blog/tags/english/english.rss

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged english</title>
   5                 <description>Entries tagged english</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
  15 project&lt;/a&gt; is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
  16 release today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
  17
  18 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
  19 2013-05-14&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  20
  21 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
  22 alpha1, based on &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.debian.org&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; with
  23 codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
  24
  25 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  26
  27 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
  28 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
  29 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
  30 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
  31 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
  32 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
  33 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
  34 other machines can be installed via the network.&lt;/p&gt;
  35
  36 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
  37 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
  38 version compared to the Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
  39
  40 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  41 &lt;ul&gt;
  42   &lt;li&gt;Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
  43     default.&lt;/li&gt;
  44   &lt;li&gt;Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.&lt;/li&gt;
  45   &lt;li&gt;Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.&lt;/li&gt;
  46   &lt;li&gt;Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
  47     ibus-anthy.&lt;/li&gt;
  48 &lt;/ul&gt;
  49
  50 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  51 &lt;ul&gt;
  52
  53   &lt;li&gt;Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
  54     reliability improvements.&lt;/li&gt;
  55   &lt;li&gt;Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
  56     of &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/706434&quot;&gt;706434&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
  57   &lt;li&gt;Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
  58     problems.&lt;/li&gt;
  59   &lt;li&gt;Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
  60     direct:// URL.&lt;/li&gt;
  61   &lt;li&gt;Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.&lt;/li&gt;
  62   &lt;li&gt;Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.&lt;/li&gt;
  63   &lt;li&gt;Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.&lt;/li&gt;
  64   &lt;li&gt;Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
  65     servers, to make room for all the software installed.&lt;/li&gt;
  66   &lt;li&gt;Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
  67     log in (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/706753&quot;&gt;706753&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
  68 &lt;/ul&gt;
  69
  70 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  71 &lt;ul&gt;
  72
  73   &lt;li&gt;IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
  74     (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/705900&quot;&gt;705900&lt;/a&gt;).  Only install
  75     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.&lt;/li&gt;
  76   &lt;li&gt;DVD images are not yet ready.&lt;/li&gt;
  77   &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
  78     available yet (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698840&quot;&gt;698840&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
  79   &lt;li&gt;Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).&lt;/li&gt;
  80   &lt;li&gt;KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.&lt;/li&gt;
  81   &lt;li&gt;LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
  82     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.&lt;/li&gt;
  83   &lt;li&gt;Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
  84     password submission problem
  85     (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/700257&quot;&gt;700257&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
  86
  87 &lt;/ul&gt;
  88
  89 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  90
  91 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
  92 &lt;ul&gt;
  93
  94   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  95   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  96   &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
  97
  98 &lt;/ul&gt;
  99
 100 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b&lt;/p&gt;
 101
 102 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c&lt;/p&gt;
 103
 104 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 105
 106 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 107 </description>
 108         </item>
 109
 110         <item>
 111                 <title>Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</title>
 112                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</link>
 113                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</guid>
 114                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 115                 <description>&lt;P&gt;In January,
 116 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html&quot;&gt;I
 117 announced a&lt;/a&gt; new &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;IRC
 118 channel #debian-lego&lt;/a&gt;, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
 119 community interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lego.com/&quot;&gt;LEGO&lt;/a&gt;, the
 120 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
 121 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;a wiki page&lt;/a&gt; to have
 122 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
 123 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
 124 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
 125 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego&quot;&gt;hardware::hobby:lego&lt;/a&gt;
 126 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
 127 LEGO and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/&quot;&gt;Mindstorms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
 128
 129 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
 130 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos&quot;&gt;brickos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 131 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad&quot;&gt;leocad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;virtual brick CAD software&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 132 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt&quot;&gt;libnxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 133 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd&quot;&gt;lnpd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 134 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc&quot;&gt;nbc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 135 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc&quot;&gt;nqc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 136 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt&quot;&gt;python-nxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 137 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer&quot;&gt;python-nxt-filer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 138 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch&quot;&gt;scratch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 139 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n&quot;&gt;t2n&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple command-line tool for Lego NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 140 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 141
 142 &lt;p&gt;Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
 143 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
 144 available in experimental.&lt;/p&gt;
 145
 146 &lt;p&gt;If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
 147 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
 148 for LEGO designers.&lt;/p&gt;
 149 </description>
 150         </item>
 151
 152         <item>
 153                 <title>Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</title>
 154                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</link>
 155                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</guid>
 156                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 May 2013 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
 157                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
 158 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504&quot;&gt;release announcement
 159 for Debian Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
 160 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
 161 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
 162
 163 &lt;p&gt;The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
 164 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
 165 &lt;a href=&quot;http://scratch.mit.edu/&quot;&gt;Scratch&lt;/a&gt; program, made famous by
 166 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.code.org/&quot;&gt;Teach kids code&lt;/a&gt; movement, is
 167 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
 168 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/&quot;&gt;kturtle&lt;/a&gt; and
 169 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art&quot;&gt;turtleart&lt;/a&gt;,
 170 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
 171 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
 172 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
 173 Edu.&lt;/a&gt;
 174
 175 &lt;p&gt;And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
 176 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
 177 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html&quot;&gt;first
 178 alpha release&lt;/a&gt; went out last week, and the next should soon
 179 follow.&lt;p&gt;
 180 </description>
 181         </item>
 182
 183         <item>
 184                 <title>First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
 185                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
 186                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
 187                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 188                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
 189 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
 190 announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
 191
 192 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
 193 2013-04-26&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 194
 195 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
 196 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
 197
 198 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 199
 200 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
 201 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
 202 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
 203 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
 204 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
 205 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
 206 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
 207 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
 208 installed via the network.&lt;/p&gt;
 209
 210 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
 211 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
 212 version compared to the Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
 213
 214 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 215
 216 &lt;ul&gt;
 217 &lt;li&gt;Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
 218   &lt;ul&gt;
 219      &lt;li&gt;Linux kernel 3.2.x&lt;/li&gt;
 220      &lt;li&gt;Desktop environments KDE &quot;Plasma&quot; 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
 221          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
 222          manual.)&lt;/li&gt;
 223      &lt;li&gt;Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR&lt;/li&gt;
 224      &lt;li&gt;LibreOffice 3.5.4&lt;/li&gt;
 225      &lt;li&gt;LTSP 5.4.2&lt;/li&gt;
 226      &lt;li&gt;GOsa 2.7.4&lt;/li&gt;
 227      &lt;li&gt;CUPS print system 1.5.3&lt;/li&gt;
 228      &lt;li&gt;Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01&lt;/li&gt;
 229      &lt;li&gt;Music creator Rosegarden 12.04&lt;/li&gt;
 230      &lt;li&gt;Image editor Gimp 2.8.2&lt;/li&gt;
 231      &lt;li&gt;Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1&lt;/li&gt;
 232      &lt;li&gt;Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3&lt;/li&gt;
 233      &lt;li&gt;Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6&lt;/li&gt;
 234      &lt;li&gt;New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
 235          &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual&quot;&gt;installation
 236          manual&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/li&gt;
 237      &lt;li&gt;Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
 238          installation.&lt;/li&gt;
 239      &lt;li&gt;More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
 240          &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes&quot;&gt;release notes&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual&quot;&gt;installation manual&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
 241   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 242 &lt;/ul&gt;
 243
 244 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 245 &lt;ul&gt;
 246 &lt;li&gt;The (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy&quot;&gt;English&lt;/a&gt;) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
 247     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
 248     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.&lt;/li&gt;
 249 &lt;/ul&gt;
 250
 251 &lt;p&gt;&lt;Strong&gt;LDAP related changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 252 &lt;ul&gt;
 253 &lt;li&gt;Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
 254     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
 255     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.&lt;/li&gt;
 256 &lt;/ul&gt;
 257
 258 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 259 &lt;ul&gt;
 260 &lt;li&gt;LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
 261     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
 262     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.&lt;li&gt;
 263 &lt;li&gt;GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
 264     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
 265     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.&lt;/li&gt;
 266 &lt;/ul&gt;
 267
 268 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regressions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 269 &lt;ul&gt;
 270 &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
 271     yet.&lt;/li&gt;
 272 &lt;/ul&gt;
 273
 274 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No updated artwork&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 275
 276 &lt;ul&gt;
 277 &lt;li&gt;Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
 278     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
 279     had for our Squeeze based release.&lt;/li&gt;
 280 &lt;/ul&gt;
 281
 282 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 283
 284 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
 285 &lt;ul&gt;
 286 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 287 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 288 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/li&gt;
 289 &lt;/ul&gt;
 290
 291 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c&lt;/p&gt;
 292
 293 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2&lt;/p&gt;
 294
 295 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 296
 297 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 298 </description>
 299         </item>
 300
 301         <item>
 302                 <title>First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</title>
 303                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html</link>
 304                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html</guid>
 305                 <pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
 306                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This years first &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux /
 307 Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
 308 Details about the gathering can be found
 309 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim&quot;&gt;on
 310 the FRiSK wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
 311 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
 312 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
 313 weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
 314
 315 &lt;p&gt;The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
 316 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
 317 Edu release.&lt;/p&gt;
 318
 319 &lt;p&gt;See you on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,&lt;/a&gt; then?&lt;/p&gt;
 320 </description>
 321         </item>
 322
 323         <item>
 324                 <title>Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</title>
 325                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
 326                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
 327                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Apr 2013 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
 328                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today the &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram
 329 package&lt;/a&gt; finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
 330 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
 331 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.&lt;/p&gt;
 332
 333 &lt;p&gt;Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
 334 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
 335 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
 336 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
 337 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
 338 BTS. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 339 </description>
 340         </item>
 341
 342         <item>
 343                 <title>Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</title>
 344                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html</link>
 345                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html</guid>
 346                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
 347                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
 348 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
 349 font you use when printing.&lt;/p&gt;
 350
 351 &lt;p&gt;Three years ago,
 352 &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/&quot;&gt;Ars
 353 Technica&lt;/a&gt; reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
 354 changed their default front from
 355 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial&quot;&gt;Arial&lt;/a&gt; to
 356 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic&quot;&gt;Century
 357 Gothic&lt;/a&gt; to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
 358 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
 359 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
 360 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
 361 prints.&lt;/p&gt;
 362
 363 &lt;p&gt;But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
 364 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
 365 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
 366 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097&quot;&gt;a report from
 367 TwinCities.com&lt;/a&gt;, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
 368 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
 369 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
 370 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
 371 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
 372 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
 373 depend on the documents printed.&lt;/p&gt;
 374
 375 &lt;p&gt;But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
 376 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
 377 and save some money in the process.&lt;/p&gt;
 378
 379 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
 380 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
 381 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font&quot;&gt;service to calculate the
 382 difference between font pairs&lt;/a&gt;.  They also
 383 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---&quot;&gt;recommend
 384 which fonts to use&lt;/a&gt; to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
 385 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
 386 &lt;a href=&quot;http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/&quot;&gt;listing
 387 the fonts they recommend&lt;/a&gt;, with Centory Gothic at the top.&lt;/p&gt;
 388 </description>
 389         </item>
 390
 391         <item>
 392                 <title>Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</title>
 393                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html</link>
 394                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html</guid>
 395                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
 396                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, during a discussion in
 397 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efn.no/&quot;&gt;EFN&lt;/a&gt; about interesting books to read
 398 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
 399 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
 400 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/&quot;&gt;Tore Åge Bringsværd&lt;/a&gt;
 401 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
 402 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
 403 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
 404 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
 405 short story using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creativecommons.org/&quot;&gt;Creative
 406 Commons&lt;/a&gt; license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
 407 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.&lt;/p&gt;
 408
 409 &lt;p&gt;As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
 410 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
 411 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
 412 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;DocBook&lt;/a&gt; processing framework to
 413 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
 414 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
 415 distribution of choice, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;, so
 416 all I had to do was to use the
 417 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;dblatex&lt;/a&gt;,
 418 &lt;a href=&quot;http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README&quot;&gt;dbtoepub&lt;/a&gt;
 419 and &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/&quot;&gt;xmlto&lt;/a&gt; tools to do the
 420 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
 421 xsltproc/fop (aka
 422 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets&quot;&gt;docbook-xsl&lt;/a&gt;),
 423 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
 424 nicer &amp;lt;variablelist&amp;gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
 425 technical detail.&lt;/p&gt;
 426
 427 &lt;p&gt;There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
 428 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
 429 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
 430 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
 431 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
 432 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;
 433
 434 &lt;p&gt;I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
 435 single star in it, ie &amp;lt;para&amp;gt;*&amp;lt;/para&amp;gt;, but it made sure a
 436 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
 437 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
 438 preprocessor directive &amp;lt;?newscene?&amp;gt;, mapping to &quot;&amp;lt;hr/&amp;gt;&quot;
 439 for HTML and &quot;&amp;lt;fo:block text-align=&quot;center&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;fo:leader
 440 leader-pattern=&quot;rule&quot; rule-thickness=&quot;0.5pt&quot;/&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/fo:block&amp;gt;&quot;
 441 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
 442 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 443
 444 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 445 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
 446 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
 447   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;newscene&#39;)&quot;&amp;gt;
 448     &amp;lt;hr/&amp;gt;
 449   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
 450 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
 451 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 452
 453 &lt;p&gt;And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 454
 455 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 456 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
 457 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
 458   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;newscene&#39;)&quot;&amp;gt;
 459     &amp;lt;fo:block text-align=&quot;center&quot;&amp;gt;
 460       &amp;lt;fo:leader leader-pattern=&quot;rule&quot; rule-thickness=&quot;0.5pt&quot;/&amp;gt;
 461     &amp;lt;/fo:block&amp;gt;
 462   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
 463 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
 464 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 465
 466 &lt;p&gt;Finally, I came across the &amp;lt;bridgehead&amp;gt; tag, which seem to be
 467 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &amp;lt;?newscene?&amp;gt;
 468 with &amp;lt;bridgehead&amp;gt;*&amp;lt;/bridgehead&amp;gt;.  It isn&#39;t centred, but we
 469 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn&#39;t
 470 enough.&lt;/p&gt;
 471
 472 &lt;p&gt;I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
 473 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
 474 directive &amp;lt;?linebreak?&amp;gt;, mapping to &amp;lt;br/&amp;gt; in HTML, and
 475 &amp;lt;fo:block/&amp;gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
 476 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
 477 look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 478
 479 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 480 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
 481 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
 482   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;linebreak)&quot;&amp;gt;
 483     &amp;lt;br/&amp;gt;
 484   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
 485 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
 486 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 487
 488 &lt;p&gt;And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 489
 490 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 491 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
 492 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;
 493   xmlns:fo=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format&quot;&amp;gt;
 494   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;linebreak)&quot;&amp;gt;
 495     &amp;lt;fo:block/&amp;gt;
 496   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
 497 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
 498 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 499
 500 &lt;p&gt;One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
 501 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
 502 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
 503 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
 504 page.&lt;/p&gt;
 505
 506 &lt;p&gt;If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
 507 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/sickel/kodemus&quot;&gt;source repository at
 508 github&lt;/a&gt;
 509 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/EFN/kodemus&quot;&gt;future/new/official
 510 repository&lt;/a&gt;).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
 511 days.&lt;/p&gt;
 512 </description>
 513         </item>
 514
 515         <item>
 516                 <title>Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</title>
 517                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html</link>
 518                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html</guid>
 519                 <pubDate>Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
 520                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via
 521 &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930&quot;&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt;
 522 I just discovered that &lt;a href=&quot;http://pcwizz.net/&quot;&gt;Pcwizz&lt;/a&gt; have
 523 done a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc&quot;&gt;video
 524 review&lt;/a&gt; on Youtube of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
 525 / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
 526 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
 527 a few programs and his view of our distribution.&lt;/p&gt;
 528
 529 &lt;p&gt;There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
 530 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:&lt;/p&gt;
 531
 532 &lt;blockquote&gt;
 533 &quot;Basically everything you ever need in a school environment.&quot;
 534 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
 535
 536 &lt;p&gt;And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:&lt;/p&gt;
 537
 538 &lt;blockquote&gt;
 539 &quot;So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
 540 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
 541 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
 542 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
 543 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network.&quot;
 544 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
 545
 546 &lt;p&gt;To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
 547 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
 548 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
 549 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 550
 551 &lt;p&gt;While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
 552 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
 553
 554 &lt;blockquote&gt;
 555 &quot;[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
 556 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
 557 actually don&#39;t need in the education distribution, but have just been
 558 included because it isn&#39;t stripped out for some reason.&quot;
 559 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
 560
 561 &lt;p&gt;I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
 562 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
 563 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries&quot;&gt;one
 564 consistent menu system&lt;/a&gt; instead of two incomplete and partly
 565 inconsistent menu systems.&lt;/p&gt;
 566
 567 &lt;p&gt;The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
 568 embedding:&lt;/p&gt;
 569
 570 &lt;iframe width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
 571 </description>
 572         </item>
 573
 574         <item>
 575                 <title>First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</title>
 576                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html</link>
 577                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html</guid>
 578                 <pubDate>Fri, 8 Mar 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
 579                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
 580 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;
 581 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
 582 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;the
 583 initial release 2012-03-11&lt;/a&gt;.  This is the
 584 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;release
 585 announcement email from Holger&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
 586
 587 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hi,&lt;/p&gt;
 588
 589 &lt;p&gt;it&#39;s my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
 590 Edu 6.0.7+r1 (&quot;Debian Edu Squeeze&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;
 591
 592 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
 593 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
 594 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
 595 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
 596 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311&lt;/a&gt;
 597 for more information on &quot;Debian Edu Squeeze&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
 598
 599 &lt;p&gt;Images are available for download at
 600 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 601
 602 &lt;p&gt;md5sums:
 603 &lt;br&gt;1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
 604 &lt;br&gt;a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
 605 &lt;br&gt;ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso&lt;/p&gt;
 606
 607 &lt;p&gt;sha1sums:
 608 &lt;br&gt;a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
 609 &lt;br&gt;9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
 610 &lt;br&gt;43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso&lt;/p&gt;
 611
 612 &lt;p&gt;These images are suitable for amd64+i386.&lt;/p&gt;
 613
 614 &lt;p&gt;Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename &quot;Squeeze&quot;, released
 615 2013-03-03:&lt;/p&gt;
 616
 617 &lt;ul&gt;
 618   &lt;li&gt;sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
 619   &lt;ul&gt;
 620         &lt;li&gt;Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient&lt;/li&gt;
 621         &lt;li&gt;Comply with 3.X kernel&lt;/li&gt;
 622   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 623   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
 624   &lt;ul&gt;
 625         &lt;li&gt;Minor updates from the wiki&lt;/li&gt;
 626         &lt;li&gt;Danish translation now complete&lt;/li&gt;
 627   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 628   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
 629      &lt;ul&gt;
 630         &lt;li&gt;Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880&lt;/li&gt;
 631         &lt;li&gt;Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.&lt;/li&gt;
 632         &lt;li&gt;Correct Kerberos user policy: don&#39;t expire password after 2 days.
 633                 Closes: #664596&lt;/li&gt;
 634         &lt;li&gt;Handle &#39;#&#39; characters in the root or first users password.
 635                 Closes: #664976&lt;/li&gt;
 636         &lt;li&gt;Fixes for gosa-sync:
 637            &lt;ul&gt;
 638                 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t fail if password contains &quot;&lt;/li&gt;
 639                 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t disclose new password string in syslog&lt;/li&gt;
 640            &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 641         &lt;li&gt;Fixes for gosa-create:
 642            &lt;ul&gt;
 643                 &lt;li&gt;Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes&lt;/li&gt;
 644                 &lt;li&gt;Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²&lt;/li&gt;
 645                 &lt;li&gt;gosa-netgroups plugin: don&#39;t erase entries of attribute type
 646                          &quot;memberNisNetgroup&quot;. Closes: #687256&lt;/li&gt;
 647                 &lt;li&gt;First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users&lt;/li&gt;
 648            &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 649         &lt;li&gt;Add Danish web page&lt;/li&gt;
 650     &lt;/ul&gt;
 651   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
 652     &lt;ul&gt;
 653         &lt;li&gt;Improve preseeding support and documentation&lt;/li&gt;
 654     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 655 &lt;/ul&gt;
 656
 657 &lt;p&gt;End-user documentation in English is available at
 658 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/&lt;/a&gt;
 659 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
 660 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)&lt;/p&gt;
 661
 662 &lt;p&gt;If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
 663 mailinglist
 664 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;debian-edu@lists.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;!
 665 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
 666
 667 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 668 </description>
 669         </item>
 670
 671         <item>
 672                 <title>Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</title>
 673                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html</link>
 674                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html</guid>
 675                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Mar 2013 07:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
 676                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
 677 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
 678 support using
 679 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and
 680 open standards&lt;/a&gt;?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
 681 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
 682 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
 683 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frikanalen.no/&quot;&gt;Frikanalen&lt;/a&gt; have been building a
 684 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
 685 using the GNU LGPL, and
 686 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/Frikanalen&quot;&gt;available from github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 687
 688 &lt;p&gt;The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
 689 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
 690 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
 691 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
 692 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
 693 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.&lt;/p&gt;
 694
 695 &lt;p&gt;There are several parts to this web based solution.  I&#39;ll mention
 696 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
 697 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
 698 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
 699 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
 700 &lt;a href=&quot;http://beta.frikanalen.tv/&quot;&gt;beta.frikanalen.tv&lt;/a&gt;.  The
 701 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
 702 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
 703 using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.casparcg.com/&quot;&gt;CasparCG from SVT&lt;/a&gt; and
 704 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mltframework.org/&quot;&gt;Media Lovin&#39; Toolkit&lt;/a&gt;.  Video
 705 signal distribution is handled using
 706 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ob-encoder.com/&quot;&gt;Open Broadcast Encoder&lt;/a&gt;.  The
 707 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
 708 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
 709 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
 710 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
 711 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
 712 them up a bit more first.&lt;/p&gt;
 713
 714 &lt;p&gt;The development is coordinated on the
 715 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen&quot;&gt;#frikanalen IRC
 716 channel&lt;/a&gt; (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
 717 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen&quot;&gt;the
 718 frikanalen mailing list&lt;/a&gt;. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
 719 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
 720 development.&lt;/p&gt;
 721 </description>
 722         </item>
 723
 724         <item>
 725                 <title>Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</title>
 726                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html</link>
 727                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html</guid>
 728                 <pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 20:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
 729                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Dr. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stallman.org/&quot;&gt;Richard Stallman&lt;/a&gt;,
 730 founder of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsf.org/&quot;&gt;Free Software Foundation&lt;/a&gt;,
 731 is giving &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/&quot;&gt;a
 732 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00&lt;/a&gt;.  The event is public
 733 and organised by &lt;a href=&quot;&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)&lt;/a&gt;
 734 (where I am the chair of the board) and
 735 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprog.no/&quot;&gt;The Norwegian Open Source Competence
 736 Center&lt;/a&gt;.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
 737 GNU», with this description:
 738
 739 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
 740 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users&#39; freedom to
 741 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
 742 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
 743 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
 744 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 745
 746 &lt;p&gt;The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
 747 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
 748 am really curious how many will show up.  See
 749 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/&quot;&gt;the event
 750 page&lt;/a&gt; for the location details.&lt;/p&gt;
 751 </description>
 752         </item>
 753
 754         <item>
 755                 <title>Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</title>
 756                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html</link>
 757                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html</guid>
 758                 <pubDate>Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
 759                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
 760 now a great source of free maps available from
 761 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html&quot;&gt;Frikart&lt;/a&gt;.  To
 762 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
 763 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
 764 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
 765 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
 766 &quot;Trails - overlay map&quot; and &quot;Cross country - overlay map&quot; (see the web
 767 page for descriptions).&lt;/p&gt;
 768
 769 &lt;p&gt;The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
 770 map you can just edit the
 771 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; map source
 772 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 773 </description>
 774         </item>
 775
 776         <item>
 777                 <title>&quot;Electronic&quot; paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</title>
 778                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</link>
 779                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</guid>
 780                 <pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
 781                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
 782 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura&quot;&gt;solution promoted
 783 by the Norwegian government&lt;/a&gt; require that invoices are sent through
 784 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
 785 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
 786 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
 787 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
 788 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
 789 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
 790 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
 791 &quot;electronic&quot; information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
 792 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
 793 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
 794 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
 795 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard&quot;&gt;the vCard format&lt;/a&gt;, as
 796 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.&lt;/p&gt;
 797
 798 &lt;p&gt;The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
 799 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
 800 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
 801 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;ask
 802 for donations to the Debian Edu project&lt;/a&gt; and thus have bank account
 803 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
 804 fields:&lt;/p&gt;
 805
 806 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 807 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
 808 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
 809 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
 810 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
 811 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
 812 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
 813 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
 814 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 815
 816 &lt;p&gt;The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
 817 answer regarding
 818 &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file&quot;&gt;how
 819 to put bank account information into a vCard&lt;/a&gt;.  For payments in
 820 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
 821 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.&lt;/p&gt;
 822
 823 &lt;p&gt;The complete vCard could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 824
 825 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 826 BEGIN:VCARD
 827 VERSION:2.1
 828 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
 829 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
 830 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
 831 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
 832 REV:20130212T095000Z
 833 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
 834 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
 835 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
 836 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
 837 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
 838 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
 839 END:VCARD
 840 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 841
 842 &lt;p&gt;The resulting QR code created using
 843 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/&quot;&gt;qrencode&lt;/a&gt; would look
 844 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
 845 phone, or for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://zbar.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;zbar
 846 bar code reader&lt;/a&gt; and feed right into the approval and accounting
 847 system.&lt;/p&gt;
 848
 849 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 850
 851 &lt;p&gt;The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
 852 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
 853 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
 854 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
 855
 856 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-02-12 11:30&lt;/strong&gt;: Added KID to the proposal
 857 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.&lt;/p&gt;
 858 </description>
 859         </item>
 860
 861         <item>
 862                 <title>Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</title>
 863                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html</link>
 864                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html</guid>
 865                 <pubDate>Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
 866                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img align=&quot;left&quot; style=&quot;margin-right:25px;&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 867
 868 &lt;p&gt;With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
 869 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
 870 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
 871 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
 872 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
 873 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
 874 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
 875 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
 876 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
 877 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
 878 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.&lt;/p&gt;
 879
 880 &lt;p&gt;But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
 881 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
 882 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick&quot;&gt;Tellstick&lt;/a&gt; and RF
 883 switches at the local &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clasohlson.com/&quot;&gt;Clas
 884 Ohlson&lt;/a&gt; shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
 885 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
 886 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
 887 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
 888 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
 889 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net&quot;&gt;Tellstick
 890 Net&lt;/a&gt; to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
 891 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
 892 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
 893 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
 894 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
 895 ones own
 896 &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware&quot;&gt;firmware
 897 with local access&lt;/A&gt; instead of being controlled by a Swedish
 898 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
 899 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
 900 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
 901 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
 902 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
 903 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
 904 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
 905 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
 906 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;
 907
 908 &lt;p&gt;We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
 909 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
 910 &quot;morning light&quot; was turned on and signalled that the morning had
 911 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
 912 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
 913 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;
 914
 915 &lt;p&gt;A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
 916 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
 917 can also delay it if we want to.&lt;/p&gt;
 918 </description>
 919         </item>
 920
 921         <item>
 922                 <title>Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</title>
 923                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</link>
 924                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</guid>
 925                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
 926                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
 927 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;last
 928 bitcoin related blog post&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the new
 929 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin package&lt;/a&gt; for
 930 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
 931 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
 932 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
 933 version too.&lt;/p&gt;
 934
 935 &lt;p&gt;But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
 936 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
 937 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
 938 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
 939 architectures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/672524&quot;&gt;BTS #672524&lt;/a&gt;).
 940 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
 941 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
 942 failing, please let us know via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
 943
 944 &lt;p&gt;One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
 945 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
 946 if it run short on space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/696715&quot;&gt;BTS
 947 #696715&lt;/a&gt;).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
 948 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 949
 950 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 951 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 952 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 953 </description>
 954         </item>
 955
 956         <item>
 957                 <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
 958                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
 959                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
 960                 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
 961                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
 962 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
 963 for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
 964 pluggable hardware devices, which I
 965 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
 966 out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
 967 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
 968 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
 969 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
 970 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
 971 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
 972 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
 973 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
 974 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;
 975
 976 &lt;pre&gt;
 977 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
 978 cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage -us -uc
 979 &lt;/pre&gt;
 980
 981 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
 982 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
 983 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
 984 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 985
 986 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
 987 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
 988 stuff, in other words.  I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
 989 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
 990 word.&lt;/p&gt;
 991
 992 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-26&lt;/strong&gt;: Added -us -us to build
 993 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
 994 process.&lt;/p&gt;
 995
 996 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-27&lt;/strong&gt;: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
 997 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.&lt;/p&gt;
 998 </description>
 999         </item>
1000
1001         <item>
1002                 <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
1003                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
1004                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
1005                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1006                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
1007 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
1008 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;.  Now my
1009 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
1010 it, fetch the
1011 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
1012 from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
1013 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
1014 autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;
1015
1016 &lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
1017
1018 &lt;ul&gt;
1019
1020 &lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1021 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
1022
1023 &lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1024 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1025 initially did.&lt;/li&gt;
1026
1027 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1028 the APT database, a database
1029 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
1030 via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;
1031
1032 &lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1033 isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1034 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1035 package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;
1036
1037 &lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
1038 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;
1039
1040 &lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
1041 package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;
1042
1043 &lt;/ul&gt;
1044
1045 &lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
1046 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
1047 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
1048 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
1049
1050 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
1051 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
1052 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
1053 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
1054 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1055
1056 &lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
1057 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
1058 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
1059 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
1060 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
1061 method.  I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
1062 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
1063 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;
1064
1065 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
1066 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
1067 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
1068 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
1069 hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;.  If you lack debuild, install the
1070 devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;
1071
1072 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-23 12:00&lt;/strong&gt;: The project is now
1073 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
1074 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
1075 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html&quot;&gt;build
1076 instructions&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;
1077 </description>
1078         </item>
1079
1080         <item>
1081                 <title>Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</title>
1082                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</link>
1083                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</guid>
1084                 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1085                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
1086 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
1087 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
1088 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
1089 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
1090 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
1091 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
1092 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
1093 not a durable solution.
