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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/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         12th October 2012
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
  32 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
  33 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
  34 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
  35 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
  36 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
  37 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
  38 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
  39 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
  40 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
  41 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
  42 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
  43 matter".</p>
  44
  45 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
  46 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
  47 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
  48 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
  49 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
  50 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
  51 to argue its side.</p>
  52
  53 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
  54 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
  55 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
  56 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
  57
  58 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
  59 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
  60 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
  61
  62       </div>
  63       <div class="tags">
  64
  65
  66         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
  67
  68
  69       </div>
  70     </div>
  71     <div class="padding"></div>
  72
  73     <div class="entry">
  74       <div class="title">
  75         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
  76       </div>
  77       <div class="date">
  78          3rd October 2012
  79       </div>
  80       <div class="body">
  81         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
  82 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
  83 the computer science book collection available in his local
  84 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
  85 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
  86 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
  87 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
  88 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
  89 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
  90 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
  91 recently published books.</p>
  92
  93 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
  94 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
  95 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
  96 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
  97 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
  98 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
  99 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
 100 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
 101 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
 102 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
 103 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
 104 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
 105 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
 106 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
 107 for the library that evening.</p>
 108
 109 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
 110 going to know that for example
 111 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
 112 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
 113 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
 114 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
 115 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
 116 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
 117 book right away.</p>
 118
 119       </div>
 120       <div class="tags">
 121
 122
 123         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 124
 125
 126       </div>
 127     </div>
 128     <div class="padding"></div>
 129
 130     <div class="entry">
 131       <div class="title">
 132         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
 133       </div>
 134       <div class="date">
 135         23rd September 2012
 136       </div>
 137       <div class="body">
 138         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
 139 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
 140 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
 141 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
 142 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
 143 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
 144
 145 When I started, I
 146 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
 147 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
 148 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
 149 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
 150 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
 151 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
 152 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
 153
 154 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
 155
 156 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
 157 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
 158 the project files currently available from
 159 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 160
 161 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
 162 the updated
 163 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
 164 and
 165 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 166 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
 167 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
 168 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
 169
 170       </div>
 171       <div class="tags">
 172
 173
 174         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>.
 175
 176
 177       </div>
 178     </div>
 179     <div class="padding"></div>
 180
 181     <div class="entry">
 182       <div class="title">
 183         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
 184       </div>
 185       <div class="date">
 186         17th September 2012
 187       </div>
 188       <div class="body">
 189         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
 190 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
 191 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
 192 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
 193 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
 194 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
 195 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
 196
 197 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 198
 199 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
 200 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
 201 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
 202 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
 203 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
 204 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
 205 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
 206 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
 207 training is anyway very important</p>
 208
 209 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
 210 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
 211 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
 212 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
 213 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
 214
 215 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
 216 project?</strong></p>
 217
 218 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
 219 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
 220 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
 221 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
 222 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
 223 hole.</p>
 224
 225 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 226 Edu?</strong></p>
 227
 228 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
 229 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
 230 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
 231 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
 232 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
 233 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
 234 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
 235 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
 236 hassle.</p>
 237
 238 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 239 Edu?</strong></p>
 240
 241 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
 242 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
 243 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
 244 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
 245 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
 246 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
 247 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
 248 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
 249
 250 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 251
 252 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
 253 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
 254 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
 255 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
 256 has the same...</p>
 257
 258 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
 259 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
 260 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
 261 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
 262
 263 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 264 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 265
 266 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
 267 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
 268 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
 269
 270 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
 271 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
 272 don't.</p>
 273
 274 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
 275 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
 276 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
 277 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
 278 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
 279 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
 280 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
 281
 282       </div>
 283       <div class="tags">
 284
 285
 286         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>.
 287
 288
 289       </div>
 290     </div>
 291     <div class="padding"></div>
 292
 293     <div class="entry">
 294       <div class="title">
 295         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
 296       </div>
 297       <div class="date">
 298         15th September 2012
 299       </div>
 300       <div class="body">
 301         <p>After the
 302 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
 303 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
 304 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
 305 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
 306 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
 307 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
 308 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
 309 was
 310 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
 311 formal working group should be formed.</p>
 312
 313 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
 314 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
 315 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
 316 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
 317 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
 318 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
 319 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
 320 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
 321
 322 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
 323 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
 324 IETF.</p>
 325
 326       </div>
 327       <div class="tags">
 328
 329
 330         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>.
 331
 332
 333       </div>
 334     </div>
 335     <div class="padding"></div>
 336
 337     <div class="entry">
 338       <div class="title">
 339         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
 340       </div>
 341       <div class="date">
 342         12th September 2012
 343       </div>
 344       <div class="body">
 345         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
 346 publication of of
 347 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
 348 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
 349 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
 350 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
 351 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
 352 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
 353 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
 354 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
 355 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
 356 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
 357
 358 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
 359 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
 360 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
 361 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
 362
 363 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
 364 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
 365
 366       </div>
 367       <div class="tags">
 368
 369
 370         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>.
 371
 372
 373       </div>
 374     </div>
 375     <div class="padding"></div>
 376
 377     <div class="entry">
 378       <div class="title">
 379         <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>
 380       </div>
 381       <div class="date">
 382          7th September 2012
 383       </div>
 384       <div class="body">
 385         <p>As I
 386 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
 387 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
 388 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
 389 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
 390 repository for the project</a>.</p>
 391
 392 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
 393 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
 394 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
 395 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
 396
 397 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
 398 PostScript formats at
 399 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
 400 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
 401
 402       </div>
 403       <div class="tags">
 404
 405
 406         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>.
 407
 408
 409       </div>
 410     </div>
 411     <div class="padding"></div>
 412
 413     <div class="entry">
 414       <div class="title">
 415         <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>
 416       </div>
 417       <div class="date">
 418         23rd August 2012
 419       </div>
 420       <div class="body">
 421         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
 422 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
 423 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
 424 revisit the great site
 425 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
 426 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
 427 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
 428
 429       </div>
 430       <div class="tags">
 431
 432
 433         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>.
 434
 435
 436       </div>
 437     </div>
 438     <div class="padding"></div>
 439
 440     <div class="entry">
 441       <div class="title">
 442         <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>
 443       </div>
 444       <div class="date">
 445         17th August 2012
 446       </div>
 447       <div class="body">
 448         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
 449 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
 450 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
 451 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
 452 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
 453 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
 454 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
 455 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
 456 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
 457 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
 458 summer I
 459 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
 460 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
 461 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
 462
 463 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
 464 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
 465 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
 466 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
 467 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
 468 progress:</p>
 469
 470 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
 471
 472 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
 473 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
 474 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
 475 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
 476 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
 477 english version of the docbook source.</p>
 478
 479 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
 480 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
 481 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
 482 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
 483 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
 484 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
 485 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
 486 project files currently available from <a
 487 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 488
 489 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
 490 the updated
 491 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
 492 and
 493 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 494 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
 495 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
 496 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
 497
 498       </div>
 499       <div class="tags">
 500
 501
 502         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>.
 503
 504
 505       </div>
 506     </div>
 507     <div class="padding"></div>
 508
 509     <div class="entry">
 510       <div class="title">
 511         <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>
 512       </div>
 513       <div class="date">
 514         10th August 2012
 515       </div>
 516       <div class="body">
 517         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
 518 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
 519 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
 520 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
 521 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
 522 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
 523 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
 524 case for the language
 525 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
 526 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
 527
 528 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
 529 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
 530 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
 531 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
 532 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
 533
 534 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
 535 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
 536 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
 537 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
 538 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
 539 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
 540 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
 541 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
 542 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
 543 alias for 'nb'.</p>
 544
 545 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
 546 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
 547 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
 548 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
 549 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
 550 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
 551 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
 552 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
 553 at the same time. :(</p>
 554
 555 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
 556 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
 557 processors. :(</p>
 558
 559 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
 560
 561       </div>
 562       <div class="tags">
 563
 564
 565         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>.
 566
 567
 568       </div>
 569     </div>
 570     <div class="padding"></div>
 571
 572     <div class="entry">
 573       <div class="title">
 574         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
 575       </div>
 576       <div class="date">
 577         31st July 2012
 578       </div>
 579       <div class="body">
 580         <p>I tried to send this text to the
 581 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
 582 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
 583 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
 584 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
 585 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
 586 out.</p>
 587
 588 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
 589 learning curve at the moment.</p>
 590
 591 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
 592 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
 593 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
 594 available from
 595 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
 596 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
 597 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
 598 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
 599 Squeeze.</p>
 600
 601 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
 602 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
 603 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
 604 problems.</p>
 605
 606 <ul>
 607
 608 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
 609    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
 610    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
 611    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
 612    index references spanning several pages (See
 613    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
 614    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
 615    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
 616
 617 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
 618    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
 619    #683163</a>).</li>
 620
 621 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
 622    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
 623    footnote and text body, see
 624    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
 625    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
 626    refs listed are not right).</li>
 627
 628 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
 629
 630 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
 631    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
 632
 633 </ul>
 634
 635 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
 636 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
 637 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
 638
 639 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
 640
 641       </div>
 642       <div class="tags">
 643
 644
 645         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>.
 646
 647
 648       </div>
 649     </div>
 650     <div class="padding"></div>
 651
 652     <div class="entry">
 653       <div class="title">
 654         <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>
 655       </div>
 656       <div class="date">
 657         21st July 2012
 658       </div>
 659       <div class="body">
 660         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
 661 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
 662 norwegian version</a> of the book
 663 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
 664 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
 665 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
 666 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
 667 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 668
 669 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
 670 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
 671 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
 672 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
 673 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
 674 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
 675 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
 676 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
 677 print. :)</p>
 678
 679 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
 680 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
 681 language.</p>
 682
 683       </div>
 684       <div class="tags">
 685
 686
 687         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>.
 688
 689
 690       </div>
 691     </div>
 692     <div class="padding"></div>
 693
 694     <div class="entry">
 695       <div class="title">
 696         <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>
 697       </div>
 698       <div class="date">
 699         16th July 2012
 700       </div>
 701       <div class="body">
 702         <p>I am currently working on a
 703 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
 704 to translate</a> the book
 705 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
 706 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
 707 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
 708 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
 709 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
 710 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
 711 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
 712
 713 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
 714 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
 715 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
 716 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
 717 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
 718 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
 719 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
 720 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
 721 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
 722
 723       </div>
 724       <div class="tags">
 725
 726
 727         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>.
 728
 729
 730       </div>
 731     </div>
 732     <div class="padding"></div>
 733
 734     <div class="entry">
 735       <div class="title">
 736         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
 737       </div>
 738       <div class="date">
 739          9th July 2012
 740       </div>
 741       <div class="body">
 742         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 743 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
 744 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
 745 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
 746 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
 747 to adjust and scale the just released
 748 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
 749 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
 750 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
 751
 752 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 753
 754 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
 755 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
 756 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
 757 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
 758 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
 759 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
 760 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
 761 perspective when working with IT.</p>
 762
 763 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
 764 project?</strong></p>
 765
 766 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
 767 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
 768 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
 769 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
 770 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
 771 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
 772
 773 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 774 Edu?</strong></p>
 775
 776 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
 777 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
 778 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
 779 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
 780 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
 781 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
 782 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
 783 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
 784 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
 785 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
 786 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
 787 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
 788 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
 789 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
 790 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
 791 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
 792 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
 793 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
 794 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
 795 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
 796 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
 797 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
 798 quicker to update.
 799
 800 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
 801 Edu?</strong></p>
 802
 803 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
 804 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
 805 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
 806 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
 807 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
 808 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
 809
 810 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
 811 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
 812 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
 813 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
 814 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
 815 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
 816 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
 817 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
 818 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
 819 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
 820 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
 821 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
 822 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
 823 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
 824 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
 825
 826 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
 827 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
 828 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
 829 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
 830 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
 831 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
 832 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
 833 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
 834
 835 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
 836 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
 837 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
 838 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
 839 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
 840 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
 841 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
 842 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
 843 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
 844 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
 845 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
 846 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
 847 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
 848 sound file.</p>
 849
 850 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
 851 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
 852 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
 853 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
 854 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
 855 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
 856 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
 857 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
 858 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
 859
 860 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 861
 862 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
 863 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
 864 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
 865 )</p>
 866
 867 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 868 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 869
 870 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
 871 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
 872 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
 873 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
 874 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
 875 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
 876 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
 877 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
 878 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
 879 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
 880 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
 881 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
 882 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
 883 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
 884 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
 885
 886 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
 887 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
 888 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
 889 management with Airtime</a>,
 890 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
 891 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
 892 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
 893 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
 894 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
 895
 896       </div>
 897       <div class="tags">
 898
 899
 900         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>.
 901
 902
 903       </div>
 904     </div>
 905     <div class="padding"></div>
 906
 907     <div class="entry">
 908       <div class="title">
 909         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
 910       </div>
 911       <div class="date">
 912          8th July 2012
 913       </div>
 914       <div class="body">
 915         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
 916 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
 917 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
 918 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
 919 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
 920 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
 921 Steinberg in his blog post
 922 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
 923 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
 924 spending of your tax money.</p>
 925
 926 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
 927 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
 928 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
 929 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
 930 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
 931 purchases.</p>
 932
 933       </div>
 934       <div class="tags">
 935
 936
 937         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>.
 938
 939
 940       </div>
 941     </div>
 942     <div class="padding"></div>
 943
 944     <div class="entry">
 945       <div class="title">
 946         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
 947       </div>
 948       <div class="date">
 949          7th July 2012
 950       </div>
 951       <div class="body">
 952         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 953 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
 954 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
 955 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
 956 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
 957 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
 958 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
 959 receive.  The software is
 960
 961 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
 962 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
 963 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
 964 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
 965 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
 966 Windows</a>.</p>
 967
 968 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
 969 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
 970
 971 <p><ul>
 972
 973   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
 974     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
 975
 976   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
 977     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
 978     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
 979     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
 980     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
 981     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
 982     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
 983     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
 984     </li>
 985
 986   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
 987     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
 988
 989   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
 990     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
 991
 992   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
 993     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
 994
 995   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
 996
 997   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
 998     formats </li>
 999
1000   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
1001     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
1002     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
1003     (as separate sets)</li>
1004
1005   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
1006     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
1007     percentage)</li>
1008
1009   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
1010     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
1011     memory):
1012     <ul>
1013       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
1014       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
1015       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
1016       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
1017       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
1018       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
1019       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
1020       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
1021       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
1022       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
1023           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
1024           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
1025           activity)</li>
1026       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
1027       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
1028     </ul></li>
1029
1030   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
1031     <ul>
1032       <li>Break periods</li>
1033       <li>For teacher(s):
1034         <ul>
1035           <li>Not available periods</li>
1036           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
1037           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
1038           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
1039           <li>Min hours daily</li>
1040           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
1041
1042           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
1043             days per week</li>
1044         </ul></li>
1045       <li>For students (sets):
1046         <ul>
1047           <li>Not available periods</li>
1048           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
1049           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
1050           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
1051           <li>Min hours daily</li>
1052           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
1053
1054           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
1055             days per week</li>
1056         </ul></li>
1057       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
1058         <ul>
1059           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
1060           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
1061           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
1062           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
1063           <li>End(s) students day</li>
1064           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
1065           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
1066             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
1067           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
1068           <li>Not overlapping</li>
1069           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
1070           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
1071         </ul></li>
1072     </ul></li>
1073
1074   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
1075     <ul>
1076       <li>Room not available periods</li>
1077       <li>For teacher(s):
1078         <ul>
1079           <li>Home room(s)</li>
1080           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
1081           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
1082         </ul>
1083       </li>
1084
1085       <li>For students (sets):
1086         <ul>
1087           <li>Home room(s)</li>
1088           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
1089           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
1090         </ul>
1091       </li>
1092       <li>Preferred room(s):
1093         <ul>
1094           <li>For a subject</li>
1095           <li>For an activity tag</li>
1096           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
1097           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
1098         </ul>
1099       </li>
1100
1101       <li>For a set of activities:
1102         <ul>
1103           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
1104         </ul>
1105       </li>
1106     </ul>
1107   </li>
1108 </ul></p>
1109
1110 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
1111 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
1112 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
1113 manually, check it out.
1114
1115 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
1116 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
1117 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
1118 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
1119 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
1120 section</a>.</p>
1121
1122       </div>
1123       <div class="tags">
1124
1125
1126         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>.
1127
1128
1129       </div>
1130     </div>
1131     <div class="padding"></div>
1132
1133     <div class="entry">
1134       <div class="title">
1135         <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>
1136       </div>
1137       <div class="date">
1138          3rd July 2012
1139       </div>
1140       <div class="body">
1141         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
1142 project (Norwegian version of
1143 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
1144 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
1145 a problem with the municipalities using
1146 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
1147 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
1148 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
1149 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
1150 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
1151 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
1152 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
1153 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
1154 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
1155 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
1156 the From: header.</p>
1157
1158 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
1159 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
1160 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
1161 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
1162 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
1163 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
1164 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
1165 behaviour.</p>
1166
1167 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
1168 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
1169 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
1170 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
1171 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
1172 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
1173 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
1174
1175       </div>
1176       <div class="tags">
1177
1178
1179         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>.
1180
1181
1182       </div>
1183     </div>
1184     <div class="padding"></div>
1185
1186     <div class="entry">
1187       <div class="title">
1188         <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>
1189       </div>
1190       <div class="date">
1191         26th June 2012
1192       </div>
1193       <div class="body">
1194         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
1195 another interview with the people behind
1196 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
1197 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
1198 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
1199 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
1200 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
1201 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1202 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
1203
1204 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1205
1206 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
1207 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
1208 ICT in schools</p>
1209
1210 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1211 project?</strong></p>
1212
1213 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
1214 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
1215 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
1216 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
1217
1218 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1219 Edu?</strong></p>
1220
1221 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
1222 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
1223 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
1224 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
1225
1226 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1227 Edu?</strong></p>
1228
1229 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
1230 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
1231 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
1232 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
1233 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
1234 technologies in school.</p>
1235
1236 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1237
1238 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
1239 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
1240 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
1241
1242 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1243 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1244
1245 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
1246 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
1247 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
1248 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
1249
1250 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
1251 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
1252 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
1253
1254 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
1255 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
1256 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
1257 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
1258 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
1259 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
1260 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
1261 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
1262 working there.</p>
1263
1264       </div>
1265       <div class="tags">
1266
1267
1268         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>.
1269
1270
1271       </div>
1272     </div>
1273     <div class="padding"></div>
1274
1275     <div class="entry">
1276       <div class="title">
1277         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1278       </div>
1279       <div class="date">
1280         24th June 2012
1281       </div>
1282       <div class="body">
1283         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1284 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
1285 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
1286 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1287 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1288 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
1289 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1290 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1291 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
1292 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
1293 missing in my book.</p>
1294
1295 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1296 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1297 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1298 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
1299 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
1300 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
1301 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
1302
1303       </div>
1304       <div class="tags">
1305
1306
1307         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>.
1308
1309
1310       </div>
1311     </div>
1312     <div class="padding"></div>
1313
1314     <div class="entry">
1315       <div class="title">
1316         <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>
1317       </div>
1318       <div class="date">
1319         11th June 2012
1320       </div>
1321       <div class="body">
1322         <p>During my work on
1323 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
1324 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
1325 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
1326 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
1327 explanation.</p>
1328
1329 <p><ul>
1330
1331 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
1332 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
1333 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
1334 system depend on tasksel tasks in
1335 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
1336 installation.</li>
1337
1338 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
1339 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
1340 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
1341 at least try to enable it for these services:
1342 <ul>
1343
1344   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
1345     quotas.</li>
1346   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
1347   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
1348   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
1349   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
1350   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
1351
1352 </ul></li>
1353
1354 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
1355 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
1356 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
1357 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
1358
1359 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
1360 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
1361 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
1362
1363 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
1364 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
1365 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
1366 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
1367 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
1368 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
1369
1370 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
1371 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
1372 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
1373 in Wheezy.
1374
1375 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
1376 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
1377 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
1378
1379 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
1380 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
1381 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
1382 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
1383
1384 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
1385 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
1386 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
1387 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
1388
1389 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
1390 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
1391 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
1392
1393 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
1394 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
1395 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
1396
1397 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
1398 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
1399 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
1400 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
1401 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
1402
1403 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
1404 <ul>
1405
1406 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
1407 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
1408 <li>and probably more?</li>
1409 </ul></li>
1410
1411 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
1412 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
1413 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
1414 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
1415 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
1416 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
1417 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
1418 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
1419
1420
1421 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
1422 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
1423 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
1424 use.</li>
1425
1426 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
1427 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
1428 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
1429 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
1430 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
1431
1432 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
1433 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
1434 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
1435 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
1436 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
1437 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
1438
1439 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
1440 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
1441 There are at least three implementations,
1442 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
1443 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
1444 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
1445 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
1446 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
1447 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
1448 given room.</li>
1449
1450 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
1451 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
1452 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
1453 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
1454 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
1455 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
1456 investigated.</li>
1457
1458 </ul></p>
1459
1460 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
1461 version.</p>
1462
1463       </div>
1464       <div class="tags">
1465
1466
1467         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>.
1468
1469
1470       </div>
1471     </div>
1472     <div class="padding"></div>
1473
1474     <div class="entry">
1475       <div class="title">
1476         <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>
1477       </div>
1478       <div class="date">
1479          9th June 2012
1480       </div>
1481       <div class="body">
1482         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
1483 <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
1484 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
1485 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
1486 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
1487 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
1488 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
1489 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
1490 be willing to pay for.</p>
1491
1492 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
1493 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
1494 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
1495 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
1496 Orwell</a>.</p>
1497
1498       </div>
1499       <div class="tags">
1500
1501
1502         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>.
1503
1504
1505       </div>
1506     </div>
1507     <div class="padding"></div>
1508
1509     <div class="entry">
1510       <div class="title">
1511         <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>
1512       </div>
1513       <div class="date">
1514          6th June 2012
1515       </div>
1516       <div class="body">
1517         <p>A few days ago
1518 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
1519 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
1520 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
1521 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
1522 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
1523 code for HP, Dell and IBM
1524 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
1525 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
1526 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
1527 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
1528 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
1529
1530 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
1531 output:
1532
1533 <blockquote><pre>
1534 % 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>
1535 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": ""})
1536 %
1537 </pre></blockquote>
1538
1539 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
1540 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
1541 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
1542
1543       </div>
1544       <div class="tags">
1545
1546
1547         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>.
