 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
3442 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
3443 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
3444 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
3445
3446 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
3447 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
3448 new setting.</p>
3449
3450 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
3451 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
3452 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
3453
3454       </div>
3455       <div class="tags">
3456
3457
3458         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3459
3460
3461       </div>
3462     </div>
3463     <div class="padding"></div>
3464
3465     <div class="entry">
3466       <div class="title">
3467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
3468       </div>
3469       <div class="date">
3470          7th January 2012
3471       </div>
3472       <div class="body">
3473         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
3474 the second beta version of
3475 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
3476 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
3477 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
3478 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
3479 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
3480 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
3481 on the project announcement list.</p>
3482
3483       </div>
3484       <div class="tags">
3485
3486
3487         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3488
3489
3490       </div>
3491     </div>
3492     <div class="padding"></div>
3493
3494     <div class="entry">
3495       <div class="title">
3496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
3497       </div>
3498       <div class="date">
3499          3rd January 2012
3500       </div>
3501       <div class="body">
3502         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
3503 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
3504 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
3505 interesting.</p>
3506
3507 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
3508 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
3509 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
3510 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
3511 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
3512 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
3513 wrap up its tasks.</p>
3514
3515 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
3516 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
3517 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
3518 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
3519 because I was typing.</P>
3520
3521 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
3522 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
3523 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
3524 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
3525 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
3526 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
3527 generate entropy.</p>
3528
3529 <p>The fix is in
3530 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
3531 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
3532 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
3533 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
3534
3535       </div>
3536       <div class="tags">
3537
3538
3539         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3540
3541
3542       </div>
3543     </div>
3544     <div class="padding"></div>
3545
3546     <div class="entry">
3547       <div class="title">
3548         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
3549       </div>
3550       <div class="date">
3551         21st November 2011
3552       </div>
3553       <div class="body">
3554         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
3555 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
3556 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
3557 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
3558 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
3559 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
3560 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
3561 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
3562 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
3563 the tools to do so.</p>
3564
3565 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
3566 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
3567 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
3568 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
3569
3570 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
3571 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
3572 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
3573 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
3574 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
3575 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
3576 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
3577 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
3578
3579 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
3580 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
3581 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
3582
3583 <p><pre>
3584 #!/usr/bin/perl
3585 use strict;
3586 use warnings;
3587 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
3588 BEGIN {
3589     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
3590     my %rhelmodules = (
3591         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
3592         );
3593     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
3594         eval "use $module;";
3595         if ($@) {
3596             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
3597             system("yum install -y $pkg");
3598             eval "use $module;";
3599         }
3600     }
3601 }
3602 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
3603
3604 upgrade_dell();
3605
3606 exit 0;
3607
3608 sub run_firmware_script {
3609     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
3610     unless ($script) {
3611         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
3612         exit 1
3613     }
3614     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
3615
3616     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
3617         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
3618     } else {
3619         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
3620     }
3621 }
3622
3623 sub run_firmware_scripts {
3624     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
3625     # Run firmware packages
3626     for my $dir (@dirs) {
3627         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
3628         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
3629         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
3630             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
3631             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
3632         }
3633         closedir $dh;
3634     }
3635 }
3636
3637 sub download {
3638     my $url = shift;
3639     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
3640     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
3641 }
3642
3643 sub upgrade_dell {
3644     my @dirs;
3645     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
3646     chomp $product;
3647
3648     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
3649
3650         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
3651         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
3652
3653         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
3654             CLEANUP => 1
3655             );
3656         chdir($tmpdir);
3657         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
3658         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
3659         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
3660         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
3661         my $fwopts = "-q";
3662         if (@paths) {
3663             for my $url (@paths) {
3664                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
3665             }
3666             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
3667         } else {
3668             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3669             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3670         }
3671         chdir('/');
3672     } else {
3673         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3674         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3675     }
3676 }
3677
3678 sub fetch_dell_fw {
3679     my $path = shift;
3680     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
3681     download($url);
3682 }
3683
3684 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
3685 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
3686 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
3687 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
3688     my $filename = shift;
3689
3690     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
3691     chomp $product;
3692     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
3693
3694     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
3695
3696     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
3697     my @paths;
3698     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
3699         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
3700         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
3701         my $oscode;
3702         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
3703             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
3704         } else {
3705             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
3706         }
3707         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
3708         {
3709             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
3710         }
3711     }
3712     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
3713         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
3714
3715         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
3716         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
3717
3718         my $cpath = $component->{path};
3719         for my $path (@paths) {
3720             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
3721                 push(@paths, $cpath);
3722             }
3723         }
3724     }
3725     return @paths;
3726 }
3727 </pre>
3728
3729 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
3730 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
3731 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
3732 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
3733 outdated.</p>
3734
3735       </div>
3736       <div class="tags">
3737
3738
3739         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3740
3741
3742       </div>
3743     </div>
3744     <div class="padding"></div>
3745
3746     <div class="entry">
3747       <div class="title">
3748         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
3749       </div>
3750       <div class="date">
3751          7th October 2011
3752       </div>
3753       <div class="body">
3754         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
3755 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
3756 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
3757 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
3758 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
3759 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
3760 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
3761 models.</p>
3762
3763 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
3764 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
3765 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
3766 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
3767
3768 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
3769 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
3770 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
3771 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (abount
3772 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
3773 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
3774 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
3775 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
3776 distributed.</p>
3777
3778 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
3779
3780 <ul>
3781
3782 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
3783   other relevant equipment.</li>
3784
3785 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
3786
3787 </ul>
3788
3789 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
3790 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
3791 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
3792 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
3793 books available.</p>
3794
3795 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
3796 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
3797 libraries. :)</p>
3798
3799       </div>
3800       <div class="tags">
3801
3802
3803         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3804
3805
3806       </div>
3807     </div>
3808     <div class="padding"></div>
3809
3810     <div class="entry">
3811       <div class="title">
3812         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
3813       </div>
3814       <div class="date">
3815         17th September 2011
3816       </div>
3817       <div class="body">
3818         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
3819 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
3820 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
3821 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
3822 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
3823 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
3824 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
3825 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
3826
3827 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
3828
3829 <blockquote><pre>
3830 #!/bin/sh
3831 # apt-get install lsdvd
3832 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
3833 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
3834 </pre></blockquote>
3835
3836 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
3837 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
3838 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
3839 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
3840
3841 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
3842 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
3843 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
3844 back as an ISO.
3845
3846 <blockquote><pre>
3847 #!/bin/sh
3848 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
3849 set -e
3850 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
3851 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
3852 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
3853 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
3854 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
3855 </pre></blockquote>
3856
3857 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
3858
3859 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
3860 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
3861 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
3862 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
3863 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
3864
3865 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
3866 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
3867 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
3868 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
3869 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
3870 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
3871
3872       </div>
3873       <div class="tags">
3874
3875
3876         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3877
3878
3879       </div>
3880     </div>
3881     <div class="padding"></div>
3882
3883     <div class="entry">
3884       <div class="title">
3885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
3886       </div>
3887       <div class="date">
3888          4th August 2011
3889       </div>
3890       <div class="body">
3891         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
3892 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
3893 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
3894 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
3895 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
3896 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
3897 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
3898 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
3899 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
3900
3901 <p><blockquote>
3902 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
3903 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
3904 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
3905 </blockquote></p>
3906
3907 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
3908 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
3909 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
3910 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
3911 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
3912 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
3913 hard to explain.</p>
3914
3915 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
3916 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
3917 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
3918 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
3919 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
3920 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
3921 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
3922 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
3923 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
3924 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
3925 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
3926 mode).</p>
3927
3928 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
3929 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
3930 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
3931 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
3932 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
3933 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
3934 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
3935 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
3936 after visiting single user mode.</p>
3937
3938 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
3939 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
3940 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
3941 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
3942 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
3943 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
3944 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
3945 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
3946
3947 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
3948 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
3949 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
3950
3951       </div>
3952       <div class="tags">
3953
3954
3955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3956
3957
3958       </div>
3959     </div>
3960     <div class="padding"></div>
3961
3962     <div class="entry">
3963       <div class="title">
3964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
3965       </div>
3966       <div class="date">
3967         30th July 2011
3968       </div>
3969       <div class="body">
3970         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
3971 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
3972 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
3973 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
3974 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
3975 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
3976 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
3977 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
3978 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
3979 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
3980 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
3981 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
3982 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
3983
3984 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
3985 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
3986 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
3987 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
3988 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
3989 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
3990 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
3991 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
3992 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
3993
3994 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
3995 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
3996 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
3997 is presented.</p>
3998
3999 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
4000 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
4001 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
4002 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
4003 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4004 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4005 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4006 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
4007 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4008 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4009 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4010 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
4011 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4012 find time to push this forward.</p>
4013
4014       </div>
4015       <div class="tags">
4016
4017
4018         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4019
4020
4021       </div>
4022     </div>
4023     <div class="padding"></div>
4024
4025     <div class="entry">
4026       <div class="title">
4027         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
4028       </div>
4029       <div class="date">
4030         29th July 2011
4031       </div>
4032       <div class="body">
4033         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
4034 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
4035 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
4036 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
4037 issues.</p>
4038
4039 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
4040 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
4041 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
4042
4043 <ol>
4044
4045 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
4046 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
4047 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
4048 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
4049 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
4050 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
4051 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
4052 Debian.</li>
4053
4054 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
4055 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
4056 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
4057 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
4058 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
4059 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
4060 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
4061 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
4062 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
4063 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
4064 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
4065 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
4066 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
4067
4068 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
4069 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
4070 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
4071 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
4072 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
4073 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
4074 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
4075 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
4076 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
4077 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
4078
4079 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
4080 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
4081 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
4082 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
4083 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
4084 latter behaviour.</li>
4085
4086 </ol>
4087
4088 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
4089 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
4090 it do not matter much.</p>
4091
4092 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
4093 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
4094 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
4095
4096       </div>
4097       <div class="tags">
4098
4099
4100         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4101
4102
4103       </div>
4104     </div>
4105     <div class="padding"></div>
4106
4107     <div class="entry">
4108       <div class="title">
4109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
4110       </div>
4111       <div class="date">
4112         26th July 2011
4113       </div>
4114       <div class="body">
4115         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
4116 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
4117 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
4118 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
4119 security support for a few years.</p>
4120
4121 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
4122 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
4123 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
4124 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
4125 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
4126 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
4127 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
4128 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
4129 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
4130 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
4131 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
4132 easier in the future.</p>
4133
4134 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
4135 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
4136 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
4137 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
4138 do not have time for.</p>
4139
4140       </div>
4141       <div class="tags">
4142
4143
4144         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
4145
4146
4147       </div>
4148     </div>
4149     <div class="padding"></div>
4150
4151     <div class="entry">
4152       <div class="title">
4153         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
4154       </div>
4155       <div class="date">
4156         20th June 2011
4157       </div>
4158       <div class="body">
4159         <p>Reading
4160 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
4161 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
4162 parts of the
4163 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
4164 and
4165 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
4166 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
4167 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
4168 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
4169
4170       </div>
4171       <div class="tags">
4172
4173
4174         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
4175
4176
4177       </div>
4178     </div>
4179     <div class="padding"></div>
4180
4181     <div class="entry">
4182       <div class="title">
4183         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
4184       </div>
4185       <div class="date">
4186         30th April 2011
4187       </div>
4188       <div class="body">
4189         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
4190 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
4191 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
4192 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
4193 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
4194 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
4195 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
4196 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
4197 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
4198 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
4199
4200 <p>Where is it?  Visit
4201 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
4202 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
4203 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
4204 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
4205
4206       </div>
4207       <div class="tags">
4208
4209
4210         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
4211
4212
4213       </div>
4214     </div>
4215     <div class="padding"></div>
4216
4217     <div class="entry">
4218       <div class="title">
4219         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
4220       </div>
4221       <div class="date">
4222         29th April 2011
4223       </div>
4224       <div class="body">
4225         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
4226 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
4227 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
4228 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
4229 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
4230 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
4231 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
4232 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
4233 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
4234 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
4235 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
4236 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
4237 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
4238
4239 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
4240 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
4241 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
4242 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
4243 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
4244 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
4245 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
4246 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
4247 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
4248 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
4249 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
4250 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
4251 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
4252
4253 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
4254 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
4255 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
4256 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
4257 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
4258 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
4259 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
4260 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
4261 it.</p>
4262
4263 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
4264 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
4265 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
4266 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
4267 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
4268 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
4269 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
4270
4271 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
4272 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
4273 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
4274 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
4275 and range= options.</p>
4276
4277 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
4278 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
4279 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
4280 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
4281 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
4282 to best handle this.  I've noticed
4283 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
4284 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
4285 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
4286 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
4287
4288 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
4289 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
4290 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
4291 discussions instead of only
4292 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
4293 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
4294 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
4295 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
4296 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
4297 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
4298
4299       </div>
4300       <div class="tags">
4301
4302
4303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
4304
4305
4306       </div>
4307     </div>
4308     <div class="padding"></div>
4309
4310     <div class="entry">
4311       <div class="title">
4312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
4313       </div>
4314       <div class="date">
4315          6th April 2011
4316       </div>
4317       <div class="body">
4318         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
4319 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
4320 A few days ago the project
4321 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
4322 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
4323 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
4324 into Gnash.</p>
4325
4326       </div>
4327       <div class="tags">
4328
4329
4330         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4331
4332
4333       </div>
4334     </div>
4335     <div class="padding"></div>
4336
4337     <div class="entry">
4338       <div class="title">
4339         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
4340       </div>
4341       <div class="date">
4342          3rd April 2011
4343       </div>
4344       <div class="body">
4345         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
4346 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
4347 update in English.</p>
4348
4349 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
4350 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
4351 of the British service
4352 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
4353 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
4354 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
4355 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
4356 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
4357 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
4358 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
4359 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
4360 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
4361 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
4362 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
4363 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
4364 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
4365
4366 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
4367 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
4368 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
4369 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
4370 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
4371 public infrastructure.</p>
4372
4373 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
4374 such service?</p>
4375
4376       </div>
4377       <div class="tags">
4378
4379
4380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
4381
4382
4383       </div>
4384     </div>
4385     <div class="padding"></div>
4386
4387     <div class="entry">
4388       <div class="title">
4389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
4390       </div>
4391       <div class="date">
4392         28th January 2011
4393       </div>
4394       <div class="body">
4395         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
4396 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
4397 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
4398 available on the Internet, and check our locally
4399 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
4400 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
4401 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
4402 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
4403 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
4404 out which security holes were present in our free software
4405 collection.</p>
4406
4407 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
4408 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
4409 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
4410 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
4411 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
4412 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
4413 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
4414 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