1094
1095 &lt;p&gt;My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
1096 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)&lt;/p&gt;
1097
1098 &lt;ul&gt;
1099
1100 &lt;li&gt;Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
1101   than A4).&lt;/li&gt;
1102 &lt;li&gt;Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.&lt;/li&gt;
1103 &lt;li&gt;Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.&lt;/li&gt;
1104 &lt;li&gt;Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.&lt;/li&gt;
1105 &lt;li&gt;Internal WIFI network card.&lt;/li&gt;
1106 &lt;li&gt;Internal Twisted Pair network card.&lt;/li&gt;
1107 &lt;li&gt;Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)&lt;/li&gt;
1108 &lt;li&gt;Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.&lt;/li&gt;
1109 &lt;li&gt;Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12&quot; (A4 paper
1110 size).&lt;/li&gt;
1111 &lt;li&gt;Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1112   X.org packages.&lt;/li&gt;
1113 &lt;li&gt;Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1114   the time).
1115
1116 &lt;/ul&gt;
1117
1118 &lt;p&gt;You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1119 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1120 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1121 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
1122 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1123 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1124 Lenovo took over.  But I&#39;ve been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1125 still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;
1126
1127 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1128 external keyboard?  I&#39;ll have to check the
1129 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linux-laptop.net/&quot;&gt;Linux Laptops site&lt;/a&gt; for
1130 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1131 of the vendors listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxpreloaded.com/&quot;&gt;Linux
1132 Pre-loaded site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1133 </description>
1134         </item>
1135
1136         <item>
1137                 <title>How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</title>
1138                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</link>
1139                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</guid>
1140                 <pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
1141                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1142 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
1143 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins&quot;&gt;specifications
1144 done by Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1145 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1146 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1147 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:&lt;/p&gt;
1148
1149 &lt;pre&gt;
1150 #!/usr/bin/python
1151 import sys
1152 import apt
1153 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1154     cache = apt.Cache()
1155     cache.open(None)
1156     thepkgs = []
1157     for pkg in cache:
1158         version = pkg.candidate
1159         if version is None:
1160             version = pkg.installed
1161         if version is None:
1162             continue
1163         record = version.record
1164         if not record.has_key(&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;):
1165             continue
1166         mime_types = record[&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;].split(&#39;,&#39;)
1167         for t in mime_types:
1168             t = t.rstrip().strip()
1169             if t == mimetype:
1170                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1171     return thepkgs
1172 mimetype = &quot;audio/ogg&quot;
1173 if 1 &lt; len(sys.argv):
1174     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1175 print &quot;Browser plugin packages supporting %s:&quot; % mimetype
1176 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1177     print &quot;  %s&quot; %pkg
1178 &lt;/pre&gt;
1179
1180 &lt;p&gt;It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:&lt;/p&gt;
1181
1182 &lt;pre&gt;
1183 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1184 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1185   gecko-mediaplayer
1186 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1187 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1188   browser-plugin-gnash
1189 %
1190 &lt;/pre&gt;
1191
1192 &lt;p&gt;In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1193 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1194 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
1195 anyone working on adding it?&lt;/p&gt;
1196
1197 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-18 14:20&lt;/strong&gt;: The Debian BTS
1198 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1199 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/484010&quot;&gt;#484010&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 (and
1200 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698426&quot;&gt;#698426&lt;/a&gt; from today).  Lack
1201 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1202 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
1203 </description>
1204         </item>
1205
1206         <item>
1207                 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</title>
1208                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</link>
1209                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</guid>
1210                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
1211                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal&quot;&gt;DEP-11
1212 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive&lt;/a&gt;, is a
1213 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1214 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1215 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
1216 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1217 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1218 downloaded by the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
1219
1220 &lt;p&gt;To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1221 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1222 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
1223 can be found on the
1224 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest&quot;&gt;Skolelinux FTP
1225 site&lt;/a&gt;.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
1226 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1227 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1228 The complete list is available from the link above.&lt;/p&gt;
1229
1230 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Stable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1231
1232 &lt;pre&gt;
1233   count MIME type
1234   ----- -----------------------
1235      32 text/plain
1236      30 audio/mpeg
1237      29 image/png
1238      28 image/jpeg
1239      27 application/ogg
1240      26 audio/x-mp3
1241      25 image/tiff
1242      25 image/gif
1243      22 image/bmp
1244      22 audio/x-wav
1245      20 audio/x-flac
1246      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1247      18 video/x-ms-asf
1248      18 audio/x-musepack
1249      18 audio/x-mpeg
1250      18 application/x-ogg
1251      17 video/mpeg
1252      17 audio/x-scpls
1253      17 audio/ogg
1254      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1255 &lt;/pre&gt;
1256
1257 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Testing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1258
1259 &lt;pre&gt;
1260   count MIME type
1261   ----- -----------------------
1262      33 text/plain
1263      32 image/png
1264      32 image/jpeg
1265      29 audio/mpeg
1266      27 image/gif
1267      26 image/tiff
1268      26 application/ogg
1269      25 audio/x-mp3
1270      22 image/bmp
1271      21 audio/x-wav
1272      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1273      19 audio/x-mpeg
1274      18 video/mpeg
1275      18 audio/x-scpls
1276      18 audio/x-flac
1277      18 application/x-ogg
1278      17 video/x-ms-asf
1279      17 text/html
1280      17 audio/x-musepack
1281      16 image/x-xbitmap
1282 &lt;/pre&gt;
1283
1284 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1285
1286 &lt;pre&gt;
1287   count MIME type
1288   ----- -----------------------
1289      31 text/plain
1290      31 image/png
1291      31 image/jpeg
1292      29 audio/mpeg
1293      28 application/ogg
1294      27 image/gif
1295      26 image/tiff
1296      26 audio/x-mp3
1297      23 audio/x-wav
1298      22 image/bmp
1299      21 audio/x-flac
1300      20 audio/x-mpegurl
1301      19 audio/x-mpeg
1302      18 video/x-ms-asf
1303      18 video/mpeg
1304      18 audio/x-scpls
1305      18 application/x-ogg
1306      17 audio/x-musepack
1307      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1308      16 video/x-msvideo
1309 &lt;/pre&gt;
1310
1311 &lt;p&gt;I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
1312 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
1313 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
1314 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
1315
1316 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-16 13:35&lt;/strong&gt;: Updated numbers after
1317 discovering a typo in my script.&lt;/p&gt;
1318 </description>
1319         </item>
1320
1321         <item>
1322                 <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
1323                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
1324                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
1325                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1326                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
1327 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
1328 values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
1329 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
1330 dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
1331 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
1332 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1333 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1334 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1335 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
1336
1337 &lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1338 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1339 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1340 modalias.&lt;/p&gt;
1341
1342 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1343 Package: package-name
1344 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
1345 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1346
1347 &lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1348 for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;
1349
1350 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1351 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;
1352
1353 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1354 Package: cheese
1355 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
1356 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1357
1358 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1359 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;
1360
1361 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1362 Package: pcmciautils
1363 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1364 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1365
1366 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1367 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;
1368
1369 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1370 Package: colorhug-client
1371 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
1372 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1373
1374 &lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1375 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1376 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
1377
1378 &lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1379 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1380 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1381 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1382 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I&#39;ve
1383 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1384 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
1385 Raring.&lt;/p&gt;
1386
1387 &lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1388 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1389 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
1390 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
1391 try the
1392 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
1393 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1394 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1395 repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;
1396
1397 &lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1398 install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;
1399
1400 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1401 % ./hw-support-lookup
1402 &lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
1403 &lt;br&gt;%
1404 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1405
1406 &lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1407 propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;
1408
1409 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1410 % ./hw-support-lookup
1411 &lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
1412 &lt;br&gt;%
1413 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1414
1415 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1416 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
1417 database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;
1418
1419 &lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1420 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
1421 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1422 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
1423 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1424 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1425 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
1426 see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;
1427
1428 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1429 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1430 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1431 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1432 </description>
1433         </item>
1434
1435         <item>
1436                 <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
1437                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
1438                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
1439                 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1440                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1441 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1442 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1443 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
1444 in
1445 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
1446 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:
1447
1448 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1449
1450 &lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1451 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
1452 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
1453 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
1454 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
1455 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.
1456
1457 &lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1458 this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
1459
1460 &lt;pre&gt;
1461 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
1462 &lt;/pre&gt;
1463
1464 &lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1465 using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;
1466
1467 &lt;pre&gt;
1468 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1469 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1470 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1471 %
1472 &lt;/pre&gt;
1473
1474 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1475
1476 &lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
1477 Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;
1478
1479 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1480 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1481 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1482
1483 &lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;
1484
1485 &lt;pre&gt;
1486  v   00008086  (vendor)
1487  d   00002770  (device)
1488  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
1489  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
1490  bc  06        (bus class)
1491  sc  00        (bus subclass)
1492  i   00        (interface)
1493 &lt;/pre&gt;
1494
1495 &lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
1496 -n&#39; as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1497 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
1498 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;
1499
1500 &lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1501 means.&lt;/p&gt;
1502
1503 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1504
1505 &lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
1506 USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
1507
1508 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1509 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1510 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1511
1512 &lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;
1513
1514 &lt;pre&gt;
1515  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
1516  p    0001  (device product)
1517  d    0206  (bcddevice)
1518  dc     09  (device class)
1519  dsc    00  (device subclass)
1520  dp     00  (device protocol)
1521  ic     09  (interface class)
1522  isc    00  (interface subclass)
1523  ip     00  (interface protocol)
1524 &lt;/pre&gt;
1525
1526 &lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
1527 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
1528 these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;
1529
1530 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1531 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1532 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1533 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
1534 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
1535 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1536
1537 &lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
1538 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
1539 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;
1540
1541 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1542
1543 &lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
1544 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;
1545
1546 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1547 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1548 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1549
1550 &lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;
1551
1552 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1553
1554 &lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1555 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1556 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;
1557
1558 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1559 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
1560 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1561
1562 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
1563
1564 &lt;pre&gt;
1565  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
1566  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
1567  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
1568  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
1569  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
1570  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
1571  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
1572  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
1573  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
1574  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
1575  ct   10             (chassis type)
1576  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
1577 &lt;/pre&gt;
1578
1579 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
1580 found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;
1581
1582 &lt;pre&gt;
1583   3 Desktop
1584   4 Low Profile Desktop
1585   5 Pizza Box
1586   6 Mini Tower
1587   7 Tower
1588   8 Portable
1589   9 Laptop
1590  10 Notebook
1591  11 Hand Held
1592  12 Docking Station
1593  13 All In One
1594  14 Sub Notebook
1595  15 Space-saving
1596  16 Lunch Box
1597  17 Main Server Chassis
1598  18 Expansion Chassis
1599  19 Sub Chassis
1600  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1601  21 Peripheral Chassis
1602  22 RAID Chassis
1603  23 Rack Mount Chassis
1604  24 Sealed-case PC
1605  25 Multi-system
1606  26 CompactPCI
1607  27 AdvancedTCA
1608  28 Blade
1609  29 Blade Enclosing
1610 &lt;/pre&gt;
1611
1612 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1613 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1614 claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;
1615
1616 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1617
1618 &lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
1619 test machine:&lt;/p&gt;
1620
1621 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1622 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1623 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1624
1625 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
1626
1627 &lt;pre&gt;
1628   ty  01  (type)
1629   pr  00  (prototype)
1630   id  00  (id)
1631   ex  00  (extra)
1632 &lt;/pre&gt;
1633
1634 &lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
1635 the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;
1636
1637 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1638
1639 &lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1640 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1641 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
1642 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
1643 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
1644 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
1645 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;
1646
1647 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1648
1649 &lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
1650 one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
1651
1652 &lt;pre&gt;
1653   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
1654     echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
1655     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/  /&#39; ; \
1656   done
1657 &lt;/pre&gt;
1658
1659 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
1660 list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;
1661
1662 &lt;pre&gt;
1663   acpi:ACPI0003:
1664     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
1665   acpi:device:
1666   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
1667   acpi:IBM0068:
1668     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
1669     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
1670     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
1671     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
1672   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1673     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
1674     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
1675     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
1676   [...]
1677 &lt;/pre&gt;
1678
1679 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1680 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1681 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1682 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1683
1684 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
1685 &quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
1686 in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
1687 </description>
1688         </item>
1689
1690         <item>
1691                 <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
1692                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
1693                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
1694                 <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
1695                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1696 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1697 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1698 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
1699 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
1700 also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
1701 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1702 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
1703 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1704 contribute.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
1705 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1706 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
1707 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1708 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
1709 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1710 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
1711 view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
1712 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
1713 </description>
1714         </item>
1715
1716         <item>
1717                 <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
1718                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
1719                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
1720                 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
1721                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1722 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1723 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1724 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1725 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1726 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1727 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1728 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1729 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1730 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
1731 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;
1732
1733 &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
1734 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
1735 the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;.  The idea is fairly
1736 simple:
1737
1738 &lt;ul&gt;
1739
1740 &lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1741   starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
1742
1743 &lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1744   hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;
1745
1746 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1747   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1748   packages.&lt;/li&gt;
1749
1750 &lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1751   package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;
1752
1753 &lt;/ul&gt;
1754
1755 &lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1756 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1757 discover database to find packages and
1758 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
1759 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
1760
1761 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1762 draft package is now checked into
1763 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
1764 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;.  In the process, I updated the
1765 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
1766 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1767 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1768 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
1769 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
1770 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1771 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
1772 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
1773 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
1774 because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;
1775
1776 &lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1777 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1778 inserted):&lt;/p&gt;
1779
1780 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1781
1782 &lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1783 install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
1784 program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;
1785
1786 &lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1787 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1788 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
1789 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1790 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1791 reportbug if it isn&#39;t.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1792 such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
1793
1794 &lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1795 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1796 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1797 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1798 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1799 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1800 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1801 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1802 not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;
1803
1804 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1805 please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1806 </description>
1807         </item>
1808
1809         <item>
1810                 <title>New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</title>
1811                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</link>
1812                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</guid>
1813                 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
1814                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
1815 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;LEGO Mindstorm
1816 NXT&lt;/a&gt;.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
1817 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
1818 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
1819 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
1820 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; (server
1821 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
1822 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
1823 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1824
1825 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-03: A
1826 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;project page&lt;/a&gt;
1827 including links to Lego related packages is now available.&lt;/p&gt;
1828 </description>
1829         </item>
1830
1831         <item>
1832                 <title>A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</title>
1833                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html</link>
1834                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html</guid>
1835                 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1836                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
1837 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;
1838 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
1839 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
1840 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
1841 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
1842 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
1843 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
1844 cost around NOK 15&amp;nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
1845 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
1846 followed by many others. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1847
1848 &lt;p&gt;The public list of donors can be found on
1849 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;the
1850 donation page&lt;/a&gt; for the project, which also contain instructions if
1851 you want to donate to the project.&lt;/p&gt;
1852 </description>
1853         </item>
1854
1855         <item>
1856                 <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
1857                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
1858                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
1859                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
1860                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1861 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;
1862
1863 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
1864 decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1865 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1866 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1867 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
1868 The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
1869 package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1870 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
1871 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1872 name.&lt;/p&gt;
1873
1874 &lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1875 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1876 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;
1877
1878 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1879 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1880 cd bitcoin
1881 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1882 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1883 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
1884
1885 &lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1886 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1887 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1888 client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
1889 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1890 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1891 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1892 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1893 not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;
1894
1895 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1896 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1897 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1898 </description>
1899         </item>
1900
1901         <item>
1902                 <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
1903                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
1904                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
1905                 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
1906                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
1907 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
1908 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1909 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1910 state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
1911 Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1912 is now maintained by a
1913 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
1914 people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1915 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1916 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1917 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1918 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
1919 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
1920 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
1921 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
1922 Corallo in a
1923 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
1924 Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
1925 Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
1926
1927 &lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
1928 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
1929 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
1930 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
1931 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
1932 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
1933 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
1934 patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
1935 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1936 new version to unstable.
1937
1938 &lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1939 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
1940 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1941 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1942 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1943 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1944 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1945 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
1946 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1947 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1948 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
1949 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1950 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1951 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
1952 have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;
1953
1954 &lt;p&gt;My
1955 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
1956 with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1957 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1958 years ago, as can be
1959 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
1960 on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you everyone for your
1961 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1962 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1963 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
1964 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1965 the same address as last time,
1966 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1967 </description>
1968         </item>
1969
1970         <item>
1971                 <title>Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</title>
1972                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</link>
1973                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</guid>
1974                 <pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
1975                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I came across
1976 &lt;a href=&quot;http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/&quot;&gt;a blog post from Joey
1977 Hess&lt;/a&gt; describing &lt;a href=&quot;http://ledger-cli.org/&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt; and
1978 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
1979 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
1980 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
1981 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
1982 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
1983 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
1984 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
1985
1986 are at least &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports&quot;&gt;five
1987 different implementations&lt;/a&gt; able to read the format.  An example
1988 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
1989 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:&lt;/p&gt;
1990
1991 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1992 2004-05-27 Book Store
1993       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
1994       Liabilities:Visa
1995 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
1996
1997 &lt;p&gt;The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
1998 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
1999 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/&quot;&gt;Christine
2000 Spang&lt;/a&gt;,
2001 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html&quot;&gt;Pete
2002 Keen&lt;/a&gt;,
2003 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/&quot;&gt;Andrew
2004 Cantino&lt;/a&gt; and
2005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/&quot;&gt;Ronald
2006 Ip&lt;/a&gt; describing how they use it, as well as a post from
2007 &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo&quot;&gt;Bradley
2008 M. Kuhn&lt;/a&gt; at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
2009 recommendations fitting my need.&lt;/p&gt;
2010
2011 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt;
2012 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
2013 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html&quot;&gt;hledger&lt;/a&gt;
2014 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
2015 seemed the best choice to get started.&lt;/p&gt;
2016
2017 &lt;p&gt;To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
2018 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger&quot;&gt;web scraper&lt;/a&gt; for
2019 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lodo.no/&quot;&gt;LODO&lt;/a&gt;, the accounting system used by
2020 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt; association, and started to
2021 play with the data set.  I&#39;m not really deeply into accounting, but I
2022 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
2023 using the &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ledger balance&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; command.  But I will have to
2024 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
2025 for the organisations I am involved in.&lt;/p&gt;
2026 </description>
2027         </item>
2028
2029         <item>
2030                 <title>Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</title>
2031                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</link>
2032                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</guid>
2033                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 Dec 2012 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2034                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of
2035 Oslo&lt;/a&gt;, we use the
2036 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/&quot;&gt;Cerebrum user
2037 administration system&lt;/a&gt; to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
2038 I&#39;ve known since the system was written that the server is providing
2039 an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC&quot;&gt;XML-RPC&lt;/a&gt; API, but
2040 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
2041 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
2042 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
2043 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
2044 Python.&lt;/p&gt;
2045
2046 &lt;p&gt;I started by looking at the source of the Java
2047 &lt;a href=&quot;http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/&quot;&gt;bofh
2048 client&lt;/a&gt;, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
2049 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
2050 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html&quot;&gt;a
2051 simple example in&lt;/a&gt; the XML-RPC howto.&lt;/p&gt;
2052
2053 &lt;p&gt;This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
2054 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
2055 user currently logged in:&lt;/p&gt;
2056
2057 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2058 #!/usr/bin/env python
2059 import getpass
2060 import xmlrpclib
2061 server_url = &#39;https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000&#39;;
2062 username = getpass.getuser()
2063 password = getpass.getpass()
2064 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
2065 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
2066 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
2067 print server.run_command(sessionid, &quot;user_info&quot;, username)
2068 result = server.logout(sessionid)
2069 print result
2070 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2071
2072 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
2073 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.&lt;/p&gt;
2074 </description>
2075         </item>
2076
2077         <item>
2078                 <title>Why isn&#39;t the value of copyright taxed?</title>
2079                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html</link>
2080                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html</guid>
2081                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Nov 2012 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2082                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While working on a
2083 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;Norwegian
2084 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig&lt;/a&gt; (76% done),
2085 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
2086 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
2087 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
2088 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.&lt;/p&gt;
2089
2090 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
2091 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
2092 -15-30-19-00/&quot;&gt;presentation
2093 by John Perry Barlow&lt;/a&gt;, and concluded that it was best to put it
2094 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
2095 argument that copyrighted works are &quot;intellectual property&quot;, as the
2096 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
2097 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
2098 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I&#39;m sharing the idea here to
2099 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
2100 arguments.&lt;/p&gt;
2101
2102 &lt;p&gt;Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
2103 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
2104 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
2105 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
2106 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
2107 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
2108 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
2109 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?&lt;/p&gt;
2110
2111 &lt;p&gt;If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
2112 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
2113 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
2114 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
2115 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
2116 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
2117 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
2118 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
2119 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
2120 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
2121 correct right holder.&lt;/p&gt;
2122
2123 &lt;p&gt;If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
2124 they will have a small incentive to &quot;disown&quot; their copyright, and let
2125 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
2126 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
2127 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
2128 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
2129 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
2130 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
2131 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
2132 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
2133 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
2134 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
2135 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
2136 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;
2137
2138 &lt;p&gt;The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
2139 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
2140 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .&lt;/p&gt;
2141
2142 &lt;p&gt;Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
2143 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.&lt;/p&gt;
2144 </description>
2145         </item>
2146
2147         <item>
2148                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</title>
2149                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</link>
2150                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</guid>
2151                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2152                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is another interview with one of the people in the &lt;a
2153 href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
2154 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
2155 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
2156 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
2157 the people behind the German
2158 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/&quot;&gt;IT-Zukunft Schule&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
2159 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
2160 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2161
2162 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2163
2164 &lt;p&gt;I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
2165 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with &quot;my man&quot; Mike Gabriel, my
2166 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
2167
2168 &lt;p&gt;At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
2169 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
2170 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
2171 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
2172 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
2173 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.&lt;/p&gt;
2174
2175 &lt;p&gt;In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
2176 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
2177 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
2178 working in our own school project &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; in North
2179 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
2180 relationship management and the communication processes in the
2181 project.&lt;/p&gt;
2182
2183 &lt;p&gt;Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
2184 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
2185 and a yoga teacher.&lt;/p&gt;
2186
2187 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2188 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2189
2190 &lt;p&gt;I fell in love with Mike ;-).&lt;/p&gt;
2191
2192 &lt;p&gt;Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
2193 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
2194 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
2195 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
2196 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
2197 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
2198 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
2199 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
2200 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
2201 parents.&lt;/p&gt;
2202
2203 &lt;p&gt;Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
2204 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
2205 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
2206 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
2207 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
2208 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
2209 Germany.&lt;/p&gt;
2210
2211 &lt;p&gt;For information about our school project you can read
2212 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html&quot;&gt;the
2213 interview with Mike Gabriel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2214
2215 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2216 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2217
2218 &lt;p&gt;First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
2219 answer comes rather from a social point of view.&lt;/p&gt;
2220
2221 &lt;p&gt;The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
2222 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
2223 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
2224 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
2225 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
2226 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
2227 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
2228 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
2229 teachers, parents...&lt;/p&gt;
2230
2231 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2232 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2233
2234 &lt;p&gt;I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
2235 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
2236
2237 &lt;p&gt;What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
2238 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
2239 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
2240 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
2241 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
2242
2243 &lt;p&gt;Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
2244 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
2245 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
2246 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
2247 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
2248 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
2249 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
2250
2251 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2252
2253 &lt;p&gt;On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
2254 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
2255 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
2256 my N900 running with Maemo.&lt;/p&gt;
2257
2258 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2259 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2260
2261 &lt;p&gt;I am really convinced that in our school project &quot;IT-Zukunft
2262 Schule&quot; we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
2263 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
2264 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
2265 strategy has three crucial pillars:&lt;/p&gt;
2266
2267 &lt;ul&gt;
2268
2269 &lt;li&gt;We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
2270 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
2271 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.&lt;/li&gt;
2272
2273 &lt;li&gt;Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
2274 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
2275 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
2276 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
2277 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
2278 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
2279 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.&lt;/li&gt;
2280
2281 &lt;li&gt;Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
2282 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
2283 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
2284 offer to become more and more independent from us.&lt;/li&gt;
2285
2286 &lt;/ul&gt;
2287 </description>
2288         </item>
2289
2290         <item>
2291                 <title>The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</title>
2292                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</link>
2293                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</guid>
2294                 <pubDate>Sun, 4 Nov 2012 08:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2295                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
2296 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf&quot;&gt;releasing
2297 a report (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; about virtual currencies and
2298 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;.  It is interesting to
2299 see how a member of the bitcoin community
2300 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html&quot;&gt;receive
2301 the report&lt;/a&gt;.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
2302 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
2303 competition.  My thoughts go to the
2304 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl&quot;&gt;Wörgl experiment&lt;/a&gt; with
2305 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
2306 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
2307 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
2308 powerful forces to work against it.&lt;/p&gt;
2309
2310 &lt;p&gt;While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
2311 that the community already seem to have
2312 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down&quot;&gt;experienced
2313 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme&lt;/a&gt;.  Not very surprising, given
2314 how members of &quot;small&quot; communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
2315 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
2316 wealth is available.&lt;/p&gt;
2317 </description>
2318         </item>
2319
2320         <item>
2321                 <title>12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</title>
2322                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</link>
2323                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</guid>
2324                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2325                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt;
2326 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
2327 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
2328 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the NUUG association&lt;/a&gt;, which in turn
2329 make me a member of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usenix.org/&quot;&gt;USENIX&lt;/a&gt;.  NUUG
2330 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
2331 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
2332 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
2333 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
2334 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login&quot;&gt;;login:&lt;/a&gt; in the
2335 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
2336 it every time.&lt;/p&gt;
2337
2338 &lt;p&gt;In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
2339 article by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/&quot;&gt;Stuart Kendrick&lt;/a&gt; from
2340 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
2341 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down&quot;&gt;What
2342 Takes Us Down&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (longer version also
2343 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf&quot;&gt;available
2344 from his own site&lt;/a&gt;), where he report what he found when he
2345 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
2346 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
2347 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
2348 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
2349 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.&lt;p&gt;
2350
2351 &lt;p&gt;The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
2352 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
2353 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
2354 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
2355 article: First the unplanned outage:
2356
2357 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2358 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
2359 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
2360 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
2361 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
2362 Duration:    40 minutes
2363 Scope:       Exchange 2003
2364 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
2365              a cluster failover.
2366
2367 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
2368              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
2369 Technician:  [xxx]
2370 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2371
2372 Next the planned outage:
2373
2374 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2375 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
2376 Severity:    Major (Planned)
2377 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
2378 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
2379 Duration:    10 hours
2380 Scope:       H2 Transport
2381 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
2382              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
2383              4510s.
2384 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
2385              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
2386              connectivity.
2387 Technician:  [xxx]
2388 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2389
2390 &lt;p&gt;He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
2391 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
2392 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
2393 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
2394 people to write &#39;2012-06-16 06:00 +0000&#39; instead of the start time
2395 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
2396 that could be improved, read the article for the details.&lt;/p&gt;
2397
2398 &lt;p&gt;I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
2399 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
2400 university too.  We do register
2401 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/&quot;&gt;planned
2402 changes and outages in a calendar&lt;/a&gt;, and report the to a mailing
2403 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
2404 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
2405 for other sites to consider too?&lt;/p&gt;
2406 </description>
2407         </item>
2408
2409         <item>
2410                 <title>Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</title>
2411                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</link>
2412                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</guid>
2413                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2414                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
2415 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/&quot;&gt;how
2416 Amazon erased the books from a customer&#39;s kindle, locked the account
2417 and refuse to tell the customer why&lt;/a&gt;.  If a real book store did
2418 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
2419 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
2420 background information is available in Norwegian from
2421 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon&quot;&gt;digi.no&lt;/a&gt;.
2422 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
2423 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
2424 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
2425 willing to
2426 &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html&quot;&gt;
2427 break into customers equipment and remove the books&lt;/a&gt; people had
2428 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
2429 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
2430 sounded like
2431 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html&quot;&gt;Amazon
2432 would never do that again&lt;/a&gt;.  And here we are, three years
2433 later.&lt;/p&gt;
2434
2435 &lt;p&gt;And thought this action is
2436 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende&quot;&gt;against
2437 Norwegian regulations and law&lt;/a&gt;, it is according to the terms of use
2438 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
2439 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
2440 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
2441 rights.&lt;/p&gt;
2442
2443 &lt;p&gt;Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
2444 unacceptable terms.  For example
2445 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; (about 40,000
2446 books), &lt;a href=&quot;http://runeberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Runenberg&lt;/a&gt; (1,652
2447 books) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/texts&quot;&gt;The Internet
2448 Archive&lt;/a&gt; (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
2449 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.&lt;/p&gt;
2450
2451 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
2452 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
2453 restored the account of the user, as reported by
2454 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon&quot;&gt;digi.no&lt;/a&gt;
2455 and &lt;a href=&quot;http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487&quot;&gt;NRK&lt;/a&gt;.
2456 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
2457 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
2458 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
2459 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
2460 reading two opinions from
2461 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm&quot;&gt;Simon
2462 Phipps&lt;/a&gt; and
2463 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm&quot;&gt;Glen
2464 Moody&lt;/a&gt; if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
2465 details about the original story.&lt;/p&gt;
2466 </description>
2467         </item>
2468
2469         <item>
2470                 <title>The fight for freedom and privacy</title>
2471                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</link>
2472                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</guid>
2473                 <pubDate>Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2474                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
2475 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
2476 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
2477 across a marvellous drawing by
2478 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/about.html&quot;&gt;Clay Bennett&lt;/a&gt;
2479 visualising some of what is going on.