1548
1549
1550       </div>
1551     </div>
1552     <div class="padding"></div>
1553
1554     <div class="entry">
1555       <div class="title">
1556         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
1557       </div>
1558       <div class="date">
1559          2nd June 2012
1560       </div>
1561       <div class="body">
1562         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
1563 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
1564 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
1565 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
1566 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1567 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
1568
1569 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1570
1571 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
1572 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
1573 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
1574 by Angela).</p>
1575
1576 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
1577 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
1578 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
1579 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
1580 becoming an osteopath.</p>
1581
1582 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
1583 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
1584 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
1585 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
1586 skills with communication skills.</p>
1587
1588 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1589 project?</strong></p>
1590
1591 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
1592 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
1593 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
1594 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
1595 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
1596
1597 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
1598 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
1599 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
1600 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
1601 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
1602 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
1603 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
1604 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
1605 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
1606
1607 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
1608 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
1609 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
1610
1611 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
1612
1613 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
1614 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
1615 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
1616 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
1617 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
1618 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
1619 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
1620 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
1621 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
1622 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
1623 point.</p>
1624
1625 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
1626 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
1627 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
1628 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
1629 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
1630 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
1631
1632 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
1633 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
1634 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
1635 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
1636 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
1637 spare time.</p>
1638
1639 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
1640 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
1641 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
1642 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
1643 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
1644
1645 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
1646 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
1647 avoidance do exist.</p>
1648
1649 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
1650 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
1651 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
1652 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
1653 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
1654 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
1655 and probably a gain for all.</p>
1656
1657 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1658 Edu?</strong></p>
1659
1660 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
1661 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
1662 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
1663 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
1664 project communication, honest communication within the group of
1665 developers, etc.</p>
1666
1667 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1668 Edu?</strong></p>
1669
1670 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
1671
1672 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
1673 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
1674 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
1675 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
1676 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
1677 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
1678 contribute).</p>
1679
1680 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
1681 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
1682 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
1683 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
1684 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
1685 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
1686 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
1687 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
1688 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
1689 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
1690
1691 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1692
1693 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
1694
1695 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
1696 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
1697 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
1698
1699 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
1700 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
1701 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
1702 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
1703
1704 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
1705 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
1706 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
1707 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
1708 whiteboard.</p>
1709
1710 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
1711
1712 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1713 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1714
1715 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
1716 enrol people.</p>
1717
1718       </div>
1719       <div class="tags">
1720
1721
1722         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>.
1723
1724
1725       </div>
1726     </div>
1727     <div class="padding"></div>
1728
1729     <div class="entry">
1730       <div class="title">
1731         <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>
1732       </div>
1733       <div class="date">
1734          1st June 2012
1735       </div>
1736       <div class="body">
1737         <p>A few years ago I wrote
1738 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
1739 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
1740 I have learned from colleges here at the
1741 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
1742 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
1743 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
1744 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
1745 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
1746
1747 <p><pre>
1748 use strict;
1749 use warnings;
1750 use SOAP::Lite;
1751 use Data::Dumper;
1752 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
1753 my $App = 'test';
1754 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
1755 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
1756 my $s = SOAP::Lite
1757     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
1758     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
1759     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
1760     ;
1761 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
1762     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
1763     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
1764     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
1765 );
1766 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
1767 </pre></p>
1768
1769 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
1770
1771 <p><pre>
1772 $VAR1 = {
1773           'Asset' => {
1774                      'Entitlements' => {
1775                                        'EntitlementData' => [
1776                                                             {
1777                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
1778                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
1779                                                               'Provider' => '',
1780                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
1781                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
1782                                                             },
1783                                                             {
1784                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
1785                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
1786                                                               'Provider' => '',
1787                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
1788                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
1789                                                             },
1790                                                             {
1791                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
1792                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
1793                                                               'Provider' => '',
1794                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
1795                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
1796                                                             }
1797                                                           ]
1798                                      },
1799                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
1800                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
1801                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
1802                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
1803                                           'Buid' => '2323',
1804                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
1805                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
1806                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
1807                                         }
1808                    }
1809         };
1810 </pre></p>
1811
1812 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
1813 service outside the
1814 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
1815 documentation</a>, and according to
1816 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
1817 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
1818 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
1819
1820 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
1821 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
1822
1823       </div>
1824       <div class="tags">
1825
1826
1827         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>.
1828
1829
1830       </div>
1831     </div>
1832     <div class="padding"></div>
1833
1834     <div class="entry">
1835       <div class="title">
1836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
1837       </div>
1838       <div class="date">
1839         31st May 2012
1840       </div>
1841       <div class="body">
1842         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
1843 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
1844 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
1845 running Debian Squeeze, where
1846 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
1847 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
1848 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
1849 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
1850 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
1851 another day.</p>
1852
1853 <p>After calibration, I get a
1854 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
1855 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
1856 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
1857 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
1858 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
1859 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
1860 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
1861 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
1862 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
1863 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
1864 and a simple</p>
1865
1866 <p><pre>
1867 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
1868 </pre></p>
1869
1870 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
1871 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
1872 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
1873 enough for now.</p>
1874
1875       </div>
1876       <div class="tags">
1877
1878
1879         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1880
1881
1882       </div>
1883     </div>
1884     <div class="padding"></div>
1885
1886     <div class="entry">
1887       <div class="title">
1888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
1889       </div>
1890       <div class="date">
1891         27th May 2012
1892       </div>
1893       <div class="body">
1894         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
1895 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
1896 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
1897 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
1898 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
1899 since then, helping to make sure the
1900 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
1901 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
1902
1903 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1904
1905 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
1906 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
1907 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
1908 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
1909 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
1910 our computer network.</p>
1911
1912 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
1913 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
1914 (4 months).</p>
1915
1916 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1917 project?</strong></p>
1918
1919 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
1920 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
1921 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
1922 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
1923 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
1924 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
1925 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
1926 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
1927 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
1928 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
1929 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
1930 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
1931 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
1932 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
1933
1934 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1935 Edu?</strong></p>
1936
1937 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
1938 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
1939 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
1940 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
1941 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
1942 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
1943 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
1944 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
1945
1946 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1947 Edu?</strong></p>
1948
1949 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
1950 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
1951 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
1952 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
1953 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
1954 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
1955 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
1956 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
1957 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
1958 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
1959 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
1960 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
1961
1962 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1963
1964 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
1965 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
1966 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
1967
1968 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1969 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1970
1971 <p><ol>
1972
1973 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
1974 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
1975 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
1976 developing.</li>
1977
1978 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
1979 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
1980 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
1981 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
1982 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
1983
1984 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
1985 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
1986 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
1987
1988 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
1989 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
1990 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
1991 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
1992
1993 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
1994 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
1995 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
1996
1997 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
1998
1999 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
2000 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
2001 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
2002 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
2003
2004 </ol></p>
2005
2006       </div>
2007       <div class="tags">
2008
2009
2010         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>.
2011
2012
2013       </div>
2014     </div>
2015     <div class="padding"></div>
2016
2017     <div class="entry">
2018       <div class="title">
2019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
2020       </div>
2021       <div class="date">
2022         26th May 2012
2023       </div>
2024       <div class="body">
2025         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
2026 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
2027 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
2028 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
2029 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
2030
2031 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
2032 <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>
2033 comment:</p>
2034
2035 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
2036 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
2037 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
2038 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
2039 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
2040 </blockquote></p>
2041
2042 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
2043 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
2044 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
2045 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
2046 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
2047 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
2048 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
2049 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
2050 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
2051 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
2052 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
2053 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
2054 of wasted effort.</p>
2055
2056 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
2057 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
2058 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
2059
2060 <p>See
2061 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
2062 and
2063 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
2064 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
2065 </blockquote></p>
2066
2067       </div>
2068       <div class="tags">
2069
2070
2071         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>.
2072
2073
2074       </div>
2075     </div>
2076     <div class="padding"></div>
2077
2078     <div class="entry">
2079       <div class="title">
2080         <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>
2081       </div>
2082       <div class="date">
2083         18th May 2012
2084       </div>
2085       <div class="body">
2086         <p>In january, I
2087 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
2088 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
2089 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
2090 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
2091 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
2092 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
2093 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
2094 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
2095 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
2096 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
2097
2098 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
2099 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
2100 drivers. :)</p>
2101
2102       </div>
2103       <div class="tags">
2104
2105
2106         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2107
2108
2109       </div>
2110     </div>
2111     <div class="padding"></div>
2112
2113     <div class="entry">
2114       <div class="title">
2115         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
2116       </div>
2117       <div class="date">
2118         13th May 2012
2119       </div>
2120       <div class="body">
2121         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
2122 publish another interview with the people behind
2123 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
2124 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
2125 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
2126 details get right before release.
2127
2128 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2129
2130 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
2131 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
2132 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
2133 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
2134 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
2135 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
2136 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
2137 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
2138
2139 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
2140 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
2141 home since 2006.</p>
2142
2143 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2144 project?</strong></p>
2145
2146 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
2147 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
2148 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
2149 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
2150 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
2151 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
2152
2153 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
2154 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
2155 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
2156 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
2157 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
2158 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
2159 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
2160 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
2161 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
2162 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
2163 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
2164 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
2165 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
2166 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
2167 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
2168 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
2169
2170 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2171 Edu?</strong></p>
2172
2173 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
2174 for me as today.</p>
2175
2176 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
2177
2178 <p><ul>
2179
2180 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
2181 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
2182
2183 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
2184 cost.</li>
2185
2186 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
2187 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
2188 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
2189 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
2190 server</li>
2191
2192 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
2193 school.</li>
2194
2195 </ul></p>
2196
2197 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
2198 came up in this way:</p>
2199
2200 <p><ul>
2201
2202 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
2203 now.</li>
2204
2205 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
2206 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
2207 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
2208
2209 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
2210 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
2211 interfaces used in the past.</li>
2212
2213 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
2214 different needs.</li>
2215
2216 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
2217
2218 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
2219 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
2220 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
2221
2222 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
2223 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
2224
2225 </ul></p>
2226
2227 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2228 Edu?</strong></p>
2229
2230 <p><ul>
2231
2232 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
2233 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
2234 whole municipality areas.</li>
2235
2236 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
2237 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
2238 politicians.</li>
2239
2240 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
2241
2242 </ul></p>
2243
2244 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2245
2246 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
2247 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
2248 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
2249 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
2250 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
2251 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
2252
2253 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
2254 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
2255 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
2256 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
2257 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
2258
2259 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2260 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2261
2262 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
2263 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
2264 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
2265
2266       </div>
2267       <div class="tags">
2268
2269
2270         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>.
2271
2272
2273       </div>
2274     </div>
2275     <div class="padding"></div>
2276
2277     <div class="entry">
2278       <div class="title">
2279         <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>
2280       </div>
2281       <div class="date">
2282         30th April 2012
2283       </div>
2284       <div class="body">
2285         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
2286 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
2287
2288 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
2289 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
2290 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
2291 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
2292 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
2293 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
2294 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
2295 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
2296 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
2297 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
2298 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
2299 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
2300 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
2301 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
2302 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
2303 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
2304
2305 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
2306 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
2307 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
2308 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
2309 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
2310 finally found a Danish supplier
2311 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
2312 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
2313 days ago.</p>
2314
2315 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
2316 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
2317 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
2318 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
2319 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
2320 toys.</p>
2321
2322       </div>
2323       <div class="tags">
2324
2325
2326         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2327
2328
2329       </div>
2330     </div>
2331     <div class="padding"></div>
2332
2333     <div class="entry">
2334       <div class="title">
2335         <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>
2336       </div>
2337       <div class="date">
2338         26th April 2012
2339       </div>
2340       <div class="body">
2341         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
2342 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
2343 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
2344 that the video editor application included with
2345 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
2346 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
2347 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
2348
2349 <p><blockquote>
2350 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
2351 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
2352 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
2353 </blockquote></p>
2354
2355 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
2356
2357 <p><blockquote>
2358 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
2359 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
2360 </blockquote></p>
2361
2362 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
2363 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
2364 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
2365 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
2366 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
2367 video.  AMR is
2368 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
2369 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
2370 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
2371 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
2372 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
2373 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
2374 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
2375
2376 <p>I know why I prefer
2377 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
2378 standards</a> also for video.</p>
2379
2380       </div>
2381       <div class="tags">
2382
2383
2384         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>.
2385
2386
2387       </div>
2388     </div>
2389     <div class="padding"></div>
2390
2391     <div class="entry">
2392       <div class="title">
2393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
2394       </div>
2395       <div class="date">
2396         19th April 2012
2397       </div>
2398       <div class="body">
2399         <p>Here in Norway, the
2400 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
2401 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
2402 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
2403 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
2404 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
2405 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
2406 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
2407 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
2408 on the same level.</p>
2409
2410 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
2411 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
2412 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
2413 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
2414 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
2415 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
2416 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
2417 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
2418 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
2419 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
2420 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
2421 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
2422 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
2423 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
2424 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
2425 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
2426 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
2427 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
2428
2429 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
2430 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
2431 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
2432 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
2433 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
2434 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
2435 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
2436 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
2437
2438 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
2439 from Simon Phipps
2440 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
2441 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
2442
2443 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
2444 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
2445 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
2446 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
2447 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
2448 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
2449 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
2450 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
2451 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
2452
2453       </div>
2454       <div class="tags">
2455
2456
2457         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>.
2458
2459
2460       </div>
2461     </div>
2462     <div class="padding"></div>
2463
2464     <div class="entry">
2465       <div class="title">
2466         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
2467       </div>
2468       <div class="date">
2469         15th April 2012
2470       </div>
2471       <div class="body">
2472         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2473 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
2474 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
2475 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
2476 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
2477 up in the recently released
2478 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
2479 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
2480
2481 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2482
2483 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
2484 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
2485 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
2486 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
2487 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
2488 information technology and science/technology.</p>
2489
2490 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2491 project?</strong></p>
2492
2493 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
2494 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
2495 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
2496 contributing.</p>
2497
2498 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2499 Edu?</strong></p>
2500
2501 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
2502 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
2503 Debian Project!</p>
2504
2505 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2506 Edu?</strong></p>
2507
2508 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
2509 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
2510 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
2511 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
2512 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
2513 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
2514 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
2515
2516 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
2517 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
2518
2519 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2520
2521 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
2522 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
2523 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
2524 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
2525
2526 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2527 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2528
2529 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
2530 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
2531 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
2532 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
2533 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
2534 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
2535 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
2536
2537 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
2538 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
2539 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
2540 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
2541 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
2542 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
2543 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
2544 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
2545
2546       </div>
2547       <div class="tags">
2548
2549
2550         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>.
2551
2552
2553       </div>
2554     </div>
2555     <div class="padding"></div>
2556
2557     <div class="entry">
2558       <div class="title">
2559         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
2560       </div>
2561       <div class="date">
2562          8th April 2012
2563       </div>
2564       <div class="body">
2565         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
2566 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
2567 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
2568 contributor to the
2569 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
2570 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
2571
2572 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2573
2574 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
2575 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
2576
2577 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2578 project?</strong></p>
2579
2580 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
2581 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
2582 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
2583 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
2584 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
2585 "localisation".</p>
2586
2587 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2588 Edu?</strong></p>
2589
2590 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2591 Edu?</strong></p>
2592
2593 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
2594 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
2595 education system.</p>
2596
2597 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
2598 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
2599 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
2600 money on the latest hardware.</p>
2601
2602 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2603
2604 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
2605 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
2606 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
2607
2608 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2609 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2610
2611 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
2612 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
2613 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
2614
2615       </div>
2616       <div class="tags">
2617
2618
2619         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>.
2620
2621
2622       </div>
2623     </div>
2624     <div class="padding"></div>
2625
2626     <div class="entry">
2627       <div class="title">
2628         <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>
2629       </div>
2630       <div class="date">
2631          6th April 2012
2632       </div>
2633       <div class="body">
2634         <p>Recently I have spent time with
2635 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
2636 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2637 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
2638 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
2639 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
2640 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
2641 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
2642 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
2643
2644 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
2645 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
2646 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
2647 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
2648 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
2649 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
2650 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
2651 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
2652
2653 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
2654 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
2655 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
2656 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
2657 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
2658 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
2659 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
2660 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
2661
2662 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
2663 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
2664 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
2665 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
2666 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
2667 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
2668 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
2669 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
2670 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
2671 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
2672
2673 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
2674 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
2675 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
2676 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
2677
2678 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
2679 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
2680
2681       </div>
2682       <div class="tags">
2683
2684
2685         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>.
2686
2687
2688       </div>
2689     </div>
2690     <div class="padding"></div>
2691
2692     <div class="entry">
2693       <div class="title">
2694         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
2695       </div>
2696       <div class="date">
2697          5th April 2012
2698       </div>
2699       <div class="body">
2700         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
2701 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
2702 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
2703 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
2704 for schools.  Check out his article
2705 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
2706 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
2707
2708       </div>
2709       <div class="tags">
2710
2711
2712         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>.
2713
2714
2715       </div>
2716     </div>
2717     <div class="padding"></div>
2718
2719     <div class="entry">
2720       <div class="title">
2721         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
2722       </div>
2723       <div class="date">
2724          1st April 2012
2725       </div>
2726       <div class="body">
2727         <p>Germany is a core area for the
2728 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2729 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
2730 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
2731
2732 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2733
2734 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
2735 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
2736 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
2737 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
2738 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
2739 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
2740 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
2741 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
2742
2743 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
2744 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
2745 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
2746 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
2747 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
2748 the end of April this year.</p>
2749
2750 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2751 project?</strong></p>
2752
2753 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
2754 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
2755 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
2756 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
2757 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
2758 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
2759 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
2760 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
2761 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
2762 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
2763 Skolelinux.</p>
2764
2765 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
2766 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
2767 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
2768 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
2769 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
2770 the admin teachers.</p>
2771
2772 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2773 Edu?</strong></p>
2774
2775 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
2776 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
2777 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
2778
2779 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
2780 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
2781 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
2782 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
2783 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
2784
2785 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2786 Edu?</strong></p>
2787
2788 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
2789
2790 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2791
2792 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
2793 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
2794 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
2795 LibreOffice.</p>
2796
2797 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2798 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2799
2800 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
2801 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
2802 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
2803
2804       </div>
2805       <div class="tags">
2806
2807
2808         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>.
2809
2810
2811       </div>
2812     </div>
2813     <div class="padding"></div>
2814
2815     <div class="entry">
2816       <div class="title">
2817         <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>
2818       </div>
2819       <div class="date">
2820         25th March 2012
2821       </div>
2822       <div class="body">
2823         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
2824
2825 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
2826 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
2827 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
2828 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
2829 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
2830 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
2831 and download as a
2832 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
2833 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
2834
2835 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
2836   <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"' />
2837     <p>Download video as
2838       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
2839 </video></p>
2840
2841       </div>
2842       <div class="tags">
2843
2844
2845         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>.
2846
2847
2848       </div>
2849     </div>
2850     <div class="padding"></div>
2851
2852     <div class="entry">
2853       <div class="title">
2854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
2855       </div>
2856       <div class="date">
2857         19th March 2012
2858       </div>
2859       <div class="body">
2860         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2861 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
2862 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
2863 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
2864 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
2865
2866 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2867
2868 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
2869 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
2870 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
2871 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
2872 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
2873 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
2874 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
2875 installations.</p>
2876
2877 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2878 project?</strong></p>
2879
2880 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
2881 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
2882 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
2883 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
2884 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
2885 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
2886 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
2887 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
2888 these things we decided to try it.</p>
2889
2890 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2891 Edu?</strong></p>
2892
2893 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
2894 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
2895 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
2896 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
2897 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
2898 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
2899 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
2900 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
2901
2902 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2903 Edu?</strong></p>
2904
2905 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
2906 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
2907 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
2908 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
2909 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
2910
2911 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2912
2913 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
2914 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
2915 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
2916 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
2917 that counts...)</p>
2918
2919 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2920 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2921
2922 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
2923 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
2924 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
2925 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
2926 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
2927 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
2928 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
2929 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
2930 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
2931 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
2932 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
2933
2934 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
2935 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
2936 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
2937
2938       </div>
2939       <div class="tags">
2940
2941
2942         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>.
2943
2944
2945       </div>
2946     </div>
2947     <div class="padding"></div>
2948
2949     <div class="entry">
2950       <div class="title">
2951         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
2952       </div>
2953       <div class="date">
2954         16th March 2012
2955       </div>
2956       <div class="body">
2957         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
2958 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
2959 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
2960 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
2961
2962 <ol>
2963
2964 <li>The documentation is written in a
2965 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
2966 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
2967 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
2968 docbook XML.</li>
2969
2970 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
2971 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
2972 with the translated text.</li>
2973
2974 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
2975 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
2976 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
2977 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
2978 images.</li>
2979
2980 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
2981 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
2982
2983 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
2984 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
2985
2986 </ol>
2987
2988 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
2989 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
2990 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
2991 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
2992 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
2993
2994 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
2995 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
2996 package</a>.</p>
2997
2998       </div>
2999       <div class="tags">
3000
3001
3002         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>.
3003
3004
3005       </div>
3006     </div>
3007     <div class="padding"></div>
3008
3009     <div class="entry">
3010       <div class="title">
3011         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
3012       </div>
3013       <div class="date">
3014         11th March 2012
3015       </div>
3016       <div class="body">
3017         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
3018 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
3019 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
3020 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
3021 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
3022 you have not done so already.</p>
3023
3024 <p>I plan to present the new version at
3025 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
3026 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
3027 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
3028
3029       </div>
3030       <div class="tags">
3031
3032
3033         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>.
3034
3035
3036       </div>
3037     </div>
3038     <div class="padding"></div>
3039
3040     <div class="entry">
3041       <div class="title">
3042         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
3043       </div>
3044       <div class="date">
3045          9th March 2012
3046       </div>
3047       <div class="body">
3048         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
3049 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
3050 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3051 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
3052 more international audience.</p>
3053
3054 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
3055 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
3056 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
3057 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
3058 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
3059 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
3060 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
3061
3062
3063 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3064
3065 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
3066 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
3067 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
3068 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
3069 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
3070 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
3071 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
3072 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
3073 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
3074 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
3075 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
3076
3077 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3078 project?</strong></p>
3079
3080 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
3081 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
3082 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
3083 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
3084 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
3085 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
3086 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
3087 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
3088 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
3089 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
3090 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
3091 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
3092 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
3093
3094 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3095 Edu?</strong></p>
3096
3097 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
3098 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
3099 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
3100 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
3101 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
3102 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
3103 Japan.</p>
3104
3105 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3106 Edu?</strong></p>
3107
3108 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
3109 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
3110 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
3111 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
3112 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
3113 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
3114 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
3115 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
3116 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
3117 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
3118 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
3119 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
3120 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
3121 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
3122 help.</p>
3123
3124 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3125
3126 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
3127 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
3128 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
3129 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
3130 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
3131 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
3132 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
3133 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
3134 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
3135 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
3136 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
3137
3138 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3139 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3140
3141 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
3142 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
3143 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
3144 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
3145 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
3146 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
3147 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
3148 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
3149 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
3150 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
3151 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
3152 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
3153
3154       </div>
3155       <div class="tags">
3156
3157
3158         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>.