4415 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
4416 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
4417 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
4418 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
4419 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
4420 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
4421 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
4422 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
4423
4424 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
4425 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
4426 check out, one could look up
4427 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
4428 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
4429 The most recent one is
4430 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
4431 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
4432 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
4433
4434 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
4435 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
4436 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
4437 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
4438 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
4439 security issues out.</p>
4440
4441 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
4442 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
4443 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
4444 RHEL is providing
4445 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
4446 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
4447 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
4448
4449 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
4450 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
4451 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
4452 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
4453 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
4454 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
4455 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
4456 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
4457 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
4458 established soon.</p>
4459
4460 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
4461 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
4462 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
4463 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
4464 for their packages.</p>
4465
4466       </div>
4467       <div class="tags">
4468
4469
4470         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4471
4472
4473       </div>
4474     </div>
4475     <div class="padding"></div>
4476
4477     <div class="entry">
4478       <div class="title">
4479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
4480       </div>
4481       <div class="date">
4482         23rd January 2011
4483       </div>
4484       <div class="body">
4485         <p>In the
4486 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
4487 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
4488 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
4489 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
4490 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
4491 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
4492 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
4493 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
4494 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
4495 one of my machines like this:</p>
4496
4497 <pre>
4498 loaded modules:
4499 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
4500 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
4501 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
4502 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
4503 10de:03ec pata_amd
4504 10de:03f6 sata_nv
4505 1022:1103 k8temp
4506 109e:036e bttv
4507 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
4508 11ab:4364 sky2
4509 </pre>
4510
4511 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
4512 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
4513
4514 <pre>
4515 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
4516     echo loaded pci modules:
4517     (
4518         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
4519         for address in * ; do
4520             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4521                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4522                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4523                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4524                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
4525                     echo "$id $module"
4526                 fi
4527             fi
4528         done
4529     )
4530     echo
4531 fi
4532 </pre>
4533
4534 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
4535 mappings:</p>
4536
4537 <pre>
4538 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
4539     echo loaded usb modules:
4540     (
4541         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
4542         for address in * ; do
4543             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4544                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4545                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4546                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4547                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
4548                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
4549                         echo "$id $module"
4550                     fi
4551                 fi
4552             fi
4553         done
4554     )
4555     echo
4556 fi
4557 </pre>
4558
4559 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
4560 well.</p>
4561
4562       </div>
4563       <div class="tags">
4564
4565
4566         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4567
4568
4569       </div>
4570     </div>
4571     <div class="padding"></div>
4572
4573     <div class="entry">
4574       <div class="title">
4575         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
4576       </div>
4577       <div class="date">
4578         16th January 2011
4579       </div>
4580       <div class="body">
4581         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
4582 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
4583 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
4584 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
4585 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
4586 the Wikipedia article on
4587 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
4588 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
4589 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
4590 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
4591 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
4592 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
4593 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
4594 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
4595 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
4596 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
4597 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
4598 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
4599
4600 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
4601 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
4602 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
4603 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
4604 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
4605 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
4606 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
4607 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
4608 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
4609 from last week</a>.</p>
4610
4611 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
4612 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
4613 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
4614 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
4615 was without royalties and license terms, check out
4616 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
4617 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
4618
4619 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
4620 available from
4621 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
4622 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
4623 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
4624
4625 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
4626 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
4627 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
4628 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
4629
4630       </div>
4631       <div class="tags">
4632
4633
4634         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4635
4636
4637       </div>
4638     </div>
4639     <div class="padding"></div>
4640
4641     <div class="entry">
4642       <div class="title">
4643         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
4644       </div>
4645       <div class="date">
4646         12th January 2011
4647       </div>
4648       <div class="body">
4649         <p>Today I discovered
4650 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
4651 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
4652 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
4653 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
4654 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
4655 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
4656 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
4657 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
4658 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
4659 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
4660 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
4661 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
4662 on the Google announcement is available from
4663 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
4664 A good read. :)</p>
4665
4666 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
4667 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
4668 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
4669 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
4670 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
4671 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
4672 browsers support H.264, and others support
4673 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
4674 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
4675 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
4676 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
4677 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
4678 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
4679 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
4680 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
4681
4682 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
4683 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
4684 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
4685 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
4686 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
4687 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
4688 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
4689
4690 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
4691 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
4692 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
4693 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
4694 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
4695 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
4696 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
4697
4698 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
4699 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
4700 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
4701 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
4702 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
4703 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
4704 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
4705
4706 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
4707 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
4708 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
4709 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
4710 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
4711 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
4712 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
4713 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
4714 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
4715 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
4716 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
4717 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
4718 I guess time will tell.</p>
4719
4720 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
4721 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
4722 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
4723
4724       </div>
4725       <div class="tags">
4726
4727
4728         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4729
4730
4731       </div>
4732     </div>
4733     <div class="padding"></div>
4734
4735     <div class="entry">
4736       <div class="title">
4737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
4738       </div>
4739       <div class="date">
4740         30th December 2010
4741       </div>
4742       <div class="body">
4743         <p>After trying to
4744 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
4745 Ogg Theora</a> to
4746 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
4747 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
4748 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
4749 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
4750 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
4751 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
4752 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
4753
4754 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
4755 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
4756 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
4757 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
4758 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
4759 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
4760 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
4761
4762 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
4763 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
4764
4765       </div>
4766       <div class="tags">
4767
4768
4769         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
4770
4771
4772       </div>
4773     </div>
4774     <div class="padding"></div>
4775
4776     <div class="entry">
4777       <div class="title">
4778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
4779       </div>
4780       <div class="date">
4781         27th December 2010
4782       </div>
4783       <div class="body">
4784         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
4785 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
4786 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
4787 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
4788 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
4789 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
4790 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
4791 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
4792
4793 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
4794 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
4795 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
4796 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
4797 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
4798 page</a>.</p>
4799
4800 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
4801 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
4802 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
4803 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
4804 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
4805 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
4806 specification on equal terms.</p>
4807
4808 <blockquote>
4809
4810 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
4811 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
4812 open standard:</p>
4813
4814 <ul>
4815
4816 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
4817 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
4818 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
4819 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
4820
4821 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
4822 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
4823 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
4824 nominal fee.</li>
4825
4826 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
4827 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
4828 free basis.</li>
4829
4830 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
4831
4832 </ul>
4833 </blockquote>
4834
4835 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
4836 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
4837 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
4838 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
4839 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
4840 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
4841 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
4842
4843 <blockquote>
4844
4845 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
4846
4847 <ol>
4848
4849 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
4850 tilgængelig.</li>
4851
4852 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
4853 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
4854
4855 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
4856 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
4857
4858 </ol>
4859
4860 </blockquote>
4861
4862 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
4863 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
4864
4865 <blockquote>
4866
4867 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
4868
4869 <ol>
4870
4871 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
4872 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
4873
4874 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
4875 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
4876 Standard themselves;</li>
4877
4878 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
4879 any party or in any business model;</li>
4880
4881 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
4882 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
4883 parties;</li>
4884
4885 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
4886 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
4887 parties.</li>
4888
4889 </ol>
4890
4891 </blockquote>
4892
4893 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
4894 its
4895 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
4896 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
4897
4898 <blockquote>
4899 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
4900
4901 <ul>
4902
4903 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
4904   democratic:
4905
4906          <ul>
4907
4908          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
4909             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
4910             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
4911             and managed.</li>
4912
4913          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
4914             method, can be changed through input from all
4915             participants.</li>
4916
4917          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
4918             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
4919
4920          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
4921             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
4922
4923          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
4924             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
4925             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
4926
4927          </ul>
4928
4929 </li>
4930
4931 </ul>
4932
4933 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
4934 <ul>
4935
4936 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
4937   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
4938   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
4939   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
4940   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
4941
4942 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
4943   a technical or economic barriers</li>
4944
4945 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
4946   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
4947   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
4948   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
4949   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
4950   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
4951   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
4952   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
4953   intended to function.</li>
4954
4955 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
4956   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
4957   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
4958
4959 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
4960   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
4961   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
4962   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
4963   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
4964   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
4965   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
4966   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
4967
4968       <ul>
4969
4970       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
4971         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
4972         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
4973
4974       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
4975         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
4976         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
4977         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
4978
4979       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
4980         licensor</li>
4981
4982       </ul>
4983 </li>
4984
4985 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
4986   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
4987   or restricted licensing terms</li>
4988
4989 </ul>
4990
4991 </blockquote>
4992
4993 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
4994 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
4995 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
4996 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
4997 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
4998 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
4999 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
5000 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
5001 Standards.</p>
5002
5003       </div>
5004       <div class="tags">
5005
5006
5007         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5008
5009
5010       </div>
5011     </div>
5012     <div class="padding"></div>
5013
5014     <div class="entry">
5015       <div class="title">
5016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
5017       </div>
5018       <div class="date">
5019         25th December 2010
5020       </div>
5021       <div class="body">
5022         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
5023 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
5024
5025 <blockquote>
5026
5027 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
5028 as follows:</p>
5029
5030 <ol>
5031
5032 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
5033 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
5034 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
5035
5036 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
5037 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
5038 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
5039 parties.</li>
5040
5041 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
5042 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
5043 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
5044
5045 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
5046 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
5047
5048 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
5049
5050 </ol>
5051
5052 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
5053 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
5054 products based on the standard.</p>
5055 </blockquote>
5056
5057 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
5058 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
5059 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
5060 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
5061 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
5062 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
5063 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
5064 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
5065
5066 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
5067
5068 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
5069 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
5070 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
5071 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
5072 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
5073 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
5074 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
5075 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
5076 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
5077 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
5078 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
5079 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
5080 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
5081 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
5082
5083 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
5084
5085 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
5086 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
5087 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
5088 documentation indicating this.</p>
5089
5090 <p>According to
5091 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
5092 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
5093 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
5094 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
5095 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
5096 report is correct.</p>
5097
5098 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
5099
5100 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
5101 container format</a> and both the
5102 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
5103 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
5104 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
5105
5106 <blockquote>
5107
5108 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
5109 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
5110 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
5111 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
5112 specification compliance.
5113
5114 </blockquote>
5115
5116 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
5117 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
5118 this is the term:<p>
5119
5120 <blockquote>
5121
5122 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
5123 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
5124 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
5125 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
5126 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
5127 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
5128 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
5129 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
5130 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
5131 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
5132 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
5133 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
5134
5135 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
5136 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
5137 </blockquote>
5138
5139 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
5140 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
5141 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
5142 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
5143 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
5144
5145 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
5146
5147 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
5148 Theora format.
5149 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
5150 and
5151 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
5152 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
5153 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
5154 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
5155 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
5156 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
5157 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
5158 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
5159
5160 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
5161
5162 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
5163
5164 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
5165
5166 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
5167 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
5168 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
5169 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
5170 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
5171 this.</p>
5172
5173 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
5174 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
5175
5176       </div>
5177       <div class="tags">
5178
5179
5180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5181
5182
5183       </div>
5184     </div>
5185     <div class="padding"></div>
5186
5187     <div class="entry">
5188       <div class="title">
5189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
5190       </div>
5191       <div class="date">
5192         25th December 2010
5193       </div>
5194       <div class="body">
5195         <p>A few days ago
5196 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
5197 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
5198 2.0 of
5199 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
5200 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
5201 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
5202 Nothing very surprising there, given
5203 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
5204 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
5205 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
5206 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
5207 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
5208 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
5209 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
5210 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
5211 standard definition from its content.</p>
5212
5213 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
5214 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
5215 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
5216 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
5217 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
5218 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
5219 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
5220 background information about that story is available in
5221 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
5222 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
5223
5224 <blockquote>
5225 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
5226 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
5227 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
5228
5229 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
5230
5231 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
5232
5233 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
5234
5235 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
5236
5237 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
5238
5239 <p>
5240 <ul>
5241 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
5242 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
5243 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
5244 </ul>
5245 </p>
5246
5247 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
5248
5249 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
5250
5251 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
5252
5253 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
5254
5255 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
5256
5257
5258 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
5259 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
5260 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
5261 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
5262 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
5263 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
5264
5265 </p>
5266
5267 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
5268
5269 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
5270
5271 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
5272
5273 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
5274
5275 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
5276
5277 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
5278
5279 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
5280
5281 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
5282
5283 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
5284
5285 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
5286
5287 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
5288
5289 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
5290
5291 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
5292
5293 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
5294
5295 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
5296
5297 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
5298
5299 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
5300
5301 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
5302
5303 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
5304
5305 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
5306
5307 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
5308
5309 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
5310
5311 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
5312
5313 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
5314
5315 <p>On security:</p>
5316
5317 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
5318
5319 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
5320
5321 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
5322
5323 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
5324
5325 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
5326
5327 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
5328
5329 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
5330
5331 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
5332
5333 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
5334
5335 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
5336
5337 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
5338
5339 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
5340
5341 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
5342
5343 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
5344
5345 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
5346
5347 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
5348
5349 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
5350
5351 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
5352
5353 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
5354
5355 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
5356
5357 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
5358
5359 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
5360
5361 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
5362
5363 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
5364
5365 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
5366
5367 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
5368
5369 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
5370
5371 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
5372
5373 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
5374
5375 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
5376
5377 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
5378
5379 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
5380
5381 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
5382
5383 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
5384
5385 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
5386
5387 <p>Cordially,<br>
5388 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
5389 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
5390 </blockquote>
5391
5392       </div>
5393       <div class="tags">
5394
5395
5396         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5397
5398
5399       </div>
5400     </div>
5401     <div class="padding"></div>
5402
5403     <div class="entry">
5404       <div class="title">
5405         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
5406       </div>
5407       <div class="date">
5408         25th December 2010
5409       </div>
5410       <div class="body">
5411         <p>Half a year ago I
5412 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