2480
2481 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html&quot;&gt;
2482 &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2483
2484 &lt;blockquote&gt;
2485 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
2486 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
2487 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
2488
2489 &lt;p&gt;Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
2490 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
2491 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
2492 just remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon&quot;&gt;the
2493 Panopticon&lt;/a&gt;, and can not help to think that we are slowly
2494 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.&lt;/p&gt;
2495 </description>
2496         </item>
2497
2498         <item>
2499                 <title>ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</title>
2500                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</link>
2501                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</guid>
2502                 <pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2503                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to a blog post by
2504 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html&quot;&gt;Eddy
2505 Petrișor&lt;/a&gt;, I became aware of yet another &quot;alternative medicine&quot;
2506 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
2507 According to the originating blog post about the detox &quot;cure&quot;
2508 &lt;a href=&quot;http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/&quot;&gt;ColonHelp
2509 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions&lt;/a&gt;, the producer
2510 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
2511 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
2512 wordpress.com, and they reply was &quot;We can confirm that Zenyth is
2513 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
2514 don&#39;t believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
2515 matter&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
2516
2517 &lt;p&gt;The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
2518 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
2519 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
2520 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
2521 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
2522 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
2523 to argue its side.&lt;/p&gt;
2524
2525 &lt;p&gt;This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
2526 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
2527 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect&quot;&gt;Streisand
2528 effect&lt;/a&gt; can make it rethink its strategy.&lt;/p&gt;
2529
2530 &lt;p&gt;What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
2531 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html&quot;&gt;a list of
2532 victims of detoxification&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2533 </description>
2534         </item>
2535
2536         <item>
2537                 <title>Why is your local library collecting the &quot;wrong&quot; computer books?</title>
2538                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html</link>
2539                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html</guid>
2540                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Oct 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2541                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
2542 &lt;a href=&quot;http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge&quot;&gt;about
2543 the computer science book collection available in his local
2544 library&lt;/a&gt;, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
2545 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
2546 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
2547 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
2548 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
2549 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
2550 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
2551 recently published books.&lt;/p&gt;
2552
2553 &lt;p&gt;During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
2554 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
2555 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
2556 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
2557 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
2558 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
2559 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
2560 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
2561 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
2562 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens&quot;&gt;Stevens
2563 collection&lt;/a&gt;).  I picked several of the generic O&#39;Reilly books (ie
2564 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
2565 products) and stayed away from the &#39;teach yourself X in N days&#39; class.
2566 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
2567 for the library that evening.&lt;/p&gt;
2568
2569 &lt;p&gt;The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
2570 going to know that for example
2571 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming&quot;&gt;The
2572 Practice of Programming&lt;/a&gt; is a must-have in any computer library,
2573 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
2574 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
2575 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
2576 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
2577 book right away.&lt;/p&gt;
2578 </description>
2579         </item>
2580
2581         <item>
2582                 <title>Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</title>
2583                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
2584                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
2585                 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2586                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian &lt;a
2587 href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book &lt;a
2588 href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig.
2589 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
2590 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
2591 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
2592
2593 When I started, I
2594 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;called
2595 for volunteers&lt;/a&gt; to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
2596 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
2597 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
2598 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
2599 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
2600 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:&lt;/p&gt;
2601
2602 &lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;
2603
2604 &lt;p&gt;Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
2605 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
2606 the project files currently available from
2607 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2608
2609 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2610 the updated
2611 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
2612 and
2613 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
2614 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2615 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2616 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
2617 </description>
2618         </item>
2619
2620         <item>
2621                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</title>
2622                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html</link>
2623                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html</guid>
2624                 <pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
2625                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
2626 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
2627 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
2628 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
2629 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
2630 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
2631 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.&lt;/p&gt;
2632
2633 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2634
2635 &lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
2636 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of &quot;light&quot;
2637 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
2638 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
2639 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
2640 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
2641 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
2642 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
2643 training is anyway very important&lt;/p&gt;
2644
2645 &lt;p&gt;I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
2646 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spse.ch/&quot;&gt;SPSE school&lt;/a&gt; (secondary) is a very
2647 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
2648 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
2649 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
2650
2651 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2652 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2653
2654 &lt;p&gt;Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
2655 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
2656 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn&#39;t
2657 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
2658 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
2659 hole.&lt;/p&gt;
2660
2661 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2662 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2663
2664 &lt;p&gt;Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
2665 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
2666 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
2667 engineered platform and you don&#39;t have to start to build up your PDC
2668 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I&#39;ve already done this once and I
2669 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
2670 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
2671 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
2672 hassle.&lt;/p&gt;
2673
2674 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2675 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2676
2677 &lt;p&gt;The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
2678 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
2679 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
2680 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
2681 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
2682 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
2683 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
2684 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)&lt;/p&gt;
2685
2686 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2687
2688 &lt;p&gt;I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
2689 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
2690 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
2691 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html&quot;&gt;Perceus&lt;/a&gt;
2692 has the same...&lt;/p&gt;
2693
2694 &lt;p&gt;For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
2695 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
2696 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
2697 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.&lt;/p&gt;
2698
2699 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2700 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2701
2702 &lt;P&gt;I think that the only real argument that school managers &quot;hear&quot; is
2703 cost reduction. They don&#39;t give too much weight on quality, stability,
2704 just because they are normally not open to change.&lt;/p&gt;
2705
2706 &lt;p&gt;Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
2707 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
2708 don&#39;t.&lt;/p&gt;
2709
2710 &lt;p&gt;We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
2711 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
2712 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
2713 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
2714 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
2715 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
2716 Those who don&#39;t have such needs will hardly move to Linux.&lt;/p&gt;
2717 </description>
2718         </item>
2719
2720         <item>
2721                 <title>IETF activity to standardise video codec</title>
2722                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html</link>
2723                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html</guid>
2724                 <pubDate>Sat, 15 Sep 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2725                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After the
2726 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html&quot;&gt;Opus
2727 codec made&lt;/a&gt; it into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; as
2728 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716&quot;&gt;RFC 6716&lt;/a&gt;, I had a look
2729 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
2730 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
2731 area.  A non-&quot;working group&quot; mailing list
2732 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec&quot;&gt;video-codec&lt;/a&gt;
2733 was
2734 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html&quot;&gt;created 2012-08-20&lt;/a&gt;.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
2735 formal working group should be formed.&lt;/p&gt;
2736
2737 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
2738 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html&quot;&gt;an
2739 email from someone&lt;/a&gt; in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
2740 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
2741 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
2742 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
2743 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
2744 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
2745
2746 &lt;p&gt;If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
2747 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
2748 IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
2749 </description>
2750         </item>
2751
2752         <item>
2753                 <title>IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</title>
2754                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html</link>
2755                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html</guid>
2756                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2757                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; announced the
2758 publication of of
2759 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716&quot;&gt;RFC 6716, the Definition
2760 of the Opus Audio Codec&lt;/a&gt;, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
2761 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
2762 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
2763 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, IETF
2764 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
2765 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
2766 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
2767 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
2768 multimedia content on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;
2769
2770 &lt;p&gt;IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
2771 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
2772 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
2773 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;
2774
2775 &lt;p&gt;Visit the &lt;a href=&quot;http://opus-codec.org/&quot;&gt;Opus project page&lt;/a&gt; if
2776 you want to learn more about the solution.&lt;/p&gt;
2777 </description>
2778         </item>
2779
2780         <item>
2781                 <title>Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</title>
2782                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
2783                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
2784                 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2785                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I
2786 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html&quot;&gt;mentioned
2787 this summer&lt;/a&gt;, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2788 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2789 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook&quot;&gt;Gitorious
2790 repository for the project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2791
2792 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2793 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2794 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2795 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.&lt;/p&gt;
2796
2797 &lt;p&gt;Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2798 PostScript formats at
2799 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s Computer
2800 Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2801 </description>
2802         </item>
2803
2804         <item>
2805                 <title>Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don&#39;t forget Officeshots)</title>
2806                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</link>
2807                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</guid>
2808                 <pubDate>Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2809                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
2810 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233&quot;&gt;Microsoft
2811 have been forced to open Office&lt;/a&gt;, and it made me remember and
2812 revisit the great site
2813 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;officeshots&lt;/a&gt; which allow you
2814 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
2815 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2816 </description>
2817         </item>
2818
2819         <item>
2820                 <title>Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</title>
2821                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
2822                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
2823                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2824                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
2825 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book
2826 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig,
2827 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
2828 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
2829 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
2830 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
2831 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
2832 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
2833 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
2834 summer I
2835 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;called
2836 for volunteers&lt;/a&gt; to help me, and I have been able to secure the
2837 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.&lt;/p&gt;
2838
2839 &lt;p&gt;Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
2840 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
2841 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
2842 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
2843 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
2844 progress:&lt;/p&gt;
2845
2846 &lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;
2847
2848 &lt;p&gt;The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
2849 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
2850 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
2851 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
2852 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
2853 english version of the docbook source.&lt;/p&gt;
2854
2855 &lt;p&gt;There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2856 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2857 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2858 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
2859 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
2860 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
2861 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
2862 project files currently available from &lt;a
2863 href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2864
2865 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2866 the updated
2867 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
2868 and
2869 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
2870 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2871 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2872 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
2873 </description>
2874         </item>
2875
2876         <item>
2877                 <title>Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</title>
2878                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</link>
2879                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</guid>
2880                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2881                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; one can specify
2882 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
2883 this information to pick the correct translations for &#39;chapter&#39;, &#39;see
2884 also&#39;, &#39;index&#39; etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
2885 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
2886 with &amp;lt;book lang=&quot;de&quot;&amp;gt;, and the document will show up with the
2887 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
2888 case for the language
2889 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html&quot;&gt;I
2890 am working with at the moment&lt;/a&gt;, Norwegian Bokmål.&lt;/p&gt;
2891
2892 &lt;p&gt;For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
2893 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
2894 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
2895 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
2896 of them do not handle it at all.&lt;/p&gt;
2897
2898 &lt;p&gt;A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
2899 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
2900 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
2901 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
2902 is &#39;no&#39;, Norwegian Nynorsk is &#39;nn&#39; and Norwegian Bokmål is &#39;nb&#39;.
2903 Historically the &#39;no&#39; language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
2904 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
2905 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
2906 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure &#39;no&#39; was an
2907 alias for &#39;nb&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
2908
2909 &lt;p&gt;Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
2910 understand &#39;nn&#39;.  There are translations for &#39;no&#39;, but not &#39;nb&#39; (BTS
2911 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/684391&quot;&gt;#684391&lt;/a&gt;), but due to a bug
2912 (BTS &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682936&quot;&gt;#682936&lt;/a&gt;) the &#39;no&#39;
2913 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
2914 recognise &#39;nn&#39; and &#39;nb&#39;, but not &#39;no&#39;.  The xmlto tool only recognise
2915 &#39;nn&#39; and &#39;nb&#39;, but not &#39;no&#39;.  The end result that there is no language
2916 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
2917 at the same time. :(&lt;/p&gt;
2918
2919 &lt;p&gt;The correct solution is to use &amp;lt;book lang=&quot;nb&quot;&amp;gt;, but it will
2920 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
2921 processors. :(&lt;/p&gt;
2922
2923 &lt;p&gt;Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/&lt;/p&gt;
2924 </description>
2925         </item>
2926
2927         <item>
2928                 <title>Best way to create a docbook book?</title>
2929                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</link>
2930                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</guid>
2931                 <pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2932                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I tried to send this text to the
2933 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/&quot;&gt;docbook-apps
2934 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org&lt;/a&gt;, but it only accept messages
2935 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
2936 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
2937 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
2938 out.&lt;/p&gt;
2939
2940 &lt;p&gt;I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
2941 learning curve at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
2942
2943 &lt;p&gt;To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
2944 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
2945 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
2946 available from
2947 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
2948 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
2949 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
2950 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
2951 Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
2952
2953 &lt;p&gt;I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
2954 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
2955 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
2956 problems.&lt;/p&gt;
2957
2958 &lt;ul&gt;
2959
2960 &lt;li&gt;Using dblatex, the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt; handling is not the way I want to,
2961    as &amp;lt;/part&amp;gt; do not really end the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt;. (See
2962    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683166&quot;&gt;BTS report #683166&lt;/a&gt;), the
2963    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
2964    index references spanning several pages (See
2965    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682901&quot;&gt;BTS report #682901&lt;/a&gt;), and
2966    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
2967    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682936&quot;&gt;BTS report #682936&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
2968
2969 &lt;li&gt;Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
2970    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683163&quot;&gt;BTS report
2971    #683163&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
2972
2973 &lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
2974    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
2975    footnote and text body, see
2976    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683197&quot;&gt;BTS report #683197&lt;/a&gt;), and
2977    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
2978    refs listed are not right).&lt;/li&gt;
2979
2980 &lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.&lt;/li&gt;
2981
2982 &lt;li&gt;Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
2983    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.&lt;/li&gt;
2984
2985 &lt;/ul&gt;
2986
2987 &lt;p&gt;So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
2988 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
2989 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?&lt;/p&gt;
2990
2991 &lt;p&gt;What about HTML and EPUB versions?&lt;/p&gt;
2992 </description>
2993         </item>
2994
2995         <item>
2996                 <title>Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</title>
2997                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</link>
2998                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</guid>
2999                 <pubDate>Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3000                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I reported earlier that I am working on
3001 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;a
3002 norwegian version&lt;/a&gt; of the book
3003 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig.
3004 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
3005 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
3006 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
3007 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3008
3009 &lt;p&gt;I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
3010 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
3011 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
3012 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
3013 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
3014 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
3015 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
3016 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
3017 print. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3018
3019 &lt;p&gt;The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
3020 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
3021 language.&lt;/p&gt;
3022 </description>
3023         </item>
3024
3025         <item>
3026                 <title>Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</title>
3027                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</link>
3028                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</guid>
3029                 <pubDate>Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3030                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a
3031 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;project
3032 to translate&lt;/a&gt; the book
3033 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig
3034 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
3035 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version, to
3036 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
3037 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
3038 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
3039 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3040
3041 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
3042 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
3043 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
3044 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
3045 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
3046 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
3047 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
3048 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
3049 send pull requests with fixes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3050 </description>
3051         </item>
3052
3053         <item>
3054                 <title>Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</title>
3055                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</link>
3056                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</guid>
3057                 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Jul 2012 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3058                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
3059 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; project have users all over the globe, but until
3060 recently we have not known about any users in Norway&#39;s neighbour
3061 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
3062 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
3063 to adjust and scale the just released
3064 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
3065 Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
3066 happy to share his answers with you here.&lt;/p&gt;
3067
3068 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3069
3070 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
3071 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
3072 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
3073 &quot;folkhighschool&quot; teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
3074 Norwegian I believe it&#39;s called &quot;Vuxenupplaring&quot;. I also have a master
3075 in &quot;Technology and social change&quot;. So I&#39;m not really a tech guy, I
3076 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
3077 perspective when working with IT.&lt;/p&gt;
3078
3079 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3080 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3081
3082 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
3083 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
3084 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
3085 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
3086 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
3087 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
3088
3089 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3090 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3091
3092 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
3093 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
3094 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
3095 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
3096 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
3097 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
3098 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
3099 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
3100 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
3101 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to &quot;beat around the bush&quot; by
3102 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
3103 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
3104 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
3105 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
3106 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
3107 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
3108 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
3109 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
3110 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
3111 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
3112 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
3113 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit &quot;oldish&quot; applications. Debian is
3114 quicker to update.
3115
3116 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3117 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3118
3119 &lt;p&gt;Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
3120 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
3121 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
3122 sound from working with them.  It&#39;s a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
3123 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
3124 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.&lt;/p&gt;
3125
3126 &lt;p&gt;I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
3127 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
3128 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
3129 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
3130 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
3131 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
3132 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
3133 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
3134 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
3135 some applications can&#39;t be open source. As for us we really need to
3136 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
3137 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
3138 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
3139 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
3140 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.&lt;/p&gt;
3141
3142 &lt;p&gt;Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
3143 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
3144 market to Adobe. The only &quot;equivalent&quot; to InDesign in the opensource
3145 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
3146 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
3147 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
3148 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
3149 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.&lt;/p&gt;
3150
3151 &lt;p&gt;We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
3152 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
3153 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
3154 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
3155 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
3156 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
3157 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
3158 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
3159 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
3160 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
3161 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
3162 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
3163 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
3164 sound file.&lt;/p&gt;
3165
3166 &lt;p&gt;So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
3167 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
3168 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
3169 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
3170 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
3171 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
3172 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
3173 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
3174 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.&lt;/p&gt;
3175
3176 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3177
3178 &lt;p&gt;Myself I&#39;m running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
3179 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
3180 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
3181 )&lt;/p&gt;
3182
3183 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3184 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3185
3186 &lt;p&gt;To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
3187 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
3188 it&#39;s also very important that the multimedia support is working
3189 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
3190 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
3191 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
3192 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
3193 idea. It&#39;s also important that the open source software works even for
3194 the administration.  It&#39;s hard to convince the teachers to stick with
3195 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
3196 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
3197 will create a difference in &quot;status&quot; between classes, so a good
3198 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
3199 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
3200 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.&lt;/p&gt;
3201
3202 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
3203 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
3204 article &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/&quot;&gt;Radio station
3205 management with Airtime&lt;/a&gt;,
3206 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/&quot;&gt;Airtime&lt;/a&gt; which
3207 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
3208 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rivendellaudio.org/&quot;&gt;Rivendell&lt;/a&gt; which claim to
3209 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
3210 useful to the aspiring radio producer.&lt;/p&gt;
3211 </description>
3212         </item>
3213
3214         <item>
3215                 <title>Why do schools waste money on IT?</title>
3216                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</link>
3217                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</guid>
3218                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Jul 2012 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
3219                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
3220 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
3221 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
3222 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
3223 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
3224 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
3225 Steinberg in his blog post
3226 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/&quot;&gt;Can
3227 you recognize the million pound chair?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  Read it and weep for the
3228 spending of your tax money.&lt;/p&gt;
3229
3230 &lt;p&gt;Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
3231 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
3232 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
3233 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
3234 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
3235 purchases.&lt;/p&gt;
3236 </description>
3237         </item>
3238
3239         <item>
3240                 <title>Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</title>
3241                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</link>
3242                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
3243                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jul 2012 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3244                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Included in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
3245 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is a large collection of end user and school specific
3246 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
3247 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
3248 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
3249 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
3250 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
3251 receive.  The software is
3252
3253 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/&quot;&gt;named FET&lt;/a&gt;, and it provide a
3254 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
3255 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
3256 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
3257 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html&quot;&gt;Linux, MacOSX and
3258 Windows&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3259
3260 &lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html&quot;&gt;the
3261 feature list&lt;/a&gt;, liftet from the project web site:&lt;/p&gt;
3262
3263 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
3264
3265   &lt;li&gt;FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
3266     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it &lt;/li&gt;
3267
3268   &lt;li&gt;Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
3269     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
3270     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
3271     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
3272     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
3273     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
3274     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
3275     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
3276     &lt;/li&gt;
3277
3278   &lt;li&gt;Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
3279     semi-automatic or manual allocation&lt;/li&gt;
3280
3281   &lt;li&gt;Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
3282     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports &lt;/li&gt;
3283
3284   &lt;li&gt;Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
3285     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)&lt;/li&gt;
3286
3287   &lt;li&gt;Import/export from CSV format&lt;/li&gt;
3288
3289   &lt;li&gt;The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
3290     formats &lt;/li&gt;
3291
3292   &lt;li&gt;Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
3293     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
3294     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
3295     (as separate sets)&lt;/li&gt;
3296
3297   &lt;li&gt;Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
3298     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
3299     percentage)&lt;/li&gt;
3300
3301   &lt;li&gt;Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
3302     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
3303     memory):
3304     &lt;ul&gt;
3305       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60&lt;/li&gt;
3306       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of working days per week: 35&lt;/li&gt;
3307       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of teachers: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
3308       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
3309       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of subjects: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
3310       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of activity tags&lt;/li&gt;
3311       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of activities: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
3312       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of rooms: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
3313       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of buildings: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
3314       &lt;li&gt;Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
3315           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
3316           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
3317           activity)&lt;/li&gt;
3318       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of time constraints&lt;/li&gt;
3319       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of space constraints&lt;/li&gt;
3320     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3321
3322   &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
3323     &lt;ul&gt;
3324       &lt;li&gt;Break periods&lt;/li&gt;
3325       &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
3326         &lt;ul&gt;
3327           &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
3328           &lt;li&gt;Max/min days per week&lt;/li&gt;
3329           &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
3330           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
3331           &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
3332           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
3333
3334           &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3335             days per week&lt;/li&gt;
3336         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3337       &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
3338         &lt;ul&gt;
3339           &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
3340           &lt;li&gt;Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)&lt;/li&gt;
3341           &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
3342           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
3343           &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
3344           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
3345
3346           &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3347             days per week&lt;/li&gt;
3348         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3349       &lt;li&gt;For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
3350         &lt;ul&gt;
3351           &lt;li&gt;A single preferred starting time&lt;/li&gt;
3352           &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred starting times&lt;/li&gt;
3353           &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred time slots&lt;/li&gt;
3354           &lt;li&gt;Min/max days between them&lt;/li&gt;
3355           &lt;li&gt;End(s) students day&lt;/li&gt;
3356           &lt;li&gt;Same starting time/day/hour&lt;/li&gt;
3357           &lt;li&gt;Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
3358             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)&lt;/li&gt;
3359           &lt;li&gt;Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)&lt;/li&gt;
3360           &lt;li&gt;Not overlapping&lt;/li&gt;
3361           &lt;li&gt;Max simultaneous in selected time slots&lt;/li&gt;
3362           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities&lt;/li&gt;
3363         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3364     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3365
3366   &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
3367     &lt;ul&gt;
3368       &lt;li&gt;Room not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
3369       &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
3370         &lt;ul&gt;
3371           &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
3372           &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
3373           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
3374         &lt;/ul&gt;
3375       &lt;/li&gt;
3376
3377       &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
3378         &lt;ul&gt;
3379           &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
3380           &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
3381           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
3382         &lt;/ul&gt;
3383       &lt;/li&gt;
3384       &lt;li&gt;Preferred room(s):
3385         &lt;ul&gt;
3386           &lt;li&gt;For a subject&lt;/li&gt;
3387           &lt;li&gt;For an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
3388           &lt;li&gt;For a subject and an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
3389           &lt;li&gt;Individually for a (sub)activity&lt;/li&gt;
3390         &lt;/ul&gt;
3391       &lt;/li&gt;
3392
3393       &lt;li&gt;For a set of activities:
3394         &lt;ul&gt;
3395           &lt;li&gt;Occupy a maximum number of different rooms&lt;/li&gt;
3396         &lt;/ul&gt;
3397       &lt;/li&gt;
3398     &lt;/ul&gt;
3399   &lt;/li&gt;
3400 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3401
3402 &lt;p&gt;I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
3403 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
3404 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
3405 manually, check it out.
3406
3407 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
3408 &lt;a href=&quot;http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/&quot;&gt;a
3409 blog post from MarvelSoft&lt;/a&gt;.  If you find FET useful, please provide
3410 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
3411 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos&quot;&gt;Debian Edu HowTo
3412 section&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3413 </description>
3414         </item>
3415
3416         <item>
3417                 <title>Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</title>
3418                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html</link>
3419                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html</guid>
3420                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Jul 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3421                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the NUUG &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt;
3422 project (Norwegian version of
3423 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; from
3424 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt;), we have discovered
3425 a problem with the municipalities using
3426 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zimbra.com/&quot;&gt;Zimbra&lt;/a&gt;.  When FiksGataMi send a
3427 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
3428 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
3429 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
3430 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
3431 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
3432 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
3433 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
3434 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
3435 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
3436 the From: header.&lt;/p&gt;
3437
3438 &lt;p&gt;This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
3439 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
3440 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
3441 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
3442 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
3443 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
3444 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
3445 behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;
3446
3447 &lt;p&gt;The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
3448 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
3449 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
3450 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
3451 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
3452 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami&quot;&gt;fiksgatami
3453 (at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3454 </description>
3455         </item>
3456
3457         <item>
3458                 <title>Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</title>
3459                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html</link>
3460                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html</guid>
3461                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3462                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
3463 another interview with the people behind
3464 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.
3465 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
3466 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
3467 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
3468 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
3469 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
3470 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
3471
3472 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3473
3474 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
3475 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
3476 ICT in schools&lt;/p&gt;
3477
3478 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3479 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3480
3481 &lt;p&gt;At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
3482 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
3483 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
3484 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;
3485
3486 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3487 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3488
3489 &lt;p&gt;A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
3490 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
3491 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
3492 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
3493
3494 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3495 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3496
3497 &lt;p&gt;Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
3498 economical and technical resources in the different countries don&#39;t
3499 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
3500 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
3501 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
3502 technologies in school.&lt;/p&gt;
3503
3504 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3505
3506 &lt;p&gt;Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
3507 between Iceweasel, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geany.org/&quot;&gt;Geany&lt;/a&gt; and
3508 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator&quot;&gt;Terminator&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3509
3510 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3511 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3512
3513 &lt;p&gt;I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
3514 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
3515 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
3516 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
3517
3518 &lt;p&gt;Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
3519 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
3520 universities. So different strategies are needed.&lt;/p&gt;
3521
3522 &lt;p&gt;But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
3523 we&#39;ve done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
3524 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
3525 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
3526 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
3527 using wireless. I think we&#39;ll see more and more personal devices in
3528 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
3529 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
3530 working there.&lt;/p&gt;
3531 </description>
3532         </item>
3533
3534         <item>
3535                 <title>Song book for Computer Scientists</title>
3536                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
3537                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
3538                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3539                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
3540 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uit.no/&quot;&gt;University of Tromsø&lt;/a&gt;, I started
3541 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
3542 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
3543 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
3544 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
3545 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
3546 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
3547 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
3548 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
3549 missing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;
3550
3551 &lt;p&gt;I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
3552 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
3553 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
3554 Especially now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://debconf12.debconf.org/&quot;&gt;Debconf
3555 12&lt;/a&gt; is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
3556 out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s
3557 Computer Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.
3558 </description>
3559         </item>
3560
3561         <item>
3562                 <title>Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</title>
3563                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</link>
3564                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</guid>
3565                 <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3566                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During my work on
3567 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
3568 based on Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;, I came across some issues that should be
3569 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
3570 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
3571 explanation.&lt;/p&gt;
3572
3573 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
3574
3575 &lt;li&gt;We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
3576 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
3577 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
3578 system depend on tasksel tasks in
3579 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
3580 installation.&lt;/li&gt;
3581
3582 &lt;li&gt;Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
3583 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
3584 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
3585 at least try to enable it for these services:
3586 &lt;ul&gt;
3587
3588   &lt;li&gt;CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
3589     quotas.&lt;/li&gt;
3590   &lt;li&gt;Nagios for admins checking the system status.&lt;/li&gt;
3591   &lt;li&gt;GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.&lt;/li&gt;
3592   &lt;li&gt;LDAP for admins updating LDAP.&lt;/li&gt;
3593   &lt;li&gt;Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.&lt;/li&gt;
3594   &lt;li&gt;ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.&lt;/li&gt;
3595
3596 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3597
3598 &lt;li&gt;When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
3599 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
3600 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
3601 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind&lt;/li&gt;
3602
3603 &lt;li&gt;Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
3604 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
3605 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.&lt;/li&gt;
3606
3607 &lt;li&gt;Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
3608 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
3609 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/653305&quot;&gt;BTS report #653305&lt;/a&gt; and the
3610 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
3611 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
3612 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.&lt;/li&gt;
3613
3614 &lt;li&gt;Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
3615 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
3616 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
3617 in Wheezy.