3159
3160
3161       </div>
3162     </div>
3163     <div class="padding"></div>
3164
3165     <div class="entry">
3166       <div class="title">
3167         <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>
3168       </div>
3169       <div class="date">
3170          7th March 2012
3171       </div>
3172       <div class="body">
3173         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
3174
3175 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
3176 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
3177 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
3178 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
3179 download as a
3180 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
3181 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
3182
3183 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
3184   <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"' />
3185     <p>Download video as
3186       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
3187 </video></p>
3188
3189       </div>
3190       <div class="tags">
3191
3192
3193         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>.
3194
3195
3196       </div>
3197     </div>
3198     <div class="padding"></div>
3199
3200     <div class="entry">
3201       <div class="title">
3202         <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>
3203       </div>
3204       <div class="date">
3205          4th March 2012
3206       </div>
3207       <div class="body">
3208         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
3209 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3210 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
3211 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
3212 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
3213 need a software solution for your school.</p>
3214
3215       </div>
3216       <div class="tags">
3217
3218
3219         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>.
3220
3221
3222       </div>
3223     </div>
3224     <div class="padding"></div>
3225
3226     <div class="entry">
3227       <div class="title">
3228         <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>
3229       </div>
3230       <div class="date">
3231          3rd March 2012
3232       </div>
3233       <div class="body">
3234         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
3235 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
3236 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
3237 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
3238 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
3239 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
3240 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
3241 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
3242 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
3243 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
3244 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
3245 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
3246 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
3247 year...</p>
3248
3249 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
3250 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
3251 name,
3252 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
3253 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
3254 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
3255 mean). I've been following
3256 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
3257 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
3258 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
3259 Check it out. :)</p>
3260
3261       </div>
3262       <div class="tags">
3263
3264
3265         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>.
3266
3267
3268       </div>
3269     </div>
3270     <div class="padding"></div>
3271
3272     <div class="entry">
3273       <div class="title">
3274         <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>
3275       </div>
3276       <div class="date">
3277         27th February 2012
3278       </div>
3279       <div class="body">
3280         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
3281 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3282 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
3283 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
3284 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
3285 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
3286 need a software solution for your school.</p>
3287
3288       </div>
3289       <div class="tags">
3290
3291
3292         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>.
3293
3294
3295       </div>
3296     </div>
3297     <div class="padding"></div>
3298
3299     <div class="entry">
3300       <div class="title">
3301         <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>
3302       </div>
3303       <div class="date">
3304         19th February 2012
3305       </div>
3306       <div class="body">
3307         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
3308 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
3309 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
3310 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
3311 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
3312 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
3313 solution for your school.</p>
3314
3315       </div>
3316       <div class="tags">
3317
3318
3319         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>.
3320
3321
3322       </div>
3323     </div>
3324     <div class="padding"></div>
3325
3326     <div class="entry">
3327       <div class="title">
3328         <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>
3329       </div>
3330       <div class="date">
3331         14th February 2012
3332       </div>
3333       <div class="body">
3334         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
3335 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
3336 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
3337 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
3338 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
3339 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
3340 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
3341 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
3342 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
3343
3344 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
3345 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
3346 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
3347 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
3348 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
3349
3350 <blockquote><pre>
3351 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
3352 do
3353     printf "Failed disk $d: "
3354     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
3355 done
3356 </blockquote></pre>
3357
3358 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
3359 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
3360
3361 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
3362
3363 <blockquote><pre>
3364 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
3365 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
3366 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
3367 </blockquote></pre>
3368
3369 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
3370 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
3371 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
3372 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
3373 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
3374 mounted inside my box.</p>
3375
3376 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
3377 Software RAID in the
3378 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
3379 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
3380 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
3381 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
3382 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
3383 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
3384
3385       </div>
3386       <div class="tags">
3387
3388
3389         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>.
3390
3391
3392       </div>
3393     </div>
3394     <div class="padding"></div>
3395
3396     <div class="entry">
3397       <div class="title">
3398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
3399       </div>
3400       <div class="date">
3401         13th February 2012
3402       </div>
3403       <div class="body">
3404         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
3405 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
3406 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
3407 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
3408 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
3409 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
3410 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
3411 change the global proxy setting by editing
3412 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
3413 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
3414
3415 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
3416 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
3417 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
3418
3419 <blockquote><pre>
3420 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
3421 {
3422    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
3423        isPlainHostName(host) ||
3424        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
3425       return "DIRECT";
3426    else
3427       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
3428 }
3429 </pre></blockquote>
3430
3431 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
3432
3433 <blockquote><pre>
3434 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
3435 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
3436 </pre></blockquote>
3437
3438 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
3439 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
3440 would be used for
3441 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
3442 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
3443 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
3444 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
3445 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
3446 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
3447 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
3448 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
3449 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
3450 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
3451
3452 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
3453 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
3454 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
3455 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
3456 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
3457 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
3458
3459 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
3460 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
3461 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
3462 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
3463 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
3464 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
3465 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
3466 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
3467 the network setup changes.</p>
3468
3469 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
3470 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
3471 draft</a> and a
3472 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
3473 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
3474
3475       </div>
3476       <div class="tags">
3477
3478
3479         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>.
3480
3481
3482       </div>
3483     </div>
3484     <div class="padding"></div>
3485
3486     <div class="entry">
3487       <div class="title">
3488         <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>
3489       </div>
3490       <div class="date">
3491          5th February 2012
3492       </div>
3493       <div class="body">
3494         <p>Since the Lenny version of
3495 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
3496 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
3497 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
3498 in the morning.  This is done using the
3499 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
3500
3501 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
3502 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
3503 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
3504 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
3505 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
3506 the
3507 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
3508 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
3509 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
3510 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
3511 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
3512
3513 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
3514 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
3515 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
3516 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
3517 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
3518 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
3519 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
3520
3521 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
3522 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
3523 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
3524 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
3525 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
3526
3527       </div>
3528       <div class="tags">
3529
3530
3531         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>.
3532
3533
3534       </div>
3535     </div>
3536     <div class="padding"></div>
3537
3538     <div class="entry">
3539       <div class="title">
3540         <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>
3541       </div>
3542       <div class="date">
3543          4th February 2012
3544       </div>
3545       <div class="body">
3546         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
3547 publish the third beta version of
3548 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
3549 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
3550 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
3551 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
3552 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
3553 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
3554 on the project announcement list.</p>
3555
3556 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
3557 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
3558
3559 <ul>
3560
3561 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
3562   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
3563   the installation.</li>
3564
3565 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
3566   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
3567
3568 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
3569   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
3570   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
3571
3572 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
3573   for the local system administrator is created during installation
3574   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
3575   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
3576   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
3577   up to date on the system.</li>
3578
3579 </ul>
3580
3581 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
3582 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
3583 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
3584 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
3585
3586 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
3587 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
3588 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
3589 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
3590 will see you there?</p>
3591
3592       </div>
3593       <div class="tags">
3594
3595
3596         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>.
3597
3598
3599       </div>
3600     </div>
3601     <div class="padding"></div>
3602
3603     <div class="entry">
3604       <div class="title">
3605         <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>
3606       </div>
3607       <div class="date">
3608         27th January 2012
3609       </div>
3610       <div class="body">
3611         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
3612 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
3613 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
3614 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
3615 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
3616 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
3617 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
3618
3619 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
3620 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
3621 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
3622 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
3623 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
3624 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
3625 not taken care of by this.</p>
3626
3627 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
3628 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
3629 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
3630 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
3631 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
3632 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
3633 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
3634 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
3635 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
3636 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
3637 firmware packages.</p>
3638
3639 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
3640 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
3641 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
3642 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
3643 initrd with extra firmware, the
3644 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
3645 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
3646 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
3647
3648 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
3649 network cards working.  For this,
3650 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
3651 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
3652 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
3653
3654 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
3655 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
3656 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
3657
3658 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
3659 try.</p>
3660
3661       </div>
3662       <div class="tags">
3663
3664
3665         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>.
3666
3667
3668       </div>
3669     </div>
3670     <div class="padding"></div>
3671
3672     <div class="entry">
3673       <div class="title">
3674         <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>
3675       </div>
3676       <div class="date">
3677         25th January 2012
3678       </div>
3679       <div class="body">
3680         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
3681 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
3682 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
3683 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
3684 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
3685
3686 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
3687 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
3688 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
3689 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
3690 this is done, log on to the central server and run
3691 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
3692 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
3693 will look similar to this:</p>
3694
3695 <p><blockquote><pre>
3696 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
3697 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
3698 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.
3699
3700 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
3701
3702 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3703 enter password: *******
3704 %
3705 </pre></blockquote></p>
3706
3707 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
3708 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
3709 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
3710 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
3711 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
3712 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
3713 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
3714 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
3715 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
3716 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
3717 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
3718 automatically.</p>
3719
3720 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
3721 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
3722
3723 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
3724 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
3725 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
3726
3727       </div>
3728       <div class="tags">
3729
3730
3731         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>.
3732
3733
3734       </div>
3735     </div>
3736     <div class="padding"></div>
3737
3738     <div class="entry">
3739       <div class="title">
3740         <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>
3741       </div>
3742       <div class="date">
3743         10th January 2012
3744       </div>
3745       <div class="body">
3746         <p>In the Squeeze version of
3747 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
3748 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
3749 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
3750 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
3751 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
3752 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
3753 first time.</p>
3754
3755 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
3756 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
3757 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
3758 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
3759
3760 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
3761 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
3762 new setting.</p>
3763
3764 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
3765 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
3766 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
3767
3768       </div>
3769       <div class="tags">
3770
3771
3772         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>.
3773
3774
3775       </div>
3776     </div>
3777     <div class="padding"></div>
3778
3779     <div class="entry">
3780       <div class="title">
3781         <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>
3782       </div>
3783       <div class="date">
3784          7th January 2012
3785       </div>
3786       <div class="body">
3787         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
3788 the second beta version of
3789 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
3790 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
3791 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
3792 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
3793 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
3794 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
3795 on the project announcement list.</p>
3796
3797       </div>
3798       <div class="tags">
3799
3800
3801         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>.
3802
3803
3804       </div>
3805     </div>
3806     <div class="padding"></div>
3807
3808     <div class="entry">
3809       <div class="title">
3810         <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>
3811       </div>
3812       <div class="date">
3813          3rd January 2012
3814       </div>
3815       <div class="body">
3816         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
3817 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
3818 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
3819 interesting.</p>
3820
3821 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
3822 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
3823 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
3824 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
3825 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
3826 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
3827 wrap up its tasks.</p>
3828
3829 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
3830 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
3831 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
3832 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
3833 because I was typing.</P>
3834
3835 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
3836 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
3837 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
3838 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
3839 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
3840 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
3841 generate entropy.</p>
3842
3843 <p>The fix is in
3844 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
3845 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
3846 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
3847 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
3848
3849       </div>
3850       <div class="tags">
3851
3852
3853         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>.
3854
3855
3856       </div>
3857     </div>
3858     <div class="padding"></div>
3859
3860     <div class="entry">
3861       <div class="title">
3862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
3863       </div>
3864       <div class="date">
3865         21st November 2011
3866       </div>
3867       <div class="body">
3868         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
3869 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
3870 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
3871 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
3872 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
3873 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
3874 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
3875 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
3876 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
3877 the tools to do so.</p>
3878
3879 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
3880 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
3881 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
3882 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
3883
3884 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
3885 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
3886 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
3887 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
3888 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
3889 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
3890 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
3891 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
3892
3893 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
3894 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
3895 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
3896
3897 <p><pre>
3898 #!/usr/bin/perl
3899 use strict;
3900 use warnings;
3901 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
3902 BEGIN {
3903     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
3904     my %rhelmodules = (
3905         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
3906         );
3907     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
3908         eval "use $module;";
3909         if ($@) {
3910             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
3911             system("yum install -y $pkg");
3912             eval "use $module;";
3913         }
3914     }
3915 }
3916 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
3917
3918 upgrade_dell();
3919
3920 exit 0;
3921
3922 sub run_firmware_script {
3923     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
3924     unless ($script) {
3925         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
3926         exit 1
3927     }
3928     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
3929
3930     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
3931         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
3932     } else {
3933         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
3934     }
3935 }
3936
3937 sub run_firmware_scripts {
3938     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
3939     # Run firmware packages
3940     for my $dir (@dirs) {
3941         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
3942         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
3943         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
3944             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
3945             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
3946         }
3947         closedir $dh;
3948     }
3949 }
3950
3951 sub download {
3952     my $url = shift;
3953     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
3954     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
3955 }
3956
3957 sub upgrade_dell {
3958     my @dirs;
3959     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
3960     chomp $product;
3961
3962     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
3963
3964         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
3965         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
3966
3967         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
3968             CLEANUP => 1
3969             );
3970         chdir($tmpdir);
3971         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
3972         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
3973         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
3974         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
3975         my $fwopts = "-q";
3976         if (@paths) {
3977             for my $url (@paths) {
3978                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
3979             }
3980             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
3981         } else {
3982             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3983             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3984         }
3985         chdir('/');
3986     } else {
3987         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
3988         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
3989     }
3990 }
3991
3992 sub fetch_dell_fw {
3993     my $path = shift;
3994     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
3995     download($url);
3996 }
3997
3998 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
3999 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
4000 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
4001 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
4002     my $filename = shift;
4003
4004     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4005     chomp $product;
4006     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
4007
4008     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
4009
4010     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
4011     my @paths;
4012     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
4013         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
4014         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
4015         my $oscode;
4016         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
4017             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
4018         } else {
4019             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
4020         }
4021         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
4022         {
4023             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
4024         }
4025     }
4026     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
4027         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
4028
4029         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
4030         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
4031
4032         my $cpath = $component->{path};
4033         for my $path (@paths) {
4034             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
4035                 push(@paths, $cpath);
4036             }
4037         }
4038     }
4039     return @paths;
4040 }
4041 </pre>
4042
4043 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
4044 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
4045 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
4046 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
4047 outdated.</p>
4048
4049       </div>
4050       <div class="tags">
4051
4052
4053         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>.
4054
4055
4056       </div>
4057     </div>
4058     <div class="padding"></div>
4059
4060     <div class="entry">
4061       <div class="title">
4062         <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>
4063       </div>
4064       <div class="date">
4065          7th October 2011
4066       </div>
4067       <div class="body">
4068         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
4069 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
4070 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
4071 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
4072 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
4073 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
4074 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
4075 models.</p>
4076
4077 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
4078 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
4079 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
4080 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
4081
4082 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
4083 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
4084 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
4085 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (abount
4086 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
4087 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
4088 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
4089 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
4090 distributed.</p>
4091
4092 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
4093
4094 <ul>
4095
4096 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
4097   other relevant equipment.</li>
4098
4099 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
4100
4101 </ul>
4102
4103 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
4104 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
4105 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
4106 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
4107 books available.</p>
4108
4109 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
4110 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
4111 libraries. :)</p>
4112
4113       </div>
4114       <div class="tags">
4115
4116
4117         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>.
4118
4119
4120       </div>
4121     </div>
4122     <div class="padding"></div>
4123
4124     <div class="entry">
4125       <div class="title">
4126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
4127       </div>
4128       <div class="date">
4129         17th September 2011
4130       </div>
4131       <div class="body">
4132         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
4133 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
4134 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
4135 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
4136 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
4137 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
4138 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
4139 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
4140
4141 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
4142
4143 <blockquote><pre>
4144 #!/bin/sh
4145 # apt-get install lsdvd
4146 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
4147 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
4148 </pre></blockquote>
4149
4150 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
4151 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
4152 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
4153 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
4154
4155 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
4156 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
4157 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
4158 back as an ISO.
4159
4160 <blockquote><pre>
4161 #!/bin/sh
4162 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
4163 set -e
4164 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
4165 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
4166 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
4167 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
4168 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
4169 </pre></blockquote>
4170
4171 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
4172
4173 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
4174 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
4175 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
4176 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
4177 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
4178
4179 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
4180 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
4181 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
4182 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
4183 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
4184 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
4185
4186       </div>
4187       <div class="tags">
4188
4189
4190         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>.
4191
4192
4193       </div>
4194     </div>
4195     <div class="padding"></div>
4196
4197     <div class="entry">
4198       <div class="title">
4199         <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>
4200       </div>
4201       <div class="date">
4202          4th August 2011
4203       </div>
4204       <div class="body">
4205         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
4206 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
4207 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
4208 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
4209 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
4210 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
4211 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
4212 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4213 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
4214
4215 <p><blockquote>
4216 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4217 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
4218 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4219 </blockquote></p>
4220
4221 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4222 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
4223 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4224 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4225 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
4226 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
4227 hard to explain.</p>
4228
4229 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
4230 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
4231 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
4232 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
4233 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
4234 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
4235 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
4236 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
4237 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
4238 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
4239 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
4240 mode).</p>
4241
4242 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
4243 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
4244 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
4245 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
4246 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
4247 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
4248 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
4249 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
4250 after visiting single user mode.</p>
4251
4252 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
4253 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
4254 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
4255 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
4256 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
4257 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
4258 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
4259 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
4260
4261 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
4262 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
4263 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
4264
4265       </div>
4266       <div class="tags">
4267
4268
4269         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>.
4270
4271
4272       </div>
4273     </div>
4274     <div class="padding"></div>
4275
4276     <div class="entry">
4277       <div class="title">
4278         <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>
4279       </div>
4280       <div class="date">
4281         30th July 2011
4282       </div>
4283       <div class="body">
4284         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
4285 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
4286 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
4287 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
4288 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
4289 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
4290 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
4291 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
4292 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
4293 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
4294 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
4295 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
4296 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
4297
4298 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
4299 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
4300 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
4301 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
4302 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
4303 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
4304 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
4305 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
4306 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
4307
4308 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
4309 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
4310 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
4311 is presented.</p>
4312
4313 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
4314 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
4315 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
4316 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
4317 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4318 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4319 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4320 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
4321 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4322 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4323 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4324 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
4325 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4326 find time to push this forward.</p>
4327
4328       </div>
4329       <div class="tags">
4330
4331
4332         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>.
4333
4334
4335       </div>
4336     </div>
4337     <div class="padding"></div>
4338
4339     <div class="entry">
4340       <div class="title">
4341         <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>
4342       </div>
4343       <div class="date">
4344         29th July 2011
4345       </div>
4346       <div class="body">
4347         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
4348 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
4349 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
4350 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
4351 issues.</p>
4352
4353 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
4354 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
4355 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
4356
4357 <ol>
4358
4359 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
4360 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
4361 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
4362 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
4363 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
4364 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
4365 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
4366 Debian.</li>
4367
4368 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
4369 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
4370 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
4371 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
4372 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
4373 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
4374 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
4375 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
4376 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
4377 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
4378 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
4379 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
4380 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
4381
4382 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
4383 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
4384 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
4385 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
4386 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
4387 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
4388 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
4389 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
4390 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
4391 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
4392
4393 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
4394 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
4395 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
4396 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
4397 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
4398 latter behaviour.</li>
4399
4400 </ol>
4401
4402 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
4403 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
4404 it do not matter much.</p>
4405
4406 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
4407 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
4408 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
4409
4410       </div>
4411       <div class="tags">
4412
4413
4414         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>.
4415
4416
4417       </div>
4418     </div>
4419     <div class="padding"></div>
4420
4421     <div class="entry">
4422       <div class="title">
4423         <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>
4424       </div>
4425       <div class="date">
4426         26th July 2011
4427       </div>
4428       <div class="body">
4429         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
4430 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
4431 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
4432 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
4433 security support for a few years.</p>
4434
4435 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
4436 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
4437 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
4438 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
4439 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
4440 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
4441 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
4442 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
4443 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
4444 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
4445 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
4446 easier in the future.</p>
4447
4448 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
4449 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
4450 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
4451 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
4452 do not have time for.</p>
4453
4454       </div>
4455       <div class="tags">
4456
4457
4458         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>.
4459
4460
4461       </div>
4462     </div>
4463     <div class="padding"></div>
4464
4465     <div class="entry">
4466       <div class="title">
4467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
4468       </div>
4469       <div class="date">
4470         20th June 2011
4471       </div>
4472       <div class="body">
4473         <p>Reading
4474 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
4475 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
4476 parts of the
4477 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
4478 and
4479 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
4480 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
4481 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
4482 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
4483
4484       </div>
4485       <div class="tags">
4486
4487
4488         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>.
4489
4490
4491       </div>
4492     </div>
4493     <div class="padding"></div>
4494
4495     <div class="entry">
4496       <div class="title">
4497         <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>
4498       </div>
4499       <div class="date">
4500         30th April 2011
4501       </div>
4502       <div class="body">
4503         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
4504 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
4505 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
4506 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
4507 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
4508 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
4509 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
4510 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
4511 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
4512 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
4513
4514 <p>Where is it?  Visit
4515 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
4516 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
4517 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
4518 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
4519
4520       </div>
4521       <div class="tags">
4522
4523
4524         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>.
4525
4526
4527       </div>
4528     </div>
4529     <div class="padding"></div>
4530
4531     <div class="entry">
4532       <div class="title">
4533         <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>
4534       </div>
4535       <div class="date">
4536         29th April 2011
4537       </div>
4538       <div class="body">
4539         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
4540 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
4541 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
4542 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
4543 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
4544 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
4545 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
4546 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
4547 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
4548 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
4549 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
4550 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
4551 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
4552
4553 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
4554 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
4555 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
4556 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
4557 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
4558 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
4559 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
4560 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
4561 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
4562 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
4563 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
4564 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
4565 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
4566
4567 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
4568 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
4569 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
4570 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
4571 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
4572 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
4573 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
4574 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
4575 it.</p>
4576
4577 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
4578 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
4579 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
4580 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
4581 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
4582 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
4583 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
4584
4585 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
4586 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
4587 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
4588 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
4589 and range= options.</p>
4590
4591 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
4592 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
4593 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
4594 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
4595 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
4596 to best handle this.  I've noticed
4597 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
4598 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
4599 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
4600 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
4601
4602 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
4603 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
4604 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
4605 discussions instead of only
4606 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
4607 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
4608 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
4609 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
4610 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
4611 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
4612
4613       </div>
4614       <div class="tags">
4615
4616
4617         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>.