5413 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
5414 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
5415 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
5416
5417 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
5418 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
5419 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
5420 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
5421 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
5422 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
5423 got such a great test tool available.</p>
5424
5425       </div>
5426       <div class="tags">
5427
5428
5429         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5430
5431
5432       </div>
5433     </div>
5434     <div class="padding"></div>
5435
5436     <div class="entry">
5437       <div class="title">
5438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
5439       </div>
5440       <div class="date">
5441         22nd December 2010
5442       </div>
5443       <div class="body">
5444         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
5445 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
5446 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
5447 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5448 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
5449 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
5450 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5451 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5452 university.</p>
5453
5454 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5455 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
5456 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5457 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
5458 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5459 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5460 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5461 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
5462
5463 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
5464 I perform on a new model.</p>
5465
5466 <ul>
5467
5468 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5469 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
5470 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
5471
5472 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
5473 installation, X.org is working.</li>
5474
5475 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
5476 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5477 reported by the program.</li>
5478
5479 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5480 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
5481 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5482 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
5483 normally test this by playing
5484 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
5485 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
5486
5487 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
5488 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5489
5490 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5491 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5492
5493 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
5494 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
5495
5496 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5497 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
5498 few.</li>
5499
5500 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
5501 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5502 notice this.</li>
5503
5504 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
5505 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5506 resume.</li>
5507
5508 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5509 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5510 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
5511 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5512 not.</li>
5513
5514 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5515 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5516 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5517 existence.</li>
5518
5519 </ul>
5520
5521 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5522 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
5523 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
5524 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5525 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
5526 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
5527 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5528 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
5529
5530       </div>
5531       <div class="tags">
5532
5533
5534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5535
5536
5537       </div>
5538     </div>
5539     <div class="padding"></div>
5540
5541     <div class="entry">
5542       <div class="title">
5543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
5544       </div>
5545       <div class="date">
5546         11th December 2010
5547       </div>
5548       <div class="body">
5549         <p>As I continue to explore
5550 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
5551 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5552 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
5553
5554 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5555 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5556 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5557 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5558 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5559 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
5560 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
5561 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
5562 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
5563 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
5564 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
5565 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
5566 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
5567 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5568 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5569 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5570 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
5571 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5572 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
5573 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
5574
5575 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
5576 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
5577 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
5578 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
5579 If the Skolelinux foundation
5580 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
5581 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
5582 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
5583 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
5584 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
5585 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
5586 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
5587 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
5588
5589 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
5590 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
5591 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
5592 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
5593 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
5594 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
5595 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
5596 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
5597 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
5598 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
5599 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
5600 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
5601 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
5602 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
5603 currencies.</p>
5604
5605 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
5606 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
5607 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
5608 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
5609 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
5610 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
5611 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
5612 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
5613 BitCoins.  Check out
5614 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
5615 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
5616 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
5617 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
5618 yet.</p>
5619
5620 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
5621 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
5622 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
5623 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
5624 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
5625
5626       </div>
5627       <div class="tags">
5628
5629
5630         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5631
5632
5633       </div>
5634     </div>
5635     <div class="padding"></div>
5636
5637     <div class="entry">
5638       <div class="title">
5639         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
5640       </div>
5641       <div class="date">
5642         10th December 2010
5643       </div>
5644       <div class="body">
5645         <p>With this weeks lawless
5646 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
5647 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
5648 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
5649 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5650 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5651 A blog post from
5652 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
5653 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
5654 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
5655 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
5656 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5657 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5658 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
5659
5660 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
5661 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5662 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5663 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5664 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
5665 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
5666 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5667 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
5668 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
5669 Debian</a> soon.</p>
5670
5671 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5672 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
5673 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
5674 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
5675 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
5676 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5677 you can even get
5678 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
5679 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
5680 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
5681 on the current exchange rates.</p>
5682
5683 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5684 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5685 donations to the address
5686 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
5687
5688       </div>
5689       <div class="tags">
5690
5691
5692         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5693
5694
5695       </div>
5696     </div>
5697     <div class="padding"></div>
5698
5699     <div class="entry">
5700       <div class="title">
5701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
5702       </div>
5703       <div class="date">
5704          9th December 2010
5705       </div>
5706       <div class="body">
5707         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
5708 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
5709 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
5710 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
5711 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
5712 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
5713 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
5714 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
5715 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
5716 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
5717 operational.</p>
5718
5719 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
5720 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
5721 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
5722 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
5723 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
5724 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
5725 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
5726
5727       </div>
5728       <div class="tags">
5729
5730
5731         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
5732
5733
5734       </div>
5735     </div>
5736     <div class="padding"></div>
5737
5738     <div class="entry">
5739       <div class="title">
5740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
5741       </div>
5742       <div class="date">
5743         29th November 2010
5744       </div>
5745       <div class="body">
5746         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5747 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
5748 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
5749 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
5750 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
5751 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
5752
5753 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
5754 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
5755 will hold its
5756 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
5757 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
5758 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
5759 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
5760 vote this year.</p>
5761
5762       </div>
5763       <div class="tags">
5764
5765
5766         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5767
5768
5769       </div>
5770     </div>
5771     <div class="padding"></div>
5772
5773     <div class="entry">
5774       <div class="title">
5775         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
5776       </div>
5777       <div class="date">
5778         27th November 2010
5779       </div>
5780       <div class="body">
5781         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
5782 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
5783 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
5784 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
5785 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
5786 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
5787 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
5788 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
5789
5790 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
5791 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
5792 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
5793 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
5794 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
5795 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
5796 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
5797 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
5798 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
5799 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
5800 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
5801
5802 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
5803 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
5804 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
5805 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
5806 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
5807 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
5808 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
5809 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
5810 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
5811 what is going on.</p>
5812
5813       </div>
5814       <div class="tags">
5815
5816
5817         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5818
5819
5820       </div>
5821     </div>
5822     <div class="padding"></div>
5823
5824     <div class="entry">
5825       <div class="title">
5826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
5827       </div>
5828       <div class="date">
5829         22nd November 2010
5830       </div>
5831       <div class="body">
5832         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
5833 upgrade testing of the
5834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
5835 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
5836 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
5837 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
5838
5839 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
5840
5841 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5842
5843 <blockquote><p>
5844   apache2.2-bin
5845   aptdaemon
5846   baobab
5847   binfmt-support
5848   browser-plugin-gnash
5849   cheese-common
5850   cli-common
5851   cups-pk-helper
5852   dmz-cursor-theme
5853   empathy
5854   empathy-common
5855   freedesktop-sound-theme
5856   freeglut3
5857   gconf-defaults-service
5858   gdm-themes
5859   gedit-plugins
5860   geoclue
5861   geoclue-hostip
5862   geoclue-localnet
5863   geoclue-manual
5864   geoclue-yahoo
5865   gnash
5866   gnash-common
5867   gnome
5868   gnome-backgrounds
5869   gnome-cards-data
5870   gnome-codec-install
5871   gnome-core
5872   gnome-desktop-environment
5873   gnome-disk-utility
5874   gnome-screenshot
5875   gnome-search-tool
5876   gnome-session-canberra
5877   gnome-system-log
5878   gnome-themes-extras
5879   gnome-themes-more
5880   gnome-user-share
5881   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5882   gstreamer0.10-tools
5883   gtk2-engines
5884   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5885   gtk2-engines-smooth
5886   hamster-applet
5887   libapache2-mod-dnssd
5888   libapr1
5889   libaprutil1
5890   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
5891   libaprutil1-ldap
5892   libart2.0-cil
5893   libboost-date-time1.42.0
5894   libboost-python1.42.0
5895   libboost-thread1.42.0
5896   libchamplain-0.4-0
5897   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
5898   libcheese-gtk18
5899   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
5900   libcryptui0
5901   libdiscid0
5902   libelf1
5903   libepc-1.0-2
5904   libepc-common
5905   libepc-ui-1.0-2
5906   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5907   libfreerdp0
5908   libgconf2.0-cil
5909   libgdata-common
5910   libgdata7
5911   libgdu-gtk0
5912   libgee2
5913   libgeoclue0
5914   libgexiv2-0
5915   libgif4
5916   libglade2.0-cil
5917   libglib2.0-cil
5918   libgmime2.4-cil
5919   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5920   libgnome2.24-cil
5921   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
5922   libgpod-common
5923   libgpod4
5924   libgtk2.0-cil
5925   libgtkglext1
5926   libgtksourceview2.0-common
5927   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5928   libmono-addins0.2-cil
5929   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
5930   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5931   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
5932   libmono-posix2.0-cil
5933   libmono-security2.0-cil
5934   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5935   libmono-system2.0-cil
5936   libmtp8
5937   libmusicbrainz3-6
5938   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
5939   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
5940   libopal3.6.8
5941   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
5942   libpt2.6.7
5943   libpython2.6
5944   librpm1
5945   librpmio1
5946   libsdl1.2debian
5947   libsrtp0
5948   libssh-4
5949   libtelepathy-farsight0
5950   libtelepathy-glib0
5951   libtidy-0.99-0
5952   media-player-info
5953   mesa-utils
5954   mono-2.0-gac
5955   mono-gac
5956   mono-runtime
5957   nautilus-sendto
5958   nautilus-sendto-empathy
5959   p7zip-full
5960   pkg-config
5961   python-aptdaemon
5962   python-aptdaemon-gtk
5963   python-axiom
5964   python-beautifulsoup
5965   python-bugbuddy
5966   python-clientform
5967   python-coherence
5968   python-configobj
5969   python-crypto
5970   python-cupshelpers
5971   python-elementtree
5972   python-epsilon
5973   python-evolution
5974   python-feedparser
5975   python-gdata
5976   python-gdbm
5977   python-gst0.10
5978   python-gtkglext1
5979   python-gtksourceview2
5980   python-httplib2
5981   python-louie
5982   python-mako
5983   python-markupsafe
5984   python-mechanize
5985   python-nevow
5986   python-notify
5987   python-opengl
5988   python-openssl
5989   python-pam
5990   python-pkg-resources
5991   python-pyasn1
5992   python-pysqlite2
5993   python-rdflib
5994   python-serial
5995   python-tagpy
5996   python-twisted-bin
5997   python-twisted-conch
5998   python-twisted-core
5999   python-twisted-web
6000   python-utidylib
6001   python-webkit
6002   python-xdg
6003   python-zope.interface
6004   remmina
6005   remmina-plugin-data
6006   remmina-plugin-rdp
6007   remmina-plugin-vnc
6008   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6009   rhythmbox-plugins
6010   rpm-common
6011   rpm2cpio
6012   seahorse-plugins
6013   shotwell
6014   software-center
6015   system-config-printer-udev
6016   telepathy-gabble
6017   telepathy-mission-control-5
6018   telepathy-salut
6019   tomboy
6020   totem
6021   totem-coherence
6022   totem-mozilla
6023   totem-plugins
6024   transmission-common
6025   xdg-user-dirs
6026   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
6027   xserver-xephyr
6028 </p></blockquote>
6029
6030 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6031
6032 <blockquote><p>
6033   cheese
6034   ekiga
6035   eog
6036   epiphany-extensions
6037   evolution-exchange
6038   fast-user-switch-applet
6039   file-roller
6040   gcalctool
6041   gconf-editor
6042   gdm
6043   gedit
6044   gedit-common
6045   gnome-games
6046   gnome-games-data
6047   gnome-nettool
6048   gnome-system-tools
6049   gnome-themes
6050   gnuchess
6051   gucharmap
6052   guile-1.8-libs
6053   libavahi-ui0
6054   libdmx1
6055   libgalago3
6056   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6057   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6058   liblircclient0
6059   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6060   libspeexdsp1
6061   libsvga1
6062   rhythmbox
6063   seahorse
6064   sound-juicer
6065   system-config-printer
6066   totem-common
6067   transmission-gtk
6068   vinagre
6069   vino
6070 </p></blockquote>
6071
6072 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6073
6074 <blockquote><p>
6075   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6076 </p></blockquote>
6077
6078 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6079
6080 <blockquote><p>
6081 [nothing]
6082 </p></blockquote>
6083
6084 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6085
6086 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6087
6088 <blockquote><p>
6089   ksmserver
6090 </p></blockquote>
6091
6092 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6093
6094 <blockquote><p>
6095   kwin
6096   network-manager-kde
6097 </p></blockquote>
6098
6099 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6100
6101 <blockquote><p>
6102   arts
6103   dolphin
6104   freespacenotifier
6105   google-gadgets-gst
6106   google-gadgets-xul
6107   kappfinder
6108   kcalc
6109   kcharselect
6110   kde-core
6111   kde-plasma-desktop
6112   kde-standard
6113   kde-window-manager
6114   kdeartwork
6115   kdeartwork-emoticons
6116   kdeartwork-style
6117   kdeartwork-theme-icon
6118   kdebase
6119   kdebase-apps
6120   kdebase-workspace
6121   kdebase-workspace-bin
6122   kdebase-workspace-data
6123   kdeeject
6124   kdelibs
6125   kdeplasma-addons
6126   kdeutils
6127   kdewallpapers
6128   kdf
6129   kfloppy
6130   kgpg
6131   khelpcenter4
6132   kinfocenter
6133   konq-plugins-l10n
6134   konqueror-nsplugins
6135   kscreensaver
6136   kscreensaver-xsavers
6137   ktimer
6138   kwrite
6139   libgle3
6140   libkde4-ruby1.8
6141   libkonq5
6142   libkonq5-templates
6143   libnetpbm10
6144   libplasma-ruby
6145   libplasma-ruby1.8
6146   libqt4-ruby1.8
6147   marble-data
6148   marble-plugins
6149   netpbm
6150   nuvola-icon-theme
6151   plasma-dataengines-workspace
6152   plasma-desktop
6153   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
6154   plasma-runners-addons
6155   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
6156   plasma-scriptengine-python
6157   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
6158   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
6159   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
6160   plasma-scriptengines
6161   plasma-wallpapers-addons
6162   plasma-widget-folderview
6163   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6164   ruby
6165   sweeper
6166   update-notifier-kde
6167   xscreensaver-data-extra
6168   xscreensaver-gl
6169   xscreensaver-gl-extra
6170   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6171 </p></blockquote>
6172
6173 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6174
6175 <blockquote><p>
6176   ark
6177   google-gadgets-common
6178   google-gadgets-qt
6179   htdig
6180   kate
6181   kdebase-bin
6182   kdebase-data
6183   kdepasswd
6184   kfind
6185   klipper
6186   konq-plugins
6187   konqueror
6188   ksysguard
6189   ksysguardd
6190   libarchive1
6191   libcln6
6192   libeet1
6193   libeina-svn-06
6194   libggadget-1.0-0b
6195   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
6196   libgps19
6197   libkdecorations4
6198   libkephal4
6199   libkonq4
6200   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
6201   libkscreensaver5
6202   libksgrd4
6203   libksignalplotter4
6204   libkunitconversion4
6205   libkwineffects1a
6206   libmarblewidget4
6207   libntrack-qt4-1
6208   libntrack0
6209   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
6210   libplasmaclock4a
6211   libplasmagenericshell4
6212   libprocesscore4a
6213   libprocessui4a
6214   libqalculate5
6215   libqedje0a
6216   libqtruby4shared2
6217   libqzion0a
6218   libruby1.8
6219   libscim8c2a
6220   libsmokekdecore4-3
6221   libsmokekdeui4-3
6222   libsmokekfile3
6223   libsmokekhtml3
6224   libsmokekio3
6225   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
6226   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
6227   libsmokekparts3
6228   libsmokektexteditor3
6229   libsmokekutils3
6230   libsmokenepomuk3
6231   libsmokephonon3
6232   libsmokeplasma3
6233   libsmokeqtcore4-3
6234   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
6235   libsmokeqtgui4-3
6236   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
6237   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
6238   libsmokeqtscript4-3
6239   libsmokeqtsql4-3
6240   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
6241   libsmokeqttest4-3
6242   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
6243   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
6244   libsmokeqtxml4-3
6245   libsmokesolid3
6246   libsmokesoprano3
6247   libtaskmanager4a
6248   libtidy-0.99-0
6249   libweather-ion4a
6250   libxklavier16
6251   libxxf86misc1
6252   okteta
6253   oxygencursors
6254   plasma-dataengines-addons
6255   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
6256   plasma-widget-lancelot
6257   plasma-widgets-addons
6258   plasma-widgets-workspace
6259   polkit-kde-1
6260   ruby1.8
6261   systemsettings
6262   update-notifier-common
6263 </p></blockquote>
6264
6265 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
6266 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
6267 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
6268 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
6269
6270       </div>
6271       <div class="tags">
6272
6273
6274         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6275
6276
6277       </div>
6278     </div>
6279     <div class="padding"></div>
6280
6281     <div class="entry">
6282       <div class="title">
6283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
6284       </div>
6285       <div class="date">
6286         22nd November 2010
6287       </div>
6288       <div class="body">
6289         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
6290 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
6291 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
6292 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
6293 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
6294 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
6295 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
6296 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
6297 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
6298
6299 <p>I found
6300 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
6301 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
6302 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
6303 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
6304 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
6305 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
6306
6307 <pre>
6308 #!/bin/sh
6309
6310 # Based on
6311 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
6312
6313 set -e
6314 set -x
6315
6316 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
6317     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
6318     exit 1
6319 else
6320     host="$1"
6321 fi
6322
6323 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
6324     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
6325     exit 1
6326 fi
6327
6328 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
6329 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6330 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6331 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
6332
6333 img=$host.img
6334 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
6335 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
6336
6337 parted $img mklabel msdos
6338 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
6339 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
6340 parted $img set 1 boot on
6341
6342 modprobe dm-mod
6343 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
6344 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
6345
6346 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
6347 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
6348 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
6349
6350 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
6351 losetup -d /dev/loop0
6352 </pre>
6353
6354 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
6355 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
6356
6357 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
6358 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
6359 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
6360 seem to work just fine.</p>
6361
6362       </div>
6363       <div class="tags">
6364
6365
6366         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6367
6368
6369       </div>
6370     </div>
6371     <div class="padding"></div>
6372
6373     <div class="entry">
6374       <div class="title">
6375         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
6376       </div>
6377       <div class="date">
6378         20th November 2010
6379       </div>
6380       <div class="body">
6381         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
6382 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6383 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
6384 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
6385
6386 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
6387 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
6388 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
6389
6390 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6391
6392 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6393
6394 <blockquote><p>
6395   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
6396   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
6397   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
6398   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
6399   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
6400   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
6401   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
6402   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
6403   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
6404   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
6405   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6406   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6407   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
6408   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
6409   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
6410   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
6411   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6412   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
6413   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6414   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
6415   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
6416   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6417   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
6418   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
6419   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
6420   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6421   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6422   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
6423   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6424   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
6425   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
6426   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6427   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
6428   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
6429   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
6430   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
6431   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
6432   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
6433   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
6434   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
6435   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
6436   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
6437   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
6438   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
6439   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
6440   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
6441   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
6442   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
6443   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
6444   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
6445   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
6446   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
6447   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6448   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
6449   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
6450   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
6451   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
6452   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
6453   zip
6454 </p></blockquote>
6455
6456 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
6457
6458 <blockquote><p>
6459   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
6460   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
6461   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
6462   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
6463   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
6464   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
6465   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
6466   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
6467   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
6468   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
6469   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
6470   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6471   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6472   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6473   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6474   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
6475   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6476   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
6477   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
6478   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
6479   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
6480   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
6481   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
6482   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
6483   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
6484   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
6485   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
6486   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
6487   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
6488 </p></blockquote>
6489
6490 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6491
6492 <blockquote><p>