3618
3619 &lt;li&gt;Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
3620 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
3621 up KDE login on slow networks.&lt;/li&gt;
3622
3623 &lt;li&gt;Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
3624 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
3625 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
3626 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.&lt;/li&gt;
3627
3628 &lt;li&gt;Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
3629 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
3630 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
3631 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..&lt;/li&gt;
3632
3633 &lt;li&gt;We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
3634 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
3635 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.&lt;/li&gt;
3636
3637 &lt;li&gt;We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
3638 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
3639 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.&lt;/li&gt;
3640
3641 &lt;li&gt;We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
3642 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
3643 requested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/588968&quot;&gt;BTS report
3644 #588968&lt;/a&gt; and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
3645 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.&lt;/li&gt;
3646
3647 &lt;li&gt;We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
3648 &lt;ul&gt;
3649
3650 &lt;li&gt;reduce the number of chemistry visualisers&lt;/li&gt;
3651 &lt;li&gt;consider dropping xpaint&lt;/li&gt;
3652 &lt;li&gt;and probably more?&lt;/li&gt;
3653 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3654
3655 &lt;li&gt;Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
3656 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
3657 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
3658 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
3659 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
3660 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
3661 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
3662 for the LTSP chroot).&lt;/li&gt;
3663
3664
3665 &lt;li&gt;In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
3666 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
3667 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
3668 use.&lt;/li&gt;
3669
3670 &lt;li&gt;The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
3671 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
3672 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
3673 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
3674 new applications with a simple mouse click.&lt;/li&gt;
3675
3676 &lt;li&gt;The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
3677 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
3678 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
3679 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
3680 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
3681 instead of the &quot;it is documented&quot; method of today.&lt;/li&gt;
3682
3683 &lt;li&gt;A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
3684 &quot;take over&quot; the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
3685 There are at least three implementations,
3686 &lt;a href=&quot;italc.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;italc&lt;/a&gt;,
3687 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itais.net/help/en/&quot;&gt;controlaula&lt;/a&gt; og
3688 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epoptes.org/&quot;&gt;epoptes&lt;/a&gt; and we should pick one of
3689 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
3690 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
3691 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
3692 given room.&lt;/li&gt;
3693
3694 &lt;li&gt;Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
3695 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
3696 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
3697 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
3698 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
3699 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
3700 investigated.&lt;/li&gt;
3701
3702 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3703
3704 &lt;p&gt;I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
3705 version.&lt;/p&gt;
3706 </description>
3707         </item>
3708
3709         <item>
3710                 <title>TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</title>
3711                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</link>
3712                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</guid>
3713                 <pubDate>Sat, 9 Jun 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3714                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
3715 &lt;a href=&quot;http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year&quot;&gt;TV
3716 with face recognition&lt;/a&gt; to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
3717 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
3718 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
3719 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
3720 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
3721 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
3722 be willing to pay for.&lt;/p&gt;
3723
3724 &lt;p&gt;I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
3725 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
3726 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
3727 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt&quot;&gt;1984 by George
3728 Orwell&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3729 </description>
3730         </item>
3731
3732         <item>
3733                 <title>Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</title>
3734                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</link>
3735                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</guid>
3736                 <pubDate>Wed, 6 Jun 2012 23:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
3737                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago
3738 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html&quot;&gt;I
3739 reported how to get&lt;/a&gt; the support status out of Dell using an
3740 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
3741 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html&quot;&gt;discovered
3742 by Daniel De Marco in february&lt;/a&gt;.  Combined with my web scraping
3743 code for HP, Dell and IBM
3744 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html&quot;&gt;from
3745 2009&lt;/a&gt;, I got inspired and wrote
3746 &lt;a href=&quot;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/&quot;&gt;a
3747 web service&lt;/a&gt; based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
3748 support status and get a machine readable result back.&lt;/p&gt;
3749
3750 &lt;p&gt;This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
3751 output:
3752
3753 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3754 % GET &lt;a href=&quot;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&amp;vendor=Dell&amp;servicetag=2v1xwn1&quot;&gt;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&amp;vendor=Dell&amp;servicetag=2v1xwn1&lt;/a&gt;
3755 supportstatus({&quot;servicetag&quot;: &quot;2v1xwn1&quot;, &quot;warrantyend&quot;: &quot;2013-11-24&quot;, &quot;shipped&quot;: &quot;2010-11-24&quot;, &quot;scrapestamputc&quot;: &quot;2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847&quot;, &quot;scrapedurl&quot;: &quot;http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL&quot;, &quot;vendor&quot;: &quot;Dell&quot;, &quot;productid&quot;: &quot;&quot;})
3756 %
3757 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3758
3759 &lt;p&gt;It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
3760 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
3761 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.&lt;/p&gt;
3762 </description>
3763         </item>
3764
3765         <item>
3766                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</title>
3767                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</link>
3768                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</guid>
3769                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Jun 2012 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3770                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
3771 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
3772 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
3773 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
3774 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
3775 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
3776
3777 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3778
3779 &lt;p&gt;My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
3780 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
3781 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
3782 by Angela).&lt;/p&gt;
3783
3784 &lt;p&gt;During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
3785 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
3786 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
3787 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
3788 becoming an osteopath.&lt;/p&gt;
3789
3790 &lt;p&gt;Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
3791 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
3792 introducing free software into schools. The project&#39;s name is
3793 &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; (IT future for schools). The project links IT
3794 skills with communication skills.&lt;/p&gt;
3795
3796 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3797 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3798
3799 &lt;p&gt;While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
3800 &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
3801 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
3802 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
3803 distributions that target being used for school networks.&lt;/p&gt;
3804
3805 &lt;p&gt;At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
3806 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
3807 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
3808 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
3809 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
3810 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
3811 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
3812 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
3813 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.&lt;/p&gt;
3814
3815 &lt;p&gt;In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
3816 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
3817 protection experts, other IT professionals.&lt;/p&gt;
3818
3819 &lt;p&gt;We came to two conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;
3820
3821 &lt;p&gt;First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
3822 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
3823 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
3824 whereas most of each school&#39;s requirements could mapped by a standard
3825 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
3826 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
3827 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
3828 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
3829 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
3830 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
3831 point.&lt;/p&gt;
3832
3833 &lt;p&gt;Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
3834 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
3835 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
3836 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
3837 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot;
3838 tries to provide an approach for this.&lt;/p&gt;
3839
3840 &lt;p&gt;Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
3841 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
3842 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school&#39;s IT
3843 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
3844 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
3845 spare time.&lt;/p&gt;
3846
3847 &lt;p&gt;We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
3848 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
3849 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
3850 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
3851 non-existent until 2010/2011.&lt;/p&gt;
3852
3853 &lt;p&gt;Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
3854 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
3855 avoidance do exist.&lt;/p&gt;
3856
3857 &lt;p&gt;We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
3858 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
3859 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
3860 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
3861 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
3862 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
3863 and probably a gain for all.&lt;/p&gt;
3864
3865 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3866 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3867
3868 &lt;p&gt;There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
3869 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
3870 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
3871 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
3872 project communication, honest communication within the group of
3873 developers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
3874
3875 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3876 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3877
3878 &lt;p&gt;Every coin has two sides:&lt;/p&gt;
3879
3880 &lt;p&gt;Technically: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/311188&quot;&gt;BTS issue
3881 #311188&lt;/a&gt;, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
3882 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
3883 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
3884 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
3885 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
3886 contribute).&lt;/p&gt;
3887
3888 &lt;p&gt;Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
3889 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
3890 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
3891 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
3892 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
3893 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
3894 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
3895 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
3896 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
3897 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
3898
3899 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3900
3901 &lt;p&gt;For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.&lt;/p&gt;
3902
3903 &lt;p&gt;For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
3904 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
3905 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.&lt;/p&gt;
3906
3907 &lt;p&gt;I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
3908 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
3909 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
3910 is being integrated in Ubuntu&#39;s software center.&lt;/p&gt;
3911
3912 &lt;p&gt;For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
3913 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
3914 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
3915 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
3916 whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;
3917
3918 &lt;p&gt;My favourite terminal emulator is KDE&#39;s Yakuake.&lt;/p&gt;
3919
3920 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3921 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3922
3923 &lt;p&gt;Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
3924 enrol people.&lt;/p&gt;
3925 </description>
3926         </item>
3927
3928         <item>
3929                 <title>SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</title>
3930                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</link>
3931                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</guid>
3932                 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Jun 2012 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
3933                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I wrote
3934 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html&quot;&gt;how
3935 to extract support status&lt;/a&gt; for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
3936 I have learned from colleges here at the
3937 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; that Dell have
3938 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
3939 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
3940 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
3941 demonstrate how to do it:&lt;/p&gt;
3942
3943 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3944 use strict;
3945 use warnings;
3946 use SOAP::Lite;
3947 use Data::Dumper;
3948 my $GUID = &#39;11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111&#39;;
3949 my $App = &#39;test&#39;;
3950 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die &quot;Please supply a servicetag. $!\n&quot;;
3951 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
3952 my $s = SOAP::Lite
3953     -&gt; uri(&#39;http://support.dell.com/WebServices/&#39;)
3954     -&gt; on_action( sub { join &#39;&#39;, @_ } )
3955     -&gt; proxy(&#39;http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx&#39;)
3956     ;
3957 my $a = $s-&gt;GetAssetInformation(
3958     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;guid&#39;)-&gt;value($GUID)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
3959     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;applicationName&#39;)-&gt;value($App)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
3960     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;serviceTags&#39;)-&gt;value($servicetag)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
3961 );
3962 print Dumper($a -&gt; result) ;
3963 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3964
3965 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
3966
3967 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3968 $VAR1 = {
3969           &#39;Asset&#39; =&gt; {
3970                      &#39;Entitlements&#39; =&gt; {
3971                                        &#39;EntitlementData&#39; =&gt; [
3972                                                             {
3973                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
3974                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2009-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
3975                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
3976                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
3977                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
3978                                                             },
3979                                                             {
3980                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
3981                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2009-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
3982                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
3983                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
3984                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
3985                                                             },
3986                                                             {
3987                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
3988                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2007-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
3989                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
3990                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
3991                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
3992                                                             }
3993                                                           ]
3994                                      },
3995                      &#39;AssetHeaderData&#39; =&gt; {
3996                                           &#39;SystemModel&#39; =&gt; &#39;GX620&#39;,
3997                                           &#39;ServiceTag&#39; =&gt; &#39;8DSGD2J&#39;,
3998                                           &#39;SystemShipDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00&#39;,
3999                                           &#39;Buid&#39; =&gt; &#39;2323&#39;,
4000                                           &#39;Region&#39; =&gt; &#39;Europe&#39;,
4001                                           &#39;SystemID&#39; =&gt; &#39;PLX_GX620&#39;,
4002                                           &#39;SystemType&#39; =&gt; &#39;OptiPlex&#39;
4003                                         }
4004                    }
4005         };
4006 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4007
4008 &lt;p&gt;I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
4009 service outside the
4010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation&quot;&gt;inline
4011 documentation&lt;/a&gt;, and according to
4012 &lt;a href=&quot;http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/&quot;&gt;one
4013 comment&lt;/a&gt; it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
4014 scraping HTML pages. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4015
4016 &lt;p&gt;Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
4017 you know of one, drop me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4018 </description>
4019         </item>
4020
4021         <item>
4022                 <title>First monitor calibration using ColorHug</title>
4023                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html</link>
4024                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html</guid>
4025                 <pubDate>Thu, 31 May 2012 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
4026                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago my color calibration gadget
4027 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hughski.com/index.html&quot;&gt;ColorHug&lt;/a&gt; arrived in the
4028 mail, and I&#39;ve had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
4029 running Debian Squeeze, where
4030 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html&quot;&gt;the
4031 calibration software&lt;/a&gt; is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
4032 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
4033 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
4034 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
4035 another day.&lt;/p&gt;
4036
4037 &lt;p&gt;After calibration, I get a
4038 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile&quot;&gt;ICC color
4039 profile&lt;/a&gt; file that can be passed to programs understanding such
4040 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
4041 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
4042 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
4043 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
4044 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
4045 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
4046 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896&quot;&gt;discovered&lt;/a&gt;
4047 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
4048 and a simple&lt;/p&gt;
4049
4050 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4051 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
4052 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4053
4054 &lt;p&gt;later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
4055 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
4056 wrong monitor type for the &quot;led&quot; monitor I got, but the result is good
4057 enough for now.&lt;/p&gt;
4058 </description>
4059         </item>
4060
4061         <item>
4062                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</title>
4063                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html</link>
4064                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html</guid>
4065                 <pubDate>Sun, 27 May 2012 17:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
4066                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
4067 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
4068 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
4069 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
4070 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
4071 since then, helping to make sure the
4072 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
4073 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; release became as good as it is..&lt;/p&gt;
4074
4075 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4076
4077 &lt;p&gt;I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
4078 Mathematics, and Computer Science (&quot;Informatik&quot;). During the past 12
4079 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
4080 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
4081 O- or A-level (&quot;Abitur&quot;).  For quite as long, I&#39;ve been taking care of
4082 our computer network.&lt;/p&gt;
4083
4084 &lt;p&gt;Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
4085 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
4086 (4 months).&lt;/p&gt;
4087
4088 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4089 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4090
4091 &lt;p&gt;We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
4092 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
4093 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
4094 (&quot;Best Newcomer Distribution&quot;, also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
4095 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
4096 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
4097 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
4098 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
4099 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
4100 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
4101 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
4102 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
4103 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
4104 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
4105
4106 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4107 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4108
4109 &lt;p&gt;Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
4110 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
4111 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
4112 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
4113 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
4114 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
4115 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
4116 administration costs tend towards zero.&lt;/p&gt;
4117
4118 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4119 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4120
4121 &lt;p&gt;While Debian&#39;s stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
4122 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
4123 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
4124 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
4125 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
4126 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
4127 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
4128 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
4129 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
4130 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
4131 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
4132 i.e. harder to understand for novices.&lt;/p&gt;
4133
4134 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4135
4136 &lt;p&gt;LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
4137 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
4138 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)&lt;/p&gt;
4139
4140 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4141 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4142
4143 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ol&gt;
4144
4145 &lt;li&gt;Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
4146 people really &quot;own&quot; their hardware, to make them understand the
4147 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
4148 developing.&lt;/li&gt;
4149
4150 &lt;li&gt;Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany&#39;s public schools
4151 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
4152 licenses), so schools won&#39;t benefit from any savings here. This
4153 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
4154 share among German Skolelinux schools.&lt;/li&gt;
4155
4156 &lt;li&gt;Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
4157 trained. In many cases, teachers&#39; software customs are respected by
4158 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.&lt;/li&gt;
4159
4160 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
4161 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
4162 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
4163 shared world wide (school books e.g.).&lt;/li&gt;
4164
4165 &lt;li&gt;Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
4166 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don&#39;t
4167 need to know the &quot;ribbon menu&quot; in order to get employed.&lt;/li&gt;
4168
4169 &lt;li&gt;Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.&lt;/li&gt;
4170
4171 &lt;li&gt;Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
4172 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
4173 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
4174 keep sending documents in ODF formats.&lt;/li&gt;
4175
4176 &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4177 </description>
4178         </item>
4179
4180         <item>
4181                 <title>The cost of ODF and OOXML</title>
4182                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</link>
4183                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</guid>
4184                 <pubDate>Sat, 26 May 2012 18:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4185                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
4186 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
4187 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
4188 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
4189 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;
4190
4191 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hi.  I just noted your
4192 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&quot;&gt;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;
4193 comment:&lt;/p&gt;
4194
4195 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;They&#39;re all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
4196 with the help of Google Translate I can&#39;t find any figures about the
4197 savings of &quot;moving to a flexible two standard&quot; as claimed by the
4198 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let&#39;s take
4199 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust.&quot;
4200 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4201
4202 &lt;p&gt;I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
4203 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
4204 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
4205 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
4206 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
4207 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
4208 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
4209 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
4210 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
4211 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
4212 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
4213 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
4214 of wasted effort.&lt;/p&gt;
4215
4216 &lt;p&gt;Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
4217 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
4218 minutes converting to ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4219
4220 &lt;p&gt;See
4221 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&lt;/a&gt;
4222 and
4223 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&lt;/a&gt;
4224 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4225 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4226 </description>
4227         </item>
4228
4229         <item>
4230                 <title>ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</title>
4231                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html</link>
4232                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html</guid>
4233                 <pubDate>Fri, 18 May 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4234                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In january, I
4235 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/&quot;&gt;discovered
4236 the ColorHug&lt;/a&gt;, a USB dongle from
4237 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hughski.com/index.html&quot;&gt;Hughski&lt;/a&gt; to calibrate
4238 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
4239 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html&quot;&gt;included
4240 in Debian&lt;/a&gt;, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
4241 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
4242 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
4243 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
4244 should go in the mail on monday. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4245
4246 &lt;p&gt;If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
4247 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
4248 drivers. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4249 </description>
4250         </item>
4251
4252         <item>
4253                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</title>
4254                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</link>
4255                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</guid>
4256                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 May 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4257                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
4258 publish another interview with the people behind
4259 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.
4260 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
4261 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
4262 details get right before release.
4263
4264 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4265
4266 &lt;p&gt;My name is Jürgen Leibner, I&#39;m 49 years old and living in
4267 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
4268 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
4269 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I&#39;m a
4270 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
4271 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
4272 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
4273 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.&lt;/p&gt;
4274
4275 &lt;p&gt;My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
4276 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
4277 home since 2006.&lt;/p&gt;
4278
4279 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4280 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4281
4282 &lt;p&gt;Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
4283 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
4284 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
4285 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
4286 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
4287 computers in use. I answered: &quot;Yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
4288
4289 &lt;p&gt;Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
4290 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
4291 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
4292 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
4293 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
4294 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
4295 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
4296 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
4297 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
4298 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
4299 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
4300 people nearby who founded &#39;skolelinux.de&#39;. It was the Skolelinux
4301 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
4302 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
4303 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
4304 Bielefeld in December of 2006.&lt;/p&gt;
4305
4306 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4307 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4308
4309 &lt;p&gt;When I&#39;m looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
4310 for me as today.&lt;/p&gt;
4311
4312 &lt;p&gt;In the past there were advantages like:&lt;/p&gt;
4313
4314 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
4315
4316 &lt;li&gt;I don&#39;t need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
4317 they had little money to spent for computers and software.&lt;/li&gt;
4318
4319 &lt;li&gt;It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
4320 cost.&lt;/li&gt;
4321
4322 &lt;li&gt;It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
4323 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
4324 clients because of it&#39;s preconfigured overall concept of being a
4325 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
4326 server&lt;/li&gt;
4327
4328 &lt;li&gt;I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
4329 school.&lt;/li&gt;
4330
4331 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4332
4333 &lt;p&gt;Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
4334 came up in this way:&lt;/p&gt;
4335
4336 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
4337
4338 &lt;li&gt;Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
4339 now.&lt;/li&gt;
4340
4341 &lt;li&gt;They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
4342 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
4343 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.&lt;/li&gt;
4344
4345 &lt;li&gt;With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
4346 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
4347 interfaces used in the past.&lt;/li&gt;
4348
4349 &lt;li&gt;It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
4350 different needs.&lt;/li&gt;
4351
4352 &lt;li&gt;The documentation is usable and gets better every day.&lt;/li&gt;
4353
4354 &lt;li&gt;More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
4355 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
4356 is sharing knowledge and minds.&lt;/li&gt;
4357
4358 &lt;li&gt;Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
4359 solved today by Debian Edu. &lt;/li&gt;
4360
4361 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4362
4363 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4364 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4365
4366 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
4367
4368 &lt;li&gt;There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
4369 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
4370 whole municipality areas.&lt;/li&gt;
4371
4372 &lt;li&gt;Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
4373 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
4374 politicians.&lt;/li&gt;
4375
4376 &lt;li&gt;Technically there are no disadvantages I&#39;m aware of.&lt;/li&gt;
4377
4378 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4379
4380 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4381
4382 &lt;p&gt;I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
4383 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
4384 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
4385 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
4386 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
4387 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.&lt;/p&gt;
4388
4389 &lt;p&gt;My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
4390 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
4391 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
4392 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
4393 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.&lt;/p&gt;
4394
4395 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4396 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4397
4398 &lt;p&gt;I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
4399 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
4400 countries and areas all over the world.&lt;/p&gt;
4401 </description>
4402         </item>
4403
4404         <item>
4405                 <title>Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</title>
4406                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</link>
4407                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</guid>
4408                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4409                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- IMG_5869.JPG --&gt;
4410 &lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4411
4412 &lt;p&gt;I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
4413 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
4414 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
4415 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
4416 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
4417 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
4418 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
4419 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
4420 are not marketed and sold to &quot;regular consumers&quot;.  The hair saloons
4421 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
4422 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
4423 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
4424 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
4425 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
4426 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
4427 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.&lt;/p&gt;
4428
4429 &lt;p&gt;The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
4430 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
4431 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
4432 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
4433 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
4434 finally found a Danish supplier
4435 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html&quot;&gt;selling
4436 it for around NOK 1800,-&lt;/a&gt;.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
4437 days ago.&lt;/p&gt;
4438
4439 &lt;p&gt;The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
4440 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
4441 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
4442 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
4443 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
4444 toys.&lt;/p&gt;
4445 </description>
4446         </item>
4447
4448         <item>
4449                 <title>HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</title>
4450                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</link>
4451                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</guid>
4452                 <pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4453                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece&quot;&gt;an
4454 article today&lt;/a&gt; published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
4455 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urke.com/eirik/&quot;&gt;Eirik Helland Urke&lt;/a&gt; reports
4456 that the video editor application included with
4457 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs&quot;&gt;HTC One
4458 X&lt;/a&gt; have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
4459 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
4460
4461 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4462 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280&quot;&gt;Drøy
4463 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
4464 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
4465 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4466
4467 &lt;p&gt;I quickly translated it to this English message:&lt;/p&gt;
4468
4469 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4470 &quot;Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
4471 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately.&quot;
4472 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4473
4474 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
4475 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
4476 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html&quot;&gt;discovered
4477 with my Canon IXUS 130&lt;/a&gt;.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
4478 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
4479 video.  AMR is
4480 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues&quot;&gt;Adaptive
4481 Multi-Rate audio codec&lt;/a&gt; with patents which according to the
4482 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
4483 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voiceage.com/&quot;&gt;VoiceAge&lt;/a&gt;.  MP4 is
4484 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing&quot;&gt;MPEG4 with
4485 H.264&lt;/a&gt;, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
4486 with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpegla.com/&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4487
4488 &lt;p&gt;I know why I prefer
4489 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and open
4490 standards&lt;/a&gt; also for video.&lt;/p&gt;
4491 </description>
4492         </item>
4493
4494         <item>
4495                 <title>RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</title>
4496                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</link>
4497                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</guid>
4498                 <pubDate>Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4499                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, the
4500 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339&quot;&gt; Ministry of
4501 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs&lt;/a&gt; is behind
4502 a &lt;a href=&quot;http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder&quot;&gt;directory of
4503 standards&lt;/a&gt; that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
4504 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
4505 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
4506 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
4507 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
4508 on the same level.&lt;/p&gt;
4509
4510 &lt;p&gt;But recently, some standards with RAND
4511 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing&quot;&gt;Reasonable
4512 And Non-Discriminatory&lt;/a&gt;) terms have made their way into the
4513 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
4514 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
4515 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
4516 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
4517 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
4518 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
4519 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
4520 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
4521 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
4522 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
4523 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
4524 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
4525 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
4526 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
4527 implementing standards with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
4528
4529 &lt;p&gt;Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
4530 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
4531 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
4532 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
4533 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
4534 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
4535 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
4536 attention to these issues in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
4537
4538 &lt;p&gt;You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
4539 from Simon Phipps
4540 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/&quot;&gt;RAND:
4541 Not So Reasonable?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
4542
4543 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
4544 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm&quot;&gt;blog
4545 post from Glyn Moody&lt;/a&gt; over at Computer World UK warning about the
4546 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
4547 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
4548 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder&quot;&gt;the
4549 hearing taking place at the moment&lt;/a&gt; (respond before 2012-04-27).
4550 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
4551 specifications with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
4552 </description>
4553         </item>
4554
4555         <item>
4556                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</title>
4557                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</link>
4558                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</guid>
4559                 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
4560                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
4561 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
4562 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
4563 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
4564 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
4565 up in the recently released
4566 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
4567 Edu Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
4568
4569 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4570
4571 &lt;p&gt;My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
4572 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
4573 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
4574 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
4575 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
4576 information technology and science/technology.&lt;/p&gt;
4577
4578 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4579 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4580
4581 &lt;p&gt;Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
4582 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
4583 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
4584 contributing.&lt;/p&gt;
4585
4586 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4587 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4588
4589 &lt;p&gt;The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
4590 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
4591 Debian Project!&lt;/p&gt;
4592
4593 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4594 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4595
4596 &lt;p&gt;As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
4597 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
4598 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
4599 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
4600 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
4601 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
4602 rather small and often busy elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;
4603
4604 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN&quot;&gt;Debian LAN&lt;/a&gt;
4605 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.&lt;/p&gt;
4606
4607 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4608
4609 &lt;p&gt;I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
4610 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
4611 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
4612 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.&lt;/p&gt;
4613
4614 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4615 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4616
4617 &lt;p&gt;One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
4618 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
4619 politicians, this works out great for the &quot;market-leader&quot;.  The school
4620 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
4621 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
4622 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
4623 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.&lt;/p&gt;
4624
4625 &lt;p&gt;To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
4626 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
4627 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to &#39;free&#39;
4628 the system.  There is currently some discussion about &quot;Open Data&quot; and
4629 &quot;Free/Open Standards&quot;.  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
4630 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
4631 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
4632 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.&lt;/p&gt;
4633 </description>
4634         </item>
4635
4636         <item>
4637                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</title>
4638                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</link>
4639                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</guid>
4640                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Apr 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4641                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