4618
4619
4620       </div>
4621     </div>
4622     <div class="padding"></div>
4623
4624     <div class="entry">
4625       <div class="title">
4626         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
4627       </div>
4628       <div class="date">
4629          6th April 2011
4630       </div>
4631       <div class="body">
4632         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
4633 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
4634 A few days ago the project
4635 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
4636 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
4637 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
4638 into Gnash.</p>
4639
4640       </div>
4641       <div class="tags">
4642
4643
4644         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>.
4645
4646
4647       </div>
4648     </div>
4649     <div class="padding"></div>
4650
4651     <div class="entry">
4652       <div class="title">
4653         <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>
4654       </div>
4655       <div class="date">
4656          3rd April 2011
4657       </div>
4658       <div class="body">
4659         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
4660 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
4661 update in English.</p>
4662
4663 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
4664 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
4665 of the British service
4666 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
4667 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
4668 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
4669 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
4670 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
4671 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
4672 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
4673 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
4674 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
4675 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
4676 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
4677 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
4678 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
4679
4680 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
4681 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
4682 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
4683 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
4684 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
4685 public infrastructure.</p>
4686
4687 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
4688 such service?</p>
4689
4690       </div>
4691       <div class="tags">
4692
4693
4694         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>.
4695
4696
4697       </div>
4698     </div>
4699     <div class="padding"></div>
4700
4701     <div class="entry">
4702       <div class="title">
4703         <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>
4704       </div>
4705       <div class="date">
4706         28th January 2011
4707       </div>
4708       <div class="body">
4709         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
4710 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
4711 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
4712 available on the Internet, and check our locally
4713 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
4714 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
4715 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
4716 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
4717 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
4718 out which security holes were present in our free software
4719 collection.</p>
4720
4721 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
4722 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
4723 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
4724 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
4725 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
4726 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
4727 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
4728 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
4729 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
4730 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
4731 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
4732 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
4733 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
4734 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
4735 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
4736 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
4737
4738 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
4739 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
4740 check out, one could look up
4741 <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
4742 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
4743 The most recent one is
4744 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
4745 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
4746 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
4747
4748 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
4749 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
4750 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
4751 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
4752 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
4753 security issues out.</p>
4754
4755 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
4756 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
4757 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
4758 RHEL is providing
4759 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
4760 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
4761 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
4762
4763 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
4764 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
4765 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
4766 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
4767 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
4768 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
4769 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
4770 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
4771 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
4772 established soon.</p>
4773
4774 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
4775 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
4776 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
4777 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
4778 for their packages.</p>
4779
4780       </div>
4781       <div class="tags">
4782
4783
4784         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>.
4785
4786
4787       </div>
4788     </div>
4789     <div class="padding"></div>
4790
4791     <div class="entry">
4792       <div class="title">
4793         <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>
4794       </div>
4795       <div class="date">
4796         23rd January 2011
4797       </div>
4798       <div class="body">
4799         <p>In the
4800 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
4801 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
4802 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
4803 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
4804 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
4805 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
4806 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
4807 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
4808 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
4809 one of my machines like this:</p>
4810
4811 <pre>
4812 loaded modules:
4813 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
4814 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
4815 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
4816 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
4817 10de:03ec pata_amd
4818 10de:03f6 sata_nv
4819 1022:1103 k8temp
4820 109e:036e bttv
4821 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
4822 11ab:4364 sky2
4823 </pre>
4824
4825 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
4826 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
4827
4828 <pre>
4829 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
4830     echo loaded pci modules:
4831     (
4832         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
4833         for address in * ; do
4834             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4835                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4836                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4837                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4838                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
4839                     echo "$id $module"
4840                 fi
4841             fi
4842         done
4843     )
4844     echo
4845 fi
4846 </pre>
4847
4848 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
4849 mappings:</p>
4850
4851 <pre>
4852 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
4853     echo loaded usb modules:
4854     (
4855         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
4856         for address in * ; do
4857             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4858                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4859                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4860                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
4861                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
4862                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
4863                         echo "$id $module"
4864                     fi
4865                 fi
4866             fi
4867         done
4868     )
4869     echo
4870 fi
4871 </pre>
4872
4873 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
4874 well.</p>
4875
4876       </div>
4877       <div class="tags">
4878
4879
4880         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>.
4881
4882
4883       </div>
4884     </div>
4885     <div class="padding"></div>
4886
4887     <div class="entry">
4888       <div class="title">
4889         <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>
4890       </div>
4891       <div class="date">
4892         16th January 2011
4893       </div>
4894       <div class="body">
4895         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
4896 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
4897 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
4898 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
4899 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
4900 the Wikipedia article on
4901 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
4902 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
4903 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
4904 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
4905 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
4906 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
4907 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
4908 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
4909 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
4910 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
4911 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
4912 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
4913
4914 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
4915 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
4916 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
4917 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
4918 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
4919 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
4920 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
4921 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
4922 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
4923 from last week</a>.</p>
4924
4925 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
4926 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
4927 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
4928 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
4929 was without royalties and license terms, check out
4930 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
4931 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
4932
4933 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
4934 available from
4935 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
4936 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
4937 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
4938
4939 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
4940 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
4941 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
4942 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
4943
4944       </div>
4945       <div class="tags">
4946
4947
4948         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>.
4949
4950
4951       </div>
4952     </div>
4953     <div class="padding"></div>
4954
4955     <div class="entry">
4956       <div class="title">
4957         <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>
4958       </div>
4959       <div class="date">
4960         12th January 2011
4961       </div>
4962       <div class="body">
4963         <p>Today I discovered
4964 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
4965 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
4966 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
4967 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
4968 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
4969 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
4970 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
4971 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
4972 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
4973 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
4974 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
4975 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
4976 on the Google announcement is available from
4977 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
4978 A good read. :)</p>
4979
4980 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
4981 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
4982 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
4983 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
4984 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
4985 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
4986 browsers support H.264, and others support
4987 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
4988 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
4989 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
4990 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
4991 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
4992 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
4993 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
4994 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
4995
4996 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
4997 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
4998 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
4999 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
5000 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
5001 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
5002 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
5003
5004 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
5005 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
5006 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
5007 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
5008 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
5009 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
5010 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
5011
5012 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
5013 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
5014 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
5015 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
5016 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
5017 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
5018 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
5019
5020 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
5021 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
5022 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
5023 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
5024 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
5025 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
5026 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
5027 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
5028 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
5029 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
5030 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
5031 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
5032 I guess time will tell.</p>
5033
5034 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
5035 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
5036 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
5037
5038       </div>
5039       <div class="tags">
5040
5041
5042         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>.
5043
5044
5045       </div>
5046     </div>
5047     <div class="padding"></div>
5048
5049     <div class="entry">
5050       <div class="title">
5051         <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>
5052       </div>
5053       <div class="date">
5054         30th December 2010
5055       </div>
5056       <div class="body">
5057         <p>After trying to
5058 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
5059 Ogg Theora</a> to
5060 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
5061 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
5062 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
5063 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
5064 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
5065 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
5066 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
5067
5068 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
5069 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
5070 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
5071 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
5072 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
5073 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
5074 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
5075
5076 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
5077 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
5078
5079       </div>
5080       <div class="tags">
5081
5082
5083         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>.
5084
5085
5086       </div>
5087     </div>
5088     <div class="padding"></div>
5089
5090     <div class="entry">
5091       <div class="title">
5092         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
5093       </div>
5094       <div class="date">
5095         27th December 2010
5096       </div>
5097       <div class="body">
5098         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
5099 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
5100 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
5101 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
5102 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
5103 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
5104 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
5105 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
5106
5107 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
5108 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
5109 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
5110 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
5111 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
5112 page</a>.</p>
5113
5114 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
5115 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
5116 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
5117 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
5118 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
5119 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
5120 specification on equal terms.</p>
5121
5122 <blockquote>
5123
5124 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
5125 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
5126 open standard:</p>
5127
5128 <ul>
5129
5130 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
5131 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
5132 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
5133 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
5134
5135 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
5136 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
5137 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
5138 nominal fee.</li>
5139
5140 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
5141 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
5142 free basis.</li>
5143
5144 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
5145
5146 </ul>
5147 </blockquote>
5148
5149 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
5150 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
5151 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
5152 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
5153 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
5154 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
5155 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
5156
5157 <blockquote>
5158
5159 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
5160
5161 <ol>
5162
5163 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
5164 tilgængelig.</li>
5165
5166 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
5167 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
5168
5169 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
5170 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
5171
5172 </ol>
5173
5174 </blockquote>
5175
5176 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
5177 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
5178
5179 <blockquote>
5180
5181 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
5182
5183 <ol>
5184
5185 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
5186 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
5187
5188 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
5189 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
5190 Standard themselves;</li>
5191
5192 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
5193 any party or in any business model;</li>
5194
5195 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
5196 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
5197 parties;</li>
5198
5199 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
5200 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
5201 parties.</li>
5202
5203 </ol>
5204
5205 </blockquote>
5206
5207 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
5208 its
5209 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
5210 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
5211
5212 <blockquote>
5213 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
5214
5215 <ul>
5216
5217 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
5218   democratic:
5219
5220          <ul>
5221
5222          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
5223             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
5224             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
5225             and managed.</li>
5226
5227          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
5228             method, can be changed through input from all
5229             participants.</li>
5230
5231          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
5232             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
5233
5234          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
5235             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
5236
5237          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
5238             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
5239             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
5240
5241          </ul>
5242
5243 </li>
5244
5245 </ul>
5246
5247 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
5248 <ul>
5249
5250 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
5251   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
5252   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
5253   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
5254   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
5255
5256 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
5257   a technical or economic barriers</li>
5258
5259 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
5260   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
5261   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
5262   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
5263   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
5264   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
5265   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
5266   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
5267   intended to function.</li>
5268
5269 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
5270   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
5271   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
5272
5273 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
5274   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
5275   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
5276   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
5277   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
5278   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
5279   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
5280   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
5281
5282       <ul>
5283
5284       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
5285         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
5286         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
5287
5288       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
5289         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
5290         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
5291         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
5292
5293       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
5294         licensor</li>
5295
5296       </ul>
5297 </li>
5298
5299 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
5300   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
5301   or restricted licensing terms</li>
5302
5303 </ul>
5304
5305 </blockquote>
5306
5307 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
5308 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
5309 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
5310 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
5311 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
5312 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
5313 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
5314 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
5315 Standards.</p>
5316
5317       </div>
5318       <div class="tags">
5319
5320
5321         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>.
5322
5323
5324       </div>
5325     </div>
5326     <div class="padding"></div>
5327
5328     <div class="entry">
5329       <div class="title">
5330         <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>
5331       </div>
5332       <div class="date">
5333         25th December 2010
5334       </div>
5335       <div class="body">
5336         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
5337 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
5338
5339 <blockquote>
5340
5341 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
5342 as follows:</p>
5343
5344 <ol>
5345
5346 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
5347 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
5348 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
5349
5350 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
5351 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
5352 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
5353 parties.</li>
5354
5355 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
5356 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
5357 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
5358
5359 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
5360 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
5361
5362 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
5363
5364 </ol>
5365
5366 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
5367 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
5368 products based on the standard.</p>
5369 </blockquote>
5370
5371 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
5372 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
5373 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
5374 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
5375 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
5376 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
5377 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
5378 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
5379
5380 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
5381
5382 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
5383 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
5384 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
5385 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
5386 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
5387 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
5388 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
5389 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
5390 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
5391 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
5392 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
5393 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
5394 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
5395 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
5396
5397 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
5398
5399 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
5400 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
5401 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
5402 documentation indicating this.</p>
5403
5404 <p>According to
5405 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
5406 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
5407 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
5408 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
5409 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
5410 report is correct.</p>
5411
5412 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
5413
5414 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
5415 container format</a> and both the
5416 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
5417 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
5418 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
5419
5420 <blockquote>
5421
5422 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
5423 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
5424 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
5425 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
5426 specification compliance.
5427
5428 </blockquote>
5429
5430 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
5431 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
5432 this is the term:<p>
5433
5434 <blockquote>
5435
5436 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
5437 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
5438 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
5439 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
5440 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
5441 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
5442 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
5443 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
5444 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
5445 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
5446 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
5447 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
5448
5449 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
5450 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
5451 </blockquote>
5452
5453 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
5454 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
5455 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
5456 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
5457 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
5458
5459 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
5460
5461 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
5462 Theora format.
5463 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
5464 and
5465 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
5466 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
5467 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
5468 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
5469 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
5470 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
5471 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
5472 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
5473
5474 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
5475
5476 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
5477
5478 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
5479
5480 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
5481 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
5482 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
5483 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
5484 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
5485 this.</p>
5486
5487 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
5488 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
5489
5490       </div>
5491       <div class="tags">
5492
5493
5494         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>.
5495
5496
5497       </div>
5498     </div>
5499     <div class="padding"></div>
5500
5501     <div class="entry">
5502       <div class="title">
5503         <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>
5504       </div>
5505       <div class="date">
5506         25th December 2010
5507       </div>
5508       <div class="body">
5509         <p>A few days ago
5510 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
5511 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
5512 2.0 of
5513 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
5514 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
5515 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
5516 Nothing very surprising there, given
5517 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
5518 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
5519 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
5520 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
5521 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
5522 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
5523 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
5524 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
5525 standard definition from its content.</p>
5526
5527 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
5528 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
5529 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
5530 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
5531 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
5532 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
5533 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
5534 background information about that story is available in
5535 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
5536 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
5537
5538 <blockquote>
5539 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
5540 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
5541 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
5542
5543 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
5544
5545 <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>
5546
5547 <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>
5548
5549 <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>
5550
5551 <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>
5552
5553 <p>
5554 <ul>
5555 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
5556 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
5557 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
5558 </ul>
5559 </p>
5560
5561 <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>
5562
5563 <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>
5564
5565 <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>
5566
5567 <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>
5568
5569 <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>
5570
5571
5572 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
5573 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
5574 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
5575 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
5576 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
5577 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
5578
5579 </p>
5580
5581 <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>
5582
5583 <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>
5584
5585 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
5586
5587 <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>
5588
5589 <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>
5590
5591 <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>
5592
5593 <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>
5594
5595 <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>
5596
5597 <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>
5598
5599 <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>
5600
5601 <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>
5602
5603 <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>
5604
5605 <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>
5606
5607 <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>
5608
5609 <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>
5610
5611 <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>
5612
5613 <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>
5614
5615 <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>
5616
5617 <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>
5618
5619 <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>
5620
5621 <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>
5622
5623 <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>
5624
5625 <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>
5626
5627 <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>
5628
5629 <p>On security:</p>
5630
5631 <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>
5632
5633 <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>
5634
5635 <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>
5636
5637 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
5638
5639 <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>
5640
5641 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
5642
5643 <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>
5644
5645 <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>
5646
5647 <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>
5648
5649 <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>
5650
5651 <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>
5652
5653 <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>
5654
5655 <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>
5656
5657 <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>
5658
5659 <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>
5660
5661 <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>
5662
5663 <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>
5664
5665 <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>
5666
5667 <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>
5668
5669 <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>
5670
5671 <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>
5672
5673 <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>
5674
5675 <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>
5676
5677 <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>
5678
5679 <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>
5680
5681 <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>
5682
5683 <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>
5684
5685 <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>
5686
5687 <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>
5688
5689 <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>
5690
5691 <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>
5692
5693 <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>
5694
5695 <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>
5696
5697 <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>
5698
5699 <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>
5700
5701 <p>Cordially,<br>
5702 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
5703 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
5704 </blockquote>
5705
5706       </div>
5707       <div class="tags">
5708
5709
5710         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>.
5711
5712
5713       </div>
5714     </div>
5715     <div class="padding"></div>
5716
5717     <div class="entry">
5718       <div class="title">
5719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
5720       </div>
5721       <div class="date">
5722         25th December 2010
5723       </div>
5724       <div class="body">
5725         <p>Half a year ago I
5726 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
5727 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
5728 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
5729 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
5730
5731 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
5732 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
5733 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
5734 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
5735 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
5736 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
5737 got such a great test tool available.</p>
5738
5739       </div>
5740       <div class="tags">
5741
5742
5743         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>.
5744
5745
5746       </div>
5747     </div>
5748     <div class="padding"></div>
5749
5750     <div class="entry">
5751       <div class="title">
5752         <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>
5753       </div>
5754       <div class="date">
5755         22nd December 2010
5756       </div>
5757       <div class="body">
5758         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
5759 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
5760 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
5761 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5762 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
5763 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
5764 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5765 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5766 university.</p>
5767
5768 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5769 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
5770 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5771 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
5772 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5773 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5774 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5775 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
5776
5777 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
5778 I perform on a new model.</p>
5779
5780 <ul>
5781
5782 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5783 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
5784 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
5785
5786 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
5787 installation, X.org is working.</li>
5788
5789 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
5790 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5791 reported by the program.</li>
5792
5793 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5794 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
5795 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5796 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
5797 normally test this by playing
5798 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
5799 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
5800
5801 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
5802 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5803
5804 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5805 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5806
5807 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
5808 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
5809
5810 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5811 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
5812 few.</li>
5813
5814 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
5815 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5816 notice this.</li>
5817
5818 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
5819 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5820 resume.</li>
5821
5822 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5823 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5824 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
5825 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5826 not.</li>
5827
5828 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5829 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5830 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5831 existence.</li>
5832
5833 </ul>
5834
5835 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5836 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
5837 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
5838 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5839 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
5840 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
5841 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5842 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
5843
5844       </div>
5845       <div class="tags">
5846
5847
5848         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>.
5849
5850
5851       </div>
5852     </div>
5853     <div class="padding"></div>
5854
5855     <div class="entry">
5856       <div class="title">
5857         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
5858       </div>
5859       <div class="date">
5860         11th December 2010
5861       </div>
5862       <div class="body">
5863         <p>As I continue to explore
5864 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
5865 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5866 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
5867
5868 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5869 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5870 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5871 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5872 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5873 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
5874 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
5875 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
5876 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
5877 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
5878 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
5879 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
5880 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
5881 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5882 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5883 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5884 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
5885 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5886 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
5887 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
5888
5889 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
5890 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
5891 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
5892 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
5893 If the Skolelinux foundation
5894 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
5895 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
5896 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
5897 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
5898 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
5899 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
5900 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
5901 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
5902
5903 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
5904 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
5905 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
5906 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
5907 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
5908 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
5909 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
5910 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
5911 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
5912 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
5913 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
5914 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
5915 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
5916 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
5917 currencies.</p>
5918
5919 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
5920 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
5921 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
5922 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
5923 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
5924 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
5925 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
5926 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
5927 BitCoins.  Check out
5928 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
5929 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
5930 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
5931 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
5932 yet.</p>
5933
5934 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
5935 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
5936 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
5937 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
5938 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
5939
5940       </div>
5941       <div class="tags">
5942
5943
5944         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>.
5945
5946
5947       </div>
5948     </div>
5949     <div class="padding"></div>
5950
5951     <div class="entry">
5952       <div class="title">
5953         <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>
5954       </div>
5955       <div class="date">
5956         10th December 2010
5957       </div>
5958       <div class="body">
5959         <p>With this weeks lawless
5960 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
5961 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
5962 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
5963 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5964 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5965 A blog post from
5966 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
5967 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
5968 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
5969 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
5970 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5971 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5972 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
5973
5974 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
5975 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5976 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5977 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5978 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
5979 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
5980 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5981 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
5982 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
5983 Debian</a> soon.</p>
5984
5985 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5986 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
5987 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
5988 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
5989 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
5990 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5991 you can even get
5992 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
5993 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
5994 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
5995 on the current exchange rates.</p>
5996
5997 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5998 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5999 donations to the address
6000 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
6001
6002       </div>
6003       <div class="tags">
6004
6005
6006         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>.
6007
6008
6009       </div>
6010     </div>
6011     <div class="padding"></div>
6012
6013     <div class="entry">
6014       <div class="title">
6015         <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>
6016       </div>
6017       <div class="date">
6018          9th December 2010
6019       </div>
6020       <div class="body">
6021         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
6022 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
6023 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
6024 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
6025 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
6026 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
6027 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
6028 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
6029 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
6030 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
6031 operational.</p>
6032
6033 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
6034 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
6035 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
6036 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
6037 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
6038 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
6039 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
6040
6041       </div>
6042       <div class="tags">
6043
6044
6045         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>.
6046
6047
6048       </div>
6049     </div>
6050     <div class="padding"></div>
6051
6052     <div class="entry">
6053       <div class="title">
6054         <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>
6055       </div>
6056       <div class="date">
6057         29th November 2010
6058       </div>
6059       <div class="body">
6060         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6061 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
6062 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
6063 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
6064 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
6065 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
6066
6067 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
6068 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
6069 will hold its
6070 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
6071 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
6072 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
6073 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
6074 vote this year.</p>
6075
6076       </div>
6077       <div class="tags">
6078
6079
6080         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>.
6081
6082
6083       </div>
6084     </div>
6085     <div class="padding"></div>
6086
6087     <div class="entry">
6088       <div class="title">
6089         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6090       </div>
6091       <div class="date">
6092         27th November 2010
6093       </div>
6094       <div class="body">
6095         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6096 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6097 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6098 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6099 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6100 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6101 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6102 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6103
6104 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6105 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6106 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6107 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6108 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6109 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6110 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6111 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6112 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6113 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6114 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6115
6116 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6117 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6118 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6119 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6120 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6121 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6122 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6123 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6124 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6125 what is going on.</p>
6126
6127       </div>
6128       <div class="tags">
6129
6130
6131         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>.