6493   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6494 </p></blockquote>
6495
6496 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6497
6498 <blockquote><p>
6499 [nothing]
6500 </p></blockquote>
6501
6502 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6503
6504 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6505
6506 <blockquote><p>
6507   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
6508   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6509   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
6510   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
6511   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
6512   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
6513   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6514   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
6515   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
6516   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6517   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
6518   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
6519   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
6520   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
6521   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
6522   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
6523   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
6524   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
6525   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
6526   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
6527   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
6528   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
6529   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
6530   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
6531   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
6532   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
6533   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
6534   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
6535   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
6536   ttf-sazanami-gothic
6537 </p></blockquote>
6538
6539 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6540
6541 <blockquote><p>
6542   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
6543   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
6544   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
6545   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
6546   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
6547   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
6548   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
6549   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
6550   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
6551   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
6552   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
6553   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
6554   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
6555   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
6556   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6557   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6558   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
6559   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
6560   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6561   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
6562   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6563   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
6564   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6565   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6566   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
6567   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
6568   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
6569   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
6570   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
6571   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
6572   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
6573   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
6574   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
6575 </p></blockquote>
6576
6577 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6578
6579 <blockquote><p>
6580   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
6581   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
6582   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
6583   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
6584   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6585   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
6586   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6587 </p></blockquote>
6588
6589 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6590
6591 <blockquote><p>
6592   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
6593 </p></blockquote>
6594
6595       </div>
6596       <div class="tags">
6597
6598
6599         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6600
6601
6602       </div>
6603     </div>
6604     <div class="padding"></div>
6605
6606     <div class="entry">
6607       <div class="title">
6608         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
6609       </div>
6610       <div class="date">
6611         20th November 2010
6612       </div>
6613       <div class="body">
6614         <p>Answering
6615 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
6616 call from the Gnash project</a> for
6617 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
6618 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
6619 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
6620 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
6621 releases out more often.</p>
6622
6623 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
6624 I have considered setting up a <a
6625 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
6626 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
6627 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
6628 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
6629 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
6630 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
6631 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
6632 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
6633 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
6634 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
6635 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
6636 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
6637
6638       </div>
6639       <div class="tags">
6640
6641
6642         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6643
6644
6645       </div>
6646     </div>
6647     <div class="padding"></div>
6648
6649     <div class="entry">
6650       <div class="title">
6651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
6652       </div>
6653       <div class="date">
6654          9th November 2010
6655       </div>
6656       <div class="body">
6657         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
6658
6659 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
6660 3D linked in from
6661 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
6662 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
6663
6664       </div>
6665       <div class="tags">
6666
6667
6668         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6669
6670
6671       </div>
6672     </div>
6673     <div class="padding"></div>
6674
6675     <div class="entry">
6676       <div class="title">
6677         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
6678       </div>
6679       <div class="date">
6680          7th November 2010
6681       </div>
6682       <div class="body">
6683         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
6684 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
6685 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
6686 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
6687 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
6688 working using this DVD.</p>
6689
6690 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
6691 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
6692 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
6693 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
6694 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
6695 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
6696 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
6697
6698 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
6699 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
6700 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
6701 Debian archive.</p>
6702
6703 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
6704 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
6705 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
6706 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
6707 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
6708 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
6709 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
6710 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
6711 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
6712 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
6713 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
6714 free X driver should work.</p>
6715
6716 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
6717 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
6718 DVD more useful again.</p>
6719
6720       </div>
6721       <div class="tags">
6722
6723
6724         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6725
6726
6727       </div>
6728     </div>
6729     <div class="padding"></div>
6730
6731     <div class="entry">
6732       <div class="title">
6733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
6734       </div>
6735       <div class="date">
6736         24th October 2010
6737       </div>
6738       <div class="body">
6739         <p>Some updates.</p>
6740
6741 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
6742 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
6743 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
6744 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
6745 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
6746 :)</p>
6747
6748 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
6749 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
6750 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
6751 It is called
6752 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
6753 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
6754 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
6755 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
6756 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
6757 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
6758
6759 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
6760 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
6761 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
6762 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
6763 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
6764 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
6765 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
6766 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
6767 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
6768 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
6769
6770       </div>
6771       <div class="tags">
6772
6773
6774         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
6775
6776
6777       </div>
6778     </div>
6779     <div class="padding"></div>
6780
6781     <div class="entry">
6782       <div class="title">
6783         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
6784       </div>
6785       <div class="date">
6786         19th October 2010
6787       </div>
6788       <div class="body">
6789         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
6790 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
6791 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
6792 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
6793 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
6794 AVM2 flash files.</p>
6795
6796 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
6797 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
6798 following text:</P>
6799
6800 <p><blockquote>
6801
6802   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
6803   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
6804
6805   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
6806
6807   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
6808
6809   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
6810   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
6811   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
6812   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
6813   days. The project web page is available from
6814   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
6815   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
6816   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
6817
6818   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
6819   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
6820   to get this to happen.</p>
6821
6822   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
6823   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
6824
6825 </blockquote></p>
6826
6827 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
6828 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
6829 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
6830 :)</p>
6831
6832       </div>
6833       <div class="tags">
6834
6835
6836         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6837
6838
6839       </div>
6840     </div>
6841     <div class="padding"></div>
6842
6843     <div class="entry">
6844       <div class="title">
6845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
6846       </div>
6847       <div class="date">
6848          9th October 2010
6849       </div>
6850       <div class="body">
6851         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
6852 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
6853 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
6854 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
6855 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
6856 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
6857 robots.</p>
6858
6859 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
6860 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
6861 a few less important features too.</p>
6862
6863 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
6864 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
6865 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
6866 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
6867
6868 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
6869 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
6870 source or binary package:</p>
6871
6872 <p><ul>
6873 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
6874 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
6875 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
6876 </ul></p>
6877
6878 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
6879 please let me know.</p>
6880
6881       </div>
6882       <div class="tags">
6883
6884
6885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
6886
6887
6888       </div>
6889     </div>
6890     <div class="padding"></div>
6891
6892     <div class="entry">
6893       <div class="title">
6894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
6895       </div>
6896       <div class="date">
6897          3rd October 2010
6898       </div>
6899       <div class="body">
6900         <p><ul>
6901
6902 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
6903 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
6904
6905 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
6906 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
6907 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
6908
6909 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
6910 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
6911 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
6912 simple setup.
6913
6914 </ul></p>
6915
6916       </div>
6917       <div class="tags">
6918
6919
6920         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6921
6922
6923       </div>
6924     </div>
6925     <div class="padding"></div>
6926
6927     <div class="entry">
6928       <div class="title">
6929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
6930       </div>
6931       <div class="date">
6932          9th September 2010
6933       </div>
6934       <div class="body">
6935         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
6936 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
6937 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
6938 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
6939 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
6940 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
6941 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
6942 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
6943 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
6944
6945 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
6946 written:</p>
6947
6948 <blockquote>
6949 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
6950 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
6951 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
6952 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
6953 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
6954
6955 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
6956 standard.</p>
6957 </blockquote>
6958
6959 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
6960 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
6961 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
6962 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
6963
6964 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
6965 read
6966 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
6967 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
6968 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
6969 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
6970 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
6971 the issue.  The solution is to support the
6972 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
6973 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
6974 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
6975
6976       </div>
6977       <div class="tags">
6978
6979
6980         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6981
6982
6983       </div>
6984     </div>
6985     <div class="padding"></div>
6986
6987     <div class="entry">
6988       <div class="title">
6989         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
6990       </div>
6991       <div class="date">
6992          4th September 2010
6993       </div>
6994       <div class="body">
6995         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
6996 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
6997 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
6998 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
6999 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
7000 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7001 installed.</p>
7002
7003 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7004 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7005 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7006 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7007 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7008 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
7009 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7010 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7011 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7012
7013 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7014 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7015 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
7016 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7017 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7018 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7019 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7020 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7021 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7022 pages they want to visit.</p>
7023
7024 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7025 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7026 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7027 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7028 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7029 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7030 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7031 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7032 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7033 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7034 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7035
7036       </div>
7037       <div class="tags">
7038
7039
7040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7041
7042
7043       </div>
7044     </div>
7045     <div class="padding"></div>
7046
7047     <div class="entry">
7048       <div class="title">
7049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
7050       </div>
7051       <div class="date">
7052          1st September 2010
7053       </div>
7054       <div class="body">
7055         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
7056 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
7057 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
7058 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
7059 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
7060 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
7061 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
7062 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
7063 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
7064 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
7065 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
7066 drive around.</p>
7067
7068 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
7069 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
7070
7071 <p><pre>
7072 use Spykee;
7073 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
7074 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
7075 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
7076 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
7077 $spykee->left();
7078 sleep 2;
7079 $spykee->right();
7080 sleep 2;
7081 $spykee->forward();
7082 sleep 2;
7083 $spykee->back();
7084 sleep 2;
7085 $spykee->stop();
7086 </pre></p>
7087
7088 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
7089 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
7090 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
7091 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
7092 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
7093 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
7094 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
7095 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
7096 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
7097 going. :).</p>
7098
7099 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
7100 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
7101 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
7102 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
7103
7104       </div>
7105       <div class="tags">
7106
7107
7108         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7109
7110
7111       </div>
7112     </div>
7113     <div class="padding"></div>
7114
7115     <div class="entry">
7116       <div class="title">
7117         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
7118       </div>
7119       <div class="date">
7120         30th August 2010
7121       </div>
7122       <div class="body">
7123         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
7124 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
7125 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
7126 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
7127 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
7128 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
7129 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
7130
7131 <pre>
7132 % ln foo bar
7133 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
7134 %
7135 </pre>
7136
7137 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
7138 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
7139 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
7140 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
7141 nevertheless. :)</p>
7142
7143 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
7144 git from
7145 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
7146
7147       </div>
7148       <div class="tags">
7149
7150
7151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7152
7153
7154       </div>
7155     </div>
7156     <div class="padding"></div>
7157
7158     <div class="entry">
7159       <div class="title">
7160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
7161       </div>
7162       <div class="date">
7163         26th August 2010
7164       </div>
7165       <div class="body">
7166         <p>My file system sematics program
7167 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
7168 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
7169 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
7170 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
7171 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
7172 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
7173 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
7174 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
7175 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
7176 script:</p>
7177
7178 <pre>
7179 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
7180   mode_t retval = 0;
7181   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
7182   if (-1 != fd) {
7183     unlink(name);
7184     struct stat statbuf;
7185     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
7186       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
7187     }
7188     close(fd);
7189   }
7190   return retval;
7191 }
7192
7193 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
7194 int test_umask(void) {
7195   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
7196
7197   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
7198   mode_t newmode;
7199   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
7200     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
7201            newmode);
7202   }
7203   umask(007);
7204   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
7205     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
7206            newmode);
7207   }
7208
7209   umask (orig_umask);
7210   return 0;
7211 }
7212
7213 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
7214   [...]
7215   test_umask();
7216   return 0;
7217 }
7218 </pre>
7219
7220 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
7221
7222 <pre>
7223 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7224 info: testing symlink creation
7225 info: testing subdirectory creation
7226 info: testing fcntl locking
7227   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7228   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7229   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
7230   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7231   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7232   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
7233 info: testing umask effect on file creation
7234 </pre>
7235
7236 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
7237 result:</p>
7238
7239 <pre>
7240 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7241 info: testing symlink creation
7242 info: testing subdirectory creation
7243 info: testing fcntl locking
7244   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7245   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7246   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
7247   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7248   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7249   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
7250 info: testing umask effect on file creation
7251   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
7252   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
7253 </pre>
7254
7255 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
7256 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
7257 directory.</p>
7258
7259 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
7260 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
7261
7262 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
7263 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
7264 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
7265
7266       </div>
7267       <div class="tags">
7268
7269
7270         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7271
7272
7273       </div>
7274     </div>
7275     <div class="padding"></div>
7276
7277     <div class="entry">
7278       <div class="title">
7279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
7280       </div>
7281       <div class="date">
7282         15th August 2010
7283       </div>
7284       <div class="body">
7285         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
7286 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
7287 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
7288 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
7289 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
7290 long time.</p>
7291
7292       </div>
7293       <div class="tags">
7294
7295
7296         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
7297
7298
7299       </div>
7300     </div>
7301     <div class="padding"></div>
7302
7303     <div class="entry">
7304       <div class="title">
7305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
7306       </div>
7307       <div class="date">
7308          9th August 2010
7309       </div>
7310       <div class="body">
7311         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
7312 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
7313 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
7314 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
7315 generated configuration.</p>
7316
7317 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
7318 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
7319 without any manual configuration.</p>
7320
7321 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
7322 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
7323 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
7324 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
7325 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
7326 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
7327 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
7328 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
7329 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
7330 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
7331 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
7332 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
7333 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
7334 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
7335 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
7336 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
7337 use.</p>
7338
7339 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
7340 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
7341 working properly out of the box:</p>
7342
7343 <ul>
7344 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
7345 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
7346 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
7347 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
7348 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
7349 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
7350 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
7351 </ul>
7352
7353 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
7354
7355 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
7356 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
7357 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
7358 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
7359 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
7360
7361 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
7362 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
7363 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
7364 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
7365 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
7366 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
7367 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
7368 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
7369
7370 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
7371 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
7372 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
7373 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
7374 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
7375 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
7376 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
7377 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
7378 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
7379 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
7380 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
7381 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
7382 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
7383 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
7384 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
7385 current DNS domain is used.</p>
7386
7387 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
7388 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
7389 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
7390 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
7391 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
7392 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
7393 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
7394 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
7395 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
7396 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
7397 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
7398 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
7399 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
7400
7401 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
7402 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
7403 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
7404 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
7405 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
7406 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
7407 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
7408 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
7409 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
7410 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
7411 do for now. :)</p>
7412
7413 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
7414 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
7415 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
7416 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
7417 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
7418 yet.</p>
7419
7420 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
7421 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7422
7423 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
7424 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
7425 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
7426 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
7427
7428       </div>
7429       <div class="tags">
7430
7431
7432         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7433
7434
7435       </div>
7436     </div>
7437     <div class="padding"></div>
7438
7439     <div class="entry">
7440       <div class="title">
7441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
7442       </div>
7443       <div class="date">
7444          8th August 2010
7445       </div>
7446       <div class="body">
7447         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
7448 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
7449 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
7450 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
7451 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
7452 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
7453 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
7454
7455 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
7456 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
7457 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
7458 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
7459 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
7460 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
7461 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
7462
7463 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
7464 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
7465 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
7466 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
7467 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
7468
7469 <pre>
7470 /*
7471  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
7472  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
7473  * directory.