4642 like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
4643 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
4644 contributor to the
4645 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
4646 Edu Squeeze release manual&lt;/a&gt;.
4647
4648 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4649
4650 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
4651 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.&lt;/p&gt;
4652
4653 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4654 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4655
4656 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
4657 reason my name&#39;s in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
4658 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
4659 they&#39;d like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
4660 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
4661 &quot;localisation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
4662
4663 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4664 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4665
4666 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4667 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4668
4669 &lt;p&gt;These questions are too hard for me - I don&#39;t use it!  In fact I
4670 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I&#39;d got out of the
4671 education system.&lt;/p&gt;
4672
4673 &lt;p&gt;I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
4674 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
4675 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
4676 money on the latest hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
4677
4678 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4679
4680 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
4681 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
4682 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).&lt;/p&gt;
4683
4684 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4685 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4686
4687 &lt;p&gt;Well, I don&#39;t know.  I suppose I&#39;d be inclined to try reasoning
4688 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
4689 you would hardly need a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;
4690 </description>
4691         </item>
4692
4693         <item>
4694                 <title>Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</title>
4695                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</link>
4696                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</guid>
4697                 <pubDate>Fri, 6 Apr 2012 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
4698                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent time with
4699 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slxdrift.no/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux Drift AS&lt;/a&gt; on speeding
4700 up a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
4701 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
4702 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
4703 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
4704 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
4705 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
4706 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
4707
4708 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
4709 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
4710 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
4711 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
4712 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
4713 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
4714 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
4715 around 230 access(2) calls.&lt;/p&gt;
4716
4717 &lt;p&gt;The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
4718 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
4719 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
4720 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
4721 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
4722 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
4723 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416&quot;&gt;KDE bug report
4724 from 2009&lt;/a&gt; about this problem, and it is still unsolved.&lt;/p&gt;
4725
4726 &lt;p&gt;My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
4727 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
4728 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
4729 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
4730 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
4731 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
4732 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
4733 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
4734 almost instantaneous.  I&#39;m not quite sure where to make the package
4735 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.&lt;/p&gt;
4736
4737 &lt;p&gt;The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
4738 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
4739 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
4740 that is not really an option at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
4741
4742 &lt;p&gt;If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
4743 (at) lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
4744 </description>
4745         </item>
4746
4747         <item>
4748                 <title>Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</title>
4749                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</link>
4750                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</guid>
4751                 <pubDate>Thu, 5 Apr 2012 08:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4752                 <description>&lt;p&gt;About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
4753 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; by
4754 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
4755 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
4756 for schools.  Check out his article
4757 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
4758 distribution for education&lt;/a&gt; if you want to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
4759 </description>
4760         </item>
4761
4762         <item>
4763                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</title>
4764                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</link>
4765                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</guid>
4766                 <pubDate>Sun, 1 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4767                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Germany is a core area for the
4768 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
4769 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
4770 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
4771
4772 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4773
4774 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve studied Mathematics at the university &#39;Ruhr-Universität&#39; in
4775 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I&#39;m working as a teacher at the school
4776 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/&quot;&gt;Westfalen-Kolleg
4777 Dortmund&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
4778 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
4779 examination &#39;Abitur&#39;, which will allow to study at a university. This
4780 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
4781 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.&lt;/p&gt;
4782
4783 &lt;p&gt;Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
4784 blended learning project called &#39;abitur-online.nrw&#39; and in some other
4785 information technology related projects. For about ten years I&#39;ve been
4786 teacher and coordinator for the &#39;abitur-online&#39; project at my
4787 school. Being now in my early sixties, I&#39;ve decided to leave school at
4788 the end of April this year.&lt;/p&gt;
4789
4790 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4791 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4792
4793 &lt;p&gt;The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
4794 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
4795 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
4796 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
4797 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
4798 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
4799 reach. At home I&#39;m using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
4800 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
4801 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
4802 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
4803 Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
4804
4805 &lt;p&gt;Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
4806 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
4807 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
4808 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
4809 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
4810 the admin teachers.&lt;/p&gt;
4811
4812 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4813 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4814
4815 &lt;p&gt;It&#39;s open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it&#39;s
4816 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
4817 So it was a perfect choice.&lt;/p&gt;
4818
4819 &lt;p&gt;Being open source, there are no license problems and so it&#39;s
4820 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
4821 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It&#39;s of
4822 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
4823 a school and to choose where to get support for this.&lt;/p&gt;
4824
4825 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4826 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4827
4828 &lt;p&gt;Nothing yet.&lt;/p&gt;
4829
4830 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4831
4832 &lt;p&gt;At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
4833 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
4834 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
4835 LibreOffice.&lt;/p&gt;
4836
4837 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4838 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4839
4840 &lt;p&gt;Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
4841 that doesn&#39;t seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
4842 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.&lt;/p&gt;
4843 </description>
4844         </item>
4845
4846         <item>
4847                 <title>Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</title>
4848                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html</link>
4849                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html</guid>
4850                 <pubDate>Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4851                 <description>&lt;!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html --&gt;
4852
4853 &lt;p&gt;The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
4854 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
4855 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
4856 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
4857 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
4858 and also available from &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/38601767&quot;&gt;vimeo&lt;/a&gt;
4859 and download as a
4860 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg
4861 Theora&lt;/a&gt; file.  Check it out below.&lt;/p&gt;
4862
4863 &lt;p&gt;&lt;video id=&quot;kmail-kerberos-movie&quot; width=&quot;256&quot; height=&quot;184&quot; preload controls&gt;
4864   &lt;source src=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot; type=&#39;video/ogg; codecs=&quot;theora, vorbis&quot;&#39; /&gt;
4865     &lt;p&gt;Download video as
4866       &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4867 &lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4868 </description>
4869         </item>
4870
4871         <item>
4872                 <title>Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</title>
4873                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</link>
4874                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</guid>
4875                 <pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
4876                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
4877 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
4878 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;the
4879 Squeeze release&lt;/a&gt; was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
4880 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;
4881
4882 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4883
4884 &lt;p&gt;I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
4885 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
4886 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
4887 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
4888 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
4889 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
4890 weren&#39;t able to convert many of them into sustainable
4891 installations.&lt;/p&gt;
4892
4893 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4894 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4895
4896 &lt;p&gt;Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
4897 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
4898 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
4899 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
4900 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
4901 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
4902 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
4903 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
4904 these things we decided to try it.&lt;/p&gt;
4905
4906 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4907 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4908
4909 &lt;p&gt;By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
4910 from that I have always believed in the same &quot;sustainable computing&quot;
4911 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
4912 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
4913 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
4914 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
4915 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
4916 proprietary software everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;
4917
4918 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4919 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4920
4921 &lt;p&gt;As a newcomer I&#39;m just finding out who&#39;s who in the community and
4922 how you&#39;re organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
4923 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
4924 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
4925 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!&lt;/p&gt;
4926
4927 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4928
4929 &lt;p&gt;Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
4930 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
4931 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
4932 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I&#39;m not sure if
4933 that counts...)&lt;/p&gt;
4934
4935 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4936 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4937
4938 &lt;p&gt;That&#39;s a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
4939 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
4940 the notion of &quot;computer&quot; means simply &quot;proprietary office
4941 applications&quot;.  However, schools today are experiencing budget
4942 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
4943 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
4944 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
4945 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
4946 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they&#39;re
4947 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it&#39;s encouraging that the
4948 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.&lt;/p&gt;
4949
4950 &lt;p&gt;I don&#39;t really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
4951 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
4952 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.&lt;/p&gt;
4953 </description>
4954         </item>
4955
4956         <item>
4957                 <title>Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</title>
4958                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
4959                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
4960                 <pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
4961                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
4962 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
4963 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
4964 believe is a very efficient work flow.&lt;/p&gt;
4965
4966 &lt;ol&gt;
4967
4968 &lt;li&gt;The documentation is written in a
4969 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in&quot;&gt;moinmoin wiki&lt;/a&gt; (see for example
4970 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;the
4971 Squeeze release manual&lt;/a&gt;) with support for exporting the content as
4972 docbook XML.&lt;/li&gt;
4973
4974 &lt;li&gt;This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
4975 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
4976 with the translated text.&lt;/li&gt;
4977
4978 &lt;li&gt;The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
4979 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
4980 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
4981 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
4982 images.&lt;/li&gt;
4983
4984 &lt;li&gt;The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
4985 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.&lt;/li&gt;
4986
4987 &lt;li&gt;The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
4988 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.&lt;/li&gt;
4989
4990 &lt;/ol&gt;
4991
4992 &lt;p&gt;This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
4993 issue is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/DocBook&quot;&gt;the docbook support
4994 we use in moinmoin&lt;/a&gt; is not actively maintained.  The docbook
4995 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
4996 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.&lt;/p&gt;
4997
4998 &lt;p&gt;If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
4999 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc&quot;&gt;debian-edu-doc
5000 package&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5001 </description>
5002         </item>
5003
5004         <item>
5005                 <title>Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</title>
5006                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</link>
5007                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</guid>
5008                 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
5009                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
5010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; based
5011 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5012 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5013 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
5014 you have not done so already.&lt;/p&gt;
5015
5016 &lt;p&gt;I plan to present the new version at
5017 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/&quot;&gt;a NUUG
5018 meeting&lt;/a&gt; on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
5019 in Oslo, Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
5020 </description>
5021         </item>
5022
5023         <item>
5024                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</title>
5025                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</link>
5026                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</guid>
5027                 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Mar 2012 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
5028                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/&quot;&gt;the
5029 interview series&lt;/a&gt; conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
5030 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5031 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
5032 more international audience.&lt;/p&gt;
5033
5034 &lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
5035 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
5036 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
5037 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
5038 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
5039 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
5040 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
5041
5042
5043 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5044
5045 &lt;p&gt;My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
5046 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
5047 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
5048 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
5049 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
5050 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
5051 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
5052 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
5053 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
5054 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
5055 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
5056
5057 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5058 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5059
5060 &lt;p&gt;In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
5061 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
5062 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
5063 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn&#39;t really improve my setup. I
5064 did various desperate searches for things like &quot;school Linux server&quot;
5065 and ended up in a document called &quot;Drift&quot; something or other. Reading
5066 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
5067 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
5068 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
5069 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
5070 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
5071 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
5072 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.&lt;/p&gt;
5073
5074 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5075 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5076
5077 &lt;p&gt;For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
5078 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
5079 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
5080 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
5081 doesn&#39;t necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
5082 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
5083 Japan.&lt;/p&gt;
5084
5085 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5086 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5087
5088 &lt;p&gt;The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
5089 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
5090 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
5091 who don&#39;t need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
5092 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
5093 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
5094 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
5095 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
5096 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
5097 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
5098 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
5099 multiplies. For example, backup wasn&#39;t working properly in Lenny. It
5100 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
5101 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
5102 help.&lt;/p&gt;
5103
5104 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5105
5106 &lt;p&gt;Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
5107 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
5108 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
5109 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
5110 house, that&#39;s very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
5111 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
5112 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
5113 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
5114 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
5115 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
5116 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.&lt;/p&gt;
5117
5118 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5119 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5120
5121 &lt;p&gt;Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
5122 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
5123 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
5124 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
5125 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
5126 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
5127 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
5128 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
5129 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
5130 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
5131 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn&#39;t work, or their browser
5132 doesn&#39;t play flash, for example.&lt;/p&gt;
5133 </description>
5134         </item>
5135
5136         <item>
5137                 <title>Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</title>
5138                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</link>
5139                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</guid>
5140                 <pubDate>Wed, 7 Mar 2012 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
5141                 <description>&lt;!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html --&gt;
5142
5143 &lt;p&gt;One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
5144 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
5145 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
5146 also available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/37675399&quot;&gt;vimeo&lt;/a&gt; and
5147 download as a
5148 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg
5149 Theora&lt;/a&gt; file.  Check it out below.&lt;/p&gt;
5150
5151 &lt;p&gt;&lt;video id=&quot;gosa-mass-user-create-movie&quot; width=&quot;256&quot; height=&quot;184&quot; preload controls&gt;
5152   &lt;source src=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot; type=&#39;video/ogg; codecs=&quot;theora, vorbis&quot;&#39; /&gt;
5153     &lt;p&gt;Download video as
5154       &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5155 &lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5156 </description>
5157         </item>
5158
5159         <item>
5160                 <title>Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
5161                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
5162                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
5163                 <pubDate>Sun, 4 Mar 2012 18:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
5164                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
5165 candidate for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
5166 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5167 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5168 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
5169 need a software solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
5170 </description>
5171         </item>
5172
5173         <item>
5174                 <title>Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</title>
5175                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html</link>
5176                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html</guid>
5177                 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Mar 2012 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
5178                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
5179 / Debian Edu project&lt;/a&gt; initiated a student project to create a tool
5180 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
5181 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called &quot;stopmotion&quot;,
5182 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
5183 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
5184 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
5185 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
5186 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
5187 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
5188 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
5189 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
5190 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
5191 year...&lt;/p&gt;
5192
5193 &lt;p&gt;Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
5194 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
5195 name,
5196 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/&quot;&gt;linuxstopmotion&lt;/a&gt;.
5197 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
5198 Internet search engines (try to search for &#39;stopmotion&#39; to see what I
5199 mean). I&#39;ve been following
5200 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community&quot;&gt;the
5201 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; and the improvement already in place and planned for
5202 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
5203 Check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5204 </description>
5205         </item>
5206
5207         <item>
5208                 <title>Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
5209                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
5210                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
5211                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
5212                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
5213 candidate for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
5214 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
5215 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
5216 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5217 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
5218 need a software solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
5219 </description>
5220         </item>
5221
5222         <item>
5223                 <title>First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
5224                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
5225                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
5226                 <pubDate>Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
5227                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
5228 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
5229 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
5230 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5231 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5232 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
5233 solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
5234 </description>
5235         </item>
5236
5237         <item>
5238                 <title>How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</title>
5239                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</link>
5240                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</guid>
5241                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
5242                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
5243 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
5244 &lt;a href=&quot;http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532&quot;&gt;I was
5245 close&lt;/a&gt; this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
5246 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
5247 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
5248 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
5249 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
5250 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.&lt;/p&gt;
5251
5252 &lt;p&gt;After fumbling a bit, I
5253 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/&quot;&gt;found
5254 that hdparm -I&lt;/a&gt; will report the disk serial number, which is
5255 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
5256 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:&lt;/p&gt;
5257
5258 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5259 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep &#39;(F)&#39;|tr &#39; &#39; &quot;\n&quot;|grep &#39;(F)&#39;|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
5260 do
5261     printf &quot;Failed disk $d: &quot;
5262     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep &#39;Serial Num&#39;
5263 done
5264 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
5265
5266 &lt;p&gt;Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
5267 next time, and in case other find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;
5268
5269 &lt;p&gt;At the moment I have two failing disk. :(&lt;/p&gt;
5270
5271 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5272 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5273 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5274 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
5275 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
5276
5277 &lt;p&gt;The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
5278 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
5279 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
5280 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
5281 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
5282 mounted inside my box.&lt;/p&gt;
5283
5284 &lt;p&gt;I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
5285 Software RAID in the
5286 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html&quot;&gt;nagios-plugins-standard&lt;/a&gt;
5287 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
5288 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
5289 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
5290 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
5291 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.&lt;/p&gt;
5292 </description>
5293         </item>
5294
5295         <item>
5296                 <title>Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</title>
5297                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</link>
5298                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</guid>
5299                 <pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
5300                 <description>&lt;p&gt;New in the Squeeze version of
5301 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is the
5302 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
5303 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
5304 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from &lt;tt&gt;http://wpad/wpad.dat&lt;/tt&gt;, to
5305 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
5306 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
5307 change the global proxy setting by editing
5308 &lt;tt&gt;tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat&lt;/tt&gt; and the change propagate
5309 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.&lt;/p&gt;
5310
5311 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
5312 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
5313 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):&lt;/p&gt;
5314
5315 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5316 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
5317 {
5318    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
5319        isPlainHostName(host) ||
5320        dnsDomainIs(host, &quot;.intern&quot;))
5321       return &quot;DIRECT&quot;;
5322    else
5323       return &quot;PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT&quot;;
5324 }
5325 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5326
5327 &lt;p&gt;to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:&lt;/p&gt;
5328
5329 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5330 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
5331 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
5332 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5333
5334 &lt;p&gt;To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
5335 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
5336 would be used for
5337 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;,
5338 and insert this extracted proxy URL in &lt;tt&gt;/etc/environment&lt;/tt&gt; and
5339 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/apt/apt.conf&lt;/tt&gt;.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
5340 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
5341 javascript code is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/631045&quot;&gt;no longer
5342 able to build&lt;/a&gt; because the C library it depended on is now a C++
5343 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
5344 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
5345 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
5346 known alternative is known at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
5347
5348 &lt;p&gt;This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
5349 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
5350 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
5351 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
5352 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
5353 announced, direct connections will be used instead.&lt;/p&gt;
5354
5355 &lt;p&gt;Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
5356 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
5357 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
5358 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
5359 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
5360 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
5361 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
5362 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
5363 the network setup changes.&lt;/p&gt;
5364
5365 &lt;p&gt;The WPAD system is documented in a
5366 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01&quot;&gt;IETF
5367 draft&lt;/a&gt; and a
5368 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol&quot;&gt;Wikipedia
5369 page&lt;/a&gt; for those that want to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
5370 </description>
5371         </item>
5372
5373         <item>
5374                 <title>Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</title>
5375                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</link>
5376                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</guid>
5377                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Feb 2012 09:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
5378                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since the Lenny version of
5379 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, a
5380 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
5381 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
5382 in the morning.  This is done using the
5383 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html&quot;&gt;shutdown-at-night&lt;/a&gt; Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
5384
5385 &lt;p&gt;To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
5386 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
5387 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
5388 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
5389 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
5390 the
5391 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html&quot;&gt;nvram-wakeup&lt;/a&gt;
5392 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
5393 10 minutes.  If this isn&#39;t working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
5394 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
5395 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
5396
5397 &lt;p&gt;It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
5398 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
5399 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
5400 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I&#39;ve seen old
5401 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
5402 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
5403 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.&lt;/p&gt;
5404
5405 &lt;p&gt;The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
5406 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
5407 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
5408 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night&lt;/tt&gt; to enable it.
5409 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?&lt;/p&gt;
5410 </description>
5411         </item>
5412
5413         <item>
5414                 <title>Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
5415                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
5416                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
5417                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Feb 2012 13:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
5418                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
5419 publish the third beta version of
5420 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
5421 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
5422 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
5423 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
5424 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
5425 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5426 on the project announcement list.&lt;/p&gt;
5427
5428 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
5429 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):&lt;/p&gt;
5430
5431 &lt;ul&gt;
5432
5433 &lt;li&gt;It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
5434   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
5435   the installation.&lt;/li&gt;
5436
5437 &lt;li&gt;Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
5438   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.&lt;/li&gt;
5439
5440 &lt;li&gt;The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
5441   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
5442   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.&lt;/li&gt;
5443
5444 &lt;li&gt;The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
5445   for the local system administrator is created during installation
5446   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
5447   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
5448   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
5449   up to date on the system.&lt;/li&gt;
5450
5451 &lt;/ul&gt;
5452
5453 &lt;p&gt;The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
5454 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
5455 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
5456 final Squeeze release is published.&lt;/p&gt;
5457
5458 &lt;p&gt;Next weekend the project organise a
5459 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;developer
5460 gathering&lt;/a&gt; in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
5461 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
5462 will see you there?&lt;/p&gt;
5463 </description>
5464         </item>
5465
5466         <item>
5467                 <title>Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
5468                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
5469                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
5470                 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
5471                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
5472 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
5473 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
5474 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
5475 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
5476 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
5477 work, but there are other use cases as well.&lt;/p&gt;
5478
5479 &lt;p&gt;First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
5480 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
5481 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
5482 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
5483 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
5484 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
5485 not taken care of by this.&lt;/p&gt;
5486
5487 &lt;p&gt;For non-network devices, we provide the script
5488 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; which
5489 search through the &lt;tt&gt;dmesg&lt;/tt&gt; output for drivers requesting extra
5490 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
5491 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
5492 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
5493 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
5494 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;#655507&lt;/a&gt;), to allow PXE
5495 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
5496 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
5497 firmware packages.&lt;/p&gt;
5498
5499 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
5500 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
5501 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
5502 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
5503 initrd with extra firmware, the
5504 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; script is
5505 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
5506 PXE initrd with firmware packages.&lt;/p&gt;
5507
5508 &lt;p&gt;Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
5509 network cards working.  For this,
5510 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; is
5511 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
5512 the same way as the other firmware related tools.&lt;/p&gt;
5513
5514 &lt;p&gt;At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
5515 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
5516 non-free software, and it is their choice.&lt;/p&gt;
5517
5518 &lt;p&gt;We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
5519 try.&lt;/p&gt;
5520 </description>
5521         </item>
5522
5523         <item>
5524                 <title>Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
5525                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
5526                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
5527                 <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
5528                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The next version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
5529 / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; will include a new tool
5530 &lt;tt&gt;sitesummary2ldapdhcp&lt;/tt&gt;, which can be used to quickly set up all
5531 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
5532 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.&lt;/p&gt;
5533
5534 &lt;p&gt;First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
5535 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
5536 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
5537 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
5538 this is done, log on to the central server and run
5539 &lt;tt&gt;sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a&lt;/tt&gt; in the &lt;tt&gt;konsole&lt;/tt&gt; to use the
5540 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
5541 will look similar to this:&lt;/p&gt;
5542
5543 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5544 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
5545 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
5546 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.
5547
5548 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
5549
5550 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5551 enter password: *******
5552 %
5553 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5554
5555 &lt;p&gt;After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
5556 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
5557 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
5558 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
5559 then to log into &lt;a href=&quot;https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/&quot;&gt;GOsa&lt;/a&gt;,
5560 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
5561 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
5562 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
5563 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
5564 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
5565 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
5566 automatically.&lt;/p&gt;
5567
5568 &lt;p&gt;We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
5569 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;
5570
5571 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
5572 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
5573 original text, and have added it to the text now.&lt;/p&gt;
5574 </description>
5575         </item>
5576
5577         <item>
5578                 <title>Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
5579                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
5580                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
5581                 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
5582                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Squeeze version of
5583 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; soon
5584 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
5585 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
5586 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
5587 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
5588 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
5589 first time.&lt;/p&gt;
5590
5591 &lt;p&gt;The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
5592 labeledURI with &quot;http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux&quot; as the
5593 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
5594 to see the page behind this new URL.&lt;/p&gt;
5595
5596 &lt;p&gt;An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
5597 called as &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ldapvi -ZD &#39;(cn=admin)&#39;&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to update LDAP with the
5598 new setting.&lt;/p&gt;
5599
5600 &lt;p&gt;We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
5601 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
5602 from within Iceweasel instead.&lt;/p&gt;
5603 </description>
5604         </item>
5605
5606         <item>
5607                 <title>Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
5608                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
5609                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
5610                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jan 2012 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
5611                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
5612 the second beta version of
5613 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  If
5614 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
5615 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
5616 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
5617 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
5618 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5619 on the project announcement list.&lt;/p&gt;
5620 </description>
5621         </item>
5622
5623         <item>
5624                 <title>Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</title>
5625                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html</link>
5626                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
5627                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Jan 2012 11:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
5628                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
5629 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ready
5630 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
5631 interesting.&lt;/p&gt;
5632
5633 &lt;P&gt;The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
5634 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
5635 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
5636 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
5637 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
5638 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
5639 wrap up its tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
5640
5641 &lt;p&gt;Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
5642 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
5643 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
5644 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
5645 because I was typing.&lt;/P&gt;
5646
5647 &lt;p&gt;The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
5648 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
5649 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
5650 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do &#39;find /&#39; to
5651 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
5652 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
5653 generate entropy.&lt;/p&gt;
5654
5655 &lt;p&gt;The fix is in
5656 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation&quot;&gt;beta1
5657 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version, and we
5658 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu&quot;&gt;welcome more testers and
5659 developers&lt;/a&gt;.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
5660 </description>
5661         </item>
5662
5663         <item>
5664                 <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
5665                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
5666                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
5667                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
5668                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5669 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5670 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5671 up to date.  If the firmware isn&#39;t the latest and greatest, the
5672 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5673 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5674 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5675 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5676 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5677 the tools to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
5678
5679 &lt;p&gt;To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5680 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5681 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5682 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.&lt;/P&gt;
5683
5684 &lt;p&gt;On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5685 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&quot;&gt;an XML file&lt;/a&gt;
5686 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5687 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5688 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5689 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5690 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5691 be activated on the first reboot.&lt;/p&gt;
5692
5693 &lt;p&gt;This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5694 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5695 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.&lt;/p&gt;
5696
5697 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5698 #!/usr/bin/perl
5699 use strict;
5700 use warnings;
5701 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5702 BEGIN {
5703     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5704     my %rhelmodules = (
5705         &#39;XML::Simple&#39; =&gt; &#39;perl-XML-Simple&#39;,
5706         );
5707     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5708         eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
5709         if ($@) {
5710             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5711             system(&quot;yum install -y $pkg&quot;);
5712             eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
5713         }
5714     }
5715 }
5716 my $errorsto = &#39;pere@hungry.com&#39;;
5717
5718 upgrade_dell();
5719
5720 exit 0;
5721
5722 sub run_firmware_script {
5723     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5724     unless ($script) {
5725         print STDERR &quot;fail: missing script name\n&quot;;
5726         exit 1
5727     }
5728     print STDERR &quot;Running $script\n\n&quot;;
5729
5730     if (0 == system(&quot;sh $script $opts&quot;)) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5731         print STDERR &quot;success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n&quot;;
5732     } else {
5733         print STDERR &quot;fail: firmware script returned error\n&quot;;
5734     }
5735 }
5736
5737 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5738     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5739     # Run firmware packages
5740     for my $dir (@dirs) {
5741         print STDERR &quot;info: Running scripts in $dir\n&quot;;
5742         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die &quot;Unable to open directory $dir: $!&quot;;
5743         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5744             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5745             run_firmware_script($opts, &quot;$dir/$s&quot;);
5746         }
5747         closedir $dh;
5748     }
5749 }
5750
5751 sub download {
5752     my $url = shift;
5753     print STDERR &quot;info: Downloading $url\n&quot;;
5754     system(&quot;wget --quiet \&quot;$url\&quot;&quot;);
5755 }
5756
5757 sub upgrade_dell {
5758     my @dirs;
5759     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5760     chomp $product;
5761
5762     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5763
5764         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5765         system(&#39;yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail&#39;);
5766
5767         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5768             CLEANUP =&gt; 1
5769             );
5770         chdir($tmpdir);
5771         fetch_dell_fw(&#39;catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
5772         system(&#39;gunzip Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
5773         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list(&#39;Catalog.xml&#39;);
5774         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5775         my $fwopts = &quot;-q&quot;;
5776         if (@paths) {
5777             for my $url (@paths) {
5778                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5779             }
5780             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5781         } else {
5782             print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
5783             print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
5784         }
5785         chdir(&#39;/&#39;);
5786     } else {
5787         print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
5788         print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
5789     }
5790 }
5791
5792 sub fetch_dell_fw {
5793     my $path = shift;
5794     my $url = &quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path&quot;;
5795     download($url);
5796 }
5797
5798 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5799 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
5800 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
5801 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5802     my $filename = shift;
5803
5804     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5805     chomp $product;
5806     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5807
5808     print STDERR &quot;Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n&quot;;
5809
5810     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5811     my @paths;
5812     for my $bundle (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5813         my $brand = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
5814         my $model = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Model}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
5815         my $oscode;
5816         if (&quot;ARRAY&quot; eq ref $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}) {
5817             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}[0]-&gt;{osCode};
5818         } else {
5819             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}-&gt;{osCode};
5820         }
5821         if ($mybrand eq $brand &amp;&amp; $mymodel eq $model &amp;&amp; &quot;LIN&quot; eq $oscode)
5822         {
5823             @paths = map { $_-&gt;{path} } @{$bundle-&gt;{Contents}-&gt;{Package}};
5824         }
5825     }
5826     for my $component (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5827         my $componenttype = $component-&gt;{ComponentType}-&gt;{value};
5828
5829         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5830         next if &#39;APAC&#39; eq $componenttype;
5831
5832         my $cpath = $component-&gt;{path};
5833         for my $path (@paths) {
5834             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5835                 push(@paths, $cpath);
5836             }
5837         }
5838     }
5839     return @paths;
5840 }
5841 &lt;/pre&gt;
5842
5843 &lt;p&gt;The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5844 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
5845 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
5846 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5847 outdated.&lt;/p&gt;
5848 </description>
5849         </item>
5850
5851         <item>
5852                 <title>Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</title>
5853                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html</link>
5854                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html</guid>
5855                 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Oct 2011 19:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
5856                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
5857 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
5858 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
5859 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
5860 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
5861 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
5862 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
5863 models.&lt;/p&gt;
5864
5865 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, while reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://boklaben.no/?p=220&quot;&gt;part of
5866 this debate&lt;/a&gt;, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
5867 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
5868 to a better model.  The idea is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
5869
5870 &lt;p&gt;Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
5871 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
5872 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
5873 by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; (about
5874 36,000 books), &lt;a href=&quot;http://runeberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Runenberg&lt;/a&gt;
5875 (1149 books) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/texts&quot;&gt;The
5876 Internet Archive&lt;/a&gt; (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
5877 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
5878 distributed.&lt;/p&gt;
5879
5880 &lt;p&gt;The computer system would make it easy to:&lt;/p&gt;
5881
5882 &lt;ul&gt;
5883
5884 &lt;li&gt;Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
5885   other relevant equipment.&lt;/li&gt;
5886
5887 &lt;li&gt;Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.&lt;/li&gt;
5888
5889 &lt;/ul&gt;
5890
5891 &lt;p&gt;In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
5892 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
5893 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
5894 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
5895 books available.&lt;/p&gt;
5896
5897 &lt;p&gt;Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
5898 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
5899 libraries. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5900 </description>
5901         </item>
5902
5903         <item>
5904                 <title>Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</title>
5905                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html</link>
5906                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html</guid>
5907                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
5908                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
5909 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
5910 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
5911 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
5912 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
5913 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
5914 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
5915 perfectly legal here in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
5916
5917 &lt;p&gt;Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:&lt;/p&gt;
5918
5919 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5920 #!/bin/sh
5921 # apt-get install lsdvd
5922 title=$(lsdvd 2&gt;/dev/null|awk &#39;/Disc Title: / {print $3}&#39;)
5923 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
5924 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5925
5926 &lt;p&gt;But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
5927 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
5928 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
5929 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.&lt;/p&gt;
5930
5931 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
5932 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
5933 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
5934 back as an ISO.
5935
5936 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5937 #!/bin/sh
5938 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
5939 set -e
5940 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
5941 title=$(lsdvd 2&gt;/dev/null|awk &#39;/Disc Title: / {print $3}&#39;)
5942 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
5943 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
5944 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
5945 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5946
5947 &lt;p&gt;Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?&lt;/p&gt;
5948
5949 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
5950 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
5951 read optical media, and is called like this: &lt;tt&gt;readom dev=/dev/dvd
5952 f=image.iso&lt;/tt&gt;.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
5953 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.&lt;/p&gt;
5954
5955 &lt;p&gt;Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
5956 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo&quot;&gt;his
5957 program python-dvdvideo&lt;/a&gt;, which seem to be just what I am looking
5958 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
5959 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
5960 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
5961 </description>
5962         </item>
5963
5964         <item>
5965                 <title>How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</title>
5966                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</link>
5967                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</guid>
5968                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Aug 2011 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
5969                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wouter Verhelst have some
5970 &lt;a href=&quot;http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot&quot;&gt;interesting
5971 comments and opinions&lt;/a&gt; on my blog post on
5972 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html&quot;&gt;the
5973 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian&lt;/a&gt; and my blog post about
5974 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html&quot;&gt;the
5975 default KDE desktop in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  I only have time to address one
5976 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
5977 misunderstanding he bring forward:&lt;/p&gt;
5978
5979 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
5980 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
5981 single-user system (by adding &#39;single&#39; to the kernel command line;
5982 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
5983 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5984
5985 &lt;p&gt;This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
5986 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
5987 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
5988 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
5989 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn&#39;t the same as single user
5990 mode.  I&#39;ll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
5991 hard to explain.&lt;/p&gt;
5992
5993 &lt;p&gt;Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
5994 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  This means the only thing that is
5995 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
5996 state &quot;between&quot; the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
5997 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
5998 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
5999 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6000 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6001 runs &quot;init -t1 S&quot; to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6002 1.  It is confusing that the &#39;S&#39; (single user) init mode is not the
6003 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6004 mode).&lt;/p&gt;
6005
6006 &lt;p&gt;This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
6007 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6008 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  When booting into
6009 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc
6010 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  A problem show up when
6011 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
6012 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6013 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6014 after visiting single user mode.&lt;/p&gt;
6015
6016 &lt;p&gt;A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6017 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
6018 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6019 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6020 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6021 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6022 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to get a
6023 functioning single user mode during boot.&lt;/p&gt;
6024
6025 &lt;p&gt;I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6026 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
6027 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;
6028 </description>
6029         </item>
6030
6031         <item>
6032                 <title>What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</title>
6033                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</link>
6034                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</guid>
6035                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6036                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6037 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6038 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6039 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6040 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6041 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6042 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6043 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6044 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6045 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6046 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6047 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6048 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.&lt;/p&gt;
6049
6050 &lt;p&gt;So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6051 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6052 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6053 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6054 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6055 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6056 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6057 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6058 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.&lt;/p&gt;
6059
6060 &lt;p&gt;Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6061 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6062 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6063 is presented.&lt;/p&gt;
6064
6065 &lt;p&gt;As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6066 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6067 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6068 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6069 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6070 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6071 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6072 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6073 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6074 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6075 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6076 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6077 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6078 find time to push this forward.&lt;/p&gt;
6079 </description>
6080         </item>
6081
6082         <item>
6083                 <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
6084                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
6085                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
6086                 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
6087                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6088 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6089 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6090 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6091 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
6092
6093 &lt;p&gt;I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6094 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6095 do this in Debian we would have a source.&lt;/p&gt;
6096
6097 &lt;ol&gt;
6098
6099 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.&lt;/strong&gt; When there
6100 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6101 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6102 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6103 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6104 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6105 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6106 Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
6107
6108 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6109 plugins.&lt;/strong&gt; When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6110 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6111 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6112 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6113 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6114 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6115 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6116 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6117 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6118 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6119 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6120 not the browser for any missing features.&lt;/li&gt;
6121
6122 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6123 handlers.&lt;/strong&gt; When the media players encounter a format or codec
6124 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6125 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6126 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6127 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6128 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6129 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6130 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6131 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.&lt;/li&gt;
6132
6133 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better browser handling of some MIME types.&lt;/strong&gt; When
6134 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6135 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6136 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6137 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6138 latter behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;
6139
6140 &lt;/ol&gt;
6141
6142 &lt;p&gt;There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6143 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6144 it do not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
6145
6146 &lt;p&gt;I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6147 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6148 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;
6149 </description>
6150         </item>
6151
6152         <item>
6153                 <title>Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</title>
6154                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
6155                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
6156                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
6157                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/A&gt;
6158 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6159 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6160 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6161 security support for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;
6162
6163 &lt;p&gt;The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6164 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6165 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6166 their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; clone
6167 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6168 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn&#39;t very long, and I hope the perl group
6169 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6170 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6171 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6172 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6173 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6174 easier in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
6175
6176 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6177 installed on my server was a simple call to &#39;cpan2deb Module::Name&#39;
6178 and &#39;dpkg -i&#39; to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6179 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6180 do not have time for.&lt;/p&gt;
6181 </description>
6182         </item>
6183
6184         <item>
6185                 <title>Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</title>
6186                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html</link>
6187                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html</guid>
6188                 <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
6189                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Reading
6190 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/&quot;&gt;the
6191 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;, I came across two highlights of interesting
6192 parts of the
6193 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA&quot;&gt;Autodesk&lt;/a&gt;
6194 and
6195 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html&quot;&gt;Microsoft
6196 Kinect&lt;/a&gt; End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
6197 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
6198 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;
6199 </description>
6200         </item>
6201
6202         <item>
6203                 <title>Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</title>
6204                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</link>
6205                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</guid>
6206                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
6207                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, the first draft implementation of an
6208 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open311.org/&quot;&gt;Open311 API&lt;/a&gt; for the Norwegian
6209 service &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; started to
6210 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
6211 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
6212 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
6213 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
6214 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
6215 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
6216 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.&lt;/p&gt;
6217
6218 &lt;p&gt;Where is it?  Visit
6219 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/&quot;&gt;http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/&lt;/a&gt;
6220 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
6221 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami&quot;&gt;fiksgatami
6222 (at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt; mailing list.&lt;/p&gt;
6223 </description>
6224         </item>
6225
6226         <item>
6227                 <title>Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</title>
6228                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</link>
6229                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</guid>
6230                 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6231                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
6232 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open311.org/&quot;&gt;Open311 API&lt;/a&gt; in the
6233 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian FixMyStreet service&lt;/a&gt;.