6132
6133
6134       </div>
6135     </div>
6136     <div class="padding"></div>
6137
6138     <div class="entry">
6139       <div class="title">
6140         <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>
6141       </div>
6142       <div class="date">
6143         22nd November 2010
6144       </div>
6145       <div class="body">
6146         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6147 upgrade testing of the
6148 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6149 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6150 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6151 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6152
6153 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6154
6155 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6156
6157 <blockquote><p>
6158   apache2.2-bin
6159   aptdaemon
6160   baobab
6161   binfmt-support
6162   browser-plugin-gnash
6163   cheese-common
6164   cli-common
6165   cups-pk-helper
6166   dmz-cursor-theme
6167   empathy
6168   empathy-common
6169   freedesktop-sound-theme
6170   freeglut3
6171   gconf-defaults-service
6172   gdm-themes
6173   gedit-plugins
6174   geoclue
6175   geoclue-hostip
6176   geoclue-localnet
6177   geoclue-manual
6178   geoclue-yahoo
6179   gnash
6180   gnash-common
6181   gnome
6182   gnome-backgrounds
6183   gnome-cards-data
6184   gnome-codec-install
6185   gnome-core
6186   gnome-desktop-environment
6187   gnome-disk-utility
6188   gnome-screenshot
6189   gnome-search-tool
6190   gnome-session-canberra
6191   gnome-system-log
6192   gnome-themes-extras
6193   gnome-themes-more
6194   gnome-user-share
6195   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6196   gstreamer0.10-tools
6197   gtk2-engines
6198   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6199   gtk2-engines-smooth
6200   hamster-applet
6201   libapache2-mod-dnssd
6202   libapr1
6203   libaprutil1
6204   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6205   libaprutil1-ldap
6206   libart2.0-cil
6207   libboost-date-time1.42.0
6208   libboost-python1.42.0
6209   libboost-thread1.42.0
6210   libchamplain-0.4-0
6211   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
6212   libcheese-gtk18
6213   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6214   libcryptui0
6215   libdiscid0
6216   libelf1
6217   libepc-1.0-2
6218   libepc-common
6219   libepc-ui-1.0-2
6220   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6221   libfreerdp0
6222   libgconf2.0-cil
6223   libgdata-common
6224   libgdata7
6225   libgdu-gtk0
6226   libgee2
6227   libgeoclue0
6228   libgexiv2-0
6229   libgif4
6230   libglade2.0-cil
6231   libglib2.0-cil
6232   libgmime2.4-cil
6233   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6234   libgnome2.24-cil
6235   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6236   libgpod-common
6237   libgpod4
6238   libgtk2.0-cil
6239   libgtkglext1
6240   libgtksourceview2.0-common
6241   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6242   libmono-addins0.2-cil
6243   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6244   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6245   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6246   libmono-posix2.0-cil
6247   libmono-security2.0-cil
6248   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6249   libmono-system2.0-cil
6250   libmtp8
6251   libmusicbrainz3-6
6252   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6253   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6254   libopal3.6.8
6255   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
6256   libpt2.6.7
6257   libpython2.6
6258   librpm1
6259   librpmio1
6260   libsdl1.2debian
6261   libsrtp0
6262   libssh-4
6263   libtelepathy-farsight0
6264   libtelepathy-glib0
6265   libtidy-0.99-0
6266   media-player-info
6267   mesa-utils
6268   mono-2.0-gac
6269   mono-gac
6270   mono-runtime
6271   nautilus-sendto
6272   nautilus-sendto-empathy
6273   p7zip-full
6274   pkg-config
6275   python-aptdaemon
6276   python-aptdaemon-gtk
6277   python-axiom
6278   python-beautifulsoup
6279   python-bugbuddy
6280   python-clientform
6281   python-coherence
6282   python-configobj
6283   python-crypto
6284   python-cupshelpers
6285   python-elementtree
6286   python-epsilon
6287   python-evolution
6288   python-feedparser
6289   python-gdata
6290   python-gdbm
6291   python-gst0.10
6292   python-gtkglext1
6293   python-gtksourceview2
6294   python-httplib2
6295   python-louie
6296   python-mako
6297   python-markupsafe
6298   python-mechanize
6299   python-nevow
6300   python-notify
6301   python-opengl
6302   python-openssl
6303   python-pam
6304   python-pkg-resources
6305   python-pyasn1
6306   python-pysqlite2
6307   python-rdflib
6308   python-serial
6309   python-tagpy
6310   python-twisted-bin
6311   python-twisted-conch
6312   python-twisted-core
6313   python-twisted-web
6314   python-utidylib
6315   python-webkit
6316   python-xdg
6317   python-zope.interface
6318   remmina
6319   remmina-plugin-data
6320   remmina-plugin-rdp
6321   remmina-plugin-vnc
6322   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6323   rhythmbox-plugins
6324   rpm-common
6325   rpm2cpio
6326   seahorse-plugins
6327   shotwell
6328   software-center
6329   system-config-printer-udev
6330   telepathy-gabble
6331   telepathy-mission-control-5
6332   telepathy-salut
6333   tomboy
6334   totem
6335   totem-coherence
6336   totem-mozilla
6337   totem-plugins
6338   transmission-common
6339   xdg-user-dirs
6340   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
6341   xserver-xephyr
6342 </p></blockquote>
6343
6344 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6345
6346 <blockquote><p>
6347   cheese
6348   ekiga
6349   eog
6350   epiphany-extensions
6351   evolution-exchange
6352   fast-user-switch-applet
6353   file-roller
6354   gcalctool
6355   gconf-editor
6356   gdm
6357   gedit
6358   gedit-common
6359   gnome-games
6360   gnome-games-data
6361   gnome-nettool
6362   gnome-system-tools
6363   gnome-themes
6364   gnuchess
6365   gucharmap
6366   guile-1.8-libs
6367   libavahi-ui0
6368   libdmx1
6369   libgalago3
6370   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6371   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6372   liblircclient0
6373   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6374   libspeexdsp1
6375   libsvga1
6376   rhythmbox
6377   seahorse
6378   sound-juicer
6379   system-config-printer
6380   totem-common
6381   transmission-gtk
6382   vinagre
6383   vino
6384 </p></blockquote>
6385
6386 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6387
6388 <blockquote><p>
6389   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6390 </p></blockquote>
6391
6392 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6393
6394 <blockquote><p>
6395 [nothing]
6396 </p></blockquote>
6397
6398 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6399
6400 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6401
6402 <blockquote><p>
6403   ksmserver
6404 </p></blockquote>
6405
6406 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6407
6408 <blockquote><p>
6409   kwin
6410   network-manager-kde
6411 </p></blockquote>
6412
6413 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6414
6415 <blockquote><p>
6416   arts
6417   dolphin
6418   freespacenotifier
6419   google-gadgets-gst
6420   google-gadgets-xul
6421   kappfinder
6422   kcalc
6423   kcharselect
6424   kde-core
6425   kde-plasma-desktop
6426   kde-standard
6427   kde-window-manager
6428   kdeartwork
6429   kdeartwork-emoticons
6430   kdeartwork-style
6431   kdeartwork-theme-icon
6432   kdebase
6433   kdebase-apps
6434   kdebase-workspace
6435   kdebase-workspace-bin
6436   kdebase-workspace-data
6437   kdeeject
6438   kdelibs
6439   kdeplasma-addons
6440   kdeutils
6441   kdewallpapers
6442   kdf
6443   kfloppy
6444   kgpg
6445   khelpcenter4
6446   kinfocenter
6447   konq-plugins-l10n
6448   konqueror-nsplugins
6449   kscreensaver
6450   kscreensaver-xsavers
6451   ktimer
6452   kwrite
6453   libgle3
6454   libkde4-ruby1.8
6455   libkonq5
6456   libkonq5-templates
6457   libnetpbm10
6458   libplasma-ruby
6459   libplasma-ruby1.8
6460   libqt4-ruby1.8
6461   marble-data
6462   marble-plugins
6463   netpbm
6464   nuvola-icon-theme
6465   plasma-dataengines-workspace
6466   plasma-desktop
6467   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
6468   plasma-runners-addons
6469   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
6470   plasma-scriptengine-python
6471   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
6472   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
6473   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
6474   plasma-scriptengines
6475   plasma-wallpapers-addons
6476   plasma-widget-folderview
6477   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6478   ruby
6479   sweeper
6480   update-notifier-kde
6481   xscreensaver-data-extra
6482   xscreensaver-gl
6483   xscreensaver-gl-extra
6484   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6485 </p></blockquote>
6486
6487 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6488
6489 <blockquote><p>
6490   ark
6491   google-gadgets-common
6492   google-gadgets-qt
6493   htdig
6494   kate
6495   kdebase-bin
6496   kdebase-data
6497   kdepasswd
6498   kfind
6499   klipper
6500   konq-plugins
6501   konqueror
6502   ksysguard
6503   ksysguardd
6504   libarchive1
6505   libcln6
6506   libeet1
6507   libeina-svn-06
6508   libggadget-1.0-0b
6509   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
6510   libgps19
6511   libkdecorations4
6512   libkephal4
6513   libkonq4
6514   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
6515   libkscreensaver5
6516   libksgrd4
6517   libksignalplotter4
6518   libkunitconversion4
6519   libkwineffects1a
6520   libmarblewidget4
6521   libntrack-qt4-1
6522   libntrack0
6523   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
6524   libplasmaclock4a
6525   libplasmagenericshell4
6526   libprocesscore4a
6527   libprocessui4a
6528   libqalculate5
6529   libqedje0a
6530   libqtruby4shared2
6531   libqzion0a
6532   libruby1.8
6533   libscim8c2a
6534   libsmokekdecore4-3
6535   libsmokekdeui4-3
6536   libsmokekfile3
6537   libsmokekhtml3
6538   libsmokekio3
6539   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
6540   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
6541   libsmokekparts3
6542   libsmokektexteditor3
6543   libsmokekutils3
6544   libsmokenepomuk3
6545   libsmokephonon3
6546   libsmokeplasma3
6547   libsmokeqtcore4-3
6548   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
6549   libsmokeqtgui4-3
6550   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
6551   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
6552   libsmokeqtscript4-3
6553   libsmokeqtsql4-3
6554   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
6555   libsmokeqttest4-3
6556   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
6557   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
6558   libsmokeqtxml4-3
6559   libsmokesolid3
6560   libsmokesoprano3
6561   libtaskmanager4a
6562   libtidy-0.99-0
6563   libweather-ion4a
6564   libxklavier16
6565   libxxf86misc1
6566   okteta
6567   oxygencursors
6568   plasma-dataengines-addons
6569   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
6570   plasma-widget-lancelot
6571   plasma-widgets-addons
6572   plasma-widgets-workspace
6573   polkit-kde-1
6574   ruby1.8
6575   systemsettings
6576   update-notifier-common
6577 </p></blockquote>
6578
6579 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
6580 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
6581 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
6582 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
6583
6584       </div>
6585       <div class="tags">
6586
6587
6588         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>.
6589
6590
6591       </div>
6592     </div>
6593     <div class="padding"></div>
6594
6595     <div class="entry">
6596       <div class="title">
6597         <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>
6598       </div>
6599       <div class="date">
6600         22nd November 2010
6601       </div>
6602       <div class="body">
6603         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
6604 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
6605 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
6606 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
6607 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
6608 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
6609 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
6610 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
6611 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
6612
6613 <p>I found
6614 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
6615 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
6616 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
6617 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
6618 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
6619 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
6620
6621 <pre>
6622 #!/bin/sh
6623
6624 # Based on
6625 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
6626
6627 set -e
6628 set -x
6629
6630 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
6631     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
6632     exit 1
6633 else
6634     host="$1"
6635 fi
6636
6637 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
6638     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
6639     exit 1
6640 fi
6641
6642 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
6643 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6644 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6645 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
6646
6647 img=$host.img
6648 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
6649 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
6650
6651 parted $img mklabel msdos
6652 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
6653 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
6654 parted $img set 1 boot on
6655
6656 modprobe dm-mod
6657 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
6658 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
6659
6660 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
6661 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
6662 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
6663
6664 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
6665 losetup -d /dev/loop0
6666 </pre>
6667
6668 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
6669 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
6670
6671 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
6672 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
6673 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
6674 seem to work just fine.</p>
6675
6676       </div>
6677       <div class="tags">
6678
6679
6680         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>.
6681
6682
6683       </div>
6684     </div>
6685     <div class="padding"></div>
6686
6687     <div class="entry">
6688       <div class="title">
6689         <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>
6690       </div>
6691       <div class="date">
6692         20th November 2010
6693       </div>
6694       <div class="body">
6695         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
6696 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6697 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
6698 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
6699
6700 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
6701 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
6702 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
6703
6704 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6705
6706 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6707
6708 <blockquote><p>
6709   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
6710   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
6711   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
6712   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
6713   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
6714   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
6715   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
6716   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
6717   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
6718   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
6719   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6720   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6721   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
6722   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
6723   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
6724   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
6725   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6726   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
6727   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6728   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
6729   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
6730   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6731   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
6732   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
6733   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
6734   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6735   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6736   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
6737   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6738   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
6739   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
6740   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6741   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
6742   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
6743   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
6744   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
6745   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
6746   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
6747   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
6748   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
6749   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
6750   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
6751   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
6752   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
6753   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
6754   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
6755   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
6756   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
6757   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
6758   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
6759   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
6760   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
6761   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6762   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
6763   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
6764   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
6765   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
6766   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
6767   zip
6768 </p></blockquote>
6769
6770 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
6771
6772 <blockquote><p>
6773   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
6774   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
6775   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
6776   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
6777   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
6778   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
6779   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
6780   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
6781   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
6782   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
6783   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
6784   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6785   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6786   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6787   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6788   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
6789   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6790   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
6791   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
6792   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
6793   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
6794   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
6795   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
6796   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
6797   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
6798   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
6799   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
6800   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
6801   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
6802 </p></blockquote>
6803
6804 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6805
6806 <blockquote><p>
6807   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6808 </p></blockquote>
6809
6810 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6811
6812 <blockquote><p>
6813 [nothing]
6814 </p></blockquote>
6815
6816 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6817
6818 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6819
6820 <blockquote><p>
6821   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
6822   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6823   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
6824   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
6825   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
6826   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
6827   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6828   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
6829   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
6830   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6831   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
6832   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
6833   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
6834   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
6835   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
6836   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
6837   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
6838   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
6839   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
6840   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
6841   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
6842   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
6843   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
6844   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
6845   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
6846   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
6847   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
6848   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
6849   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
6850   ttf-sazanami-gothic
6851 </p></blockquote>
6852
6853 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6854
6855 <blockquote><p>
6856   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
6857   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
6858   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
6859   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
6860   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
6861   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
6862   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
6863   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
6864   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
6865   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
6866   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
6867   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
6868   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
6869   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
6870   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6871   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6872   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
6873   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
6874   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6875   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
6876   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6877   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
6878   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6879   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6880   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
6881   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
6882   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
6883   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
6884   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
6885   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
6886   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
6887   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
6888   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
6889 </p></blockquote>
6890
6891 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6892
6893 <blockquote><p>
6894   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
6895   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
6896   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
6897   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
6898   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6899   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
6900   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6901 </p></blockquote>
6902
6903 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6904
6905 <blockquote><p>
6906   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
6907 </p></blockquote>
6908
6909       </div>
6910       <div class="tags">
6911
6912
6913         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>.
6914
6915
6916       </div>
6917     </div>
6918     <div class="padding"></div>
6919
6920     <div class="entry">
6921       <div class="title">
6922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
6923       </div>
6924       <div class="date">
6925         20th November 2010
6926       </div>
6927       <div class="body">
6928         <p>Answering
6929 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
6930 call from the Gnash project</a> for
6931 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
6932 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
6933 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
6934 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
6935 releases out more often.</p>
6936
6937 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
6938 I have considered setting up a <a
6939 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
6940 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
6941 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
6942 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
6943 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
6944 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
6945 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
6946 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
6947 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
6948 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
6949 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
6950 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
6951
6952       </div>
6953       <div class="tags">
6954
6955
6956         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>.
6957
6958
6959       </div>
6960     </div>
6961     <div class="padding"></div>
6962
6963     <div class="entry">
6964       <div class="title">
6965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
6966       </div>
6967       <div class="date">
6968          9th November 2010
6969       </div>
6970       <div class="body">
6971         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
6972
6973 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
6974 3D linked in from
6975 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
6976 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
6977
6978       </div>
6979       <div class="tags">
6980
6981
6982         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>.
6983
6984
6985       </div>
6986     </div>
6987     <div class="padding"></div>
6988
6989     <div class="entry">
6990       <div class="title">
6991         <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>
6992       </div>
6993       <div class="date">
6994          7th November 2010
6995       </div>
6996       <div class="body">
6997         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
6998 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
6999 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
7000 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
7001 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
7002 working using this DVD.</p>
7003
7004 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
7005 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
7006 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
7007 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
7008 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
7009 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
7010 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
7011
7012 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
7013 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
7014 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
7015 Debian archive.</p>
7016
7017 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
7018 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
7019 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
7020 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
7021 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
7022 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
7023 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
7024 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
7025 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
7026 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
7027 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
7028 free X driver should work.</p>
7029
7030 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
7031 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
7032 DVD more useful again.</p>
7033
7034       </div>
7035       <div class="tags">
7036
7037
7038         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>.
7039
7040
7041       </div>
7042     </div>
7043     <div class="padding"></div>
7044
7045     <div class="entry">
7046       <div class="title">
7047         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
7048       </div>
7049       <div class="date">
7050         24th October 2010
7051       </div>
7052       <div class="body">
7053         <p>Some updates.</p>
7054
7055 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
7056 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
7057 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
7058 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7059 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
7060 :)</p>
7061
7062 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7063 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7064 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7065 It is called
7066 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
7067 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
7068 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7069 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7070 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7071 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
7072
7073 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
7074 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7075 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
7076 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7077 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
7078 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7079 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7080 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
7081 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7082 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
7083
7084       </div>
7085       <div class="tags">
7086
7087
7088         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>.
7089
7090
7091       </div>
7092     </div>
7093     <div class="padding"></div>
7094
7095     <div class="entry">
7096       <div class="title">
7097         <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>
7098       </div>
7099       <div class="date">
7100         19th October 2010
7101       </div>
7102       <div class="body">
7103         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
7104 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
7105 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
7106 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
7107 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
7108 AVM2 flash files.</p>
7109
7110 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
7111 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
7112 following text:</P>
7113
7114 <p><blockquote>
7115
7116   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
7117   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
7118
7119   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
7120
7121   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
7122
7123   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
7124   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
7125   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
7126   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
7127   days. The project web page is available from
7128   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
7129   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
7130   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
7131
7132   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
7133   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
7134   to get this to happen.</p>
7135
7136   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
7137   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
7138
7139 </blockquote></p>
7140
7141 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
7142 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
7143 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
7144 :)</p>
7145
7146       </div>
7147       <div class="tags">
7148
7149
7150         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>.
7151
7152
7153       </div>
7154     </div>
7155     <div class="padding"></div>
7156
7157     <div class="entry">
7158       <div class="title">
7159         <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>
7160       </div>
7161       <div class="date">
7162          9th October 2010
7163       </div>
7164       <div class="body">
7165         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
7166 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
7167 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
7168 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
7169 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
7170 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
7171 robots.</p>
7172
7173 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
7174 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
7175 a few less important features too.</p>
7176
7177 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
7178 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
7179 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
7180 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
7181
7182 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
7183 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
7184 source or binary package:</p>
7185
7186 <p><ul>
7187 <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>
7188 <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>
7189 <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>
7190 </ul></p>
7191
7192 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
7193 please let me know.</p>
7194
7195       </div>
7196       <div class="tags">
7197
7198
7199         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>.
7200
7201
7202       </div>
7203     </div>
7204     <div class="padding"></div>
7205
7206     <div class="entry">
7207       <div class="title">
7208         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
7209       </div>
7210       <div class="date">
7211          3rd October 2010
7212       </div>
7213       <div class="body">
7214         <p><ul>
7215
7216 <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
7217 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
7218
7219 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
7220 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
7221 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
7222
7223 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
7224 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
7225 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
7226 simple setup.
7227
7228 </ul></p>
7229
7230       </div>
7231       <div class="tags">
7232
7233
7234         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>.
7235
7236
7237       </div>
7238     </div>
7239     <div class="padding"></div>
7240
7241     <div class="entry">
7242       <div class="title">
7243         <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>
7244       </div>
7245       <div class="date">
7246          9th September 2010
7247       </div>
7248       <div class="body">
7249         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
7250 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
7251 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
7252 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
7253 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
7254 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
7255 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
7256 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
7257 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
7258
7259 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
7260 written:</p>
7261
7262 <blockquote>
7263 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
7264 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
7265 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
7266 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
7267 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
7268
7269 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
7270 standard.</p>
7271 </blockquote>
7272
7273 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
7274 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
7275 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
7276 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
7277
7278 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
7279 read
7280 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
7281 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
7282 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
7283 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
7284 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
7285 the issue.  The solution is to support the
7286 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
7287 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
7288 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
7289
7290       </div>
7291       <div class="tags">
7292
7293
7294         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>.
7295
7296
7297       </div>
7298     </div>
7299     <div class="padding"></div>
7300
7301     <div class="entry">
7302       <div class="title">
7303         <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>
7304       </div>
7305       <div class="date">
7306          4th September 2010
7307       </div>
7308       <div class="body">
7309         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
7310 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7311 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
7312 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
7313 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
7314 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7315 installed.</p>
7316
7317 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7318 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7319 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7320 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7321 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7322 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
7323 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7324 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7325 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7326
7327 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7328 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7329 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
7330 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7331 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7332 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7333 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7334 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7335 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7336 pages they want to visit.</p>
7337
7338 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7339 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7340 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7341 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7342 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7343 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7344 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7345 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7346 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7347 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7348 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7349
7350       </div>
7351       <div class="tags">
7352
7353
7354         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>.
7355
7356
7357       </div>
7358     </div>
7359     <div class="padding"></div>
7360
7361     <div class="entry">
7362       <div class="title">
7363         <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>
7364       </div>
7365       <div class="date">
7366          1st September 2010
7367       </div>
7368       <div class="body">
7369         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
7370 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
7371 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
7372 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
7373 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
7374 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
7375 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
7376 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
7377 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
7378 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
7379 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
7380 drive around.</p>
7381
7382 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
7383 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
7384
7385 <p><pre>
7386 use Spykee;
7387 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
7388 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
7389 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
7390 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
7391 $spykee->left();
7392 sleep 2;
7393 $spykee->right();
7394 sleep 2;
7395 $spykee->forward();
7396 sleep 2;
7397 $spykee->back();
7398 sleep 2;
7399 $spykee->stop();
7400 </pre></p>
7401
7402 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
7403 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
7404 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
7405 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
7406 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
7407 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
7408 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
7409 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
7410 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
7411 going. :).</p>
7412
7413 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
7414 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
7415 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
7416 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
7417
7418       </div>
7419       <div class="tags">
7420
7421
7422         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>.
