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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
                <description></description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
                <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        
        <item>
                <title>New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 22 Feb 2014 21:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
innetgr tools, because I needed them in
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  I called the project
ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/&quot;&gt;Hungry Programmer&lt;/a&gt; umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
proper home since then.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
&lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Alioth&lt;/a&gt;, but did not have time
to follow up on it.  Until today. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
&lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&quot;&gt;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&lt;/a&gt;
if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
Debian Unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
&lt;a href=&quot;https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html&quot;&gt;great
Google Summer of Code work&lt;/a&gt; done last summer by Justus Winter to
get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&quot;&gt;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;,
and started it using virt-manager.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install&quot;&gt;the
instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page&lt;/a&gt; and ran these
commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
kvm internal DHCP server:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[p]finet/ { print $2}&#39;)
kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[d]evnode/ { print $2}&#39;)
dhclient /dev/eth0
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
side.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
stuff:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
EOF
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
    sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
update-alternatives --config runsystem
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
&lt;tt&gt;reboot-hurd&lt;/tt&gt; instead of just &lt;tt&gt;reboot&lt;/tt&gt;, as there is not
yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
&#39;reboot&#39; command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
ssh instead.

&lt;p&gt;Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
adding this repository to the machine:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
EOF
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
BTS.  This is the completely list of &quot;unofficial&quot; packages installed:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
# aptitude search &#39;?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))&#39;
i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
#
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
command line stuff.&lt;p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 29 Jan 2014 14:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
investigated in
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login&quot;&gt;USENIX ;login:&lt;/a&gt;
from December 2013, in the article
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf&quot;&gt;A
Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
Names&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
present) seem to be particularly attractive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
transaction log.  The 2011 paper
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524&quot;&gt;An Analysis of Anonymity in
the Bitcoin System&lt;/A&gt;&quot; by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
summarized like this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
&quot;Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
a user to his or her public-keys on that user&#39;s node only and by
allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
derived from Bitcoin&#39;s public transaction history. We show that the
two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars.&quot;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
is anonymous.  It isn&#39;t really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>New chrpath release 0.16</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; is a nice tool to
find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
the source.  The company behind it provide
&lt;a href=&quot;https://scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;check of free software projects as
a community service&lt;/a&gt;, and many hundred free software projects are
already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
the Coverity system, and discovered that the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/&quot;&gt;gnash&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/&quot;&gt;ipmitool&lt;/a&gt;
projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
check, and decided to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179&quot;&gt;request
checking of the chrpath project&lt;/a&gt;.  It was
added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
these were real, mostly resource &quot;leak&quot; when the program detected an
error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
&lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel&quot;&gt;a
mailing list for the chrpath developers&lt;/a&gt;, I decided it was time to
publish a new release.  These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can
&lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
new version 0.16 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;.  Please let us know via the Alioth
project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
include a test suite check.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 Dec 2013 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
project&lt;/a&gt; consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow&quot;&gt;Dominik
George&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg --&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
life with open source. In &quot;real life&quot;, I am, as already mentioned, a
student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
a bit vacant right now however.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
(public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
network of that school together with a team of very interested and
talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
to help building another school&#39;s informational education concept from
scratch.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That said, one might see me as a kind of &quot;glue&quot; between school kids
and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
and cycling.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.froscon.org&quot;&gt;FrOSCon&lt;/a&gt; and visited the project
booth. I think I wasn&#39;t too interested back then because I used to
have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
&quot;out-of-the-box&quot; solution ;).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openrheinruhr.de&quot;&gt;OpenRheinRuhr&lt;/a&gt; 2011 when the
BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
small demonstration, but there wasn&#39;t any real feedback and the guys
seemed rather uninterested.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The most important advantage seems to be that it &quot;just
works&quot;. After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn&#39;t
have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that&#39;s enough to say
that it rocks!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life&#39;s bad, and so no
politician will ever permit a setup described as &quot;Debian, an universal
operating system, with some really cool educational tools&quot; while they
will be jsut fine with &quot;Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
school network&quot;, even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
other words: &quot;What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?&quot; I
can list a few points about that:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

 &lt;li&gt;always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
 &lt;li&gt;be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
 &lt;li&gt;be helpful at being helpful ;)

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
year.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
run text tools. I use
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm&quot;&gt;mksh&lt;/a&gt; as shell,
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm&quot;&gt;jupp&lt;/a&gt; as very advanced
text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
based full-featured student management software with the two),
&lt;a href=&quot;http://mcabber.com/&quot;&gt;mcabber&lt;/a&gt; for XMPP and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irssi.org/&quot;&gt;irssi&lt;/a&gt; for IRC. For that overly
coloured world called the WWW, I use
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/&quot;&gt;Iceweasel
(Firefox)&lt;/a&gt;. Oh, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mutt.org/&quot;&gt;mutt&lt;/a&gt; for
e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
kids. One of these things is &lt;a href=&quot;http://jappix.org/&quot;&gt;Jappix&lt;/a&gt;,
which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
Facebook now ;).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Well, that&#39;s a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
side is what I have experienced.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
that won&#39;t work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
they jsut refused to use it because &quot;Linux sucks&quot;. It is something
that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
plain criminal.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
founded an association named
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.teckids.org&quot;&gt;Teckids&lt;/a&gt; here in Germany that does
just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
area of free and open source software, for example the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://kids.froscon.org&quot;&gt;FrogLabs&lt;/a&gt;, which share staff with
Teckids and are the youth programme of
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.froscon.org&quot;&gt;the Free and Open Source Software
Conference (FrOSCon)&lt;/a&gt;. We do a lot more than most other conferences
- this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
Skolelinux in the future ;)!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren&#39;t for the world
being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;!--

&gt;  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?