6234 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
6235 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
6236 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fixmystreet.org.nz/&quot;&gt;New Zealand version&lt;/a&gt; of
6237 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
6238 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
6239 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
6240 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
6241 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
6242 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
6243 issues with the Open311 specification.&lt;/p&gt;
6244
6245 &lt;p&gt;One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
6246 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
6247 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
6248 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
6249 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
6250 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
6251 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
6252 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
6253 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
6254 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
6255 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
6256 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
6257 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.&lt;/p&gt;
6258
6259 &lt;p&gt;A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
6260 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
6261 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
6262 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
6263 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
6264 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
6265 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
6266 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
6267 it.&lt;/p&gt;
6268
6269 &lt;p&gt;The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
6270 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
6271 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I&#39;m not
6272 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
6273 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
6274 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
6275 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.&lt;/p&gt;
6276
6277 &lt;p&gt;The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
6278 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
6279 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
6280 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
6281 and range= options.&lt;/p&gt;
6282
6283 &lt;p&gt;The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
6284 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
6285 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
6286 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
6287 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
6288 to best handle this.  I&#39;ve noticed
6289 &lt;a href=&quot;http://seeclickfix.com/open311/&quot;&gt;SeeClickFix&lt;/a&gt; added
6290 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
6291 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
6292 Will have to investigate this a bit more.&lt;/p&gt;
6293
6294 &lt;p&gt;My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
6295 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
6296 list available via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gmane.org/&quot;&gt;Gmane&lt;/a&gt; to use for
6297 discussions instead of only
6298 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss&quot;&gt;a forum&lt;a/&gt;.  Oh,
6299 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I&#39;ve
6300 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
6301 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
6302 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
6303 work like the free software project communities I am used to.&lt;/p&gt;
6304 </description>
6305         </item>
6306
6307         <item>
6308                 <title>Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</title>
6309                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</link>
6310                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</guid>
6311                 <pubDate>Wed, 6 Apr 2011 09:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6312                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getgnash.org/&quot;&gt;The Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; is still
6313 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
6314 A few days ago the project
6315 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html&quot;&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt;
6316 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
6317 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
6318 into Gnash.&lt;/p&gt;
6319 </description>
6320         </item>
6321
6322         <item>
6323                 <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
6324                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
6325                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
6326                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
6327                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6328 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6329 update in English.&lt;/p&gt;
6330
6331 &lt;p&gt;The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6332 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6333 of the British service
6334 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; up and running,
6335 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6336 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6337 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6338 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt; on what to develop,
6339 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6340 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6341 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6342 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6343 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is using
6344 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; as the map
6345 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6346 support for this had to be added/fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
6347
6348 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6349 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6350 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6351 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6352 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6353 public infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
6354
6355 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6356 such service?&lt;/p&gt;
6357 </description>
6358         </item>
6359
6360         <item>
6361                 <title>Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</title>
6362                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</link>
6363                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</guid>
6364                 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
6365                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6366 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6367 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6368 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6369 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6370 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6371 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6372 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6373 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6374 out which security holes were present in our free software
6375 collection.&lt;/p&gt;
6376
6377 &lt;p&gt;After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6378 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6379 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6380 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6381 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6382 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6383 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6384 solution.  Enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html&quot;&gt;Common
6385 Platform Enumeration&lt;/a&gt; dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6386 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6387 mapped to CVEs in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National
6388 Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, allowing me to look up know security
6389 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6390 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6391 This is fairly trivial (I google for &#39;cve cpe $package&#39; and check the
6392 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).&lt;/p&gt;
6393
6394 &lt;p&gt;To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6395 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6396 check out, one could look up
6397 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3&quot;&gt;cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
6398 in NVD&lt;/a&gt; and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6399 The most recent one is
6400 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001&quot;&gt;CVE-2010-0001&lt;/a&gt;,
6401 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6402 list of affected versions is provided.&lt;/p&gt;
6403
6404 &lt;p&gt;The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6405 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I&#39;ve written a
6406 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6407 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6408 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6409 security issues out.&lt;/p&gt;
6410
6411 &lt;p&gt;Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6412 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6413 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6414 RHEL is providing
6415 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt&quot;&gt;a
6416 map from CVE to CPE&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that they are using the CPE
6417 information.  I&#39;m not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;
6418
6419 &lt;p&gt;To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6420 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6421 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6422 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6423 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6424 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6425 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6426 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6427 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6428 established soon.&lt;/p&gt;
6429
6430 &lt;p&gt;An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6431 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6432 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6433 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6434 for their packages.&lt;/p&gt;
6435 </description>
6436         </item>
6437
6438         <item>
6439                 <title>Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</title>
6440                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</link>
6441                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</guid>
6442                 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
6443                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the
6444 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
6445 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6446 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6447 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6448 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6449 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6450 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6451 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6452 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3&gt;&amp;1&lt;/tt&gt;.  The relevant output on
6453 one of my machines like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6454
6455 &lt;pre&gt;
6456 loaded modules:
6457 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6458 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6459 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6460 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6461 10de:03ec pata_amd
6462 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6463 1022:1103 k8temp
6464 109e:036e bttv
6465 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6466 11ab:4364 sky2
6467 &lt;/pre&gt;
6468
6469 &lt;p&gt;The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6470 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:&lt;/p&gt;
6471
6472 &lt;pre&gt;
6473 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6474     echo loaded pci modules:
6475     (
6476         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6477         for address in * ; do
6478             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
6479                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6480                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
6481                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6482                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $3}&#39;`
6483                     echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
6484                 fi
6485             fi
6486         done
6487     )
6488     echo
6489 fi
6490 &lt;/pre&gt;
6491
6492 &lt;p&gt;Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6493 mappings:&lt;/p&gt;
6494
6495 &lt;pre&gt;
6496 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6497     echo loaded usb modules:
6498     (
6499         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6500         for address in * ; do
6501             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
6502                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6503                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
6504                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6505                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $6}&#39;)
6506                     if [ &quot;$id&quot; ] ; then
6507                         echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
6508                     fi
6509                 fi
6510             fi
6511         done
6512     )
6513     echo
6514 fi
6515 &lt;/pre&gt;
6516
6517 &lt;p&gt;This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6518 well.&lt;/p&gt;
6519 </description>
6520         </item>
6521
6522         <item>
6523                 <title>The video format most supported in web browsers?</title>
6524                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</link>
6525                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</guid>
6526                 <pubDate>Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
6527                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
6528 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
6529 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
6530 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
6531 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
6532 the Wikipedia article on
6533 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;HTML5 video&lt;/a&gt;,
6534 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
6535 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
6536 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
6537 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
6538 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
6539 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
6540 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
6541 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
6542 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
6543 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
6544 Safari can install plugins to get it.&lt;/p&gt;
6545
6546 &lt;p&gt;To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
6547 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
6548 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
6549 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
6550 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;, we provide first fallback to a
6551 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
6552 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
6553 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an &lt;a
6554 href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/&quot;&gt;example
6555 from last week&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6556
6557 &lt;p&gt;The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
6558 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
6559 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
6560 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
6561 was without royalties and license terms, check out
6562 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
6563 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps.&lt;/p&gt;
6564
6565 &lt;p&gt;A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
6566 available from
6567 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos&quot;&gt;the
6568 Xiph.org wiki&lt;/a&gt;, if you want to have a look.  I&#39;m not aware of a
6569 similar list for WebM nor H.264.&lt;/p&gt;
6570
6571 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
6572 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
6573 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
6574 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
6575 </description>
6576         </item>
6577
6578         <item>
6579                 <title>Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt;</title>
6580                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</link>
6581                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</guid>
6582                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
6583                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I discovered
6584 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome&quot;&gt;via
6585 digi.no&lt;/a&gt; that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
6586 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html&quot;&gt;yesterday
6587 announced&lt;/a&gt; plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; in
6588 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a &quot;completely
6589 open&quot; codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
6590 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
6591 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
6592 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  It is not free of cost for creators of video
6593 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
6594 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
6595 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
6596 on the Google announcement is available from
6597 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome&quot;&gt;OSnews&lt;/a&gt;.
6598 A good read. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6599
6600 &lt;p&gt;Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
6601 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
6602 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
6603 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
6604 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
6605 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
6606 browsers support H.264, and others support
6607 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; and
6608 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmproject.org/&quot;&gt;WebM&lt;/a&gt;
6609 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diracvideo.org/&quot;&gt;Dirac&lt;/a&gt; is not really an option
6610 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
6611 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
6612 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
6613 Wikipedia keep &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;an
6614 updated summary&lt;/a&gt; of the current browser support.&lt;/p&gt;
6615
6616 &lt;p&gt;Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
6617 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
6618 &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions&quot;&gt;presents
6619 the mind set&lt;/a&gt; of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
6620 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
6621 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM&quot;&gt;presenting
6622 the issues with H.264&lt;/a&gt;. Both are worth a read.&lt;/p&gt;
6623
6624 &lt;p&gt;Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn&#39;t free,
6625 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
6626 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
6627 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm&quot;&gt;todays
6628 blog post&lt;/a&gt;, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
6629 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
6630 browser while still allowing plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
6631
6632 &lt;p&gt;I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
6633 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
6634 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
6635 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
6636 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
6637 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
6638 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.&lt;/p&gt;
6639
6640 &lt;p&gt;An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
6641 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
6642 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
6643 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
6644 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
6645 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
6646 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
6647 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
6648 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
6649 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
6650 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
6651 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
6652 I guess time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;
6653
6654 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
6655 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html&quot;&gt;more
6656 background and information on the move&lt;/a&gt; it a blog post yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;
6657 </description>
6658         </item>
6659
6660         <item>
6661                 <title>What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</title>
6662                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</link>
6663                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</guid>
6664                 <pubDate>Thu, 30 Dec 2010 23:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
6665                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After trying to
6666 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html&quot;&gt;compare
6667 Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; to
6668 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the Digistan
6669 definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
6670 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
6671 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
6672 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
6673 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
6674 reasonable time frame, I will need help.&lt;/p&gt;
6675
6676 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with this work, please visit
6677 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse&quot;&gt;the
6678 wiki pages I have set up for this&lt;/a&gt;, and let me know that you want
6679 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
6680 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
6681 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
6682 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).&lt;/p&gt;
6683
6684 &lt;p&gt;The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
6685 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6686 </description>
6687         </item>
6688
6689         <item>
6690                 <title>The many definitions of a open standard</title>
6691                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</link>
6692                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</guid>
6693                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
6694                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
6695 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;Free and
6696 Open Standard&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
6697 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term &quot;Open Standard&quot; has
6698 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
6699 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
6700 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
6701 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.&lt;/p&gt;
6702
6703 &lt;p&gt;But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
6704 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
6705 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
6706 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
6707 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard&quot;&gt;wikipedia
6708 page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6709
6710 &lt;p&gt;First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
6711 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
6712 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
6713 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
6714 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
6715 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
6716 specification on equal terms.&lt;/p&gt;
6717
6718 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6719
6720 &lt;p&gt;The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
6721 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
6722 open standard:&lt;/p&gt;
6723
6724 &lt;ul&gt;
6725
6726 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6727 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6728 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
6729 (consensus or majority decision etc.).&lt;/li&gt;
6730
6731 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
6732 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
6733 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
6734 nominal fee.&lt;/li&gt;
6735
6736 &lt;li&gt;The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
6737 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
6738 free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
6739
6740 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
6741
6742 &lt;/ul&gt;
6743 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6744
6745 &lt;p&gt;Another one originates from my friends over at
6746 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dkuug.dk/&quot;&gt;DKUUG&lt;/a&gt;, who coined and gathered
6747 support for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaben-standard.dk/&quot;&gt;this
6748 definition&lt;/a&gt; in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
6749 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm&quot;&gt;their
6750 definition of a open standard&lt;/a&gt;.  Another from a different part of
6751 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.&lt;/p&gt;
6752
6753 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6754
6755 &lt;p&gt;En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:&lt;/p&gt;
6756
6757 &lt;ol&gt;
6758
6759 &lt;li&gt;Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
6760 tilgængelig.&lt;/li&gt;
6761
6762 &lt;li&gt;Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
6763 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.&lt;/li&gt;
6764
6765 &lt;li&gt;Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
6766 &quot;standardiseringsorganisation&quot;) via en åben proces.&lt;/li&gt;
6767
6768 &lt;/ol&gt;
6769
6770 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6771
6772 &lt;p&gt;Then there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html&quot;&gt;the
6773 definition&lt;/a&gt; from Free Software Foundation Europe.&lt;/p&gt;
6774
6775 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6776
6777 &lt;p&gt;An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is&lt;/p&gt;
6778
6779 &lt;ol&gt;
6780
6781 &lt;li&gt;subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
6782 manner equally available to all parties;&lt;/li&gt;
6783
6784 &lt;li&gt;without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
6785 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
6786 Standard themselves;&lt;/li&gt;
6787
6788 &lt;li&gt;free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
6789 any party or in any business model;&lt;/li&gt;
6790
6791 &lt;li&gt;managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
6792 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
6793 parties;&lt;/li&gt;
6794
6795 &lt;li&gt;available in multiple complete implementations by competing
6796 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
6797 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
6798
6799 &lt;/ol&gt;
6800
6801 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6802
6803 &lt;p&gt;A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
6804 its
6805 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf&quot;&gt;Open
6806 Standards Checklist&lt;/a&gt; with a fairly detailed description.&lt;/p&gt;
6807
6808 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6809 &lt;p&gt;Creation and Management of an Open Standard
6810
6811 &lt;ul&gt;
6812
6813 &lt;li&gt;Its development and management process must be collaborative and
6814   democratic:
6815
6816          &lt;ul&gt;
6817
6818          &lt;li&gt;Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
6819             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
6820             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
6821             and managed.&lt;/li&gt;
6822
6823          &lt;li&gt;The processes must be documented and, through a known
6824             method, can be changed through input from all
6825             participants.&lt;/li&gt;
6826
6827          &lt;li&gt;The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
6828             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.&lt;/li&gt;
6829
6830          &lt;li&gt;Development and management should strive for consensus,
6831             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.&lt;/li&gt;
6832
6833          &lt;li&gt;The standard specification must be open to extensive
6834             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
6835             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.&lt;/li&gt;
6836
6837          &lt;/ul&gt;
6838
6839 &lt;/li&gt;
6840
6841 &lt;/ul&gt;
6842
6843 &lt;p&gt;Use and Licensing of an Open Standard&lt;/p&gt;
6844 &lt;ul&gt;
6845
6846 &lt;li&gt;The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
6847   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
6848   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
6849   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
6850   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.&lt;/li&gt;
6851
6852 &lt;li&gt; The standard must not contain any proprietary &quot;hooks&quot; that create
6853   a technical or economic barriers&lt;/li&gt;
6854
6855 &lt;li&gt;Faithful implementations of the standard must
6856   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
6857   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
6858   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
6859   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
6860   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
6861   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
6862   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
6863   intended to function.&lt;/li&gt;
6864
6865 &lt;li&gt;It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
6866   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
6867   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.&lt;/li&gt;
6868
6869 &lt;li&gt;It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
6870   fees; also known as &quot;royalty free&quot;), worldwide, non-exclusive and
6871   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
6872   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
6873   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
6874   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
6875   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
6876   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
6877
6878       &lt;ul&gt;
6879
6880       &lt;li&gt; May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
6881         licensees&#39; patent claims essential to practice that standard
6882         (also known as a reciprocity clause)&lt;/li&gt;
6883
6884       &lt;li&gt; May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
6885         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
6886         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
6887         &quot;defensive suspension&quot; clause)&lt;/li&gt;
6888
6889       &lt;li&gt; The same licensing terms are available to every potential
6890         licensor&lt;/li&gt;
6891
6892       &lt;/ul&gt;
6893 &lt;/li&gt;
6894
6895 &lt;li&gt;The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
6896   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
6897   or restricted licensing terms&lt;/li&gt;
6898
6899 &lt;/ul&gt;
6900
6901 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6902
6903 &lt;p&gt;It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
6904 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
6905 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
6906 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
6907 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
6908 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
6909 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
6910 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
6911 Standards.&lt;/p&gt;
6912 </description>
6913         </item>
6914
6915         <item>
6916                 <title>Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</title>
6917                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</link>
6918                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</guid>
6919                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
6920                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;The
6921 Digistan definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard reads like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6922
6923 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6924
6925 &lt;p&gt;The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
6926 as follows:&lt;/p&gt;
6927
6928 &lt;ol&gt;
6929
6930 &lt;li&gt;A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
6931 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
6932 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.&lt;/li&gt;
6933
6934 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6935 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6936 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
6937 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
6938
6939 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
6940 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
6941 distribute, and use it freely.&lt;/li&gt;
6942
6943 &lt;li&gt;The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
6944 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
6945
6946 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
6947
6948 &lt;/ol&gt;
6949
6950 &lt;p&gt;The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
6951 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
6952 products based on the standard.&lt;/p&gt;
6953 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6954
6955 &lt;p&gt;For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
6956 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
6957 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
6958 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
6959 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html&quot;&gt;in
6960 July 2009&lt;/a&gt;, for those that want to see some background information.
6961 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
6962 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
6963
6964 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Free from vendor capture?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6965
6966 &lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
6967 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
6968 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/&quot;&gt;Xiph foundation&lt;/A&gt; is such vendor, but
6969 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
6970 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
6971 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
6972 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
6973 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I&#39;ve
6974 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
6975 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
6976 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
6977 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
6978 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
6979 specification.  But it seem unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;
6980
6981 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6982
6983 &lt;p&gt;Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
6984 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
6985 controlled by a single vendor, it isn&#39;t, but I have not found any
6986 documentation indicating this.&lt;/p&gt;
6987
6988 &lt;p&gt;According to
6989 &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf&quot;&gt;a report&lt;/a&gt;
6990 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
6991 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
6992 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
6993 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
6994 report is correct.&lt;/p&gt;
6995
6996 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specification freely available?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6997
6998 &lt;p&gt;The specification for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/&quot;&gt;Ogg
6999 container format&lt;/a&gt; and both the
7000 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/&quot;&gt;Vorbis&lt;/a&gt; and
7001 &lt;a href=&quot;http://theora.org/doc/&quot;&gt;Theora&lt;/a&gt; codeces are available on
7002 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
7003
7004 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7005
7006 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
7007 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
7008 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
7009 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
7010 specification compliance.
7011
7012 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7013
7014 &lt;p&gt;The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
7015 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, and
7016 this is the term:&lt;p&gt;
7017
7018 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7019
7020 &lt;p&gt;This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
7021 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
7022 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
7023 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
7024 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
7025 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
7026 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
7027 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
7028 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
7029 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
7030 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
7031 translate it into languages other than English.&lt;/p&gt;
7032
7033 &lt;p&gt;The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
7034 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.&lt;/p&gt;
7035 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7036
7037 &lt;p&gt;All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
7038 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
7039 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
7040 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
7041 requirement for the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
7042
7043 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Royalty-free?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7044
7045 &lt;p&gt;There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
7046 Theora format.
7047 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;
7048 and
7049 &lt;a href=&quot;http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit&quot;&gt;Steve
7050 Jobs&lt;/a&gt; in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
7051 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
7052 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
7053 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
7054 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
7055 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
7056 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.&lt;/p&gt;
7057
7058 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No constraints on re-use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7059
7060 &lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.&lt;/p&gt;
7061
7062 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7063
7064 &lt;p&gt;3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
7065 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
7066 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
7067 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
7068 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
7069 this.&lt;/p&gt;
7070
7071 &lt;p&gt;It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
7072 see if they are free and open standards.&lt;/p&gt;
7073 </description>
7074         </item>
7075
7076         <item>
7077                 <title>The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</title>
7078                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</link>
7079                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</guid>
7080                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
7081                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago
7082 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece&quot;&gt;an
7083 article&lt;/a&gt; in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
7084 2.0 of
7085 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework&quot;&gt;European
7086 Interoperability Framework&lt;/a&gt; has been successfully lobbied by the
7087 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
7088 Nothing very surprising there, given
7089 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe&quot;&gt;earlier
7090 reports&lt;/a&gt; on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
7091 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
7092 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt&quot;&gt;an
7093 open standard from version 1&lt;/a&gt; was very good, and something I
7094 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
7095 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the
7096 definition from Digistan&lt;/A&gt;.  Version 2 have removed the open
7097 standard definition from its content.&lt;/p&gt;
7098
7099 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
7100 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
7101 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
7102 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
7103 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
7104 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html&quot;&gt;my
7105 source&lt;/a&gt; to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
7106 background information about that story is available in
7107 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; from
7108 Linux Journal in 2002.&lt;/p&gt;
7109
7110 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7111 &lt;p&gt;Lima, 8th of April, 2002&lt;br&gt;
7112 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ&lt;br&gt;
7113 General Manager of Microsoft Perú&lt;/p&gt;
7114
7115 &lt;p&gt;Dear Sir:&lt;/p&gt;
7116
7117 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7118
7119 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7120
7121 &lt;p&gt;With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call &quot;open source software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;free software&quot;, 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 &quot;commercial software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;proprietary&quot; or &quot;unfree&quot;, given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.&lt;/p&gt;
7122
7123 &lt;p&gt;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:&lt;/p&gt;
7124
7125 &lt;p&gt;
7126 &lt;ul&gt;
7127 &lt;li&gt;Free access to public information by the citizen. &lt;/li&gt;
7128 &lt;li&gt;Permanence of public data. &lt;/li&gt;
7129 &lt;li&gt;Security of the State and citizens.&lt;/li&gt;
7130 &lt;/ul&gt;
7131 &lt;/p&gt;
7132
7133 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7134
7135 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7136
7137 &lt;p&gt;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*. &lt;/p&gt;
7138
7139 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7140
7141 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7142
7143
7144 &lt;p&gt;From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:&lt;br&gt;
7145 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
7146 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
7147 &lt;li&gt;the law does not specify which concrete software to use&lt;/li&gt;
7148 &lt;li&gt;the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought&lt;/li&gt;
7149 &lt;li&gt;the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.&lt;/li&gt;
7150
7151 &lt;/p&gt;
7152
7153 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7154
7155 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7156
7157 &lt;p&gt;As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:&lt;/p&gt;
7158
7159 &lt;p&gt;Firstly, you point out that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7160
7161 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7162
7163 &lt;p&gt;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).&lt;/p&gt;
7164
7165 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7166
7167 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7168
7169 &lt;p&gt;By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office &quot;suite&quot;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
7170
7171 &lt;p&gt;To continue; you note that:&quot; 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...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7172
7173 &lt;p&gt;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 &quot;non-competitive ... practices.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7174
7175 &lt;p&gt;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 &quot;a priori&quot;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
7176
7177 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7178
7179 &lt;p&gt;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&#39; 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.&lt;/p&gt;
7180
7181 &lt;p&gt;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: &quot;update your software to the new version&quot; (at the user&#39;s expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider&#39;s judgment alone, are &quot;old&quot;; 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 &quot;trapped&quot; 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).&lt;/p&gt;
7182
7183 &lt;p&gt;You add: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7184
7185 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7186
7187 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7188
7189 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7190
7191 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7192
7193 &lt;p&gt;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 &quot;ad hoc&quot; 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.&lt;/p&gt;
7194
7195 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7196
7197 &lt;p&gt;Your letter continues: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7198
7199 &lt;p&gt;Alluding in an abstract way to &quot;the dangers this can bring&quot;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
7200
7201 &lt;p&gt;On security:&lt;/p&gt;
7202
7203 &lt;p&gt;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 &quot;bugs&quot; (in programmers&#39; 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.&lt;/p&gt;
7204
7205 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7206
7207 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7208
7209 &lt;p&gt;In respect of the guarantee:&lt;/p&gt;
7210
7211 &lt;p&gt;As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the &quot;End User License Agreement&quot; 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&#39;&#39;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
7212
7213 &lt;p&gt;On Intellectual Property:&lt;/p&gt;
7214
7215 &lt;p&gt;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&#39;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).&lt;/p&gt;
7216
7217 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7218
7219 &lt;p&gt;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).&lt;/p&gt;
7220
7221 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7222
7223 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7224
7225 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7226
7227 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7228
7229 &lt;p&gt;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 (&quot;blue screens of death&quot;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
7230
7231 &lt;p&gt;You further state that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7232
7233 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7234
7235 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7236
7237 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7238
7239 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7240
7241 &lt;p&gt;The second argument refers to &quot;problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector&quot; 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.&lt;/p&gt;
7242
7243 &lt;p&gt;You then say that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7244
7245 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7246
7247 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7248
7249 &lt;p&gt;You continue by observing that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7250
7251 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7252
7253 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7254
7255 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7256
7257 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7258
7259 &lt;p&gt;You then state that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7260
7261 &lt;p&gt;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&#39;t have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That&#39;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7262
7263 &lt;p&gt;You end with a rhetorical question: &quot;13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn&#39;t it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7264
7265 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7266
7267 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7268
7269 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7270
7271 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
7272
7273 &lt;p&gt;Cordially,&lt;br&gt;
7274 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ&lt;br&gt;
7275 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.&lt;/p&gt;
7276 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7277 </description>
7278         </item>
7279
7280         <item>
7281                 <title>Officeshots still going strong</title>
7282                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</link>
7283                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</guid>
7284                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 09:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7285                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago I
7286 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html&quot;&gt;wrote
7287 a bit&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;,
7288 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
7289 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.&lt;/p&gt;
7290
7291 &lt;p&gt;I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
7292 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
7293 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
7294 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
7295 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
7296 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
7297 got such a great test tool available.&lt;/p&gt;
7298 </description>
7299         </item>
7300
7301         <item>
7302                 <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
7303                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
7304                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
7305                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
7306                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent at work here at the &lt;a
7307 href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; testing if the new
7308 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
7309 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
7310 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
7311 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
7312 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
7313 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
7314 university.&lt;/p&gt;
7315
7316 &lt;p&gt;My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
7317 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
7318 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
7319 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
7320 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
7321 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
7322 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
7323 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.&lt;/p&gt;
7324
7325 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
7326 I perform on a new model.&lt;/p&gt;
7327
7328 &lt;ul&gt;
7329
7330 &lt;li&gt;Is PXE installation working?  I&#39;m testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
7331 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
7332 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.&lt;/li&gt;
7333
7334 &lt;li&gt;Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
7335 installation, X.org is working.&lt;/li&gt;
7336
7337 &lt;li&gt;Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
7338 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
7339 reported by the program.&lt;/li&gt;
7340
7341 &lt;li&gt;Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
7342 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
7343 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
7344 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
7345 normally test this by playing
7346 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ &quot;&gt;a HTML5
7347 video&lt;/a&gt; in Firefox/Iceweasel.&lt;/li&gt;
7348
7349 &lt;li&gt;Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
7350 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
7351
7352 &lt;li&gt;Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
7353 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
7354
7355 &lt;li&gt;Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
7356 picture from the v4l device show up.&lt;/li&gt;
7357
7358 &lt;li&gt;Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
7359 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
7360 few.&lt;/li&gt;
7361
7362 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
7363 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
7364 notice this.&lt;/li&gt;
7365
7366 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I&#39;m testing if the
7367 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
7368 resume.&lt;/li&gt;
7369
7370 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
7371 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
7372 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
7373 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
7374 not.&lt;/li&gt;
7375
7376 &lt;li&gt;Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
7377 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
7378 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
7379 existence.&lt;/li&gt;
7380
7381 &lt;/ul&gt;
7382
7383 &lt;p&gt;By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
7384 for the HP machines I am testing.  I&#39;m not done yet, so I will report
7385 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
7386 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
7387 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
7388 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
7389 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
7390 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.&lt;/p&gt;
7391 </description>
7392         </item>
7393
7394         <item>
7395                 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
7396                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
7397                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
7398                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
7399                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
7400 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
7401 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
7402 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
7403
7404 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
7405 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
7406 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
7407 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
7408 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
7409 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
7410 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
7411 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
7412 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
7413 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
7414 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
7415 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
7416 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
7417 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
7418 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
7419 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
7420 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I&#39;m told
7421 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
7422 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
7423 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
7424
7425 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
7426 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
7427 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
7428 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
7429 If the Skolelinux foundation
7430 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
7431 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
7432 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
7433 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
7434 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
7435 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
7436 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
7437 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
7438
7439 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
7440 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
7441 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
7442 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
7443 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
7444 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
7445 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
7446 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
7447 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
7448 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
7449 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I&#39;m sure they
7450 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
7451 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
7452 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
7453 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
7454
7455 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
7456 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
7457 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
7458 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
7459 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
7460 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
7461 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
7462 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
7463 BitCoins.  Check out
7464 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
7465 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
7466 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
7467 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
7468 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
7469
7470 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
7471 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
7472 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
7473 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
7474 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
7475 </description>
7476         </item>
7477
7478         <item>
7479                 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
7480                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
7481                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
7482                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
7483                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
7484 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
7485 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
7486 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
7487 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
7488 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
7489 A blog post from
7490 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
7491 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
7492 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
7493 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;.  I got
7494 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
7495 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
7496 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
7497
7498 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
7499 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
7500 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
7501 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
7502 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
7503 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
7504 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
7505 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
7506 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
7507 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
7508
7509 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
7510 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
7511 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
7512 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
7513 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
7514 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
7515 you can even get
7516 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
7517 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
7518 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
7519 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
7520
7521 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
7522 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
7523 donations to the address
7524 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;.  Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
7525 </description>
7526         </item>
7527
7528         <item>
7529                 <title>Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</title>
7530                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html</link>
7531                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html</guid>
7532                 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Dec 2010 19:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
7533                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
7534 student assosiation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.robotica.no/&quot;&gt;Robotica
7535 Osloensis&lt;/a&gt; at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
7536 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
7537 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
7538 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
7539 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
7540 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
7541 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
7542 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
7543 operational.&lt;/p&gt;
7544
7545 &lt;p&gt;The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
7546 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
7547 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
7548 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thingiverse.com/&quot;&gt;Thingiverse&lt;/a&gt;.  I even got
7549 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
7550 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
7551 very cool 3D scanner.&lt;/p&gt;
7552 </description>
7553         </item>
7554
7555         <item>
7556                 <title>Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</title>
7557                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html</link>
7558                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html</guid>
7559                 <pubDate>Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7560                 <description>&lt;p&gt;On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7561 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo&quot;&gt;development
7562 gathering&lt;/a&gt; in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
7563 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
7564 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
7565 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
7566
7567 &lt;p&gt;On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
7568 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
7569 will hold its
7570 &lt;a href=&quot;http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010&quot;&gt;General Assembly
7571 for 2010&lt;/a&gt;.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
7572 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
7573 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
7574 vote this year.&lt;/p&gt;
7575 </description>
7576         </item>
7577
7578         <item>
7579                 <title>Why isn&#39;t Debian Edu using VLC?</title>
7580                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</link>
7581                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</guid>
7582                 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
7583                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
7584 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
7585 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
7586 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
7587 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
7588 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
7589 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
7590 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.&lt;p&gt;
7591
7592 &lt;p&gt;But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
7593 mplayer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
7594 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
7595 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
7596 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
7597 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
7598 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;last
7599 tested the browser plugins&lt;/a&gt; available in Debian, the VLC plugin
7600 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
7601 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
7602 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.&lt;/P&gt;
7603
7604 &lt;p&gt;While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
7605 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
7606 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
7607 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
7608 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
7609 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
7610 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
7611 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
7612 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
7613 what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;
7614 </description>
7615         </item>
7616
7617         <item>
7618                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</title>
7619                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</link>
7620                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</guid>
7621                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
7622                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
7623 upgrade testing of the
7624 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
7625 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt; to do &lt;tt&gt;apt-get autoremove&lt;/tt&gt; when using apt-get.