7423
7424
7425       </div>
7426     </div>
7427     <div class="padding"></div>
7428
7429     <div class="entry">
7430       <div class="title">
7431         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
7432       </div>
7433       <div class="date">
7434         30th August 2010
7435       </div>
7436       <div class="body">
7437         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
7438 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
7439 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
7440 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
7441 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
7442 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
7443 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
7444
7445 <pre>
7446 % ln foo bar
7447 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
7448 %
7449 </pre>
7450
7451 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
7452 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
7453 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
7454 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
7455 nevertheless. :)</p>
7456
7457 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
7458 git from
7459 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
7460
7461       </div>
7462       <div class="tags">
7463
7464
7465         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>.
7466
7467
7468       </div>
7469     </div>
7470     <div class="padding"></div>
7471
7472     <div class="entry">
7473       <div class="title">
7474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
7475       </div>
7476       <div class="date">
7477         26th August 2010
7478       </div>
7479       <div class="body">
7480         <p>My file system sematics program
7481 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
7482 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
7483 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
7484 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
7485 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
7486 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
7487 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
7488 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
7489 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
7490 script:</p>
7491
7492 <pre>
7493 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
7494   mode_t retval = 0;
7495   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
7496   if (-1 != fd) {
7497     unlink(name);
7498     struct stat statbuf;
7499     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
7500       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
7501     }
7502     close(fd);
7503   }
7504   return retval;
7505 }
7506
7507 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
7508 int test_umask(void) {
7509   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
7510
7511   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
7512   mode_t newmode;
7513   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
7514     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
7515            newmode);
7516   }
7517   umask(007);
7518   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
7519     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
7520            newmode);
7521   }
7522
7523   umask (orig_umask);
7524   return 0;
7525 }
7526
7527 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
7528   [...]
7529   test_umask();
7530   return 0;
7531 }
7532 </pre>
7533
7534 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
7535
7536 <pre>
7537 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7538 info: testing symlink creation
7539 info: testing subdirectory creation
7540 info: testing fcntl locking
7541   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7542   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7543   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
7544   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7545   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7546   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
7547 info: testing umask effect on file creation
7548 </pre>
7549
7550 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
7551 result:</p>
7552
7553 <pre>
7554 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7555 info: testing symlink creation
7556 info: testing subdirectory creation
7557 info: testing fcntl locking
7558   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7559   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7560   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
7561   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7562   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7563   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
7564 info: testing umask effect on file creation
7565   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
7566   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
7567 </pre>
7568
7569 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
7570 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
7571 directory.</p>
7572
7573 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
7574 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
7575
7576 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
7577 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
7578 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
7579
7580       </div>
7581       <div class="tags">
7582
7583
7584         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>.
7585
7586
7587       </div>
7588     </div>
7589     <div class="padding"></div>
7590
7591     <div class="entry">
7592       <div class="title">
7593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
7594       </div>
7595       <div class="date">
7596         15th August 2010
7597       </div>
7598       <div class="body">
7599         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
7600 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
7601 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
7602 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
7603 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
7604 long time.</p>
7605
7606       </div>
7607       <div class="tags">
7608
7609
7610         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>.
7611
7612
7613       </div>
7614     </div>
7615     <div class="padding"></div>
7616
7617     <div class="entry">
7618       <div class="title">
7619         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
7620       </div>
7621       <div class="date">
7622          9th August 2010
7623       </div>
7624       <div class="body">
7625         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
7626 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
7627 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
7628 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
7629 generated configuration.</p>
7630
7631 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
7632 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
7633 without any manual configuration.</p>
7634
7635 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
7636 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
7637 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
7638 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
7639 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
7640 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
7641 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
7642 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
7643 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
7644 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
7645 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
7646 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
7647 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
7648 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
7649 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
7650 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
7651 use.</p>
7652
7653 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
7654 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
7655 working properly out of the box:</p>
7656
7657 <ul>
7658 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
7659 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
7660 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
7661 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
7662 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
7663 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
7664 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
7665 </ul>
7666
7667 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
7668
7669 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
7670 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
7671 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
7672 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
7673 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
7674
7675 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
7676 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
7677 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
7678 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
7679 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
7680 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
7681 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
7682 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
7683
7684 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
7685 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
7686 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
7687 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
7688 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
7689 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
7690 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
7691 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
7692 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
7693 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
7694 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
7695 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
7696 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
7697 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
7698 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
7699 current DNS domain is used.</p>
7700
7701 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
7702 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
7703 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
7704 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
7705 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
7706 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
7707 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
7708 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
7709 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
7710 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
7711 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
7712 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
7713 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
7714
7715 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
7716 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
7717 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
7718 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
7719 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
7720 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
7721 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
7722 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
7723 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
7724 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
7725 do for now. :)</p>
7726
7727 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
7728 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
7729 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
7730 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
7731 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
7732 yet.</p>
7733
7734 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
7735 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7736
7737 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
7738 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
7739 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
7740 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</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/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
7756       </div>
7757       <div class="date">
7758          8th August 2010
7759       </div>
7760       <div class="body">
7761         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
7762 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
7763 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
7764 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
7765 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
7766 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
7767 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
7768
7769 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
7770 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
7771 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
7772 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
7773 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
7774 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
7775 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
7776
7777 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
7778 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
7779 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
7780 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
7781 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
7782
7783 <pre>
7784 /*
7785  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
7786  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
7787  * directory.
7788  * License: GPL v2 or later
7789  *
7790  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
7791  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
7792 */
7793
7794 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
7795 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
7796 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
7797
7798 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
7799
7800 #include &lt;errno.h>
7801 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
7802 #include &lt;stdio.h>
7803 #include &lt;string.h>
7804 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
7805 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
7806 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
7807 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
7808 #include &lt;unistd.h>
7809
7810 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
7811 /*
7812  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
7813  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
7814  * below.
7815  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
7816  */
7817 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
7818 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
7819   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
7820 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
7821   char *zErrMsg;
7822   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
7823   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
7824   unlink(name);
7825   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
7826   if( rc ){
7827     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
7828     sqlite3_close(db);
7829     return -1;
7830   }
7831
7832   /* create tables */
7833   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
7834   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
7835     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
7836     sqlite3_close(db);
7837     return -1;
7838   }
7839   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
7840   sqlite3_close(db);
7841   return 0;
7842 }
7843 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
7844
7845 /*
7846  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
7847  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
7848  * done in the sqlite3 library.
7849  * See also
7850  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
7851  * POSIX specification
7852  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
7853  */
7854 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
7855   struct flock fl;
7856   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
7857   unlink(name);
7858   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
7859   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
7860
7861   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
7862   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
7863   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
7864   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7865   fl.l_len    = 1;
7866   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
7867   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7868
7869   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
7870   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
7871   fl.l_len    = 510;
7872   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
7873   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7874
7875   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
7876   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7877   fl.l_len    = 1;
7878   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
7879   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7880
7881   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
7882   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7883   fl.l_len    = 1;
7884   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
7885   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7886
7887   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
7888   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
7889   fl.l_len    = 510;
7890   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7891
7892   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
7893   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
7894   fl.l_len    = 2;
7895   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
7896   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
7897
7898   close(fd);
7899   return 0;
7900 }
7901
7902 /*
7903  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
7904  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
7905  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
7906  * slowing down file operations.
7907  */
7908 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
7909 #define LEVELS 5
7910   char *path = strdup("test");
7911   char *dirs[LEVELS];
7912   int level;
7913   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
7914   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
7915     char *newpath = NULL;
7916     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
7917       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
7918              path, strerror(errno));
7919       break;
7920     }
7921     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
7922     free(path);
7923     path = newpath;
7924   }
7925   return 0;
7926 }
7927
7928 /*
7929  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
7930  * KDE.
7931  */
7932 int test_symlinks(void) {
7933   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
7934   unlink("symlink");
7935   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
7936     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
7937   return 0;
7938 }
7939
7940 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
7941   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
7942   test_symlinks();
7943   test_subdirectory_creation();
7944 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
7945   test_sqlite_open();
7946 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
7947   test_gcompris_locking();
7948   return 0;
7949 }
7950 </pre>
7951
7952 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
7953 this:</p>
7954
7955 <pre>
7956 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
7957 info: testing symlink creation
7958 info: testing subdirectory creation
7959 info: sqlite worked
7960 info: testing fcntl locking
7961   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7962   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7963   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
7964   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
7965   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
7966   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
7967 </pre>
7968
7969 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
7970 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
7971 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
7972 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
7973 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
7974 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
7975 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
7976 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
7977
7978 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
7979 it. :)</p>
7980
7981 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
7982 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
7983 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
7984
7985       </div>
7986       <div class="tags">
7987
7988
7989         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>.
7990
7991
7992       </div>
7993     </div>
7994     <div class="padding"></div>
7995
7996     <div class="entry">
7997       <div class="title">
7998         <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>
7999       </div>
8000       <div class="date">
8001          7th August 2010
8002       </div>
8003       <div class="body">
8004         <p>A few days ago, I
8005 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
8006 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
8007 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
8008 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
8009 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
8010 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
8011 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
8012 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
8013 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
8014
8015 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
8016 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
8017 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
8018 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
8019 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
8020 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
8021 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
8022 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
8023 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
8024 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
8025 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
8026 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
8027 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
8028 gave it a IP address.</p>
8029
8030 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
8031 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
8032 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
8033 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
8034 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
8035 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
8036 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
8037 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
8038
8039 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
8040 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
8041 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
8042 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
8043 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
8044 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
8045
8046 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
8047 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
8048 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
8049 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
8050 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
8051 with UID and GID values.</p>
8052
8053 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
8054 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8055
8056       </div>
8057       <div class="tags">
8058
8059
8060         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>.
8061
8062
8063       </div>
8064     </div>
8065     <div class="padding"></div>
8066
8067     <div class="entry">
8068       <div class="title">
8069         <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>
8070       </div>
8071       <div class="date">
8072          3rd August 2010
8073       </div>
8074       <div class="body">
8075         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
8076 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
8077 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
8078 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
8079 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
8080 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
8081 servers.</p>
8082
8083 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
8084 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
8085 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
8086 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
8087 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
8088 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
8089 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
8090 .uio.no.</p>
8091
8092 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
8093 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
8094 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
8095 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
8096 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
8097 university servers.</p>
8098
8099 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
8100 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
8101 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
8102 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
8103 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
8104 uses.</p>
8105
8106       </div>
8107       <div class="tags">
8108
8109
8110         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>.
8111
8112
8113       </div>
8114     </div>
8115     <div class="padding"></div>
8116
8117     <div class="entry">
8118       <div class="title">
8119         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
8120       </div>
8121       <div class="date">
8122         27th July 2010
8123       </div>
8124       <div class="body">
8125         <p>I discovered this while doing
8126 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
8127 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
8128 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
8129 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
8130 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
8131
8132 <p>An example is from todays
8133 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
8134 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
8135 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
8136 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
8137 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
8138 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
8139 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
8140
8141 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
8142
8143 <blockquote><pre>
8144 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
8145  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
8146   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
8147 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
8148  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
8149 </pre></blockquote>
8150
8151 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
8152 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
8153 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
8154 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
8155 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
8156 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
8157 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
8158 of dependency loops.</p>
8159
8160 <p>Thanks to
8161 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
8162 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
8163 dependencies
8164 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
8165 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
8166
8167 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
8168 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
8169 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
8170 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
8171 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
8172 it.</p>
8173
8174       </div>
8175       <div class="tags">
8176
8177
8178         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>.
8179
8180
8181       </div>
8182     </div>
8183     <div class="padding"></div>
8184
8185     <div class="entry">
8186       <div class="title">
8187         <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>
8188       </div>
8189       <div class="date">
8190         27th July 2010
8191       </div>
8192       <div class="body">
8193         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
8194 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
8195 completed.</p>
8196
8197 <blockquote>
8198 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
8199 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
8200 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
8201 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
8202 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
8203 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
8204 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
8205 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
8206
8207 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
8208 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
8209 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
8210
8211 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
8212 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
8213 much.</p>
8214
8215 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
8216
8217 <ul>
8218 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
8219 <ul>
8220   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
8221          combination with some new artwork
8222   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
8223   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
8224   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
8225   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
8226   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
8227   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
8228   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
8229   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
8230   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
8231 </ul></li>
8232 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
8233     Enabled for:
8234 <ul>
8235   <li>PAM
8236   <li>LDAP
8237   <li>IMAP
8238   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
8239 </ul>
8240 </li>
8241 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
8242 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
8243     fetched from LDAP.</li>
8244 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
8245 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
8246 </ul>
8247 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
8248
8249 <ul>
8250 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
8251     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
8252     for testing.</li>
8253 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
8254     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
8255     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
8256 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
8257 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
8258 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
8259 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
8260     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
8261 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
8262     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
8263     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
8264 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
8265     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
8266     and help out with translations.</li>
8267 </ul>
8268
8269 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
8270
8271 <ul>
8272 <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>
8273 <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>
8274 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
8275 </ul>
8276 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
8277
8278 <ul>
8279 <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>
8280 <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>
8281 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
8282 </ul>
8283
8284 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
8285 get closer to the final release.</p>
8286
8287 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
8288
8289 <ul>
8290 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
8291 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
8292 </ul>
8293
8294 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
8295 <ul>
8296 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
8297 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
8298 </ul>
8299 <p>How to report bugs:
8300 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
8301
8302 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
8303 </blockquote>
8304
8305       </div>
8306       <div class="tags">
8307
8308
8309         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>.
8310
8311
8312       </div>
8313     </div>
8314     <div class="padding"></div>
8315
8316     <div class="entry">
8317       <div class="title">
8318         <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>
8319       </div>
8320       <div class="date">
8321         25th July 2010
8322       </div>
8323       <div class="body">
8324         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
8325 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
8326 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
8327 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
8328 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
8329
8330 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
8331 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
8332 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
8333 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
8334 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
8335 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
8336 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
8337
8338 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
8339 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
8340 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
8341 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
8342 up. :)</p>
8343
8344 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
8345 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
8346 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
8347
8348 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
8349 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
8350 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
8351 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
8352 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
8353 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
8354 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
8355 release another day.</p>
8356
8357 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
8358 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8359
8360       </div>
8361       <div class="tags">
8362
8363
8364         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>.
8365
8366
8367       </div>
8368     </div>
8369     <div class="padding"></div>
8370
8371     <div class="entry">
8372       <div class="title">
8373         <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>
8374       </div>
8375       <div class="date">
8376         18th July 2010
8377       </div>
8378       <div class="body">
8379         <p>Thanks to
8380 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
8381 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
8382 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
8383 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
8384 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
8385 only available from the development server, until more experience is
8386 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
8387
8388 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
8389 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
8390 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
8391 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
8392 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
8393 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
8394 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
8395
8396       </div>
8397       <div class="tags">
8398
8399
8400         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>.
8401
8402
8403       </div>
8404     </div>
8405     <div class="padding"></div>
8406
8407     <div class="entry">
8408       <div class="title">
8409         <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>
8410       </div>
8411       <div class="date">
8412         17th July 2010
8413       </div>
8414       <div class="body">
8415         <p>This is a
8416 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
8417 on my
8418 <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
8419 work</a> on
8420 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
8421 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
8422
8423 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
8424 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
8425 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
8426 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
8427
8428 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
8429 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
8430 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
8431
8432 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
8433
8434 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
8435 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
8436 the web.
8437
8438 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
8439 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
8440 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
8441 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
8442 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
8443 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
8444
8445 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
8446 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
8447 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
8448 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
8449 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
8450 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
8451 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
8452 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
8453 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
8454 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
8455 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
8456 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
8457 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
8458 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
8459 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
8460 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
8461
8462 <blockquote><pre>
8463 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8464   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8465   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8466   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8467   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8468   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8469   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8470
8471 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8472   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8473   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
8474   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
8475   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
8476   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
8477 </pre></blockquote>
8478
8479 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
8480 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
8481 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
8482 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8483 also exist.</p>
8484
8485 <blockquote><pre>
8486 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8487 objectclass: top
8488 objectclass: dnsdomain
8489 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8490 dc: tjener
8491 arecord: 10.0.2.2
8492 associateddomain: tjener.intern
8493
8494 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8495 objectclass: top
8496 objectclass: dnsdomain2
8497 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8498 dc: 2
8499 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
8500 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
8501 </pre></blockquote>
8502
8503 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
8504 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
8505 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
8506 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
8507 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
8508 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
8509 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
8510 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
8511 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
8512 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
8513 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
8514 instead.</p>
8515
8516 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
8517 like this:</p>
8518
8519 <blockquote><pre>
8520 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8521   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8522   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8523   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8524   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8525   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8526
8527 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8528   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
8529 </pre></blockquote>
8530
8531 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
8532 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
8533 reverse lookups.</p>
8534
8535 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
8536 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
8537 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
8538 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
8539
8540 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
8541 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
8542 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
8543
8544 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
8545 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
8546 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
8547 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
8548 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
8549
8550 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
8551 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
8552 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
8553 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
8554 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
8555
8556 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
8557 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
8558 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
8559 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
8560 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
8561 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
8562
8563 <blockquote><pre>
8564 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
8565     SUP top
8566     AUXILIARY
8567     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
8568           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
8569           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
8570           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
8571           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
8572     ))
8573 </pre></blockquote>
8574
8575 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
8576 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
8577 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
8578 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
8579 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
8580 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
8581
8582 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
8583
8584 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
8585 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
8586 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
8587 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
8588 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
8589
8590 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
8591 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
8592 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
8593 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
8594
8595 <blockquote><pre>
8596 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
8597 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
8598 </pre></blockquote>
8599
8600 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
8601 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
8602 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
8603 search result is this entry:</p>
8604
8605 <blockquote><pre>
8606 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8607 cn: dhcp
8608 objectClass: top
8609 objectClass: dhcpServer
8610 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8611 </pre></blockquote>
8612
8613 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
8614 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
8615 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
8616 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
8617 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
8618 The search result is this entry:</p>
8619
8620 <blockquote><pre>
8621 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8622 cn: DHCP Config
8623 objectClass: top
8624 objectClass: dhcpService
8625 objectClass: dhcpOptions
8626 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8627 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
8628 dhcpStatements: authoritative
8629 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
8630 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
8631 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
8632 </pre></blockquote>
8633
8634 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
8635 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8636 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8637 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8638 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
8639 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
8640 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8641 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8642 related computer objects.</p>
8643
8644 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8645 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
8646 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8647 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8648 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
8649 like:</p>
8650
8651 <blockquote><pre>
8652 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8653 cn: hostname
8654 objectClass: top
8655 objectClass: dhcpHost
8656 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8657 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8658 </pre></blockquote>
8659
8660 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8661 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8662 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
8663 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8664 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
8665 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8666 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8667 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8668 structural object class.
8669
8670 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8671
8672 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8673 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8674 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8675 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8676 in the configuration.</p>
8677
8678 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8679 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8680 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8681 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8682 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8683 structure.</p>
8684
8685 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8686 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
8687
8688 <blockquote><pre>
8689 ou=services
8690   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8691     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8692     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8693       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8694         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8695     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8696       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8697         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8698     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8699       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8700 </pre></blockquote>
8701
8702 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8703 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8704 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8705 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
8706
8707 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8708 like this:</p>
8709
8710 <blockquote><pre>
8711 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8712 dc: hostname
8713 objectClass: top
8714 objectClass: dhcpHost
8715 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8716 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8717 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8718 arecord: 10.11.12.13
8719 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8720 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8721 </pre></blockquote>
8722
8723 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8724 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8725 auxiliary object class.</p>
8726
8727       </div>
8728       <div class="tags">
8729
8730
8731         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>.
8732
8733
8734       </div>
8735     </div>
8736     <div class="padding"></div>
8737
8738     <div class="entry">
8739       <div class="title">
8740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
8741       </div>
8742       <div class="date">
8743         14th July 2010
8744       </div>
8745       <div class="body">
8746         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8747 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8748 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8749 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8750 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
8751
8752 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8753 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
8754
8755 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8756 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
8757 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8758 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8759 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8760 to a slave DNS server.</p>
8761
8762 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8763 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8764 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8765 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8766 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
8767 seem to work.</p>
8768
8769 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8770 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8771 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
8772 this:</p>
8773
8774 <blockquote><pre>
8775   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8776   cn: hostname
8777   objectClass: dhcphost
8778   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8779   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8780   associateddomain: hostname.intern
8781   arecord: 10.11.12.13
8782   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8783   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8784   ldapconfigsound: Y
8785 </pre></blockquote>
8786
8787 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8788 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8789 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
8790 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
8791
8792 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8793 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8794 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8795 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8796 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8797 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8798 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8799 might be a good place to put it.</p>
8800
8801 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8802 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8803
8804       </div>
8805       <div class="tags">
8806
8807
8808         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>.
8809
8810
8811       </div>
8812     </div>
8813     <div class="padding"></div>
8814
8815     <div class="entry">
8816       <div class="title">
8817         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
8818       </div>
8819       <div class="date">
8820         11th July 2010
8821       </div>
8822       <div class="body">
8823         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8824 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8825 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8826 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
8827
8828 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8829 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
8830 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8831 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8832 LTSP clients.</p>
8833
8834 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8835 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8836 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
8837
8838 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8839 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8840 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
8841
8842 <blockquote><pre>
8843 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8844 #
8845 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8846 #
8847 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8848 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8849 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8850 #
8851 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8852 # existence of attribute names.
8853 #
8854 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8855 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8856 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8857 #
8858 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8859 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
8860 #
8861 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8862 #     SUP top
8863 #     AUXILIARY
8864 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8865
8866 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8867 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8868     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8869     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
8870         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8871         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8872             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8873             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8874             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8875             # bass value on to clients
8876             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8877         done
8878     done
8879 fi
8880 </pre></blockquote>
8881
8882 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8883 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8884 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8885 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8886 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
8887
8888 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8889 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8890
8891 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8892 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
8893 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8894 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
8895 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
8896 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
8897
8898       </div>
8899       <div class="tags">
8900
8901
8902         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>.
8903
8904
8905       </div>
8906     </div>
8907     <div class="padding"></div>
8908
8909     <div class="entry">
8910       <div class="title">
8911         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8912       </div>
8913       <div class="date">
8914          9th July 2010
8915       </div>
8916       <div class="body">
8917         <p>Since
8918 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8919 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8920 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
8921 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
8922 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8923 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
8924 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8925 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
8926 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8927 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
8928 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
8929 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8930 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
8931
8932       </div>
8933       <div class="tags">
8934
8935
8936         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>.