That&#39;s probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
community. However, I would be willing to do the following:

 &lt;li&gt;Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
   free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
   of the decision makers above;
 &lt;li&gt;Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
   knowledge about free software

If that is wanted, just let me know ;).

--&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Dugnadsnett for alle stiller på Oslo Maker Faire i januar 2014</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 10 Dec 2013 19:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Helga 18. og 19. januar 2014 arrangeres
&lt;a href=&quot;http://makerfaireoslo.no/no/program/dugnadsnett&quot;&gt;Oslo Maker
Faire&lt;/a&gt;, og &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dugnadsnett.no/&quot;&gt;Dugnadsnett for
alle&lt;/a&gt; har fått plass!  Planen er å ha et bord med en plakat der vi
forteller om hva Dugnadsnett for alle er for noe, og et lite verksted
der vi hjelper folk som er interessert i å få opp sin egen mesh-node.
Jeg gleder meg til å se hvordan prosjektet blir mottatt der.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Målet med dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo er å få på plass et datanett
for kommunikasjon ved hjelp av radio-repeaterstasjoner (kalt
mesh-noder) som gjør at en kan direkte kommunisere med slekt, venner
og bekjente i Oslo via andre som deltar i dugnadsnettet, samt gjøre
det mulig komme ut på internett via dugnadsnettet.  Første delmål er å
kunne sende SMS-meldinger vha. IP-telefoni løsningen
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.servalproject.org/&quot;&gt;Serval project&lt;/a&gt; mellom
deltagerne i Dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo.  Formålet er å ta tilbake
kontrollen over egen nett-infrastruktur og gjøre det dyrere å bedrive
massiv innsamling av informasjon om borgernes bruk av datanett.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Høres dette interessant ut?  Bli med på prosjektet, fortell oss
hvor du kunne tenke deg å sette opp en radio-repeater (slik at folk i
nærheten kan finne hverandre ved hjelp av
&lt;a href=&quot;http://flynor.net/mesh/mesh.php&quot;&gt;kartet over planlagte og
eksisterende radio-repeatere&lt;/A&gt;), bli med på epostlisten
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett&quot;&gt;dugnadsnett
(at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt; og stikk innom
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no&quot;&gt;IRC-kanalen
#dugnadsnett.no&lt;/a&gt;.  Så langt er det planlagt over 40
radio-repeatere, med VPN-forbindelser via Internet for å la de delene
av nettet som ikke når hverandre via radio kunne snakke med hverandre
likevel.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 6 Dec 2013 09:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
had a new school administrator show up on
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt; to share
his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
Germany a few years ago.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
from teaching, I&#39;m also conducting some more or less experimental
projects like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knoppix.org&quot;&gt;Knoppix GNU/Linux live
system&lt;/a&gt; (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html&quot;&gt;ADRIANE&lt;/a&gt;
(a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html&quot;&gt;LINBO&lt;/a&gt;
(Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
system supporting various operating systems).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Quick installation,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;works (almost) out of the box,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
    single company,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
    experience and problem solutions.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
  the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
  a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
  working again reliably.

  &lt;li&gt;Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
  little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
  similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
  as their base.

  &lt;li&gt;Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
  configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
  not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
  configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
  and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
  network configuration to make it &quot;Skolelinux-compatible&quot;.