7626 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
7627 can now present the updated result from today:&lt;/p&gt;
7628
7629 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
7630
7631 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
7632
7633 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7634   apache2.2-bin
7635   aptdaemon
7636   baobab
7637   binfmt-support
7638   browser-plugin-gnash
7639   cheese-common
7640   cli-common
7641   cups-pk-helper
7642   dmz-cursor-theme
7643   empathy
7644   empathy-common
7645   freedesktop-sound-theme
7646   freeglut3
7647   gconf-defaults-service
7648   gdm-themes
7649   gedit-plugins
7650   geoclue
7651   geoclue-hostip
7652   geoclue-localnet
7653   geoclue-manual
7654   geoclue-yahoo
7655   gnash
7656   gnash-common
7657   gnome
7658   gnome-backgrounds
7659   gnome-cards-data
7660   gnome-codec-install
7661   gnome-core
7662   gnome-desktop-environment
7663   gnome-disk-utility
7664   gnome-screenshot
7665   gnome-search-tool
7666   gnome-session-canberra
7667   gnome-system-log
7668   gnome-themes-extras
7669   gnome-themes-more
7670   gnome-user-share
7671   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7672   gstreamer0.10-tools
7673   gtk2-engines
7674   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7675   gtk2-engines-smooth
7676   hamster-applet
7677   libapache2-mod-dnssd
7678   libapr1
7679   libaprutil1
7680   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
7681   libaprutil1-ldap
7682   libart2.0-cil
7683   libboost-date-time1.42.0
7684   libboost-python1.42.0
7685   libboost-thread1.42.0
7686   libchamplain-0.4-0
7687   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
7688   libcheese-gtk18
7689   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7690   libcryptui0
7691   libdiscid0
7692   libelf1
7693   libepc-1.0-2
7694   libepc-common
7695   libepc-ui-1.0-2
7696   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7697   libfreerdp0
7698   libgconf2.0-cil
7699   libgdata-common
7700   libgdata7
7701   libgdu-gtk0
7702   libgee2
7703   libgeoclue0
7704   libgexiv2-0
7705   libgif4
7706   libglade2.0-cil
7707   libglib2.0-cil
7708   libgmime2.4-cil
7709   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7710   libgnome2.24-cil
7711   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
7712   libgpod-common
7713   libgpod4
7714   libgtk2.0-cil
7715   libgtkglext1
7716   libgtksourceview2.0-common
7717   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7718   libmono-addins0.2-cil
7719   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
7720   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7721   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
7722   libmono-posix2.0-cil
7723   libmono-security2.0-cil
7724   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7725   libmono-system2.0-cil
7726   libmtp8
7727   libmusicbrainz3-6
7728   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
7729   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
7730   libopal3.6.8
7731   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
7732   libpt2.6.7
7733   libpython2.6
7734   librpm1
7735   librpmio1
7736   libsdl1.2debian
7737   libsrtp0
7738   libssh-4
7739   libtelepathy-farsight0
7740   libtelepathy-glib0
7741   libtidy-0.99-0
7742   media-player-info
7743   mesa-utils
7744   mono-2.0-gac
7745   mono-gac
7746   mono-runtime
7747   nautilus-sendto
7748   nautilus-sendto-empathy
7749   p7zip-full
7750   pkg-config
7751   python-aptdaemon
7752   python-aptdaemon-gtk
7753   python-axiom
7754   python-beautifulsoup
7755   python-bugbuddy
7756   python-clientform
7757   python-coherence
7758   python-configobj
7759   python-crypto
7760   python-cupshelpers
7761   python-elementtree
7762   python-epsilon
7763   python-evolution
7764   python-feedparser
7765   python-gdata
7766   python-gdbm
7767   python-gst0.10
7768   python-gtkglext1
7769   python-gtksourceview2
7770   python-httplib2
7771   python-louie
7772   python-mako
7773   python-markupsafe
7774   python-mechanize
7775   python-nevow
7776   python-notify
7777   python-opengl
7778   python-openssl
7779   python-pam
7780   python-pkg-resources
7781   python-pyasn1
7782   python-pysqlite2
7783   python-rdflib
7784   python-serial
7785   python-tagpy
7786   python-twisted-bin
7787   python-twisted-conch
7788   python-twisted-core
7789   python-twisted-web
7790   python-utidylib
7791   python-webkit
7792   python-xdg
7793   python-zope.interface
7794   remmina
7795   remmina-plugin-data
7796   remmina-plugin-rdp
7797   remmina-plugin-vnc
7798   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7799   rhythmbox-plugins
7800   rpm-common
7801   rpm2cpio
7802   seahorse-plugins
7803   shotwell
7804   software-center
7805   system-config-printer-udev
7806   telepathy-gabble
7807   telepathy-mission-control-5
7808   telepathy-salut
7809   tomboy
7810   totem
7811   totem-coherence
7812   totem-mozilla
7813   totem-plugins
7814   transmission-common
7815   xdg-user-dirs
7816   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
7817   xserver-xephyr
7818 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7819
7820 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
7821
7822 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7823   cheese
7824   ekiga
7825   eog
7826   epiphany-extensions
7827   evolution-exchange
7828   fast-user-switch-applet
7829   file-roller
7830   gcalctool
7831   gconf-editor
7832   gdm
7833   gedit
7834   gedit-common
7835   gnome-games
7836   gnome-games-data
7837   gnome-nettool
7838   gnome-system-tools
7839   gnome-themes
7840   gnuchess
7841   gucharmap
7842   guile-1.8-libs
7843   libavahi-ui0
7844   libdmx1
7845   libgalago3
7846   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7847   libgtksourceview2.0-0
7848   liblircclient0
7849   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
7850   libspeexdsp1
7851   libsvga1
7852   rhythmbox
7853   seahorse
7854   sound-juicer
7855   system-config-printer
7856   totem-common
7857   transmission-gtk
7858   vinagre
7859   vino
7860 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7861
7862 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
7863
7864 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7865   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7866 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7867
7868 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
7869
7870 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7871 [nothing]
7872 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7873
7874 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
7875
7876 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
7877
7878 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7879   ksmserver
7880 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7881
7882 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
7883
7884 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7885   kwin
7886   network-manager-kde
7887 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7888
7889 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
7890
7891 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7892   arts
7893   dolphin
7894   freespacenotifier
7895   google-gadgets-gst
7896   google-gadgets-xul
7897   kappfinder
7898   kcalc
7899   kcharselect
7900   kde-core
7901   kde-plasma-desktop
7902   kde-standard
7903   kde-window-manager
7904   kdeartwork
7905   kdeartwork-emoticons
7906   kdeartwork-style
7907   kdeartwork-theme-icon
7908   kdebase
7909   kdebase-apps
7910   kdebase-workspace
7911   kdebase-workspace-bin
7912   kdebase-workspace-data
7913   kdeeject
7914   kdelibs
7915   kdeplasma-addons
7916   kdeutils
7917   kdewallpapers
7918   kdf
7919   kfloppy
7920   kgpg
7921   khelpcenter4
7922   kinfocenter
7923   konq-plugins-l10n
7924   konqueror-nsplugins
7925   kscreensaver
7926   kscreensaver-xsavers
7927   ktimer
7928   kwrite
7929   libgle3
7930   libkde4-ruby1.8
7931   libkonq5
7932   libkonq5-templates
7933   libnetpbm10
7934   libplasma-ruby
7935   libplasma-ruby1.8
7936   libqt4-ruby1.8
7937   marble-data
7938   marble-plugins
7939   netpbm
7940   nuvola-icon-theme
7941   plasma-dataengines-workspace
7942   plasma-desktop
7943   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7944   plasma-runners-addons
7945   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7946   plasma-scriptengine-python
7947   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7948   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7949   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7950   plasma-scriptengines
7951   plasma-wallpapers-addons
7952   plasma-widget-folderview
7953   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7954   ruby
7955   sweeper
7956   update-notifier-kde
7957   xscreensaver-data-extra
7958   xscreensaver-gl
7959   xscreensaver-gl-extra
7960   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7961 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7962
7963 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
7964
7965 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
7966   ark
7967   google-gadgets-common
7968   google-gadgets-qt
7969   htdig
7970   kate
7971   kdebase-bin
7972   kdebase-data
7973   kdepasswd
7974   kfind
7975   klipper
7976   konq-plugins
7977   konqueror
7978   ksysguard
7979   ksysguardd
7980   libarchive1
7981   libcln6
7982   libeet1
7983   libeina-svn-06
7984   libggadget-1.0-0b
7985   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
7986   libgps19
7987   libkdecorations4
7988   libkephal4
7989   libkonq4
7990   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
7991   libkscreensaver5
7992   libksgrd4
7993   libksignalplotter4
7994   libkunitconversion4
7995   libkwineffects1a
7996   libmarblewidget4
7997   libntrack-qt4-1
7998   libntrack0
7999   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
8000   libplasmaclock4a
8001   libplasmagenericshell4
8002   libprocesscore4a
8003   libprocessui4a
8004   libqalculate5
8005   libqedje0a
8006   libqtruby4shared2
8007   libqzion0a
8008   libruby1.8
8009   libscim8c2a
8010   libsmokekdecore4-3
8011   libsmokekdeui4-3
8012   libsmokekfile3
8013   libsmokekhtml3
8014   libsmokekio3
8015   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
8016   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
8017   libsmokekparts3
8018   libsmokektexteditor3
8019   libsmokekutils3
8020   libsmokenepomuk3
8021   libsmokephonon3
8022   libsmokeplasma3
8023   libsmokeqtcore4-3
8024   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
8025   libsmokeqtgui4-3
8026   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
8027   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
8028   libsmokeqtscript4-3
8029   libsmokeqtsql4-3
8030   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
8031   libsmokeqttest4-3
8032   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
8033   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
8034   libsmokeqtxml4-3
8035   libsmokesolid3
8036   libsmokesoprano3
8037   libtaskmanager4a
8038   libtidy-0.99-0
8039   libweather-ion4a
8040   libxklavier16
8041   libxxf86misc1
8042   okteta
8043   oxygencursors
8044   plasma-dataengines-addons
8045   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
8046   plasma-widget-lancelot
8047   plasma-widgets-addons
8048   plasma-widgets-workspace
8049   polkit-kde-1
8050   ruby1.8
8051   systemsettings
8052   update-notifier-common
8053 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8054
8055 &lt;p&gt;Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
8056 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
8057 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
8058 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
8059 </description>
8060         </item>
8061
8062         <item>
8063                 <title>Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</title>
8064                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</link>
8065                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</guid>
8066                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
8067                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the computers in use by the
8068 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux project&lt;/a&gt;
8069 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
8070 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
8071 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
8072 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
8073 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
8074 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
8075 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.&lt;/p&gt;
8076
8077 &lt;p&gt;I found
8078 &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM&quot;&gt;a
8079 nice recipe&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
8080 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
8081 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
8082 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
8083 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.&lt;/p&gt;
8084
8085 &lt;pre&gt;
8086 #!/bin/sh
8087
8088 # Based on
8089 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
8090
8091 set -e
8092 set -x
8093
8094 if [ -z &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
8095     echo &quot;Usage: $0 &amp;lt;hostname&amp;gt;&quot;
8096     exit 1
8097 else
8098     host=&quot;$1&quot;
8099 fi
8100
8101 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
8102     echo &quot;error: unable to find LVM volume for $host&quot;
8103     exit 1
8104 fi
8105
8106 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
8107 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
8108 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
8109 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
8110
8111 img=$host.img
8112 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
8113 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
8114
8115 parted $img mklabel msdos
8116 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
8117 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
8118 parted $img set 1 boot on
8119
8120 modprobe dm-mod
8121 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
8122 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
8123
8124 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
8125 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
8126 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
8127
8128 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
8129 losetup -d /dev/loop0
8130 &lt;/pre&gt;
8131
8132 &lt;p&gt;The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
8133 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;
8134
8135 &lt;p&gt;After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
8136 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
8137 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
8138 seem to work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
8139 </description>
8140         </item>
8141
8142         <item>
8143                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</title>
8144                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</link>
8145                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</guid>
8146                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
8147                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m still running upgrade testing of the
8148 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
8149 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt;, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
8150 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.&lt;/p&gt;
8151
8152 &lt;p&gt;I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
8153 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
8154 can see if anything should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;
8155
8156 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
8157
8158 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8159
8160 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8161   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
8162   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
8163   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
8164   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
8165   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
8166   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
8167   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
8168   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
8169   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
8170   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
8171   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8172   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8173   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
8174   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
8175   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
8176   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
8177   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8178   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
8179   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8180   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
8181   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
8182   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8183   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
8184   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
8185   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
8186   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8187   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8188   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
8189   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8190   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
8191   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
8192   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8193   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
8194   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
8195   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
8196   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
8197   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
8198   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
8199   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
8200   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
8201   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
8202   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
8203   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
8204   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
8205   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
8206   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
8207   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
8208   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
8209   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
8210   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
8211   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
8212   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
8213   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8214   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
8215   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
8216   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
8217   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
8218   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
8219   zip
8220 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8221
8222 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
8223
8224 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8225   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
8226   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
8227   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
8228   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
8229   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
8230   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
8231   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
8232   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
8233   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
8234   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
8235   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
8236   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8237   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8238   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8239   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8240   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
8241   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8242   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
8243   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
8244   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
8245   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
8246   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
8247   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8248   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
8249   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
8250   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
8251   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
8252   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
8253   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
8254 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8255
8256 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8257
8258 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8259   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8260 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8261
8262 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8263
8264 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8265 [nothing]
8266 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8267
8268 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
8269
8270 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8271
8272 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8273   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
8274   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8275   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
8276   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
8277   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
8278   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
8279   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8280   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
8281   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
8282   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8283   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
8284   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
8285   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
8286   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
8287   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
8288   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
8289   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
8290   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
8291   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
8292   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
8293   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
8294   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
8295   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
8296   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
8297   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
8298   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
8299   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
8300   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
8301   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
8302   ttf-sazanami-gothic
8303 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8304
8305 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8306
8307 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8308   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
8309   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
8310   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
8311   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
8312   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
8313   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
8314   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
8315   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
8316   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
8317   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
8318   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
8319   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
8320   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
8321   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
8322   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8323   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8324   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
8325   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
8326   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8327   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
8328   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8329   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
8330   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8331   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8332   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
8333   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
8334   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
8335   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
8336   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
8337   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
8338   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
8339   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
8340   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
8341 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8342
8343 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8344
8345 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8346   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
8347   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
8348   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
8349   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
8350   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8351   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
8352   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8353 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8354
8355 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8356
8357 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8358   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
8359 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8360 </description>
8361         </item>
8362
8363         <item>
8364                 <title>Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</title>
8365                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</link>
8366                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</guid>
8367                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
8368                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Answering
8369 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html&quot;&gt;the
8370 call from the Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; for
8371 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnashdev.org:8010&quot;&gt;buildbot&lt;/a&gt; slaves to test the
8372 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
8373 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
8374 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
8375 releases out more often.&lt;/p&gt;
8376
8377 &lt;p&gt;As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
8378 I have considered setting up a &lt;a
8379 href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/&quot;&gt;Debian/kfreebsd&lt;/a&gt;
8380 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
8381 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
8382 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
8383 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
8384 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
8385 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
8386 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
8387 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
8388 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
8389 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
8390 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
8391 </description>
8392         </item>
8393
8394         <item>
8395                 <title>Debian in 3D</title>
8396                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</link>
8397                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</guid>
8398                 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
8399                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8400
8401 &lt;p&gt;3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
8402 3D linked in from
8403 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/&quot;&gt;the
8404 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8405 </description>
8406         </item>
8407
8408         <item>
8409                 <title>Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</title>
8410                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html</link>
8411                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html</guid>
8412                 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Nov 2010 11:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
8413                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
8414 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; DVD, which is
8415 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
8416 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
8417 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
8418 working using this DVD.&lt;/p&gt;
8419
8420 &lt;p&gt;The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
8421 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
8422 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
8423 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
8424 a patch for debian-cd in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/601203&quot;&gt;BTS
8425 report #601203&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and since this change was applied to
8426 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.&lt;/p&gt;
8427
8428 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
8429 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
8430 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
8431 Debian archive.&lt;/p&gt;
8432
8433 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
8434 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
8435 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
8436 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
8437 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
8438 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
8439 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
8440 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
8441 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
8442 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
8443 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
8444 free X driver should work.&lt;/p&gt;
8445
8446 &lt;p&gt;With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
8447 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
8448 DVD more useful again.&lt;/p&gt;
8449 </description>
8450         </item>
8451
8452         <item>
8453                 <title>Software updates 2010-10-24</title>
8454                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</link>
8455                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</guid>
8456                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
8457                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some updates.&lt;/p&gt;
8458
8459 &lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;gnash pledge&lt;/a&gt; to
8460 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
8461 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
8462 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
8463 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
8464 :)&lt;/p&gt;
8465
8466 &lt;p&gt;On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
8467 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
8468 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
8469 It is called
8470 &lt;a href=&quot;http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html&quot;&gt;kcov&lt;/a&gt;,
8471 and can be used using &lt;tt&gt;kcov &amp;lt;directory&amp;gt; &amp;lt;binary&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.
8472 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
8473 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
8474 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
8475 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.&lt;/p&gt;
8476
8477 &lt;p&gt;Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for &lt;a
8478 href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html&quot;&gt;a
8479 new alpha release of Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;, and just published the second
8480 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
8481 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
8482 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
8483 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
8484 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
8485 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
8486 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.&lt;/p&gt;
8487 </description>
8488         </item>
8489
8490         <item>
8491                 <title>Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</title>
8492                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html</link>
8493                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html</guid>
8494                 <pubDate>Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
8495                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getgnash.org/&quot;&gt;The Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; is the
8496 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
8497 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
8498 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
8499 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
8500 AVM2 flash files.&lt;/p&gt;
8501
8502 &lt;p&gt;To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
8503 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;a pledge&lt;/a&gt; with the
8504 following text:&lt;/P&gt;
8505
8506 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
8507
8508   &lt;p&gt;&quot;I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
8509   only if 10 other people will do the same.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
8510
8511   &lt;p&gt;- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer&lt;/p&gt;
8512
8513   &lt;p&gt;Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010&lt;/p&gt;
8514
8515   &lt;p&gt;The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
8516   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
8517   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
8518   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
8519   days. The project web page is available from
8520   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
8521   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
8522   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.&lt;/p&gt;
8523
8524   &lt;p&gt;The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
8525   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
8526   to get this to happen.&lt;/p&gt;
8527
8528   &lt;p&gt;The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
8529   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32&quot;&gt;http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;
8530
8531 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8532
8533 &lt;p&gt;I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
8534 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
8535 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
8536 :)&lt;/p&gt;
8537 </description>
8538         </item>
8539
8540         <item>
8541                 <title>First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</title>
8542                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html</link>
8543                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html</guid>
8544                 <pubDate>Sat, 9 Oct 2010 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8545                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
8546 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
8547 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
8548 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
8549 I&#39;ve started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
8550 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
8551 robots.&lt;/p&gt;
8552
8553 &lt;p&gt;The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
8554 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
8555 a few less important features too.&lt;/p&gt;
8556
8557 &lt;p&gt;Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
8558 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
8559 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
8560 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.&lt;/p&gt;
8561
8562 &lt;p&gt;Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
8563 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
8564 source or binary package:&lt;/p&gt;
8565
8566 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
8567 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
8568 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
8569 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
8570 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8571
8572 &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
8573 please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
8574 </description>
8575         </item>
8576
8577         <item>
8578                 <title>Links for 2010-10-03</title>
8579                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html</link>
8580                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html</guid>
8581                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Oct 2010 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8582                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
8583
8584 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars&quot;&gt;There
8585 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
8586
8587 &lt;li&gt;Scanner looking under clothes
8588 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/&quot;&gt;has
8589 already been misused at Heathrow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
8590
8591 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell&quot;&gt;Landell
8592 Webcasting&lt;/a&gt; - interesting alternative for
8593 &lt;ahref=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/&quot;&gt;DVSwitch&lt;/a&gt; with
8594 simple setup.
8595
8596 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8597 </description>
8598         </item>
8599
8600         <item>
8601                 <title>Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</title>
8602                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</link>
8603                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</guid>
8604                 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Sep 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
8605                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
8606 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
8607 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
8608 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
8609 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
8610 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
8611 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
8612 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
8613 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
8614
8615 &lt;p&gt;On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
8616 written:&lt;/p&gt;
8617
8618 &lt;blockquote&gt;
8619 &lt;p&gt;This product is licensed under AT&amp;T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
8620 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
8621 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
8622 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
8623 AT&amp;T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.&lt;/p&gt;
8624
8625 &lt;p&gt;No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
8626 standard.&lt;/p&gt;
8627 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
8628
8629 &lt;p&gt;In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
8630 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
8631 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
8632 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.&lt;/p&gt;
8633
8634 &lt;p&gt;This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
8635 read
8636 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA&quot;&gt;Why
8637 Our Civilization&#39;s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
8638 MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
8639 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/&quot;&gt;H.264 Is Not
8640 The Sort Of Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps to learn more about
8641 the issue.  The solution is to support the
8642 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and
8643 open standards&lt;/a&gt; for video, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg
8644 Theora&lt;/a&gt;, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.&lt;/p&gt;
8645 </description>
8646         </item>
8647
8648         <item>
8649                 <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
8650                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
8651                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
8652                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
8653                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote&quot;&gt;Debian
8654 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the adobe-flashplugin package the
8655 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
8656 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
8657 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
8658 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
8659 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
8660
8661 &lt;p&gt;In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
8662 («&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&amp;do=view&amp;target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
8663 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
8664 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;»), one of the most important problems
8665 schools experienced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
8666 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
8667 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
8668 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
8669 good reason to stay with Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
8670
8671 &lt;p&gt;I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
8672 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
8673 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
8674 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
8675 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
8676 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
8677 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
8678 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
8679 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
8680 pages they want to visit.&lt;/p&gt;
8681
8682 &lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
8683 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
8684 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
8685 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
8686 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
8687 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
8688 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
8689 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
8690 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
8691 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
8692 accept the new package into Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
8693 </description>
8694         </item>
8695
8696         <item>
8697                 <title>My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</title>
8698                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</link>
8699                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</guid>
8700                 <pubDate>Wed, 1 Sep 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8701                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
8702 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
8703 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
8704 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
8705 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
8706 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
8707 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
8708 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
8709 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
8710 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
8711 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
8712 drive around.&lt;/p&gt;
8713
8714 &lt;p&gt;The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
8715 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:&lt;/p&gt;
8716
8717 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8718 use Spykee;
8719 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
8720 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
8721 my $spykee = Spykee-&gt;new();
8722 $spykee-&gt;contact($host, &quot;admin&quot;, &quot;admin&quot;);
8723 $spykee-&gt;left();
8724 sleep 2;
8725 $spykee-&gt;right();
8726 sleep 2;
8727 $spykee-&gt;forward();
8728 sleep 2;
8729 $spykee-&gt;back();
8730 sleep 2;
8731 $spykee-&gt;stop();
8732 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8733
8734 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
8735 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
8736 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I&#39;ve implemented several of
8737 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
8738 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
8739 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
8740 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
8741 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
8742 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
8743 going. :).&lt;/p&gt;
8744
8745 &lt;p&gt;Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
8746 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
8747 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/&quot;&gt;the NUUG wiki&lt;/a&gt; for
8748 those that want to check back later to find it.&lt;/p&gt;
8749 </description>
8750         </item>
8751
8752         <item>
8753                 <title>Broken hard link handling with sshfs</title>
8754                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html</link>
8755                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html</guid>
8756                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8757                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
8758 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html&quot;&gt;previous
8759 post about sshfs&lt;/a&gt;.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
8760 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
8761 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
8762 a link count &gt;1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
8763 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:&lt;/p&gt;
8764
8765 &lt;pre&gt;
8766 % ln foo bar
8767 ln: creating hard link `bar&#39; =&gt; `foo&#39;: Function not implemented
8768 %
8769 &lt;/pre&gt;
8770
8771 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
8772 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
8773 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
8774 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
8775 nevertheless. :)&lt;/p&gt;
8776
8777 &lt;p&gt;The latest version of the file system test code is available via
8778 git from
8779 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8780 </description>
8781         </item>
8782
8783         <item>
8784                 <title>Broken umask handling with sshfs</title>
8785                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html</link>
8786                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html</guid>
8787                 <pubDate>Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8788                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My file system sematics program
8789 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html&quot;&gt;presented
8790 a few days ago&lt;/a&gt; is very useful to verify that a file system can
8791 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I&#39;m
8792 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
8793 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
8794 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
8795 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
8796 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
8797 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
8798 script:&lt;/p&gt;
8799
8800 &lt;pre&gt;
8801 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
8802   mode_t retval = 0;
8803   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
8804   if (-1 != fd) {
8805     unlink(name);
8806     struct stat statbuf;
8807     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &amp;statbuf)) {
8808       retval = statbuf.st_mode &amp; 0x1ff;
8809     }
8810     close(fd);
8811   }
8812   return retval;
8813 }
8814
8815 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
8816 int test_umask(void) {
8817   printf(&quot;info: testing umask effect on file creation\n&quot;);
8818
8819   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
8820   mode_t newmode;
8821   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode(&quot;foobar&quot;, 0666))) {
8822     printf(&quot;  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n&quot;,
8823            newmode);
8824   }
8825   umask(007);
8826   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode(&quot;foobar&quot;, 0666))) {
8827     printf(&quot;  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n&quot;,
8828            newmode);
8829   }
8830
8831   umask (orig_umask);
8832   return 0;
8833 }
8834
8835 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
8836   [...]