7474  * License: GPL v2 or later
7475  *
7476  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
7477  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
7478 */
7479
7480 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
7481 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
7482 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
7483
7484 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
7485
7486 #include &lt;errno.h>
7487 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
7488 #include &lt;stdio.h>
7489 #include &lt;string.h>
7490 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
7491 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
7492 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
7493 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
7494 #include &lt;unistd.h>
7495
7496 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
7497 /*
7498  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
7499  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
7500  * below.
7501  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
7502  */
7503 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
7504 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
7505   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
7506 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
7507   char *zErrMsg;
7508   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
7509   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
7510   unlink(name);
7511   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
7512   if( rc ){
7513     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
7514     sqlite3_close(db);
7515     return -1;
7516   }
7517
7518   /* create tables */
7519   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
7520   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
7521     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
7522     sqlite3_close(db);
7523     return -1;
7524   }
7525   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
7526   sqlite3_close(db);
7527   return 0;
7528 }
7529 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
7530
7531 /*
7532  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
7533  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
7534  * done in the sqlite3 library.
7535  * See also
7536  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
7537  * POSIX specification
7538  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
7539  */
7540 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
7541   struct flock fl;
7542   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
7543   unlink(name);
7544   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
7545   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
7546
7547   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
7548   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
7549   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
7550   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7551   fl.l_len    = 1;
7552   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
7553   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7554
7555   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
7556   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
7557   fl.l_len    = 510;
7558   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
7559   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7560
7561   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
7562   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7563   fl.l_len    = 1;
7564   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
7565   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7566
7567   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
7568   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7569   fl.l_len    = 1;
7570   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
7571   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7572
7573   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
7574   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
7575   fl.l_len    = 510;
7576   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7577
7578   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
7579   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7580   fl.l_len    = 2;
7581   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
7582   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7583
7584   close(fd);
7585   return 0;
7586 }
7587
7588 /*
7589  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
7590  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
7591  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
7592  * slowing down file operations.
7593  */
7594 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
7595 #define LEVELS 5
7596   char *path = strdup("test");
7597   char *dirs[LEVELS];
7598   int level;
7599   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
7600   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
7601     char *newpath = NULL;
7602     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
7603       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
7604              path, strerror(errno));
7605       break;
7606     }
7607     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
7608     free(path);
7609     path = newpath;
7610   }
7611   return 0;
7612 }
7613
7614 /*
7615  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
7616  * KDE.
7617  */
7618 int test_symlinks(void) {
7619   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
7620   unlink("symlink");
7621   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
7622     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
7623   return 0;
7624 }
7625
7626 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
7627   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
7628   test_symlinks();
7629   test_subdirectory_creation();
7630 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
7631   test_sqlite_open();
7632 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
7633   test_gcompris_locking();
7634   return 0;
7635 }
7636 </pre>
7637
7638 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
7639 this:</p>
7640
7641 <pre>
7642 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7643 info: testing symlink creation
7644 info: testing subdirectory creation
7645 info: sqlite worked
7646 info: testing fcntl locking
7647   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7648   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7649   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
7650   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7651   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7652   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
7653 </pre>
7654
7655 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
7656 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
7657 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
7658 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
7659 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
7660 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
7661 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
7662 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
7663
7664 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
7665 it. :)</p>
7666
7667 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
7668 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
7669 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
7670
7671       </div>
7672       <div class="tags">
7673
7674
7675         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7676
7677
7678       </div>
7679     </div>
7680     <div class="padding"></div>
7681
7682     <div class="entry">
7683       <div class="title">
7684         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
7685       </div>
7686       <div class="date">
7687          7th August 2010
7688       </div>
7689       <div class="body">
7690         <p>A few days ago, I
7691 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
7692 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
7693 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
7694 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
7695 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
7696 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
7697 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
7698 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
7699 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
7700
7701 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
7702 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
7703 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
7704 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
7705 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
7706 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
7707 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
7708 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
7709 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
7710 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
7711 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
7712 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
7713 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
7714 gave it a IP address.</p>
7715
7716 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
7717 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
7718 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
7719 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
7720 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
7721 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
7722 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
7723 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
7724
7725 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
7726 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
7727 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
7728 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
7729 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
7730 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
7731
7732 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
7733 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
7734 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
7735 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
7736 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
7737 with UID and GID values.</p>
7738
7739 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
7740 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7741
7742       </div>
7743       <div class="tags">
7744
7745
7746         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7747
7748
7749       </div>
7750     </div>
7751     <div class="padding"></div>
7752
7753     <div class="entry">
7754       <div class="title">
7755         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
7756       </div>
7757       <div class="date">
7758          3rd August 2010
7759       </div>
7760       <div class="body">
7761         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
7762 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
7763 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
7764 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
7765 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
7766 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
7767 servers.</p>
7768
7769 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
7770 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
7771 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
7772 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
7773 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
7774 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
7775 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
7776 .uio.no.</p>
7777
7778 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
7779 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
7780 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
7781 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
7782 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
7783 university servers.</p>
7784
7785 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
7786 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
7787 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
7788 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
7789 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
7790 uses.</p>
7791
7792       </div>
7793       <div class="tags">
7794
7795
7796         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7797
7798
7799       </div>
7800     </div>
7801     <div class="padding"></div>
7802
7803     <div class="entry">
7804       <div class="title">
7805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
7806       </div>
7807       <div class="date">
7808         27th July 2010
7809       </div>
7810       <div class="body">
7811         <p>I discovered this while doing
7812 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
7813 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
7814 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
7815 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
7816 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
7817
7818 <p>An example is from todays
7819 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
7820 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
7821 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
7822 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
7823 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
7824 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
7825 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
7826
7827 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
7828
7829 <blockquote><pre>
7830 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
7831  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
7832   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
7833 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
7834  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
7835 </pre></blockquote>
7836
7837 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
7838 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
7839 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
7840 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
7841 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
7842 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
7843 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
7844 of dependency loops.</p>
7845
7846 <p>Thanks to
7847 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
7848 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
7849 dependencies
7850 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
7851 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
7852
7853 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
7854 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
7855 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
7856 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
7857 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
7858 it.</p>
7859
7860       </div>
7861       <div class="tags">
7862
7863
7864         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7865
7866
7867       </div>
7868     </div>
7869     <div class="padding"></div>
7870
7871     <div class="entry">
7872       <div class="title">
7873         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
7874       </div>
7875       <div class="date">
7876         27th July 2010
7877       </div>
7878       <div class="body">
7879         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
7880 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
7881 completed.</p>
7882
7883 <blockquote>
7884 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
7885 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
7886 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
7887 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
7888 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
7889 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
7890 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
7891 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
7892
7893 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
7894 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
7895 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
7896
7897 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
7898 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
7899 much.</p>
7900
7901 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
7902
7903 <ul>
7904 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
7905 <ul>
7906   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
7907          combination with some new artwork
7908   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
7909   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
7910   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
7911   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
7912   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
7913   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
7914   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
7915   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
7916   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
7917 </ul></li>
7918 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
7919     Enabled for:
7920 <ul>
7921   <li>PAM
7922   <li>LDAP
7923   <li>IMAP
7924   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
7925 </ul>
7926 </li>
7927 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
7928 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
7929     fetched from LDAP.</li>
7930 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
7931 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
7932 </ul>
7933 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
7934
7935 <ul>
7936 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
7937     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
7938     for testing.</li>
7939 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
7940     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
7941     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
7942 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
7943 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
7944 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
7945 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
7946     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
7947 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
7948     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
7949     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
7950 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
7951     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
7952     and help out with translations.</li>
7953 </ul>
7954
7955 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
7956
7957 <ul>
7958 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
7959 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
7960 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
7961 </ul>
7962 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
7963
7964 <ul>
7965 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
7966 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
7967 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
7968 </ul>
7969
7970 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
7971 get closer to the final release.</p>
7972
7973 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
7974
7975 <ul>
7976 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
7977 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
7978 </ul>
7979
7980 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
7981 <ul>
7982 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
7983 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
7984 </ul>
7985 <p>How to report bugs:
7986 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
7987
7988 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
7989 </blockquote>
7990
7991       </div>
7992       <div class="tags">
7993
7994
7995         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7996
7997
7998       </div>
7999     </div>
8000     <div class="padding"></div>
8001
8002     <div class="entry">
8003       <div class="title">
8004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
8005       </div>
8006       <div class="date">
8007         25th July 2010
8008       </div>
8009       <div class="body">
8010         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
8011 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
8012 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
8013 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
8014 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
8015
8016 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
8017 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
8018 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
8019 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
8020 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
8021 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
8022 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
8023
8024 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
8025 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
8026 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
8027 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
8028 up. :)</p>
8029
8030 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
8031 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
8032 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
8033
8034 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
8035 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
8036 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
8037 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
8038 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
8039 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
8040 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
8041 release another day.</p>
8042
8043 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
8044 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8045
8046       </div>
8047       <div class="tags">
8048
8049
8050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8051
8052
8053       </div>
8054     </div>
8055     <div class="padding"></div>
8056
8057     <div class="entry">
8058       <div class="title">
8059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
8060       </div>
8061       <div class="date">
8062         18th July 2010
8063       </div>
8064       <div class="body">
8065         <p>Thanks to
8066 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
8067 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
8068 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
8069 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
8070 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
8071 only available from the development server, until more experience is
8072 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
8073
8074 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
8075 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
8076 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
8077 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
8078 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
8079 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
8080 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
8081
8082       </div>
8083       <div class="tags">
8084
8085
8086         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8087
8088
8089       </div>
8090     </div>
8091     <div class="padding"></div>
8092
8093     <div class="entry">
8094       <div class="title">
8095         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
8096       </div>
8097       <div class="date">
8098         17th July 2010
8099       </div>
8100       <div class="body">
8101         <p>This is a
8102 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
8103 on my
8104 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
8105 work</a> on
8106 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
8107 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
8108
8109 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
8110 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
8111 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
8112 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
8113
8114 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
8115 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
8116 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
8117
8118 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
8119
8120 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
8121 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
8122 the web.
8123
8124 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
8125 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
8126 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
8127 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
8128 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
8129 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
8130
8131 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
8132 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
8133 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
8134 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
8135 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
8136 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
8137 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
8138 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
8139 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
8140 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
8141 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
8142 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
8143 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
8144 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
8145 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
8146 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
8147
8148 <blockquote><pre>
8149 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8150   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8151   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8152   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8153   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8154   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8155   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8156
8157 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8158   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8159   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
8160   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
8161   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
8162   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
8163 </pre></blockquote>
8164
8165 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
8166 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
8167 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
8168 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8169 also exist.</p>
8170
8171 <blockquote><pre>
8172 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8173 objectclass: top
8174 objectclass: dnsdomain
8175 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8176 dc: tjener
8177 arecord: 10.0.2.2
8178 associateddomain: tjener.intern
8179
8180 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8181 objectclass: top
8182 objectclass: dnsdomain2
8183 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8184 dc: 2
8185 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
8186 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
8187 </pre></blockquote>
8188
8189 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
8190 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
8191 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
8192 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
8193 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
8194 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
8195 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
8196 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
8197 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
8198 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
8199 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
8200 instead.</p>
8201
8202 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
8203 like this:</p>
8204
8205 <blockquote><pre>
8206 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8207   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8208   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8209   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8210   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8211   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8212
8213 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8214   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
8215 </pre></blockquote>
8216
8217 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
8218 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
8219 reverse lookups.</p>
8220
8221 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
8222 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
8223 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
8224 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
8225
8226 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
8227 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
8228 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
8229
8230 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
8231 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
8232 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
8233 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
8234 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
8235
8236 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
8237 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
8238 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
8239 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
8240 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
8241
8242 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
8243 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
8244 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
8245 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
8246 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
8247 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
8248
8249 <blockquote><pre>
8250 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
8251     SUP top
8252     AUXILIARY
8253     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
8254           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
8255           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
8256           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
8257           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
8258     ))
8259 </pre></blockquote>
8260
8261 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
8262 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
8263 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
8264 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
8265 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
8266 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
8267
8268 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
8269
8270 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
8271 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
8272 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
8273 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
8274 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
8275
8276 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
8277 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
8278 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
8279 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
8280
8281 <blockquote><pre>
8282 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
8283 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
8284 </pre></blockquote>
8285
8286 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
8287 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
8288 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
8289 search result is this entry:</p>
8290
8291 <blockquote><pre>
8292 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8293 cn: dhcp
8294 objectClass: top
8295 objectClass: dhcpServer
8296 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8297 </pre></blockquote>
8298
8299 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
8300 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
8301 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
8302 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
8303 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
8304 The search result is this entry:</p>
8305
8306 <blockquote><pre>
8307 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8308 cn: DHCP Config
8309 objectClass: top
8310 objectClass: dhcpService
8311 objectClass: dhcpOptions
8312 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8313 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
8314 dhcpStatements: authoritative
8315 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
8316 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
8317 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
8318 </pre></blockquote>
8319
8320 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
8321 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8322 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8323 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8324 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
8325 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
8326 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8327 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8328 related computer objects.</p>
8329
8330 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8331 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
8332 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8333 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8334 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
8335 like:</p>
8336
8337 <blockquote><pre>
8338 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8339 cn: hostname
8340 objectClass: top
8341 objectClass: dhcpHost
8342 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8343 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8344 </pre></blockquote>
8345
8346 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8347 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8348 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
8349 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8350 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
8351 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8352 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8353 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8354 structural object class.
8355
8356 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8357
8358 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8359 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8360 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8361 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8362 in the configuration.</p>
8363
8364 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8365 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8366 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8367 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8368 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8369 structure.</p>
8370
8371 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8372 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
8373
8374 <blockquote><pre>
8375 ou=services
8376   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8377     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8378     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8379       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8380         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8381     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8382       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8383         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8384     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8385       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8386 </pre></blockquote>
8387
8388 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8389 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8390 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8391 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
8392
8393 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8394 like this:</p>
8395
8396 <blockquote><pre>
8397 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8398 dc: hostname
8399 objectClass: top
8400 objectClass: dhcpHost
8401 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8402 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8403 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8404 arecord: 10.11.12.13
8405 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8406 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8407 </pre></blockquote>
8408
8409 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8410 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8411 auxiliary object class.</p>
8412
8413       </div>
8414       <div class="tags">
8415
8416
8417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8418
8419
8420       </div>
8421     </div>
8422     <div class="padding"></div>
8423
8424     <div class="entry">
8425       <div class="title">
8426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
8427       </div>
8428       <div class="date">
8429         14th July 2010
8430       </div>
8431       <div class="body">
8432         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8433 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8434 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8435 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8436 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
8437
8438 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8439 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
8440
8441 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8442 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
8443 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8444 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8445 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8446 to a slave DNS server.</p>
8447
8448 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8449 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8450 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8451 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8452 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
8453 seem to work.</p>
8454
8455 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8456 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8457 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
8458 this:</p>
8459
8460 <blockquote><pre>
8461   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8462   cn: hostname
8463   objectClass: dhcphost
8464   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8465   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8466   associateddomain: hostname.intern
8467   arecord: 10.11.12.13
8468   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8469   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8470   ldapconfigsound: Y
8471 </pre></blockquote>
8472
8473 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8474 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8475 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
8476 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
8477
8478 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8479 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8480 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8481 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8482 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8483 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8484 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8485 might be a good place to put it.</p>
8486
8487 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8488 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8489
8490       </div>
8491       <div class="tags">
8492
8493
8494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8495
8496
8497       </div>
8498     </div>
8499     <div class="padding"></div>
8500
8501     <div class="entry">
8502       <div class="title">
8503         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
8504       </div>
8505       <div class="date">
8506         11th July 2010
8507       </div>
8508       <div class="body">
8509         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8510 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8511 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8512 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
8513
8514 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8515 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
8516 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8517 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8518 LTSP clients.</p>
8519
8520 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8521 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8522 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
8523
8524 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8525 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8526 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
8527
8528 <blockquote><pre>
8529 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8530 #
8531 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8532 #
8533 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8534 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8535 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8536 #
8537 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8538 # existence of attribute names.