  &lt;li&gt;Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
  contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
  distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
  Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
  future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
  schemes.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
  compared to Debian.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
upgradeable without reinstallation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
programming languages for teaching.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Strong arguments are&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
    teaching and learning.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
    home, and at their working place without running into license or
    conversion problems.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
    than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
    customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
    science, not products.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
    would you need proprietary software for?&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 30 Nov 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
experiment with interesting network technology, the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dugnadsnett.no/&quot;&gt;Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo&lt;/a&gt;
might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
&lt;a href=&quot;http://freifunk.net/&quot;&gt;Freifunk&lt;/a&gt;,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awmn.net/&quot;&gt;Athens Wireless Metropolitan
Network&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet&quot;&gt;Roofnet&lt;/a&gt;
and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett&quot;&gt;dugnadsnett
(at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt; and IRC channel
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no&quot;&gt;#dugnadsnett.no&lt;/a&gt; to
coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml&quot;&gt;announcing
the mailing list and IRC channel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Hvor godt fungerer Linux-klienter mot MS Exchange?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvor_godt_fungerer_Linux_klienter_mot_MS_Exchange_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvor_godt_fungerer_Linux_klienter_mot_MS_Exchange_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2013 18:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Jeg
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_pent_m_te_p__onsdag_om_bruken_av_Microsoft_Exchange_ved_Universitetet_i_Oslo.html&quot;&gt;skrev
i juni om protestene&lt;/a&gt; på planene til min arbeidsplass,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;Universitetet i Oslo&lt;/a&gt;, om å gå bort fra
fri programvare- og åpne standardløsninger for å håndtere epost,
vekk fra IETF-standarden SIEVE for filtrering av epost og over til
godseide spesifikasjoner og epostsystemet Microsoft Exchange.
Protestene har fått litt ny omtale i media de siste dagene, i tillegg
til de oppslagene som kom i mai.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;2013-11-26 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.version2.dk/artikel/gigantisk-outlook-konvertering-moeder-protester-paa-universitet-55147&quot;&gt;Gigantisk Outlook-konvertering møder protester på universitet&lt;/a&gt; - versjon2.dk&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;2013-11-25
  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article279407.ece&quot;&gt;Microsoft-protest
  på Universitetet&lt;/a&gt; - Computerworld&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;2013-11-25
  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uniforum.uio.no/nyheter/2013/11/uio-bor-bruke-apen-programvare.html&quot;&gt;Kjemper
  mot innføring av Microsoft Exchange på UiO&lt;/a&gt; - Uniforum&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;2013-11-25
  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uniforum.uio.no/nyheter/2013/11/uio-utsetter-innforing-av-nytt-e-postsystem.html&quot;&gt;Utsetter
  innføring av nytt e-postsystem&lt;/a&gt; - Uniforum&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;2013-05-29
  &lt;a href=&quot;http://universitas.no/nyhet/58462/forsvarer-nytt-it-system&quot;&gt;Forsvarer
  nytt IT-system&lt;/a&gt; - Universitas&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;2013-05-23
  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uniforum.uio.no/nyheter/2013/05/uio-innforer-nytt-epost-og-kalendersystem.html&quot;&gt;UiO
  innfører nytt epost- og kalenderverktøy&lt;/a&gt; - Uniforum&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;2013-05-22
  &lt;a href=&quot;http://universitas.no/nyhet/58424/protestgruppe-vil-stanse-it-system&quot;&gt;Protestgruppe
  vil stanse IT-system&lt;/a&gt; - Universitas&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;2013-05-15
  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uniforum.uio.no/leserbrev/2013/uio-ma-ha-kontroll-over-sitt-eget-epostsystem.html&quot;&gt;UiO
  må ha kontroll over sitt eget epostsystem&lt;/a&gt; - Uniforum&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Prosjektledelsen har fortalt at dette skal fungere like godt for
Linux-brukere som for brukere av Microsoft Windows og Apple MacOSX,
men jeg lurer på hva slags erfaringer Linux-brukere i eksisterende
miljøer som bruker MS Exchange har gjort.  Hvis du har slik erfaring
hadet det vært veldig fint om du kan send et leserbrev til
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uniforum.uio.no/&quot;&gt;Uniforum&lt;/a&gt; og fortelle om hvor
greit det er å bruke Exchange i kryss-platform-miljøer?  De jeg har
snakket med sier en greit får lest e-posten sin hvis Exchange har
slått på IMAP-funksjonalitet, men at kalender og møtebooking ikke
fungerer godt for Linux-klienter. Jeg har ingen personlig erfaring å
komme med, så jeg er nysgjerrig på hva andre kan dele av erfaringer
med universitetet.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Mitt ankerpunkt mot å bytte ut fri programvare som fungerer godt
med godseid programvare er at en mister kontroll over egen
infrastruktur, låser seg inn i en løsning det vil bli dyrt å komme ut
av, uten at en får funksjonalitet en ikke kunne skaffet seg med fri
programvare, eventuelt videreutviklet med de pengene som brukes på
overgangen til MS Exchange.  Personlig planlegger jeg å fortsette å
laste ned all eposten min til lokal maskin for indeksering og lesing
med &lt;a href==&quot;http://notmuchmail.org&quot;&gt;notmuch&lt;/a&gt;, så jeg håper jeg
ikke blir veldig skadelidende av overgangen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dinis.linguateca.pt/Diana/ImotMSUiO.html&quot;&gt;Underskriftslista
for oss som er mot endringen&lt;/a&gt;, som omtales i artiklene, er fortsatt
åpen for de som vil signere på oppropet.  Akkurat nå er det 298
personer som har signert.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>New chrpath release 0.15</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 24 Nov 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
is working on.  I checked the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;,
&lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath&quot;&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath&quot;&gt;Fedora&lt;/a&gt;
packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
   with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
   up.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Updated README with current URLs.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
   Matthias Klose.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
   Petr Machata found in Fedora.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
   .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
   Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can
&lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
new version 0.15 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;.  Please let us know via the Alioth
project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
include a testsuite check.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        </channel>
</rss>