8937
8938
8939       </div>
8940     </div>
8941     <div class="padding"></div>
8942
8943     <div class="entry">
8944       <div class="title">
8945         <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>
8946       </div>
8947       <div class="date">
8948          3rd July 2010
8949       </div>
8950       <div class="body">
8951         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
8952 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8953 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
8954 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
8955 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8956 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8957 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
8958 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
8959
8960 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8961 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
8962 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
8963 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8964 publish the difference.</p>
8965
8966 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8967
8968 <blockquote><p>
8969   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8970   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
8971   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8972   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8973   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8974   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8975   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8976   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8977 </p></blockquote>
8978
8979 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8980
8981 <blockquote><p>
8982   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8983   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8984   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
8985   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8986   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
8987   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
8988   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8989   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8990   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8991   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8992   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8993   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
8994   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8995   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
8996   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8997   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8998   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
8999   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
9000   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
9001   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
9002 </p></blockquote>
9003
9004 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9005
9006 <blockquote><p>
9007   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
9008   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
9009   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9010   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9011   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
9012   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
9013   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
9014   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9015   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9016   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9017   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9018   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
9019   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
9020   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
9021   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
9022   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
9023   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
9024   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
9025   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
9026   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
9027   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
9028 </p></blockquote>
9029
9030 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9031
9032 <blockquote><p>
9033   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
9034   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
9035   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
9036 </p></blockquote>
9037
9038 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
9039 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
9040 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
9041 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
9042 the difference somewhat.
9043
9044       </div>
9045       <div class="tags">
9046
9047
9048         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>.
9049
9050
9051       </div>
9052     </div>
9053     <div class="padding"></div>
9054
9055     <div class="entry">
9056       <div class="title">
9057         <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>
9058       </div>
9059       <div class="date">
9060          1st July 2010
9061       </div>
9062       <div class="body">
9063         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
9064 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
9065 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
9066 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
9067 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
9068 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
9069 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
9070 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
9071 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
9072
9073 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
9074
9075 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
9076 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
9077 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
9078 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
9079 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
9080 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
9081 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
9082 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
9083 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
9084 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
9085 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
9086 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
9087 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
9088 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
9089 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
9090
9091 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
9092
9093 <blockquote><pre>
9094 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
9095 </pre></blockquote>
9096
9097 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
9098 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
9099 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
9100 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
9101 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
9102 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
9103 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
9104 on how to get this working.</p>
9105
9106 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
9107 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
9108 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
9109 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
9110 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
9111 instructions I found in the
9112 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
9113 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
9114
9115 <blockquote><pre>
9116         debug-level             0
9117         reload-count            unlimited
9118         paranoia                no
9119
9120         enable-cache            passwd          yes
9121         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
9122         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
9123         suggested-size          passwd          211
9124         check-files             passwd          yes
9125         persistent              passwd          yes
9126         shared                  passwd          yes
9127         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
9128         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
9129
9130         enable-cache            group           yes
9131         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
9132         negative-time-to-live   group           20
9133         suggested-size          group           211
9134         check-files             group           yes
9135         persistent              group           yes
9136         shared                  group           yes
9137         max-db-size             group           33554432
9138         auto-propagate          group           yes
9139
9140         enable-cache            hosts           no
9141         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
9142         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
9143         suggested-size          hosts           211
9144         check-files             hosts           yes
9145         persistent              hosts           yes
9146         shared                  hosts           yes
9147         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
9148
9149         enable-cache            services        yes
9150         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
9151         negative-time-to-live   services        20
9152         suggested-size          services        211
9153         check-files             services        yes
9154         persistent              services        yes
9155         shared                  services        yes
9156         max-db-size             services        33554432
9157 </pre></blockquote>
9158
9159 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
9160 automatically like the one provided in
9161 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
9162 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
9163 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
9164 look like this:</p>
9165
9166 <blockquote><pre>
9167 passwd:         files ldap
9168 group:          files ldap
9169 shadow:         files ldap
9170 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
9171 networks:       files
9172 protocols:      files
9173 services:       files
9174 ethers:         files
9175 rpc:            files
9176 netgroup:       files ldap
9177 </pre></blockquote>
9178
9179 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
9180 shadow and netgroup.</p>
9181
9182 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
9183 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
9184 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
9185 attributes cached.
9186
9187 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
9188   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
9189
9190 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
9191 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
9192 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
9193 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
9194 discovered sssd.</p>
9195
9196 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
9197
9198 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
9199 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
9200 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
9201 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
9202 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
9203 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
9204 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
9205 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
9206 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
9207 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
9208 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
9209 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
9210 version 1.2 is now in testing.
9211
9212 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
9213 roaming setup I want</p>
9214
9215 <blockquote><pre>
9216 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
9217 </pre></blockquote>
9218
9219 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
9220 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
9221
9222 <blockquote><pre>
9223 [sssd]
9224 config_file_version = 2
9225 reconnection_retries = 3
9226 sbus_timeout = 30
9227 services = nss, pam
9228 domains = INTERN
9229
9230 [nss]
9231 filter_groups = root
9232 filter_users = root
9233 reconnection_retries = 3
9234
9235 [pam]
9236 reconnection_retries = 3
9237
9238 [domain/INTERN]
9239 enumerate = false
9240 cache_credentials = true
9241
9242 id_provider = ldap
9243 auth_provider = ldap
9244 chpass_provider = ldap
9245
9246 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
9247 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9248 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
9249 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
9250 </pre></blockquote>
9251
9252 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
9253 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
9254
9255 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
9256 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
9257 modify it manually.</p>
9258
9259 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9260 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9261
9262       </div>
9263       <div class="tags">
9264
9265
9266         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>.
9267
9268
9269       </div>
9270     </div>
9271     <div class="padding"></div>
9272
9273     <div class="entry">
9274       <div class="title">
9275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
9276       </div>
9277       <div class="date">
9278         28th June 2010
9279       </div>
9280       <div class="body">
9281         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
9282 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
9283 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
9284 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
9285 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
9286 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
9287 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
9288 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
9289 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
9290 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
9291
9292 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
9293 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
9294 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
9295 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
9296 released.</p>
9297
9298 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
9299 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
9300 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
9301 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
9302
9303 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
9304 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9305
9306 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
9307 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
9308 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
9309 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
9310 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
9311
9312       </div>
9313       <div class="tags">
9314
9315
9316         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>.
9317
9318
9319       </div>
9320     </div>
9321     <div class="padding"></div>
9322
9323     <div class="entry">
9324       <div class="title">
9325         <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>
9326       </div>
9327       <div class="date">
9328         24th June 2010
9329       </div>
9330       <div class="body">
9331         <p>A while back, I
9332 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
9333 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
9334 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
9335 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
9336
9337 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
9338 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
9339 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
9340 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
9341
9342 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
9343 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
9344 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
9345 Debian Edu.</p>
9346
9347 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
9348 the
9349 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
9350 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
9351 available today from IETF.</p>
9352
9353 <pre>
9354 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
9355 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
9356 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
9357  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
9358         NAME 'dhcpHost'
9359         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
9360 -       SUP top
9361 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
9362         MUST cn
9363         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
9364         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
9365 </pre>
9366
9367 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
9368 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
9369 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
9370
9371 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9372 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9373
9374       </div>
9375       <div class="tags">
9376
9377
9378         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>.
9379
9380
9381       </div>
9382     </div>
9383     <div class="padding"></div>
9384
9385     <div class="entry">
9386       <div class="title">
9387         <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>
9388       </div>
9389       <div class="date">
9390         16th June 2010
9391       </div>
9392       <div class="body">
9393         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
9394 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
9395 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
9396 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
9397 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
9398 this:
9399
9400 <blockquote><pre>
9401 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9402 tasksel --new-install
9403 </pre></blockquote>
9404
9405 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
9406 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
9407 any output what so ever.
9408
9409 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
9410 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
9411 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
9412 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
9413 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
9414 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
9415 code like this:
9416
9417 <blockquote><pre>
9418 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9419 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
9420 $cmd
9421 </pre></blockquote>
9422
9423 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
9424 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
9425 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
9426 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
9427 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
9428 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
9429 installation.</p>
9430
9431 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
9432 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
9433 like this.</p>
9434
9435       </div>
9436       <div class="tags">
9437
9438
9439         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>.
9440
9441
9442       </div>
9443     </div>
9444     <div class="padding"></div>
9445
9446     <div class="entry">
9447       <div class="title">
9448         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
9449       </div>
9450       <div class="date">
9451         13th June 2010
9452       </div>
9453       <div class="body">
9454         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
9455 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
9456 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
9457 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
9458 pages.</p>
9459
9460 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
9461 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
9462 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
9463 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
9464 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
9465 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
9466 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
9467 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
9468 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
9469 see how the project is doing.</p>
9470
9471 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
9472 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
9473 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
9474 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
9475 Windows.  This is great.</p>
9476
9477       </div>
9478       <div class="tags">
9479
9480
9481         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>.
9482
9483
9484       </div>
9485     </div>
9486     <div class="padding"></div>
9487
9488     <div class="entry">
9489       <div class="title">
9490         <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>
9491       </div>
9492       <div class="date">
9493         13th June 2010
9494       </div>
9495       <div class="body">
9496         <p>My
9497 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
9498 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
9499 finally made the upgrade logs available from
9500 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
9501 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
9502 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
9503 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
9504
9505 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
9506 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
9507 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
9508 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
9509 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
9510 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
9511 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
9512 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
9513
9514 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
9515 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
9516 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
9517 too surprising.</p>
9518
9519 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
9520 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
9521 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
9522 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
9523 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
9524 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
9525 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
9526 continue.</p>
9527
9528 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
9529 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
9530   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
9531   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
9532   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
9533   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
9534   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
9535   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9536   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9537   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9538   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9539   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9540   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9541   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9542   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9543   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9544   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9545   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9546   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9547   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9548   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9549   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9550   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9551   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9552   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9553   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9554   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9555   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9556   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
9557   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
9558
9559 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
9560
9561 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
9562   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
9563   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
9564   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
9565   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9566   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
9567   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
9568   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
9569   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
9570   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
9571   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9572   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
9573   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
9574   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
9575   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
9576   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
9577   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
9578   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
9579   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
9580   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
9581   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
9582   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
9583   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
9584   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
9585   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
9586   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
9587   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
9588   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
9589   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
9590   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9591   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9592   zip</p>
9593
9594 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
9595
9596 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
9597   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
9598   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
9599   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
9600   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
9601   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
9602   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9603   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9604   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9605   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9606   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9607   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9608   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9609   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9610   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9611   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9612   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9613   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9614   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9615   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9616   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9617   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9618   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9619   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9620   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9621   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9622   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9623   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
9624
9625 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
9626 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
9627   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9628   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
9629   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
9630   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9631   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
9632   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
9633   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9634   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
9635   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
9636   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
9637   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
9638   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
9639   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
9640   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
9641   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
9642   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9643   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9644   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9645   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
9646   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9647   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
9648   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
9649   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9650   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9651   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
9652   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
9653   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
9654   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
9655   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
9656   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
9657   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
9658   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
9659   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
9660   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9661   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9662   xulrunner-1.9</p>
9663
9664
9665       </div>
9666       <div class="tags">
9667
9668
9669         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>.
9670
9671
9672       </div>
9673     </div>
9674     <div class="padding"></div>
9675
9676     <div class="entry">
9677       <div class="title">
9678         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
9679       </div>
9680       <div class="date">
9681         11th June 2010
9682       </div>
9683       <div class="body">
9684         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
9685 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
9686 have been discovered and reported in the process
9687 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
9688 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
9689 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
9690 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
9691 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
9692
9693 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
9694 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
9695 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
9696 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
9697 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
9698 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
9699
9700 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
9701 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
9702 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9703 is created.  The bug report
9704 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
9705 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
9706 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
9707 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
9708 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
9709 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
9710 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
9711 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
9712 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
9713 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
9714 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
9715 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
9716 Debian Squeeze.</p>
9717
9718 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
9719 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
9720 trick:</p>
9721
9722 <blockquote><pre>
9723 #!/bin/sh
9724 set -ex
9725
9726 if [ "$1" ] ; then
9727     desktop=$1
9728 else
9729     desktop=gnome
9730 fi
9731
9732 from=lenny
9733 to=squeeze
9734
9735 exec &lt; /dev/null
9736 unset LANG
9737 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
9738 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
9739 fuser -mv .
9740 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
9741 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9742 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
9743 #!/bin/sh
9744 exit 101
9745 EOF
9746 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
9747 exit_cleanup() {
9748     umount $tmpdir/proc
9749 }
9750 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
9751 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
9752 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
9753
9754 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
9755
9756 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
9757 # to return the correct answers.
9758 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
9759     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
9760
9761 # Include the desktop and laptop task
9762 for test in desktop laptop ; do
9763     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
9764 #!/bin/sh
9765 exit 2
9766 EOF
9767     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
9768 done
9769
9770 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9771 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
9772 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
9773 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
9774
9775 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
9776 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9777 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9778 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
9779 fuser -mv
9780 </pre></blockquote>
9781
9782 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
9783 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
9784 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
9785 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
9786 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
9787 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
9788
9789 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
9790 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
9791 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
9792 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
9793 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
9794 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
9795 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
9796
9797 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
9798 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
9799 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
9800 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
9801 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
9802 packages.</p>
9803
9804       </div>
9805       <div class="tags">
9806
9807
9808         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>.
9809
9810
9811       </div>
9812     </div>
9813     <div class="padding"></div>
9814
9815     <div class="entry">
9816       <div class="title">
9817         <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>
9818       </div>
9819       <div class="date">
9820          6th June 2010
9821       </div>
9822       <div class="body">
9823         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
9824 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
9825 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
9826 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
9827 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
9828 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
9829 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
9830
9831 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
9832 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
9833 COLUMNS):</p>
9834
9835 <blockquote><pre>
9836 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
9837 previous=N
9838 PREVLEVEL=
9839 RUNLEVEL=
9840 runlevel=S
9841 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
9842 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
9843 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
9844 </pre></blockquote>
9845
9846 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
9847 script.</p>
9848
9849 <blockquote><pre>
9850 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
9851 previous=N
9852 PREVLEVEL=N
9853 RUNLEVEL=S
9854 runlevel=S
9855 </pre></blockquote>
9856
9857 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
9858 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
9859 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
9860
9861 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
9862 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
9863 choice.</p>
9864
9865       </div>
9866       <div class="tags">
9867
9868
9869         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>.
9870
9871
9872       </div>
9873     </div>
9874     <div class="padding"></div>
9875
9876     <div class="entry">
9877       <div class="title">
9878         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
9879       </div>
9880       <div class="date">
9881          6th June 2010
9882       </div>
9883       <div class="body">
9884         <p>Via the
9885 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
9886 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
9887 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
9888 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
9889 following the standards wars of today.</p>
9890
9891       </div>
9892       <div class="tags">
9893
9894
9895         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>.
9896
9897
9898       </div>
9899     </div>
9900     <div class="padding"></div>
9901
9902     <div class="entry">
9903       <div class="title">
9904         <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>
9905       </div>
9906       <div class="date">
9907          3rd June 2010
9908       </div>
9909       <div class="body">
9910         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9911 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9912 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
9913 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9914 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
9915
9916 <blockquote><pre>
9917 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9918   vendor                    count
9919   Dell Computer Corporation     1
9920     PowerEdge 1750              1
9921   IBM                           1
9922     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
9923   Intel                         2
9924   [no-dmi-info]                 3
9925 maintainer:~#
9926 </pre></blockquote>
9927
9928 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9929 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
9930 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9931 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
9932 option to list the individual machines.</p>
9933
9934 <p>A larger list is
9935 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9936 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9937 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
9938 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9939 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9940 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9941 collector.</p>
9942
9943       </div>
9944       <div class="tags">
9945
9946
9947         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>.
9948
9949
9950       </div>
9951     </div>
9952     <div class="padding"></div>
9953
9954     <div class="entry">
9955       <div class="title">
9956         <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>
9957       </div>
9958       <div class="date">
9959          1st June 2010
9960       </div>
9961       <div class="body">
9962         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9963 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
9964 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9965 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9966 wait.</p>
9967
9968 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9969 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
9970 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9971 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9972 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
9973 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
9974
9975 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9976 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9977 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
9978 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9979 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9980 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9981 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
9982 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
9983
9984 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
9985
9986       </div>
9987       <div class="tags">
9988
9989
9990         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>.
9991
9992
9993       </div>
9994     </div>
9995     <div class="padding"></div>
9996
9997     <div class="entry">
9998       <div class="title">
9999         <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>
10000       </div>
10001       <div class="date">
10002         27th May 2010
10003       </div>
10004       <div class="body">
10005         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
10006 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
10007 issues are known and should be solved:
10008
10009 <p><ul>
10010
10011 <li>The wicd package seen to
10012 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
10013 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
10014 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
10015 seem to be on the case.</li>
10016
10017 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
10018 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
10019 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
10020 maintainer is on the case.</li>
10021
10022 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
10023 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
10024 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
10025 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
10026 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
10027 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
10028 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
10029 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
10030
10031 </ul></p>
10032
10033 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
10034 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
10035 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
10036 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
10037
10038 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10039 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10040 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10041 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10042
10043 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
10044
10045       </div>
10046       <div class="tags">
10047
10048
10049         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>.
10050
10051
10052       </div>
10053     </div>
10054     <div class="padding"></div>
10055
10056     <div class="entry">
10057       <div class="title">
10058         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
10059       </div>
10060       <div class="date">
10061         22nd May 2010
10062       </div>
10063       <div class="body">
10064         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
10065 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
10066 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
10067 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
10068
10069 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
10070 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
10071 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
10072 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
10073 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
10074 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
10075 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
10076 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
10077 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
10078 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
10079 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
10080 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
10081 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
10082 going to work.</p>
10083
10084 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
10085 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
10086 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
10087 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
10088 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
10089 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
10090 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
10091 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
10092 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
10093 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
10094 Edu.</p>
10095
10096 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
10097 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
10098 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
10099 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
10100 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
10101 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
10102
10103 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
10104 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
10105
10106       </div>
10107       <div class="tags">
10108
10109
10110         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>.
10111
10112
10113       </div>
10114     </div>
10115     <div class="padding"></div>
10116
10117     <div class="entry">
10118       <div class="title">
10119         <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>
10120       </div>
10121       <div class="date">
10122         19th May 2010
10123       </div>
10124       <div class="body">
10125         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
10126 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
10127 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
10128 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
10129 into unstable.  The
10130 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
10131 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
10132 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
10133 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
10134 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
10135 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
10136 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
10137
10138 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
10139 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
10140 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
10141 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
10142 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
10143 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
10144 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
10145 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
10146
10147 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
10148 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
10149 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
10150 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
10151 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
10152 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
10153 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
10154
10155 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
10156 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
10157 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
10158 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
10159 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
10160 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
10161 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
10162 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
10163 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
10164 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
10165 on the home directory servers.</p>
10166
10167 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
10168 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
10169 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
10170 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
10171 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
10172 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
10173
10174 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10175 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10176
10177       </div>
10178       <div class="tags">
10179
10180
10181         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>.
10182
10183
10184       </div>
10185     </div>
10186     <div class="padding"></div>
10187
10188     <div class="entry">
10189       <div class="title">
10190         <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>
10191       </div>
10192       <div class="date">
10193         14th May 2010
10194       </div>
10195       <div class="body">
10196         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
10197 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
10198 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
10199 expected, if I am to believe the
10200 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10201 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
10202 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
10203 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
10204 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
10205 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
10206 version.</p>
10207
10208 More information about
10209 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10210 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
10211 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
10212 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10213
10214 <blockquote><pre>
10215 CONCURRENCY=none
10216 </pre></blockquote>
10217
10218 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10219 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10220 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10221 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10222
10223       </div>
10224       <div class="tags">
10225
10226
10227         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>.
10228
10229
10230       </div>
10231     </div>
10232     <div class="padding"></div>
10233
10234     <div class="entry">
10235       <div class="title">
10236         <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>
10237       </div>
10238       <div class="date">
10239         14th May 2010
10240       </div>
10241       <div class="body">
10242         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
10243 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
10244 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
10245 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
10246 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
10247 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
10248 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
10249 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
10250
10251 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
10252 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
10253 this on the collector host:</p>
10254
10255 <blockquote><pre>
10256 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
10257 </pre></blockquote>
10258
10259 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
10260 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
10261
10262 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
10263 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
10264 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
10265 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
10266 written yet.</p>
10267
10268       </div>
10269       <div class="tags">
10270
10271
10272         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>.
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/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
10282       </div>
10283       <div class="date">
10284         13th May 2010
10285       </div>
10286       <div class="body">
10287         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
10288 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
10289 has been
10290 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
10291
10292 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
10293 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
10294 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
10295 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
10296 based boot system.  Tollef is
10297 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
10298 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
10299 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
10300 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
10301 at the moment do not.</p>
10302
10303 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
10304 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
10305 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
10306 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
10307 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
10308 way forward.</p>
10309
10310 <p>In the mean time, based on the
10311 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10312 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
10313 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
10314 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
10315 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
10316 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
10317 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
10318 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
10319
10320       </div>
10321       <div class="tags">
10322
10323
10324         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>.
10325
10326
10327       </div>
10328     </div>
10329     <div class="padding"></div>
10330
10331     <div class="entry">
10332       <div class="title">
10333         <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>
10334       </div>
10335       <div class="date">
10336          6th May 2010
10337       </div>
10338       <div class="body">
10339         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
10340 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
10341 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
10342 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
10343 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10344 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
10345 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10346
10347 <blockquote><pre>
10348 CONCURRENCY=makefile
10349 </pre></blockquote>
10350
10351 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
10352 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
10353 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
10354 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
10355 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
10356 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
10357 make this happen.</p>
10358
10359 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
10360 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
10361 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
10362 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
10363 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
10364
10365 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
10366 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
10367 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
10368 fix the remaining issues.</p>
10369
10370 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10371 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10372 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10373 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10374
10375       </div>
10376       <div class="tags">
10377
10378
10379         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>.