8539 #
8540 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8541 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8542 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8543 #
8544 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8545 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
8546 #
8547 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8548 #     SUP top
8549 #     AUXILIARY
8550 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8551
8552 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8553 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8554     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8555     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
8556         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8557         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8558             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8559             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8560             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8561             # bass value on to clients
8562             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8563         done
8564     done
8565 fi
8566 </pre></blockquote>
8567
8568 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8569 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8570 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8571 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8572 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
8573
8574 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8575 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8576
8577 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8578 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
8579 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8580 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
8581 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
8582 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
8583
8584       </div>
8585       <div class="tags">
8586
8587
8588         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8589
8590
8591       </div>
8592     </div>
8593     <div class="padding"></div>
8594
8595     <div class="entry">
8596       <div class="title">
8597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8598       </div>
8599       <div class="date">
8600          9th July 2010
8601       </div>
8602       <div class="body">
8603         <p>Since
8604 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8605 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8606 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
8607 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
8608 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8609 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
8610 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8611 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
8612 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8613 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
8614 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
8615 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8616 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
8617
8618       </div>
8619       <div class="tags">
8620
8621
8622         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8623
8624
8625       </div>
8626     </div>
8627     <div class="padding"></div>
8628
8629     <div class="entry">
8630       <div class="title">
8631         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
8632       </div>
8633       <div class="date">
8634          3rd July 2010
8635       </div>
8636       <div class="body">
8637         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
8638 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8639 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
8640 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
8641 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8642 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8643 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
8644 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
8645
8646 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8647 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
8648 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
8649 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8650 publish the difference.</p>
8651
8652 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8653
8654 <blockquote><p>
8655   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8656   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
8657   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8658   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8659   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8660   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8661   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8662   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8663 </p></blockquote>
8664
8665 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8666
8667 <blockquote><p>
8668   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8669   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8670   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
8671   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8672   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
8673   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
8674   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8675   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8676   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8677   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8678   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8679   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
8680   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8681   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
8682   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8683   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8684   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
8685   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8686   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8687   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8688 </p></blockquote>
8689
8690 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8691
8692 <blockquote><p>
8693   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8694   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8695   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8696   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8697   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8698   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8699   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8700   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8701   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8702   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8703   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8704   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8705   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8706   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8707   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8708   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8709   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8710   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8711   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8712   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8713   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8714 </p></blockquote>
8715
8716 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8717
8718 <blockquote><p>
8719   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8720   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8721   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8722 </p></blockquote>
8723
8724 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8725 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8726 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8727 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8728 the difference somewhat.
8729
8730       </div>
8731       <div class="tags">
8732
8733
8734         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8735
8736
8737       </div>
8738     </div>
8739     <div class="padding"></div>
8740
8741     <div class="entry">
8742       <div class="title">
8743         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
8744       </div>
8745       <div class="date">
8746          1st July 2010
8747       </div>
8748       <div class="body">
8749         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
8750 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
8751 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
8752 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
8753 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
8754 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
8755 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
8756 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
8757 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
8758
8759 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
8760
8761 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
8762 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
8763 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
8764 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
8765 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
8766 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
8767 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
8768 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
8769 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
8770 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
8771 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
8772 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
8773 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
8774 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
8775 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
8776
8777 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
8778
8779 <blockquote><pre>
8780 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
8781 </pre></blockquote>
8782
8783 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
8784 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
8785 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
8786 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
8787 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
8788 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
8789 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
8790 on how to get this working.</p>
8791
8792 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
8793 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
8794 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
8795 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
8796 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
8797 instructions I found in the
8798 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
8799 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
8800
8801 <blockquote><pre>
8802         debug-level             0
8803         reload-count            unlimited
8804         paranoia                no
8805
8806         enable-cache            passwd          yes
8807         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
8808         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
8809         suggested-size          passwd          211
8810         check-files             passwd          yes
8811         persistent              passwd          yes
8812         shared                  passwd          yes
8813         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
8814         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
8815
8816         enable-cache            group           yes
8817         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
8818         negative-time-to-live   group           20
8819         suggested-size          group           211
8820         check-files             group           yes
8821         persistent              group           yes
8822         shared                  group           yes
8823         max-db-size             group           33554432
8824         auto-propagate          group           yes
8825
8826         enable-cache            hosts           no
8827         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
8828         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
8829         suggested-size          hosts           211
8830         check-files             hosts           yes
8831         persistent              hosts           yes
8832         shared                  hosts           yes
8833         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
8834
8835         enable-cache            services        yes
8836         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
8837         negative-time-to-live   services        20
8838         suggested-size          services        211
8839         check-files             services        yes
8840         persistent              services        yes
8841         shared                  services        yes
8842         max-db-size             services        33554432
8843 </pre></blockquote>
8844
8845 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
8846 automatically like the one provided in
8847 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
8848 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
8849 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
8850 look like this:</p>
8851
8852 <blockquote><pre>
8853 passwd:         files ldap
8854 group:          files ldap
8855 shadow:         files ldap
8856 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
8857 networks:       files
8858 protocols:      files
8859 services:       files
8860 ethers:         files
8861 rpc:            files
8862 netgroup:       files ldap
8863 </pre></blockquote>
8864
8865 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
8866 shadow and netgroup.</p>
8867
8868 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
8869 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
8870 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
8871 attributes cached.
8872
8873 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
8874   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
8875
8876 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
8877 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
8878 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
8879 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
8880 discovered sssd.</p>
8881
8882 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
8883
8884 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
8885 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
8886 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
8887 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
8888 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
8889 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
8890 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
8891 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
8892 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
8893 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
8894 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
8895 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
8896 version 1.2 is now in testing.
8897
8898 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
8899 roaming setup I want</p>
8900
8901 <blockquote><pre>
8902 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
8903 </pre></blockquote>
8904
8905 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
8906 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
8907
8908 <blockquote><pre>
8909 [sssd]
8910 config_file_version = 2
8911 reconnection_retries = 3
8912 sbus_timeout = 30
8913 services = nss, pam
8914 domains = INTERN
8915
8916 [nss]
8917 filter_groups = root
8918 filter_users = root
8919 reconnection_retries = 3
8920
8921 [pam]
8922 reconnection_retries = 3
8923
8924 [domain/INTERN]
8925 enumerate = false
8926 cache_credentials = true
8927
8928 id_provider = ldap
8929 auth_provider = ldap
8930 chpass_provider = ldap
8931
8932 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
8933 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8934 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
8935 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
8936 </pre></blockquote>
8937
8938 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
8939 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
8940
8941 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
8942 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
8943 modify it manually.</p>
8944
8945 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8946 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8947
8948       </div>
8949       <div class="tags">
8950
8951
8952         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8953
8954
8955       </div>
8956     </div>
8957     <div class="padding"></div>
8958
8959     <div class="entry">
8960       <div class="title">
8961         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8962       </div>
8963       <div class="date">
8964         28th June 2010
8965       </div>
8966       <div class="body">
8967         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
8968 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
8969 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
8970 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
8971 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
8972 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
8973 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
8974 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
8975 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
8976 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
8977
8978 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
8979 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
8980 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
8981 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
8982 released.</p>
8983
8984 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
8985 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
8986 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
8987 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
8988
8989 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
8990 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8991
8992 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
8993 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
8994 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
8995 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
8996 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
8997
8998       </div>
8999       <div class="tags">
9000
9001
9002         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9003
9004
9005       </div>
9006     </div>
9007     <div class="padding"></div>
9008
9009     <div class="entry">
9010       <div class="title">
9011         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
9012       </div>
9013       <div class="date">
9014         24th June 2010
9015       </div>
9016       <div class="body">
9017         <p>A while back, I
9018 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
9019 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
9020 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
9021 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
9022
9023 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
9024 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
9025 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
9026 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
9027
9028 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
9029 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
9030 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
9031 Debian Edu.</p>
9032
9033 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
9034 the
9035 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
9036 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
9037 available today from IETF.</p>
9038
9039 <pre>
9040 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
9041 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
9042 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
9043  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
9044         NAME 'dhcpHost'
9045         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
9046 -       SUP top
9047 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
9048         MUST cn
9049         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
9050         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
9051 </pre>
9052
9053 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
9054 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
9055 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
9056
9057 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9058 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9059
9060       </div>
9061       <div class="tags">
9062
9063
9064         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9065
9066
9067       </div>
9068     </div>
9069     <div class="padding"></div>
9070
9071     <div class="entry">
9072       <div class="title">
9073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
9074       </div>
9075       <div class="date">
9076         16th June 2010
9077       </div>
9078       <div class="body">
9079         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
9080 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
9081 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
9082 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
9083 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
9084 this:
9085
9086 <blockquote><pre>
9087 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9088 tasksel --new-install
9089 </pre></blockquote>
9090
9091 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
9092 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
9093 any output what so ever.
9094
9095 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
9096 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
9097 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
9098 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
9099 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
9100 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
9101 code like this:
9102
9103 <blockquote><pre>
9104 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9105 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
9106 $cmd
9107 </pre></blockquote>
9108
9109 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
9110 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
9111 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
9112 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
9113 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
9114 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
9115 installation.</p>
9116
9117 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
9118 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
9119 like this.</p>
9120
9121       </div>
9122       <div class="tags">
9123
9124
9125         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9126
9127
9128       </div>
9129     </div>
9130     <div class="padding"></div>
9131
9132     <div class="entry">
9133       <div class="title">
9134         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
9135       </div>
9136       <div class="date">
9137         13th June 2010
9138       </div>
9139       <div class="body">
9140         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
9141 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
9142 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
9143 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
9144 pages.</p>
9145
9146 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
9147 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
9148 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
9149 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
9150 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
9151 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
9152 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
9153 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
9154 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
9155 see how the project is doing.</p>
9156
9157 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
9158 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
9159 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
9160 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
9161 Windows.  This is great.</p>
9162
9163       </div>
9164       <div class="tags">
9165
9166
9167         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9168
9169
9170       </div>
9171     </div>
9172     <div class="padding"></div>
9173
9174     <div class="entry">
9175       <div class="title">
9176         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
9177       </div>
9178       <div class="date">
9179         13th June 2010
9180       </div>
9181       <div class="body">
9182         <p>My
9183 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
9184 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
9185 finally made the upgrade logs available from
9186 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
9187 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
9188 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
9189 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
9190
9191 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
9192 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
9193 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
9194 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
9195 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
9196 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
9197 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
9198 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
9199
9200 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
9201 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
9202 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
9203 too surprising.</p>
9204
9205 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
9206 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
9207 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
9208 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
9209 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
9210 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
9211 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
9212 continue.</p>
9213
9214 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
9215 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
9216   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
9217   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
9218   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
9219   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
9220   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
9221   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9222   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9223   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9224   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9225   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9226   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9227   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9228   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9229   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9230   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9231   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9232   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9233   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9234   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9235   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9236   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9237   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9238   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9239   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9240   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9241   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9242   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
9243   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
9244
9245 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
9246
9247 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
9248   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
9249   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
9250   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
9251   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9252   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
9253   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
9254   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
9255   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
9256   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
9257   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9258   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
9259   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
9260   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
9261   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
9262   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
9263   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
9264   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
9265   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
9266   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
9267   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
9268   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
9269   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
9270   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
9271   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
9272   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
9273   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
9274   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
9275   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
9276   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9277   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9278   zip</p>
9279
9280 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
9281
9282 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
9283   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
9284   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
9285   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
9286   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
9287   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
9288   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9289   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9290   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9291   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9292   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9293   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9294   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9295   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9296   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9297   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9298   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9299   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9300   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9301   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9302   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9303   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9304   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9305   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9306   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9307   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9308   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9309   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
9310
9311 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
9312 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
9313   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9314   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
9315   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
9316   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9317   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
9318   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
9319   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9320   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
9321   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
9322   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
9323   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
9324   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
9325   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
9326   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
9327   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
9328   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9329   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9330   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9331   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
9332   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9333   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
9334   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
9335   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9336   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9337   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
9338   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
9339   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
9340   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
9341   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
9342   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
9343   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
9344   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
9345   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
9346   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9347   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9348   xulrunner-1.9</p>
9349
9350
9351       </div>
9352       <div class="tags">
9353
9354
9355         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9356
9357
9358       </div>
9359     </div>
9360     <div class="padding"></div>
9361
9362     <div class="entry">
9363       <div class="title">
9364         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
9365       </div>
9366       <div class="date">
9367         11th June 2010
9368       </div>
9369       <div class="body">
9370         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
9371 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
9372 have been discovered and reported in the process
9373 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
9374 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
9375 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
9376 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
9377 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
9378
9379 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
9380 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
9381 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
9382 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
9383 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
9384 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
9385
9386 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
9387 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
9388 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9389 is created.  The bug report
9390 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
9391 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
9392 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
9393 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
9394 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
9395 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
9396 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
9397 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
9398 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
9399 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
9400 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
9401 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
9402 Debian Squeeze.</p>
9403
9404 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
9405 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
9406 trick:</p>
9407
9408 <blockquote><pre>
9409 #!/bin/sh
9410 set -ex
9411
9412 if [ "$1" ] ; then
9413     desktop=$1
9414 else
9415     desktop=gnome
9416 fi
9417
9418 from=lenny
9419 to=squeeze
9420
9421 exec &lt; /dev/null
9422 unset LANG
9423 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
9424 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
9425 fuser -mv .
9426 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
9427 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9428 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
9429 #!/bin/sh
9430 exit 101
9431 EOF
9432 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
9433 exit_cleanup() {
9434     umount $tmpdir/proc
9435 }
9436 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
9437 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
9438 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
9439
9440 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
9441
9442 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
9443 # to return the correct answers.
9444 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
9445     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
9446
9447 # Include the desktop and laptop task
9448 for test in desktop laptop ; do
9449     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
9450 #!/bin/sh
9451 exit 2
9452 EOF
9453     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
9454 done
9455
9456 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9457 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
9458 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
9459 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
9460
9461 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
9462 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9463 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9464 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
9465 fuser -mv
9466 </pre></blockquote>
9467
9468 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
9469 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
9470 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
9471 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
9472 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
9473 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
9474
9475 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
9476 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
9477 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
9478 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
9479 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
9480 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
9481 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
9482
9483 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
9484 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
9485 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
9486 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
9487 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
9488 packages.</p>
9489
9490       </div>
9491       <div class="tags">
9492
9493
9494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9495
9496
9497       </div>
9498     </div>
9499     <div class="padding"></div>
9500
9501     <div class="entry">
9502       <div class="title">
9503         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
9504       </div>
9505       <div class="date">
9506          6th June 2010
9507       </div>
9508       <div class="body">
9509         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
9510 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
9511 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
9512 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
9513 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
9514 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
9515 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
9516
9517 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
9518 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
9519 COLUMNS):</p>
9520
9521 <blockquote><pre>
9522 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
9523 previous=N
9524 PREVLEVEL=
9525 RUNLEVEL=
9526 runlevel=S
9527 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
9528 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
9529 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
9530 </pre></blockquote>
9531
9532 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
9533 script.</p>
9534
9535 <blockquote><pre>
9536 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
9537 previous=N
9538 PREVLEVEL=N
9539 RUNLEVEL=S
9540 runlevel=S
9541 </pre></blockquote>
9542
9543 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
9544 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
9545 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
9546
9547 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
9548 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
9549 choice.</p>
9550
9551       </div>
9552       <div class="tags">
9553
9554
9555         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9556
9557
9558       </div>
9559     </div>
9560     <div class="padding"></div>
9561
9562     <div class="entry">
9563       <div class="title">
9564         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
9565       </div>
9566       <div class="date">
9567          6th June 2010
9568       </div>
9569       <div class="body">
9570         <p>Via the
9571 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
9572 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
9573 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
9574 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
9575 following the standards wars of today.</p>
9576
9577       </div>
9578       <div class="tags">
9579
9580
9581         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9582
9583
9584       </div>
9585     </div>
9586     <div class="padding"></div>
9587
9588     <div class="entry">
9589       <div class="title">
9590         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
9591       </div>
9592       <div class="date">
9593          3rd June 2010
9594       </div>
9595       <div class="body">
9596         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9597 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9598 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
9599 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9600 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
9601
9602 <blockquote><pre>
9603 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9604   vendor                    count
9605   Dell Computer Corporation     1
9606     PowerEdge 1750              1
9607   IBM                           1
9608     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
9609   Intel                         2
9610   [no-dmi-info]                 3
9611 maintainer:~#
9612 </pre></blockquote>
9613
9614 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9615 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
9616 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9617 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
9618 option to list the individual machines.</p>
9619
9620 <p>A larger list is
9621 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9622 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9623 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
9624 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9625 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9626 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9627 collector.</p>
9628
9629       </div>
9630       <div class="tags">
9631
9632
9633         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
9634
9635
9636       </div>
9637     </div>
9638     <div class="padding"></div>
9639
9640     <div class="entry">
9641       <div class="title">
9642         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
9643       </div>
9644       <div class="date">
9645          1st June 2010
9646       </div>
9647       <div class="body">
9648         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9649 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
9650 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9651 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9652 wait.</p>
9653
9654 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9655 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
9656 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9657 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9658 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
9659 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
9660
9661 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9662 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9663 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
9664 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9665 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9666 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9667 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
9668 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
9669
9670 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
9671
9672       </div>
9673       <div class="tags">
9674
9675
9676         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9677
9678
9679       </div>
9680     </div>
9681     <div class="padding"></div>
9682
9683     <div class="entry">
9684       <div class="title">
9685         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
9686       </div>
9687       <div class="date">
9688         27th May 2010
9689       </div>
9690       <div class="body">
9691         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
9692 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
9693 issues are known and should be solved:
9694
9695 <p><ul>
9696
9697 <li>The wicd package seen to
9698 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
9699 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
9700 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
9701 seem to be on the case.</li>
9702
9703 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
9704 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
9705 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
9706 maintainer is on the case.</li>
9707
9708 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
9709 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
9710 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
9711 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
9712 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
9713 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
9714 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
9715 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
9716
9717 </ul></p>
9718
9719 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
9720 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
9721 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
9722 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
9723
9724 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9725 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9726 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9727 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9728
9729 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
9730
9731       </div>
9732       <div class="tags">
9733
9734
9735         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9736
9737
9738       </div>
9739     </div>
9740     <div class="padding"></div>
9741
9742     <div class="entry">
9743       <div class="title">
9744         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
9745       </div>
9746       <div class="date">
9747         22nd May 2010
9748       </div>
9749       <div class="body">
9750         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
9751 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
9752 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
9753 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
9754
9755 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
9756 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
9757 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
9758 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
9759 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
9760 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
9761 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
9762 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
9763 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
9764 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
9765 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
9766 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
9767 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
9768 going to work.</p>
9769
9770 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
9771 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
9772 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
9773 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
9774 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
9775 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
9776 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
9777 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
9778 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
9779 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
9780 Edu.</p>
9781
9782 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
9783 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
9784 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
9785 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
9786 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
9787 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
9788
9789 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
9790 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
9791
9792       </div>
9793       <div class="tags">
9794
9795
9796         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9797
9798
9799       </div>
9800     </div>
9801     <div class="padding"></div>
9802
9803     <div class="entry">
9804       <div class="title">
9805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
9806       </div>
9807       <div class="date">
9808         19th May 2010
9809       </div>
9810       <div class="body">
9811         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
9812 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
9813 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
9814 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
9815 into unstable.  The
9816 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
9817 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
9818 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
9819 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
9820 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
9821 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
9822 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
9823
9824 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
9825 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
9826 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
9827 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
9828 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
9829 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
9830 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
9831 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
9832
9833 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
9834 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
9835 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
9836 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
9837 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
9838 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
9839 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
9840
9841 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
9842 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
9843 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
9844 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
9845 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
9846 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
9847 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
9848 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
9849 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
9850 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
9851 on the home directory servers.</p>
9852
9853 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
9854 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
9855 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
9856 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
9857 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
9858 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
9859
9860 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9861 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9862
9863       </div>
9864       <div class="tags">
9865
9866
9867         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9868
9869
9870       </div>
9871     </div>
9872     <div class="padding"></div>
9873
9874     <div class="entry">
9875       <div class="title">
9876         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
9877       </div>
9878       <div class="date">
9879         14th May 2010
9880       </div>
9881       <div class="body">
9882         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
9883 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
9884 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
9885 expected, if I am to believe the
9886 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9887 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
9888 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
9889 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
9890 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
9891 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
9892 version.</p>
9893
9894 More information about
9895 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9896 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
9897 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
9898 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9899
9900 <blockquote><pre>
9901 CONCURRENCY=none
9902 </pre></blockquote>
9903
9904 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9905 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9906 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9907 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9908
9909       </div>
9910       <div class="tags">
9911
9912
9913         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9914
9915
9916       </div>
9917     </div>
9918     <div class="padding"></div>
9919
9920     <div class="entry">
9921       <div class="title">
9922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
9923       </div>
9924       <div class="date">
9925         14th May 2010
9926       </div>
9927       <div class="body">
9928         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
9929 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
9930 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
9931 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
9932 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
9933 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
9934 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
9935 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
9936
9937 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
9938 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
9939 this on the collector host:</p>
9940
9941 <blockquote><pre>
9942 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
9943 </pre></blockquote>
9944
9945 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
9946 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
9947
9948 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
9949 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
9950 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
9951 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
9952 written yet.</p>
9953
9954       </div>
9955       <div class="tags">
9956
9957
9958         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
9959
9960
9961       </div>
9962     </div>
9963     <div class="padding"></div>
9964
9965     <div class="entry">
9966       <div class="title">
9967         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
9968       </div>
9969       <div class="date">
9970         13th May 2010
9971       </div>
9972       <div class="body">
9973         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
9974 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
9975 has been
9976 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
9977
9978 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
9979 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
9980 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
9981 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
9982 based boot system.  Tollef is
9983 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
9984 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
9985 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
9986 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
9987 at the moment do not.</p>
9988
9989 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
9990 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
9991 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
9992 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
9993 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
9994 way forward.</p>
9995
9996 <p>In the mean time, based on the
9997 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9998 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
9999 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
10000 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
10001 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
10002 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
10003 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
10004 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
10005
10006       </div>
10007       <div class="tags">
10008
10009
10010         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10011
10012
10013       </div>
10014     </div>
10015     <div class="padding"></div>
10016
10017     <div class="entry">
10018       <div class="title">
10019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
10020       </div>
10021       <div class="date">
10022          6th May 2010
10023       </div>
10024       <div class="body">
10025         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
10026 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
10027 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
10028 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
10029 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10030 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
10031 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10032
10033 <blockquote><pre>
10034 CONCURRENCY=makefile
10035 </pre></blockquote>
10036
10037 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
10038 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
10039 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
10040 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
10041 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
10042 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
10043 make this happen.</p>
10044
10045 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
10046 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
10047 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
10048 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
10049 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
10050
10051 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
10052 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
10053 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
10054 fix the remaining issues.</p>
10055
10056 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10057 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10058 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10059 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10060
10061       </div>
10062       <div class="tags">
10063
10064
10065         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10066
10067
10068       </div>
10069     </div>
10070     <div class="padding"></div>
10071
10072     <div class="entry">
10073       <div class="title">
10074         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
10075       </div>
10076       <div class="date">
10077          2nd May 2010
10078       </div>
10079       <div class="body">
10080         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
10081 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
10082 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
10083
10084 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
10085 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
10086 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
10087 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
10088 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
10089
10090 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
10091 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
10092
10093 <blockquote><pre>
10094 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10095 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
10096 Password expires                                        : never
10097 Password inactive                                       : never
10098 Account expires                                         : never
10099 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
10100 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
10101 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
10102 root@tjener:~#
10103 </pre></blockquote>
10104
10105 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
10106 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
10107 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
10108 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
10109 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
10110 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
10111
10112 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
10113 intended:</p>
10114
10115 <blockquote><pre>
10116 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
10117 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10118 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
10119 Password expires                                        : never
10120 Password inactive                                       : never
10121 Account expires                                         : never
10122 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
10123 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
10124 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
10125 root@tjener:~#
10126 </pre></blockquote>
10127
10128 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
10129 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
10130 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
10131
10132 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
10133 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
10134
10135 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
10136 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10137
10138 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
10139 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
10140 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
10141 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
10142 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
10143 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
10144 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
10145
10146 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
10147 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
10148 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
10149 change.</p>
10150
10151       </div>
10152       <div class="tags">
10153
10154
10155         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10156
10157
10158       </div>
10159     </div>
10160     <div class="padding"></div>
10161
10162     <div class="entry">
10163       <div class="title">
10164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
10165       </div>
10166       <div class="date">
10167         28th April 2010
10168       </div>
10169       <div class="body">
10170         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
10171 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
10172 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
10173 and go.</p>
10174
10175 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
10176 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
10177 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
10178 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
10179
10180 <ul>
10181
10182  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
10183    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
10184    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
10185    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
10186    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
10187    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
10188    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
10189    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
10190    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
10191    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
10192    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
10193    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
10194
10195  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
10196    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
10197    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
10198    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
10199    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
10200    or the Fedora developed
10201    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
10202    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
10203
10204  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
10205    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
10206    directory, using unison.</li>
10207
10208  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
10209    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
10210    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
10211    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
10212    implemented.</li>
10213
10214  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
10215    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
10216
10217  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
10218    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
10219    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
10220
10221 </ul>
10222
10223 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
10224 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
10225 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
10226 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
10227 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
10228 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
10229 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
10230 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
10231 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
10232
10233 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10234 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10235
10236       </div>
10237       <div class="tags">
10238
10239
10240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10241
10242
10243       </div>
10244     </div>
10245     <div class="padding"></div>
10246
10247     <div class="entry">
10248       <div class="title">
10249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
10250       </div>
10251       <div class="date">
10252         19th April 2010
10253       </div>
10254       <div class="body">
10255         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
10256 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
10257 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
10258 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
10259 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
10260 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
10261 restrictions on the web, for example from
10262 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
10263 epub-version from
10264 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
10265 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
10266 strongly recommend this book.</p>
10267
10268       </div>
10269       <div class="tags">
10270
10271
10272         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10273
10274
10275       </div>
10276     </div>
10277     <div class="padding"></div>
10278
10279     <div class="entry">
10280       <div class="title">
10281         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
10282       </div>
10283       <div class="date">
10284         14th April 2010
10285       </div>
10286       <div class="body">
10287         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
10288 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
10289 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
10290 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
10291 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
10292 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
10293 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
10294 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
10295 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
10296
10297 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
10298 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
10299 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
10300 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
10301 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
10302
10303 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
10304 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
10305
10306 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
10307 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
10308 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
10309 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
10310 to work properly.</p>
10311
10312 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
10313 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
10314 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
10315 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
10316 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
10317 time.</p>
10318
10319 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
10320 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
10321 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
10322 up in a few days.</p>
10323
10324       </div>
10325       <div class="tags">
10326
10327
10328         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10329
10330
10331       </div>
10332     </div>
10333     <div class="padding"></div>
10334
10335     <div class="entry">
10336       <div class="title">
10337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
10338       </div>
10339       <div class="date">
10340          6th March 2010
10341       </div>
10342       <div class="body">
10343         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
10344 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
10345 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
10346 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
10347 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
10348 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
10349
10350 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
10351 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
10352 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
10353 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
10354
10355 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
10356 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
10357 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
10358 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
10359 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
10360 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
10361
10362       </div>
10363       <div class="tags">
10364
10365
10366         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10367
10368
10369       </div>
10370     </div>
10371     <div class="padding"></div>
10372
10373     <div class="entry">
10374       <div class="title">
10375         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
10376       </div>
10377       <div class="date">
10378         11th February 2010
10379       </div>
10380       <div class="body">
10381         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
10382 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
10383 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
10384 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
10385 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
10386 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
10387 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
10388
10389 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
10390
10391 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
10392 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
10393 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
10394 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
10395
10396       </div>
10397       <div class="tags">
10398
10399
10400         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10401
10402
10403       </div>
10404     </div>
10405     <div class="padding"></div>
10406
10407     <div class="entry">
10408       <div class="title">
10409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
10410       </div>
10411       <div class="date">
10412         27th January 2010
10413       </div>
10414       <div class="body">
10415         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
10416 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
10417 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
10418 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
10419 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
10420 further.</p>
10421
10422 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
10423 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
10424 configured to be a server for the
10425 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
10426 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
10427 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
10428 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
10429 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
10430 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
10431 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
10432 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
10433 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
10434 and Nagios configuration.</p>
10435
10436 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
10437 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
10438 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
10439 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
10440
10441 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
10442 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
10443 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
10444 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
10445 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
10446 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
10447 the machine.</p>
10448
10449 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
10450 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
10451 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
10452 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
10453
10454 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
10455 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
10456 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
10457 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
10458 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
10459 everything is taken care of.</p>
10460
10461       </div>
10462       <div class="tags">
10463
10464
10465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
10466
10467
10468       </div>
10469     </div>
10470     <div class="padding"></div>
10471
10472     <div class="entry">
10473       <div class="title">
10474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
10475       </div>
10476       <div class="date">
10477         12th August 2009
10478       </div>
10479       <div class="body">
10480         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
10481 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
10482 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
10483 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
10484
10485 <table>
10486 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10487 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
10488 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
10489 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
10490 </table>
10491
10492 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
10493 got these numbers:</p>
10494
10495 <table>
10496 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10497 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
10498 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
10499 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
10500 </table>
10501
10502 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
10503
10504 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
10505 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
10506 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
10507 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
10508 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
10509
10510
10511 <table>
10512 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10513 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
10514 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
10515 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
10516 </table>
10517
10518 <p>And with 'site:no':
10519
10520 <table>
10521 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10522 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
10523 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
10524 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
10525 </table>
10526
10527 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
10528 numbers.</p>
10529
10530       </div>
10531       <div class="tags">
10532
10533
10534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10535
10536
10537       </div>
10538     </div>
10539     <div class="padding"></div>
10540
10541     <div class="entry">
10542       <div class="title">
10543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
10544       </div>
10545       <div class="date">
10546          8th August 2009
10547       </div>
10548       <div class="body">
10549         <p>According to <a
10550 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
10551 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
10552 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
10553 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
10554 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
10555 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
10556 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
10557 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
10558 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
10559 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
10560
10561 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
10562 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
10563 seminar this autumn.</p>
10564
10565       </div>
10566       <div class="tags">
10567
10568
10569         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10570
10571
10572       </div>
10573     </div>
10574     <div class="padding"></div>
10575
10576     <div class="entry">
10577       <div class="title">
10578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
10579       </div>
10580       <div class="date">
10581         27th July 2009
10582       </div>
10583       <div class="body">
10584         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
10585 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
10586 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
10587 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
10588 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
10589 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
10590 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
10591
10592 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
10593 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
10594 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
10595
10596       </div>
10597       <div class="tags">
10598
10599
10600         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10601
10602
10603       </div>
10604     </div>
10605     <div class="padding"></div>
10606
10607     <div class="entry">
10608       <div class="title">
10609         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
10610       </div>
10611       <div class="date">
10612         22nd July 2009
10613       </div>
10614       <div class="body">
10615         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
10616 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
10617 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
10618 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
10619 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
10620 the package up to date.</p>
10621
10622 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
10623 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
10624 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
10625 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
10626 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
10627 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
10628 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
10629 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
10630 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
10631 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
10632 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
10633 working on the future release.</p>
10634
10635 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
10636 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
10637
10638       </div>
10639       <div class="tags">
10640
10641
10642         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10643
10644
10645       </div>
10646     </div>
10647     <div class="padding"></div>
10648
10649     <div class="entry">
10650       <div class="title">
10651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
10652       </div>
10653       <div class="date">
10654         24th June 2009
10655       </div>
10656       <div class="body">
10657         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
10658 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
10659 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
10660 funded
10661 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
10662 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
10663 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
10664 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
10665 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
10666 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
10667
10668 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
10669 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
10670 boot:</p>
10671
10672 <ul>
10673
10674 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
10675
10676 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
10677    clock is in UTC.</li>
10678
10679 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
10680    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10681    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