10380
10381
10382       </div>
10383     </div>
10384     <div class="padding"></div>
10385
10386     <div class="entry">
10387       <div class="title">
10388         <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>
10389       </div>
10390       <div class="date">
10391          2nd May 2010
10392       </div>
10393       <div class="body">
10394         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
10395 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
10396 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
10397
10398 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
10399 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
10400 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
10401 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
10402 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
10403
10404 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
10405 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
10406
10407 <blockquote><pre>
10408 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10409 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
10410 Password expires                                        : never
10411 Password inactive                                       : never
10412 Account expires                                         : never
10413 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
10414 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
10415 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
10416 root@tjener:~#
10417 </pre></blockquote>
10418
10419 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
10420 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
10421 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
10422 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
10423 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
10424 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
10425
10426 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
10427 intended:</p>
10428
10429 <blockquote><pre>
10430 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
10431 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
10432 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
10433 Password expires                                        : never
10434 Password inactive                                       : never
10435 Account expires                                         : never
10436 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
10437 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
10438 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
10439 root@tjener:~#
10440 </pre></blockquote>
10441
10442 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
10443 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
10444 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
10445
10446 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
10447 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
10448
10449 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
10450 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10451
10452 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
10453 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
10454 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
10455 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
10456 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
10457 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
10458 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
10459
10460 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
10461 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
10462 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
10463 change.</p>
10464
10465       </div>
10466       <div class="tags">
10467
10468
10469         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>.
10470
10471
10472       </div>
10473     </div>
10474     <div class="padding"></div>
10475
10476     <div class="entry">
10477       <div class="title">
10478         <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>
10479       </div>
10480       <div class="date">
10481         28th April 2010
10482       </div>
10483       <div class="body">
10484         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
10485 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
10486 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
10487 and go.</p>
10488
10489 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
10490 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
10491 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
10492 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
10493
10494 <ul>
10495
10496  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
10497    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
10498    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
10499    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
10500    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
10501    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
10502    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
10503    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
10504    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
10505    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
10506    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
10507    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
10508
10509  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
10510    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
10511    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
10512    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
10513    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
10514    or the Fedora developed
10515    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
10516    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
10517
10518  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
10519    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
10520    directory, using unison.</li>
10521
10522  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
10523    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
10524    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
10525    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
10526    implemented.</li>
10527
10528  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
10529    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
10530
10531  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
10532    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
10533    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
10534
10535 </ul>
10536
10537 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
10538 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
10539 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
10540 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
10541 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
10542 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
10543 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
10544 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
10545 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
10546
10547 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10548 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10549
10550       </div>
10551       <div class="tags">
10552
10553
10554         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>.
10555
10556
10557       </div>
10558     </div>
10559     <div class="padding"></div>
10560
10561     <div class="entry">
10562       <div class="title">
10563         <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>
10564       </div>
10565       <div class="date">
10566         19th April 2010
10567       </div>
10568       <div class="body">
10569         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
10570 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
10571 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
10572 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
10573 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
10574 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
10575 restrictions on the web, for example from
10576 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
10577 epub-version from
10578 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
10579 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
10580 strongly recommend this book.</p>
10581
10582       </div>
10583       <div class="tags">
10584
10585
10586         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>.
10587
10588
10589       </div>
10590     </div>
10591     <div class="padding"></div>
10592
10593     <div class="entry">
10594       <div class="title">
10595         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
10596       </div>
10597       <div class="date">
10598         14th April 2010
10599       </div>
10600       <div class="body">
10601         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
10602 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
10603 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
10604 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
10605 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
10606 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
10607 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
10608 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
10609 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
10610
10611 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
10612 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
10613 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
10614 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
10615 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
10616
10617 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
10618 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
10619
10620 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
10621 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
10622 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
10623 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
10624 to work properly.</p>
10625
10626 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
10627 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
10628 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
10629 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
10630 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
10631 time.</p>
10632
10633 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
10634 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
10635 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
10636 up in a few days.</p>
10637
10638       </div>
10639       <div class="tags">
10640
10641
10642         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>.
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/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
10652       </div>
10653       <div class="date">
10654          6th March 2010
10655       </div>
10656       <div class="body">
10657         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
10658 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
10659 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
10660 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
10661 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
10662 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
10663
10664 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
10665 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
10666 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
10667 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
10668
10669 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
10670 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
10671 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
10672 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
10673 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
10674 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
10675
10676       </div>
10677       <div class="tags">
10678
10679
10680         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>.
10681
10682
10683       </div>
10684     </div>
10685     <div class="padding"></div>
10686
10687     <div class="entry">
10688       <div class="title">
10689         <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>
10690       </div>
10691       <div class="date">
10692         11th February 2010
10693       </div>
10694       <div class="body">
10695         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
10696 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
10697 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
10698 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
10699 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
10700 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
10701 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
10702
10703 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
10704
10705 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
10706 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
10707 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
10708 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
10709
10710       </div>
10711       <div class="tags">
10712
10713
10714         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>.
10715
10716
10717       </div>
10718     </div>
10719     <div class="padding"></div>
10720
10721     <div class="entry">
10722       <div class="title">
10723         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
10724       </div>
10725       <div class="date">
10726         27th January 2010
10727       </div>
10728       <div class="body">
10729         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
10730 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
10731 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
10732 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
10733 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
10734 further.</p>
10735
10736 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
10737 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
10738 configured to be a server for the
10739 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
10740 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
10741 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
10742 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
10743 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
10744 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
10745 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
10746 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
10747 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
10748 and Nagios configuration.</p>
10749
10750 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
10751 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
10752 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
10753 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
10754
10755 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
10756 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
10757 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
10758 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
10759 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
10760 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
10761 the machine.</p>
10762
10763 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
10764 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
10765 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
10766 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
10767
10768 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
10769 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
10770 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
10771 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
10772 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
10773 everything is taken care of.</p>
10774
10775       </div>
10776       <div class="tags">
10777
10778
10779         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>.
10780
10781
10782       </div>
10783     </div>
10784     <div class="padding"></div>
10785
10786     <div class="entry">
10787       <div class="title">
10788         <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>
10789       </div>
10790       <div class="date">
10791         12th August 2009
10792       </div>
10793       <div class="body">
10794         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
10795 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
10796 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
10797 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
10798
10799 <table>
10800 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10801 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
10802 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
10803 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
10804 </table>
10805
10806 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
10807 got these numbers:</p>
10808
10809 <table>
10810 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10811 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
10812 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
10813 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
10814 </table>
10815
10816 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
10817
10818 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
10819 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
10820 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
10821 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
10822 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
10823
10824
10825 <table>
10826 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10827 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
10828 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
10829 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
10830 </table>
10831
10832 <p>And with 'site:no':
10833
10834 <table>
10835 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
10836 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
10837 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
10838 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
10839 </table>
10840
10841 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
10842 numbers.</p>
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/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</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/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
10858       </div>
10859       <div class="date">
10860          8th August 2009
10861       </div>
10862       <div class="body">
10863         <p>According to <a
10864 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
10865 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
10866 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
10867 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
10868 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
10869 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
10870 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
10871 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
10872 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
10873 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
10874
10875 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
10876 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
10877 seminar this autumn.</p>
10878
10879       </div>
10880       <div class="tags">
10881
10882
10883         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>.
10884
10885
10886       </div>
10887     </div>
10888     <div class="padding"></div>
10889
10890     <div class="entry">
10891       <div class="title">
10892         <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>
10893       </div>
10894       <div class="date">
10895         27th July 2009
10896       </div>
10897       <div class="body">
10898         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
10899 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
10900 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
10901 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
10902 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
10903 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
10904 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
10905
10906 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
10907 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
10908 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
10909
10910       </div>
10911       <div class="tags">
10912
10913
10914         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>.
10915
10916
10917       </div>
10918     </div>
10919     <div class="padding"></div>
10920
10921     <div class="entry">
10922       <div class="title">
10923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
10924       </div>
10925       <div class="date">
10926         22nd July 2009
10927       </div>
10928       <div class="body">
10929         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
10930 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
10931 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
10932 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
10933 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
10934 the package up to date.</p>
10935
10936 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
10937 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
10938 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
10939 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
10940 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
10941 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
10942 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
10943 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
10944 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
10945 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
10946 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
10947 working on the future release.</p>
10948
10949 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
10950 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
10951
10952       </div>
10953       <div class="tags">
10954
10955
10956         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>.
10957
10958
10959       </div>
10960     </div>
10961     <div class="padding"></div>
10962
10963     <div class="entry">
10964       <div class="title">
10965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
10966       </div>
10967       <div class="date">
10968         24th June 2009
10969       </div>
10970       <div class="body">
10971         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
10972 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
10973 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
10974 funded
10975 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
10976 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
10977 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
10978 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
10979 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
10980 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
10981
10982 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
10983 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
10984 boot:</p>
10985
10986 <ul>
10987
10988 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
10989
10990 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
10991    clock is in UTC.</li>
10992
10993 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
10994    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10995    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
10996
10997 </ul>
10998
10999 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
11000 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
11001 Villegas</a>.
11002
11003 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
11004 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
11005 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
11006 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
11007 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
11008 using this.</p>
11009
11010 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
11011 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
11012 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
11013 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
11014 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
11015 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
11016 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
11017
11018       </div>
11019       <div class="tags">
11020
11021
11022         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>.
11023
11024
11025       </div>
11026     </div>
11027     <div class="padding"></div>
11028
11029     <div class="entry">
11030       <div class="title">
11031         <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>
11032       </div>
11033       <div class="date">
11034          2nd May 2009
11035       </div>
11036       <div class="body">
11037         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
11038 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
11039 do not yet know them.</p>
11040
11041 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
11042 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
11043 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
11044 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
11045 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
11046 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
11047 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
11048 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
11049 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
11050 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
11051 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
11052
11053 <p>The second one is
11054 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
11055 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
11056 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
11057 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
11058 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
11059 and the company behind it is running
11060 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
11061 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
11062 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
11063 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
11064 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
11065 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
11066 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
11067 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
11068
11069 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
11070 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
11071 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
11072 surrounded by today.</p>
11073
11074       </div>
11075       <div class="tags">
11076
11077
11078         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>.
11079
11080
11081       </div>
11082     </div>
11083     <div class="padding"></div>
11084
11085     <div class="entry">
11086       <div class="title">
11087         <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>
11088       </div>
11089       <div class="date">
11090         28th April 2009
11091       </div>
11092       <div class="body">
11093         <p>Julien Blache
11094 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
11095 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
11096 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
11097 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
11098 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
11099 properties.</p>
11100
11101       </div>
11102       <div class="tags">
11103
11104
11105         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>.
11106
11107
11108       </div>
11109     </div>
11110     <div class="padding"></div>
11111
11112     <div class="entry">
11113       <div class="title">
11114         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
11115       </div>
11116       <div class="date">
11117          5th April 2009
11118       </div>
11119       <div class="body">
11120         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
11121 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
11122 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
11123 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
11124 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
11125 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
11126 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
11127 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
11128
11129 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
11130 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
11131 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
11132   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
11133   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
11134
11135 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
11136 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
11137 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
11138 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
11139
11140 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
11141 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
11142 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
11143 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
11144
11145 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
11146 set -e
11147 URL="$1"
11148 SAVEFILE="$2"
11149 DURATION="$3"
11150 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
11151   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
11152   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
11153 pid=$!
11154 sleep $DURATION
11155 kill $pid
11156 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
11157
11158       </div>
11159       <div class="tags">
11160
11161
11162         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>.
11163
11164
11165       </div>
11166     </div>
11167     <div class="padding"></div>
11168
11169     <div class="entry">
11170       <div class="title">
11171         <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>
11172       </div>
11173       <div class="date">
11174         30th March 2009
11175       </div>
11176       <div class="body">
11177         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
11178 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
11179 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
11180 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
11181 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
11182 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
11183 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
11184 application.</p>
11185
11186 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
11187 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
11188 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
11189 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
11190 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
11191 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
11192 blocked from doing so.</p>
11193
11194 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
11195 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
11196 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
11197 requirements change.</p>
11198
11199 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
11200 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
11201 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
11202
11203       </div>
11204       <div class="tags">
11205
11206
11207         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>.
11208
11209
11210       </div>
11211     </div>
11212     <div class="padding"></div>
11213
11214     <div class="entry">
11215       <div class="title">
11216         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
11217       </div>
11218       <div class="date">
11219         29th March 2009
11220       </div>
11221       <div class="body">
11222         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
11223 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
11224 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
11225 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
11226 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
11227 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
11228 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
11229 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
11230 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
11231 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
11232 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
11233 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
11234 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
11235 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
11236 now. :)</p>
11237
11238       </div>
11239       <div class="tags">
11240
11241
11242         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>.
11243
11244
11245       </div>
11246     </div>
11247     <div class="padding"></div>
11248
11249     <div class="entry">
11250       <div class="title">
11251         <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>
11252       </div>
11253       <div class="date">
11254         29th March 2009
11255       </div>
11256       <div class="body">
11257         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
11258 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
11259 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
11260 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
11261 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
11262 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
11263
11264 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
11265 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
11266 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
11267 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
11268 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
11269 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
11270 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
11271 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
11272 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
11273 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
11274 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
11275 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
11276 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
11277
11278 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
11279 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
11280 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
11281 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
11282
11283 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
11284 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
11285
11286 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
11287 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
11288 new IETF work group?</p>
11289
11290       </div>
11291       <div class="tags">
11292
11293
11294         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>.
11295
11296
11297       </div>
11298     </div>
11299     <div class="padding"></div>
11300
11301     <div class="entry">
11302       <div class="title">
11303         <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>
11304       </div>
11305       <div class="date">
11306         28th February 2009
11307       </div>
11308       <div class="body">
11309         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
11310 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
11311 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
11312 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
11313 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
11314 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
11315 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
11316 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
11317 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
11318 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
11319 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
11320 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
11321 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
11322 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
11323 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
11324 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
11325 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
11326 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
11327 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
11328 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
11329 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
11330 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
11331 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
11332 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
11333 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
11334 machine.</p>
11335
11336 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
11337 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
11338 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
11339 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
11340 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
11341 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
11342 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
11343
11344 <pre>
11345 use LWP::Simple;
11346 use POSIX;
11347 use WWW::Mechanize;
11348 use Date::Parse;
11349 [...]
11350 sub get_support_info {
11351     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
11352     my $str;
11353
11354     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
11355         # fetch website from Dell support
11356         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";
11357         my $webpage = get($url);
11358         return undef unless ($webpage);
11359
11360         my $daysleft = -1;
11361         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
11362         foreach my $line (@lines) {
11363             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
11364             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11365             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
11366
11367             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
11368             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
11369             my $lastend = "";
11370             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
11371                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
11372
11373                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11374                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11375                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11376                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
11377                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
11378                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
11379                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
11380             }
11381             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11382             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11383                 if ($lastend lt $today);
11384         }
11385     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
11386         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
11387         my $url =
11388             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
11389         $mech->get($url);
11390         my $fields = {
11391             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
11392             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
11393             'country' => 'NO',
11394             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
11395             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
11396         };
11397         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
11398                             fields      => $fields );
11399         # Next step is screen scraping
11400         my $content = $mech->content();
11401
11402         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11403         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11404         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11405         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11406
11407         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11408
11409         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
11410             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
11411                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
11412             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
11413             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11414                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
11415             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
11416                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
11417
11418             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
11419
11420             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11421                 if ($end lt $today);
11422         }
11423     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
11424         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
11425         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
11426         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
11427             my $content =
11428                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
11429             if ($content) {
11430                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
11431                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
11432                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
11433                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
11434
11435                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
11436                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
11437
11438                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
11439
11440                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
11441                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
11442                     if ($end lt $today);
11443             }
11444         }
11445     }
11446     return $str;
11447 }
11448 </pre>
11449
11450 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
11451 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
11452 from dmidecode.</p>
11453
11454 <pre>
11455 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
11456                        "447707-B21");
11457 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
11458 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
11459                        "1234567");
11460 </pre>
11461
11462 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
11463 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
11464
11465 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
11466 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
11467 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
11468 do so.</p>
11469
11470       </div>
11471       <div class="tags">
11472
11473
11474         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>.
11475
11476
11477       </div>
11478     </div>
11479     <div class="padding"></div>
11480
11481     <div class="entry">
11482       <div class="title">
11483         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
11484       </div>
11485       <div class="date">
11486         20th February 2009
11487       </div>
11488       <div class="body">
11489         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
11490 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
11491 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
11492 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
11493 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
11494 the "missing" computer.</p>
11495
11496 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
11497 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
11498 code blocks as defined in the
11499 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
11500 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
11501 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
11502 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
11503 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
11504 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
11505 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
11506 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
11507 codes.</p>
11508
11509 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
11510 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
11511 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
11512 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
11513 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
11514 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
11515
11516 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
11517 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
11518 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
11519 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
11520 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
11521 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
11522 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
11523 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
11524 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
11525 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
11526
11527 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
11528 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
11529 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
11530
11531       </div>
11532       <div class="tags">
11533
11534
11535         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>.
11536
11537
11538       </div>
11539     </div>
11540     <div class="padding"></div>
11541
11542     <div class="entry">
11543       <div class="title">
11544         <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>
11545       </div>
11546       <div class="date">
11547         17th January 2009
11548       </div>
11549       <div class="body">
11550         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
11551 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
11552 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
11553 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
11554 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
11555 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
11556 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
11557 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
11558 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
11559 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
11560 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
11561 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
11562 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
11563 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
11564
11565 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
11566 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
11567 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
11568 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
11569 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
11570 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
11571 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
11572 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
11573 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
11574 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
11575 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
11576 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
11577 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
11578 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
11579 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
11580 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
11581 playing when the download is done.</p>
11582
11583 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
11584 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
11585 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
11586 too.</p>
11587
11588 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
11589 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
11590 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
11591 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
11592
11593       </div>
11594       <div class="tags">
11595
11596
11597         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>.
11598
11599
11600       </div>
11601     </div>
11602     <div class="padding"></div>
11603
11604     <div class="entry">
11605       <div class="title">
11606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
11607       </div>
11608       <div class="date">
11609         28th December 2008
11610       </div>
11611       <div class="body">
11612         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
11613 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
11614 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
11615 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
11616 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
11617 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
11618 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
11619 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
11620 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
11621 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
11622 source, sink and mixer applications and
11623 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
11624 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
11625 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
11626 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
11627 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
11628 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
11629 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
11630 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
11631 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
11632
11633 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
11634 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
11635 larger stick as well.</p>
11636
11637       </div>
11638       <div class="tags">
11639
11640
11641         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>.
11642
11643
11644       </div>
11645     </div>
11646     <div class="padding"></div>
11647
11648     <div class="entry">
11649       <div class="title">
11650         <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>
11651       </div>
11652       <div class="date">
11653          7th December 2008
11654       </div>
11655       <div class="body">
11656         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
11657 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
11658 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
11659 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
11660 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
11661 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
11662 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
11663 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
11664
11665 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
11666 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
11667 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
11668 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
11669 of these cards.</p>
11670
11671       </div>
11672       <div class="tags">
11673
11674
11675         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>.
11676
11677
11678       </div>
11679     </div>
11680     <div class="padding"></div>
11681
11682     <div class="entry">
11683       <div class="title">
11684         <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>
11685       </div>
11686       <div class="date">
11687         25th November 2008
11688       </div>
11689       <div class="body">
11690         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
11691 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
11692 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
11693 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
11694 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
11695 notes are available on
11696 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
11697 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
11698 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
11699 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
11700 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
11701 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
11702 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
11703 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
11704 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
11705
11706 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
11707 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
11708
11709       </div>
11710       <div class="tags">
11711
11712
11713         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>.
11714
11715
11716       </div>
11717     </div>
11718     <div class="padding"></div>
11719
11720     <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>
11721     <div id="sidebar">
11722
11723
11724
11725 <h2>Archive</h2>
11726 <ul>
11727
11728 <li>2012
11729 <ul>
11730
11731 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
11732
11733 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
11734
11735 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
11736
11737 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
11738
11739 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
11740
11741 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
11742
11743 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
11744
11745 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11746
11747 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
11748
11749 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (10)</a></li>
11750
11751 </ul></li>
11752
11753 <li>2011
11754 <ul>
11755
11756 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
11757
11758 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
11759
11760 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
11761
11762 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
11763
11764 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
11765
11766 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
11767
11768 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
11769
11770 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11771
11772 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
11773
11774 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11775
11776 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11777
11778 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
11779
11780 </ul></li>
11781
11782 <li>2010
11783 <ul>
11784
11785 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
11786
11787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
11788
11789 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
11790
11791 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
11792
11793 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11794
11795 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
11796
11797 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
11798
11799 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
11800
11801 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
11802
11803 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
11804
11805 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
11806
11807 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
11808
11809 </ul></li>
11810
11811 <li>2009
11812 <ul>
11813
11814 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
11815
11816 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
11817
11818 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
11819
11820 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
11821
11822 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11823
11824 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
11825
11826 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
11827
11828 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
11829
11830 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
11831
11832 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11833
11834 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11835
11836 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11837
11838 </ul></li>
11839
11840 <li>2008
11841 <ul>
11842
11843 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
11844
11845 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
11846
11847 </ul></li>
11848
11849 </ul>
11850
11851
11852
11853 <h2>Tags</h2>
11854 <ul>
11855
11856  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
11857
11858  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
11859
11860  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
11861
11862  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (2)</a></li>
11863
11864  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
11865
11866  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
11867
11868  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (57)</a></li>
11869
11870  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (115)</a></li>
11871
11872  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
11873
11874  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
11875
11876  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
11877
11878  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (154)</a></li>
11879
11880  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (18)</a></li>
11881
11882  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
11883
11884  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (8)</a></li>
11885
11886  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (8)</a></li>
11887
11888  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (31)</a></li>
11889
11890  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
11891
11892  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
11893
11894  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (4)</a></li>
11895
11896  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
11897
11898  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
11899
11900  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (205)</a></li>
11901
11902  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (145)</a></li>
11903
11904  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (5)</a></li>
11905
11906  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
11907
11908  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (35)</a></li>
11909
11910  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (51)</a></li>
11911
11912  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
11913
11914  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
11915
11916  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
11917
11918  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
11919
11920  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
11921
11922  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
11923
11924  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
11925
11926  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (23)</a></li>
11927
11928  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
11929
11930  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (3)</a></li>
11931
11932  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (38)</a></li>
11933
11934  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
11935
11936  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
11937
11938  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (10)</a></li>
11939
11940  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
11941
11942  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (34)</a></li>
11943
11944  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (3)</a></li>
11945
11946  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (25)</a></li>
11947
11948 </ul>
11949
11950
11951     </div>
11952     <p style="text-align: right">
11953  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
11954 </p>
11955
11956   </body>
11957 </html>