10682
10683 </ul>
10684
10685 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
10686 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
10687 Villegas</a>.
10688
10689 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
10690 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
10691 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
10692 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
10693 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
10694 using this.</p>
10695
10696 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
10697 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
10698 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
10699 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
10700 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
10701 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
10702 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
10703
10704       </div>
10705       <div class="tags">
10706
10707
10708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10709
10710
10711       </div>
10712     </div>
10713     <div class="padding"></div>
10714
10715     <div class="entry">
10716       <div class="title">
10717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
10718       </div>
10719       <div class="date">
10720          2nd May 2009
10721       </div>
10722       <div class="body">
10723         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
10724 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
10725 do not yet know them.</p>
10726
10727 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
10728 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
10729 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
10730 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
10731 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
10732 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
10733 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
10734 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
10735 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
10736 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
10737 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
10738
10739 <p>The second one is
10740 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
10741 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
10742 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
10743 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
10744 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
10745 and the company behind it is running
10746 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
10747 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
10748 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
10749 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
10750 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
10751 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
10752 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
10753 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
10754
10755 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
10756 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
10757 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
10758 surrounded by today.</p>
10759
10760       </div>
10761       <div class="tags">
10762
10763
10764         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10765
10766
10767       </div>
10768     </div>
10769     <div class="padding"></div>
10770
10771     <div class="entry">
10772       <div class="title">
10773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
10774       </div>
10775       <div class="date">
10776         28th April 2009
10777       </div>
10778       <div class="body">
10779         <p>Julien Blache
10780 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
10781 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
10782 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
10783 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
10784 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
10785 properties.</p>
10786
10787       </div>
10788       <div class="tags">
10789
10790
10791         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10792
10793
10794       </div>
10795     </div>
10796     <div class="padding"></div>
10797
10798     <div class="entry">
10799       <div class="title">
10800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
10801       </div>
10802       <div class="date">
10803          5th April 2009
10804       </div>
10805       <div class="body">
10806         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
10807 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
10808 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
10809 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
10810 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
10811 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
10812 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
10813 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
10814
10815 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
10816 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
10817 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
10818   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
10819   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
10820
10821 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
10822 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
10823 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
10824 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
10825
10826 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
10827 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
10828 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
10829 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
10830
10831 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
10832 set -e
10833 URL="$1"
10834 SAVEFILE="$2"
10835 DURATION="$3"
10836 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
10837   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
10838   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
10839 pid=$!
10840 sleep $DURATION
10841 kill $pid
10842 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
10843
10844       </div>
10845       <div class="tags">
10846
10847
10848         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10849
10850
10851       </div>
10852     </div>
10853     <div class="padding"></div>
10854
10855     <div class="entry">
10856       <div class="title">
10857         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
10858       </div>
10859       <div class="date">
10860         30th March 2009
10861       </div>
10862       <div class="body">
10863         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
10864 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
10865 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
10866 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
10867 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
10868 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
10869 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
10870 application.</p>
10871
10872 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
10873 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
10874 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
10875 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
10876 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
10877 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
10878 blocked from doing so.</p>
10879
10880 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
10881 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
10882 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
10883 requirements change.</p>
10884
10885 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
10886 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
10887 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
10888
10889       </div>
10890       <div class="tags">
10891
10892
10893         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10894
10895
10896       </div>
10897     </div>
10898     <div class="padding"></div>
10899
10900     <div class="entry">
10901       <div class="title">
10902         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
10903       </div>
10904       <div class="date">
10905         29th March 2009
10906       </div>
10907       <div class="body">
10908         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
10909 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
10910 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
10911 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
10912 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
10913 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
10914 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
10915 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
10916 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
10917 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
10918 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
10919 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
10920 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
10921 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
10922 now. :)</p>
10923
10924       </div>
10925       <div class="tags">
10926
10927
10928         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10929
10930
10931       </div>
10932     </div>
10933     <div class="padding"></div>
10934
10935     <div class="entry">
10936       <div class="title">
10937         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
10938       </div>
10939       <div class="date">
10940         29th March 2009
10941       </div>
10942       <div class="body">
10943         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
10944 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
10945 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
10946 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
10947 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
10948 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
10949
10950 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
10951 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
10952 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
10953 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
10954 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
10955 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
10956 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
10957 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
10958 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
10959 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
10960 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
10961 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
10962 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
10963
10964 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
10965 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
10966 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
10967 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
10968
10969 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
10970 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
10971
10972 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
10973 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
10974 new IETF work group?</p>
10975
10976       </div>
10977       <div class="tags">
10978
10979
10980         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10981
10982
10983       </div>
10984     </div>
10985     <div class="padding"></div>
10986
10987     <div class="entry">
10988       <div class="title">
10989         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
10990       </div>
10991       <div class="date">
10992         28th February 2009
10993       </div>
10994       <div class="body">
10995         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
10996 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
10997 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
10998 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
10999 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
11000 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
11001 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
11002 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
11003 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
11004 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
11005 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
11006 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
11007 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
11008 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
11009 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
11010 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
11011 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
11012 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
11013 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
11014 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
11015 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
11016 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
11017 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
11018 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
11019 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
11020 machine.</p>
11021
11022 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
11023 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
11024 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
11025 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
11026 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
11027 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
11028 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
11029
11030 <pre>
11031 use LWP::Simple;
11032 use POSIX;
11033 use WWW::Mechanize;
11034 use Date::Parse;
11035 [...]
11036 sub get_support_info {
11037     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
11038     my $str;
11039
11040     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
11041         # fetch website from Dell support
11042         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
11043         my $webpage = get($url);
11044         return undef unless ($webpage);
11045
11046         my $daysleft = -1;
11047         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
11048         foreach my $line (@lines) {
11049             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
11050             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11051             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
11052
11053             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
11054             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
11055             my $lastend = "";
11056             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
11057                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
11058
11059                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11060                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11061                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11062                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
11063                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
11064                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
11065                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
11066             }
11067             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11068             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11069                 if ($lastend lt $today);
11070         }
11071     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
11072         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
11073         my $url =
11074             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
11075         $mech->get($url);
11076         my $fields = {
11077             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
11078             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
11079             'country' => 'NO',
11080             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
11081             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
11082         };
11083         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
11084                             fields      => $fields );
11085         # Next step is screen scraping
11086         my $content = $mech->content();
11087
11088         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11089         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11090         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11091         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11092
11093         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11094
11095         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
11096             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
11097                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
11098             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
11099             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11100                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11101             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11102                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
11103
11104             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
11105
11106             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11107                 if ($end lt $today);
11108         }
11109     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
11110         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
11111         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
11112         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
11113             my $content =
11114                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
11115             if ($content) {
11116                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11117                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11118                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11119                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11120
11121                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
11122                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
11123
11124                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
11125
11126                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11127                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11128                     if ($end lt $today);
11129             }
11130         }
11131     }
11132     return $str;
11133 }
11134 </pre>
11135
11136 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
11137 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
11138 from dmidecode.</p>
11139
11140 <pre>
11141 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
11142                        "447707-B21");
11143 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
11144 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
11145                        "1234567");
11146 </pre>
11147
11148 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
11149 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
11150
11151 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
11152 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
11153 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
11154 do so.</p>
11155
11156       </div>
11157       <div class="tags">
11158
11159
11160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11161
11162
11163       </div>
11164     </div>
11165     <div class="padding"></div>
11166
11167     <div class="entry">
11168       <div class="title">
11169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
11170       </div>
11171       <div class="date">
11172         20th February 2009
11173       </div>
11174       <div class="body">
11175         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
11176 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
11177 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
11178 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
11179 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
11180 the "missing" computer.</p>
11181
11182 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
11183 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
11184 code blocks as defined in the
11185 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
11186 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
11187 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
11188 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
11189 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
11190 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
11191 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
11192 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
11193 codes.</p>
11194
11195 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
11196 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
11197 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
11198 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
11199 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
11200 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
11201
11202 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
11203 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
11204 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
11205 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
11206 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
11207 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
11208 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
11209 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
11210 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
11211 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
11212
11213 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
11214 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
11215 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
11216
11217       </div>
11218       <div class="tags">
11219
11220
11221         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11222
11223
11224       </div>
11225     </div>
11226     <div class="padding"></div>
11227
11228     <div class="entry">
11229       <div class="title">
11230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
11231       </div>
11232       <div class="date">
11233         17th January 2009
11234       </div>
11235       <div class="body">
11236         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
11237 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
11238 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
11239 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
11240 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
11241 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
11242 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
11243 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
11244 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
11245 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
11246 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
11247 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
11248 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
11249 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
11250
11251 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
11252 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
11253 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
11254 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
11255 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
11256 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
11257 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
11258 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
11259 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
11260 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
11261 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
11262 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
11263 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
11264 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
11265 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
11266 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
11267 playing when the download is done.</p>
11268
11269 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
11270 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
11271 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
11272 too.</p>
11273
11274 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
11275 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
11276 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
11277 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
11278
11279       </div>
11280       <div class="tags">
11281
11282
11283         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11284
11285
11286       </div>
11287     </div>
11288     <div class="padding"></div>
11289
11290     <div class="entry">
11291       <div class="title">
11292         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
11293       </div>
11294       <div class="date">
11295         28th December 2008
11296       </div>
11297       <div class="body">
11298         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
11299 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
11300 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
11301 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
11302 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
11303 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
11304 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
11305 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
11306 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
11307 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
11308 source, sink and mixer applications and
11309 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
11310 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
11311 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
11312 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
11313 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
11314 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
11315 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
11316 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
11317 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
11318
11319 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
11320 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
11321 larger stick as well.</p>
11322
11323       </div>
11324       <div class="tags">
11325
11326
11327         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11328
11329
11330       </div>
11331     </div>
11332     <div class="padding"></div>
11333
11334     <div class="entry">
11335       <div class="title">
11336         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
11337       </div>
11338       <div class="date">
11339          7th December 2008
11340       </div>
11341       <div class="body">
11342         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
11343 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
11344 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
11345 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
11346 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
11347 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
11348 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
11349 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
11350
11351 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
11352 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
11353 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
11354 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
11355 of these cards.</p>
11356
11357       </div>
11358       <div class="tags">
11359
11360
11361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
11362
11363
11364       </div>
11365     </div>
11366     <div class="padding"></div>
11367
11368     <div class="entry">
11369       <div class="title">
11370         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
11371       </div>
11372       <div class="date">
11373         25th November 2008
11374       </div>
11375       <div class="body">
11376         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
11377 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
11378 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
11379 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
11380 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
11381 notes are available on
11382 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
11383 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
11384 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
11385 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
11386 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
11387 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
11388 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
11389 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
11390 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
11391
11392 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
11393 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
11394
11395       </div>
11396       <div class="tags">
11397
11398
11399         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11400
11401
11402       </div>
11403     </div>
11404     <div class="padding"></div>
11405
11406     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
11407     <div id="sidebar">
11408
11409
11410
11411 <h2>Archive</h2>
11412 <ul>
11413
11414 <li>2012
11415 <ul>
11416
11417 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
11418
11419 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
11420
11421 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
11422
11423 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
11424
11425 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
11426
11427 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
11428
11429 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
11430
11431 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11432
11433 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (3)</a></li>
11434
11435 </ul></li>
11436
11437 <li>2011
11438 <ul>
11439
11440 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
11441
11442 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
11443
11444 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
11445
11446 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
11447
11448 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
11449
11450 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
11451
11452 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
11453
11454 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11455
11456 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
11457
11458 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11459
11460 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11461
11462 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
11463
11464 </ul></li>
11465
11466 <li>2010
11467 <ul>
11468
11469 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
11470
11471 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
11472
11473 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
11474
11475 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
11476
11477 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11478
11479 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
11480
11481 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
11482
11483 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
11484
11485 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
11486
11487 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
11488
11489 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
11490
11491 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
11492
11493 </ul></li>
11494
11495 <li>2009
11496 <ul>
11497
11498 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
11499
11500 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
11501
11502 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
11503
11504 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
11505
11506 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11507
11508 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
11509
11510 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
11511
11512 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
11513
11514 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
11515
11516 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11517
11518 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11519
11520 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11521
11522 </ul></li>
11523
11524 <li>2008
11525 <ul>
11526
11527 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
11528
11529 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
11530
11531 </ul></li>
11532
11533 </ul>
11534
11535
11536
11537 <h2>Tags</h2>
11538 <ul>
11539
11540  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
11541
11542  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
11543
11544  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
11545
11546  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (2)</a></li>
11547
11548  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
11549
11550  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
11551
11552  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (57)</a></li>
11553
11554  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (111)</a></li>
11555
11556  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
11557
11558  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (6)</a></li>
11559
11560  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
11561
11562  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (149)</a></li>
11563
11564  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (17)</a></li>
11565
11566  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
11567
11568  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (7)</a></li>
11569
11570  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (7)</a></li>
11571
11572  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (30)</a></li>
11573
11574  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (16)</a></li>
11575
11576  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
11577
11578  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (4)</a></li>
11579
11580  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
11581
11582  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (24)</a></li>
11583
11584  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (194)</a></li>
11585
11586  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (143)</a></li>
11587
11588  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (4)</a></li>
11589
11590  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
11591
11592  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (35)</a></li>
11593
11594  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (49)</a></li>
11595
11596  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
11597
11598  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
11599
11600  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
11601
11602  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
11603
11604  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
11605
11606  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
11607
11608  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
11609
11610  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (23)</a></li>
11611
11612  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
11613
11614  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (1)</a></li>
11615
11616  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (37)</a></li>
11617
11618  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
11619
11620  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (4)</a></li>
11621
11622  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (10)</a></li>
11623
11624  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
11625
11626  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (33)</a></li>
11627
11628  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
11629
11630  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (25)</a></li>
11631
11632 </ul>
11633
11634
11635     </div>
11636     <p style="text-align: right">
11637  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
11638 </p>
11639
11640   </body>
11641 </html>