8837   test_umask();
8838   return 0;
8839 }
8840 &lt;/pre&gt;
8841
8842 &lt;p&gt;Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:&lt;/p&gt;
8843
8844 &lt;pre&gt;
8845 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
8846 info: testing symlink creation
8847 info: testing subdirectory creation
8848 info: testing fcntl locking
8849   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8850   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8851   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
8852   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8853   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8854   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
8855 info: testing umask effect on file creation
8856 &lt;/pre&gt;
8857
8858 &lt;p&gt;When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
8859 result:&lt;/p&gt;
8860
8861 &lt;pre&gt;
8862 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
8863 info: testing symlink creation
8864 info: testing subdirectory creation
8865 info: testing fcntl locking
8866   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8867   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8868   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
8869   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
8870   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
8871   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
8872 info: testing umask effect on file creation
8873   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
8874   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
8875 &lt;/pre&gt;
8876
8877 &lt;p&gt;So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
8878 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
8879 directory.&lt;/p&gt;
8880
8881 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
8882 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/594498&quot;&gt;BTS report #594498&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8883
8884 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
8885 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
8886 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8887 </description>
8888         </item>
8889
8890         <item>
8891                 <title>Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</title>
8892                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html</link>
8893                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html</guid>
8894                 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
8895                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I found the notes from Rob Weir on
8896 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html&quot;&gt;how
8897 to crush dissent&lt;/a&gt; matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
8898 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
8899 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
8900 long time.&lt;/p&gt;
8901 </description>
8902         </item>
8903
8904         <item>
8905                 <title>No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</title>
8906                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html</link>
8907                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html</guid>
8908                 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Aug 2010 20:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
8909                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
8910 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
8911 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
8912 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
8913 generated configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
8914
8915 &lt;p&gt;What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
8916 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
8917 without any manual configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
8918
8919 &lt;p&gt;This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
8920 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
8921 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
8922 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
8923 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
8924 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
8925 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
8926 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
8927 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
8928 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
8929 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
8930 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
8931 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
8932 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
8933 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
8934 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
8935 use.&lt;/p&gt;
8936
8937 &lt;p&gt;How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
8938 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
8939 working properly out of the box:&lt;/p&gt;
8940
8941 &lt;ul&gt;
8942 &lt;li&gt;IP address/netmask and DNS server.&lt;/li&gt;
8943 &lt;li&gt;Web proxy URL.&lt;/li&gt;
8944 &lt;li&gt;LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).&lt;/li&gt;
8945 &lt;li&gt;Kerberos server for PAM password checking.&lt;/li&gt;
8946 &lt;li&gt;SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
8947 &lt;li&gt;Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
8948 &lt;li&gt;Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
8949 &lt;/ul&gt;
8950
8951 &lt;p&gt;(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)&lt;/p&gt;
8952
8953 &lt;p&gt;The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
8954 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
8955 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
8956 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
8957 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
8958
8959 &lt;p&gt;The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
8960 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
8961 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
8962 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
8963 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
8964 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
8965 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
8966 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.&lt;/p&gt;
8967
8968 &lt;p&gt;The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
8969 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
8970 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
8971 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
8972 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
8973 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
8974 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
8975 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
8976 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
8977 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
8978 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
8979 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
8980 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
8981 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I&#39;ve been unable to find a way to
8982 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
8983 current DNS domain is used.&lt;/p&gt;
8984
8985 &lt;p&gt;For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
8986 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
8987 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
8988 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
8989 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
8990 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
8991 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
8992 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
8993 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
8994 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
8995 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
8996 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
8997 should switch those to use sssd too?&lt;/p&gt;
8998
8999 &lt;p&gt;The user&#39;s SMB mount point for the network home directory is
9000 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
9001 consulted to look for the user&#39;s LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
9002 attribute is used if found.  If it isn&#39;t found, the home directory
9003 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
9004 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
9005 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
9006 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
9007 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
9008 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
9009 do for now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9010
9011 &lt;p&gt;This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
9012 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
9013 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
9014 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
9015 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
9016 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
9017
9018 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9019 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
9020
9021 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
9022 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
9023 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
9024 implement it for Debian Edu. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9025 </description>
9026         </item>
9027
9028         <item>
9029                 <title>Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</title>
9030                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html</link>
9031                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html</guid>
9032                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Aug 2010 21:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
9033                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
9034 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
9035 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
9036 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
9037 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
9038 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
9039 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.&lt;/p&gt;
9040
9041 &lt;p&gt;The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
9042 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
9043 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
9044 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
9045 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
9046 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
9047 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.&lt;/p&gt;
9048
9049 &lt;p&gt;As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
9050 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
9051 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
9052 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
9053 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:&lt;/p&gt;
9054
9055 &lt;pre&gt;
9056 /*
9057  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
9058  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
9059  * directory.
9060  * License: GPL v2 or later
9061  *
9062  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
9063  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
9064 */
9065
9066 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
9067 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
9068 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
9069
9070 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
9071
9072 #include &amp;lt;errno.h&gt;
9073 #include &amp;lt;fcntl.h&gt;
9074 #include &amp;lt;stdio.h&gt;
9075 #include &amp;lt;string.h&gt;
9076 #include &amp;lt;stdlib.h&gt;
9077 #include &amp;lt;sys/file.h&gt;
9078 #include &amp;lt;sys/stat.h&gt;
9079 #include &amp;lt;sys/types.h&gt;
9080 #include &amp;lt;unistd.h&gt;
9081
9082 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
9083 /*
9084  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
9085  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
9086  * below.
9087  * See also &amp;lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 &gt;.
9088  */
9089 #include &amp;lt;sqlite3.h&gt;
9090 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
9091   &quot;CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); &quot;
9092 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
9093   char *zErrMsg;
9094   char *name = &quot;testsqlite.db&quot;;
9095   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
9096   unlink(name);
9097   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &amp;db);
9098   if( rc ){
9099     printf(&quot;error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n&quot;, name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
9100     sqlite3_close(db);
9101     return -1;
9102   }
9103
9104   /* create tables */
9105   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &amp;zErrMsg);
9106   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
9107     printf(&quot;error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n&quot;, zErrMsg);
9108     sqlite3_close(db);
9109     return -1;
9110   }
9111   printf(&quot;info: sqlite worked\n&quot;);
9112   sqlite3_close(db);
9113   return 0;
9114 }
9115 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9116
9117 /*
9118  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
9119  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
9120  * done in the sqlite3 library.
9121  * See also
9122  * &amp;lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html&gt; and the
9123  * POSIX specification
9124  * &amp;lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html&gt;.
9125  */
9126 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
9127   struct flock fl;
9128   char *name = &quot;testsqlite.db&quot;;
9129   unlink(name);
9130   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
9131   printf(&quot;info: testing fcntl locking\n&quot;);
9132
9133   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
9134   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
9135   printf(&quot;  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
9136   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9137   fl.l_len    = 1;
9138   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
9139   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9140
9141   printf(&quot;  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826&quot;);
9142   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
9143   fl.l_len    = 510;
9144   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
9145   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9146
9147   printf(&quot;  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
9148   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9149   fl.l_len    = 1;
9150   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
9151   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9152
9153   printf(&quot;  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
9154   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9155   fl.l_len    = 1;
9156   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
9157   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9158
9159   printf(&quot;  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826&quot;);
9160   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
9161   fl.l_len    = 510;
9162   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9163
9164   printf(&quot;  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
9165   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9166   fl.l_len    = 2;
9167   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
9168   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9169
9170   close(fd);
9171   return 0;
9172 }
9173
9174 /*
9175  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
9176  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
9177  * Mounting with option &#39;sync&#39; seem to solve this problem while
9178  * slowing down file operations.
9179  */
9180 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
9181 #define LEVELS 5
9182   char *path = strdup(&quot;test&quot;);
9183   char *dirs[LEVELS];
9184   int level;
9185   printf(&quot;info: testing subdirectory creation\n&quot;);
9186   for (level = 0; level &amp;lt; LEVELS; level++) {
9187     char *newpath = NULL;
9188     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
9189       printf(&quot;  error: Unable to create directory &#39;%s&#39;: %s\n&quot;,
9190              path, strerror(errno));
9191       break;
9192     }
9193     asprintf(&amp;newpath, &quot;%s/%s&quot;, path, &quot;test&quot;);
9194     free(path);
9195     path = newpath;
9196   }
9197   return 0;
9198 }
9199
9200 /*
9201  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
9202  * KDE.
9203  */
9204 int test_symlinks(void) {
9205   printf(&quot;info: testing symlink creation\n&quot;);
9206   unlink(&quot;symlink&quot;);
9207   if (-1 == symlink(&quot;file&quot;, &quot;symlink&quot;))
9208     printf(&quot;  error: Unable to create symlink\n&quot;);
9209   return 0;
9210 }
9211
9212 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9213   printf(&quot;Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n&quot;);
9214   test_symlinks();
9215   test_subdirectory_creation();
9216 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
9217   test_sqlite_open();
9218 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9219   test_gcompris_locking();
9220   return 0;
9221 }
9222 &lt;/pre&gt;
9223
9224 &lt;p&gt;When everything is working, it should print something like
9225 this:&lt;/p&gt;
9226
9227 &lt;pre&gt;
9228 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9229 info: testing symlink creation
9230 info: testing subdirectory creation
9231 info: sqlite worked
9232 info: testing fcntl locking
9233   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9234   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9235   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9236   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9237   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9238   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9239 &lt;/pre&gt;
9240
9241 &lt;p&gt;I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
9242 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
9243 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
9244 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
9245 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
9246 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
9247 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
9248 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.&lt;/p&gt;
9249
9250 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
9251 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9252
9253 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9254 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9255 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9256 </description>
9257         </item>
9258
9259         <item>
9260                 <title>Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</title>
9261                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
9262                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
9263                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Aug 2010 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
9264                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I
9265 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html&quot;&gt;tried
9266 to install&lt;/a&gt; a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
9267 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
9268 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
9269 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
9270 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
9271 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
9272 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
9273 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.&lt;/p&gt;
9274
9275 &lt;p&gt;With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
9276 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
9277 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
9278 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
9279 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
9280 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
9281 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
9282 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
9283 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
9284 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
9285 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
9286 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
9287 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
9288 gave it a IP address.&lt;/p&gt;
9289
9290 &lt;p&gt;The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
9291 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
9292 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
9293 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
9294 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
9295 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
9296 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
9297 uppercase version of $domain.&lt;/p&gt;
9298
9299 &lt;p&gt;So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
9300 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
9301 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
9302 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
9303 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
9304 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(&lt;/p&gt;
9305
9306 &lt;p&gt;With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
9307 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
9308 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
9309 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
9310 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
9311 with UID and GID values.&lt;/p&gt;
9312
9313 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9314 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
9315 </description>
9316         </item>
9317
9318         <item>
9319                 <title>Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</title>
9320                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</link>
9321                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</guid>
9322                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Aug 2010 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9323                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
9324 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
9325 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
9326 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
9327 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
9328 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
9329 servers.&lt;/p&gt;
9330
9331 &lt;p&gt;I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
9332 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
9333 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
9334 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
9335 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
9336 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
9337 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
9338 .uio.no.&lt;/p&gt;
9339
9340 &lt;p&gt;This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
9341 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
9342 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
9343 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
9344 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
9345 university servers.&lt;/p&gt;
9346
9347 &lt;p&gt;My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
9348 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
9349 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
9350 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
9351 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
9352 uses.&lt;/p&gt;
9353 </description>
9354         </item>
9355
9356         <item>
9357                 <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
9358                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
9359                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
9360                 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
9361                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I discovered this while doing
9362 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;automated
9363 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;.  A few packages
9364 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
9365 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
9366 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
9367
9368 &lt;p&gt;An example is from todays
9369 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt&quot;&gt;upgrade
9370 of KDE using aptitude&lt;/a&gt;.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
9371 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
9372 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
9373 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
9374 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
9375 because its dependencies are unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;
9376
9377 &lt;p&gt;In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:&lt;/p&gt;
9378
9379 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9380 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
9381  perl-modules depends on perl (&gt;= 5.10.1-1); however:
9382   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
9383 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
9384  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
9385 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9386
9387 &lt;p&gt;The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
9388 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/527917&quot;&gt;reported as a bug&lt;/a&gt;, and will
9389 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
9390 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
9391 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
9392 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
9393 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
9394 of dependency loops.&lt;/p&gt;
9395
9396 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to
9397 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html&quot;&gt;the
9398 tireless effort by Bill Allombert&lt;/a&gt;, the number of circular
9399 dependencies
9400 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html&quot;&gt;left in Debian
9401 is dropping&lt;/a&gt;, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9402
9403 &lt;p&gt;Todays testing also exposed a bug in
9404 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590605&quot;&gt;update-notifier&lt;/a&gt; and
9405 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590604&quot;&gt;different behaviour&lt;/a&gt; between
9406 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
9407 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
9408 it.&lt;/p&gt;
9409 </description>
9410         </item>
9411
9412         <item>
9413                 <title>First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</title>
9414                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</link>
9415                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</guid>
9416                 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
9417                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
9418 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
9419 completed.&lt;/p&gt;
9420
9421 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9422 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
9423 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
9424 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
9425 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
9426 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
9427 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
9428 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
9429 language of choice, please let us know too.&lt;/p&gt;
9430
9431 &lt;p&gt;In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
9432 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
9433 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;
9434
9435 &lt;p&gt;The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
9436 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
9437 much.&lt;/p&gt;
9438
9439 &lt;p&gt;Changes compared to the lenny based version&lt;/p&gt;
9440
9441 &lt;ul&gt;
9442 &lt;li&gt;Everything from Debian Squeeze
9443 &lt;ul&gt;
9444   &lt;li&gt;Desktop environment KDE 4.4 =&gt; the new KDE desktop in
9445          combination with some new artwork
9446   &lt;li&gt;Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
9447   &lt;li&gt;OpenOffice.org 3.2
9448   &lt;li&gt;Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
9449   &lt;li&gt;Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
9450   &lt;li&gt;Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
9451   &lt;li&gt;Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
9452   &lt;li&gt;Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
9453   &lt;li&gt;3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
9454   &lt;li&gt;Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
9455 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9456 &lt;li&gt;Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
9457     Enabled for:
9458 &lt;ul&gt;
9459   &lt;li&gt;PAM
9460   &lt;li&gt;LDAP
9461   &lt;li&gt;IMAP
9462   &lt;li&gt;SMTP (sender verification)
9463 &lt;/ul&gt;
9464 &lt;/li&gt;
9465 &lt;li&gt;New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.&lt;/li&gt;
9466 &lt;li&gt;Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
9467     fetched from LDAP.&lt;/li&gt;
9468 &lt;li&gt;New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.&lt;/li&gt;
9469 &lt;li&gt;General cleanup (not finished)&lt;/li&gt;
9470 &lt;/ul&gt;
9471 &lt;p&gt;The following features are not working as they should&lt;/p&gt;
9472
9473 &lt;ul&gt;
9474 &lt;li&gt;No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
9475     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
9476     for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
9477 &lt;li&gt;DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
9478     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
9479     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.&lt;/li&gt;
9480 &lt;li&gt;The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.&lt;/li&gt;
9481 &lt;li&gt;The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.&lt;/li&gt;
9482 &lt;li&gt;The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.&lt;/li&gt;
9483 &lt;li&gt;Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
9484     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.&lt;/li&gt;
9485 &lt;li&gt;The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
9486     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
9487     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.&lt;/li&gt;
9488 &lt;li&gt;Some packages lack translations. See
9489     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
9490     and help out with translations.&lt;/li&gt;
9491 &lt;/ul&gt;
9492
9493 &lt;p&gt;To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
9494
9495 &lt;ul&gt;
9496 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9497 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9498 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9499 &lt;/ul&gt;
9500 &lt;p&gt;To download this multiarch dvd release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
9501
9502 &lt;ul&gt;
9503 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9504 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9505 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9506 &lt;/ul&gt;
9507
9508 &lt;p&gt;There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
9509 get closer to the final release.&lt;/p&gt;
9510
9511 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of these images are&lt;/p&gt;
9512
9513 &lt;ul&gt;
9514 &lt;li&gt;3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9515 &lt;li&gt;22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9516 &lt;/ul&gt;
9517
9518 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of these images are&lt;/p&gt;
9519 &lt;ul&gt;
9520 &lt;li&gt;c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9521 &lt;li&gt;2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9522 &lt;/ul&gt;
9523 &lt;p&gt;How to report bugs:
9524 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla&lt;/p&gt;
9525
9526 &lt;p&gt;Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org&lt;/p&gt;
9527 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9528 </description>
9529         </item>
9530
9531         <item>
9532                 <title>One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</title>
9533                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
9534                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
9535                 <pubDate>Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9536                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
9537 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
9538 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
9539 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
9540 getting rid of password questions one at the time.&lt;/p&gt;
9541
9542 &lt;p&gt;It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
9543 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
9544 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
9545 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
9546 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
9547 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
9548 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.&lt;/p&gt;
9549
9550 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
9551 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
9552 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
9553 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
9554 up. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9555
9556 &lt;p&gt;One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
9557 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
9558 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.&lt;/p&gt;
9559
9560 &lt;p&gt;We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
9561 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
9562 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
9563 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
9564 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
9565 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
9566 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
9567 release another day.&lt;/p&gt;
9568
9569 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
9570 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
9571 </description>
9572         </item>
9573
9574         <item>
9575                 <title>OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</title>
9576                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html</link>
9577                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html</guid>
9578                 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
9579                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to
9580 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home&quot;&gt;todays
9581 opengeodata blog entry&lt;/a&gt;, I just discovered that the
9582 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
9583 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT&quot;&gt;support
9584 for calculating routes&lt;/a&gt;.  The support is still experimental and
9585 only available from the development server, until more experience is
9586 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.&lt;/p&gt;
9587
9588 &lt;p&gt;Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
9589 was provided by &lt;a href=&quot;http://maps.cloudmade.com/&quot;&gt;Cloudmade&lt;/a&gt;,
9590 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
9591 the issue.  I&#39;ve had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
9592 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
9593 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
9594 www.openstreetmap.org front page.&lt;/p&gt;
9595 </description>
9596         </item>
9597
9598         <item>
9599                 <title>What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</title>
9600                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</link>
9601                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</guid>
9602                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9603                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This is a
9604 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;followup&lt;/a&gt;
9605 on my
9606 &lt;a href=&quot;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&quot;&gt;previous
9607 work&lt;/a&gt; on
9608 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html&quot;&gt;merging
9609 all&lt;/a&gt; the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
9610
9611 &lt;p&gt;As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
9612 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
9613 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
9614 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
9615
9616 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
9617 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
9618 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
9619
9620 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;powerdns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9621
9622 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend&quot;&gt;Clues
9623 on how to&lt;/a&gt; set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
9624 the web.
9625
9626 &lt;p&gt;PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
9627 One &quot;strict&quot; mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
9628 using the same LDAP objects, and a &quot;tree&quot; mode where the forward and
9629 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
9630 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
9631 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.&lt;/p&gt;
9632
9633 &lt;p&gt;In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
9634 base, and uses a &quot;base&quot; scoped search for the DNS name by adding
9635 &quot;dc=tjener,dc=intern,&quot; to the base with a filter for
9636 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; for the forward entry and
9637 &quot;dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,&quot; with a filter for
9638 &quot;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&quot; for the reverse entry.  For
9639 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
9640 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
9641 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
9642 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
9643 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
9644 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
9645 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
9646 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
9647 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
9648 ldapsearch commands could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
9649
9650 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9651 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9652   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9653   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9654   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9655   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9656   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9657   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9658
9659 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9660   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9661   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&#39;
9662   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
9663   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
9664   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
9665 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9666
9667 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
9668 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
9669 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
9670 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9671 also exist.&lt;/p&gt;
9672
9673 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9674 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9675 objectclass: top
9676 objectclass: dnsdomain
9677 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9678 dc: tjener
9679 arecord: 10.0.2.2
9680 associateddomain: tjener.intern
9681
9682 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9683 objectclass: top
9684 objectclass: dnsdomain2
9685 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9686 dc: 2
9687 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
9688 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
9689 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9690
9691 &lt;p&gt;In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
9692 forward DNS entries, it is doing a &quot;subtree&quot; scoped search with the
9693 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
9694 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; and requests the attributes dnsttl,
9695 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
9696 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
9697 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
9698 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is &quot;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&quot;
9699 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
9700 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
9701 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
9702 instead.&lt;/p&gt;
9703
9704 &lt;p&gt;The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
9705 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
9706
9707 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9708 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9709   &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9710   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9711   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9712   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9713   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9714
9715 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9716   &#39;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&#39; associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
9717 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9718
9719 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
9720 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
9721 reverse lookups.&lt;/p&gt;
9722
9723 &lt;p&gt;A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
9724 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
9725 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
9726 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
9727
9728 &lt;p&gt;The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
9729 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
9730 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.&lt;/p&gt;
9731
9732 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
9733 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
9734 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
9735 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
9736 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.&lt;/p&gt;
9737
9738 &lt;p&gt;There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
9739 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
9740 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
9741 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
9742 (zonename and relativedomainname).&lt;/p&gt;
9743
9744 &lt;p&gt;My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
9745 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
9746 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
9747 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
9748 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
9749 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):&lt;/p&gt;
9750
9751 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9752 objectclass ( some-oid NAME &#39;dnsDomainAux&#39;
9753     SUP top
9754     AUXILIARY
9755     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
9756           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
9757           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
9758           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
9759           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
9760     ))
9761 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9762
9763 &lt;p&gt;This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
9764 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
9765 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I&#39;ve sent an email to the PowerDNS
9766 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
9767 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
9768 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.&lt;/p&gt;
9769
9770 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISC dhcp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9771
9772 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
9773 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
9774 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
9775 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
9776 what is needed without having to read the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
9777
9778 &lt;p&gt;In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
9779 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
9780 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
9781 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:&lt;/p&gt;
9782
9783 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9784 ldap-base-dn &quot;dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot;;
9785 ldap-dhcp-server-cn &quot;dhcp&quot;;
9786 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9787
9788 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
9789 configuration it need.  The cn &quot;dhcp&quot; is located using the given LDAP
9790 base and the filter &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))&quot;.  The
9791 search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
9792
9793 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9794 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9795 cn: dhcp
9796 objectClass: top
9797 objectClass: dhcpServer
9798 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9799 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9800
9801 &lt;p&gt;The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
9802 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
9803 is located using a base scope search with base &quot;cn=DHCP
9804 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; and filter
9805 &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))&quot;.
9806 The search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
9807
9808 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9809 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9810 cn: DHCP Config
9811 objectClass: top
9812 objectClass: dhcpService
9813 objectClass: dhcpOptions
9814 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9815 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
9816 dhcpStatements: authoritative
9817 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
9818 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
9819 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
9820 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9821
9822 &lt;p&gt;Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
9823 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
9824 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
9825 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
9826 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
9827 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
9828 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
9829 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
9830 related computer objects.&lt;/p&gt;
9831
9832 &lt;p&gt;When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
9833 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
9834 scoped search with &quot;cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; as
9835 the base and &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
9836 00:00:00:00:00:00))&quot; as the filter.  This is what a host object look
9837 like:&lt;/p&gt;
9838
9839 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9840 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9841 cn: hostname
9842 objectClass: top
9843 objectClass: dhcpHost
9844 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9845 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
9846 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9847
9848 &lt;p&gt;There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
9849 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
9850 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
9851 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
9852 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
9853 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
9854 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
9855 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
9856 structural object class.
9857
9858 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9859
9860 &lt;p&gt;The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
9861 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its &quot;tree&quot; mode is rigid when it
9862 come to the the LDAP structure, the &quot;strict&quot; mode is very flexible,
9863 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
9864 in the configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
9865
9866 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
9867 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
9868 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
9869 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
9870 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
9871 structure.&lt;/p&gt;
9872
9873 &lt;p&gt;Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
9874 this might work for Debian Edu:&lt;/p&gt;
9875
9876 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9877 ou=services
9878   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
9879     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
9880     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
9881       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
9882         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
9883     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
9884       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
9885         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
9886     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
9887       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
9888 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9889
9890 &lt;P&gt;This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
9891 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
9892 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
9893 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.&lt;/p&gt;
9894
9895 &lt;p&gt;The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
9896 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
9897
9898 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9899 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9900 dc: hostname
9901 objectClass: top
9902 objectClass: dhcpHost
9903 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9904 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
9905 associateddomain: hostname.intern
9906 arecord: 10.11.12.13
9907 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9908 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
9909 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9910
9911 &lt;/p&gt;One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
9912 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
9913 auxiliary object class.&lt;/p&gt;
9914 </description>
9915         </item>
9916
9917         <item>
9918                 <title>Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</title>
9919                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</link>
9920                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</guid>
9921                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
9922                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
9923 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
9924 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
9925 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
9926 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
9927
9928 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
9929 information finally found a solution that seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
9930
9931 &lt;p&gt;The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
9932 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
9933 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
9934 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
9935 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
9936 to a slave DNS server.&lt;/p&gt;
9937
9938 &lt;p&gt;If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
9939 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
9940 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
9941 I&#39;ve written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
9942 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
9943 seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
9944
9945 &lt;p&gt;With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
9946 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
9947 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
9948 this:&lt;/p&gt;
9949
9950 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9951   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9952   cn: hostname
9953   objectClass: dhcphost
9954   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9955   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
9956   associateddomain: hostname.intern
9957   arecord: 10.11.12.13
9958   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9959   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
9960   ldapconfigsound: Y
9961 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9962
9963 &lt;p&gt;The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
9964 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
9965 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
9966 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
9967
9968 &lt;p&gt;I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
9969 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
9970 outside the &quot;DHCP Config&quot; subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
9971 that.  If I can&#39;t figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
9972 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
9973 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
9974 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
9975 might be a good place to put it.&lt;/p&gt;
9976
9977 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9978 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
9979 </description>
9980         </item>
9981
9982         <item>
9983                 <title>Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</title>
9984                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</link>
9985                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</guid>
9986                 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9987                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
9988 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
9989 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
9990 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.&lt;/p&gt;
9991
9992 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
9993 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
9994 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
9995 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
9996 LTSP clients.&lt;/p&gt;
9997
9998 &lt;p&gt;The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
9999 in a &quot;computer&quot; LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
10000 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.&lt;/p&gt;
10001
10002 &lt;p&gt;This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
10003 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
10004 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?&lt;/p&gt;
10005
10006 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10007 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
10008 #
10009 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
10010 #
10011 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
10012 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
10013 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
10014 #
10015 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
10016 # existence of attribute names.
10017 #
10018 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
10019 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
10020 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
10021 #
10022 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
10023 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
10024 #
10025 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME &#39;ltspClientAux&#39;
10026 #     SUP top
10027 #     AUXILIARY
10028 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
10029
10030 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
10031 if [ &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; ] ; then
10032     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
10033     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk &#39;{print $5}&#39;|sort -u) ; do
10034         filter=&quot;(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))&quot;
10035         ldapsearch -h &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; -b &quot;$LDAPBASE&quot; -v -x &quot;$filter&quot; | \
10036             grep &#39;^ltspConfig&#39; | while read attr value ; do
10037             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
10038             attr=$(echo $attr | sed &#39;s/^ltspConfig//i&#39; | tr a-z A-Z)
10039             # bass value on to clients
10040             eval &quot;$attr=$value; export $attr&quot;
10041         done
10042     done
10043 fi
10044 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10045
10046 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
10047 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
10048 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
10049 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
10050 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10051
10052 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10053 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10054
10055 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
10056 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
10057 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html&quot;&gt;PC
10058 Xperience, Inc., 2000&lt;/a&gt;.  I found its
10059 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/&quot;&gt;files&lt;/a&gt; on a
10060 personal home page over at redhat.com.&lt;/p&gt;
10061 </description>
10062         </item>
10063
10064         <item>
10065                 <title>jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
10066                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
10067                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
10068                 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
10069                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since
10070 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html&quot;&gt;my
10071 last post&lt;/a&gt; about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
10072 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
10073 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jxplorer.org/&quot;&gt;jXplorer&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of
10074 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
10075 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
10076 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
10077 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
10078 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html&quot;&gt;available in
10079 Debian&lt;/a&gt; testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
10080 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
10081 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
10082 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
10083 </description>
10084         </item>
10085
10086         <item>
10087                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</title>
10088                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</link>
10089                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</guid>
10090                 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
10091                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a short update on my &lt;a
10092 href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;my
10093 Debian Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrade testing&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is a summary of the
10094 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I&#39;m
10095 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
10096 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
10097 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; and
10098 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585716&quot;&gt;#585716&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
10099
10100 &lt;p&gt;At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
10101 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
10102 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
10103 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
10104 publish the difference.&lt;/p&gt;
10105
10106 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10107
10108 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10109   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10110   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
10111   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
10112   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10113   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
10114   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10115   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
10116   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
10117 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10118
10119 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10120
10121 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10122   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
10123   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
10124   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
10125   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
10126   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
10127   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
10128   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10129   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10130   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10131   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10132   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
10133   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
10134   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
10135   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
10136   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
10137   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10138   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
10139   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
10140   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
10141   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
10142 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10143
10144 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10145
10146 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10147   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
10148   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
10149   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10150   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10151   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
10152   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
10153   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
10154   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10155   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10156   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10157   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10158   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
10159   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
10160   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
10161   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
10162   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
10163   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
10164   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
10165   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
10166   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
10167   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
10168 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10169
10170 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10171
10172 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10173   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
10174   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
10175   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
10176 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10177
10178 &lt;p&gt;I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
10179 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120&quot;&gt;changed
10180 in git&lt;/a&gt; today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
10181 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
10182 the difference somewhat.
10183 </description>
10184         </item>
10185
10186         <item>
10187                 <title>Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</title>
10188                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html</link>
10189                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html</guid>
10190                 <pubDate>Thu, 1 Jul 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
10191                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
10192 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
10193 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
10194 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
10195 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
10196 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
10197 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
10198 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
10199 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.&lt;/p&gt;
10200
10201 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir&lt;/h2&gt;
10202
10203 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
10204 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
10205 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
10206 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
10207 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
10208 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
10209 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
10210 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
10211 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
10212 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
10213 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/568577&quot;&gt;bug #568577&lt;/a&gt; is in the
10214 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
10215 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
10216 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
10217 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.&lt;/p&gt;
10218
10219 &lt;p&gt;These packages need to be installed and configured&lt;/p&gt;
10220
10221 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10222 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
10223 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10224
10225 &lt;p&gt;The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
10226 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
10227 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
10228 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I&#39;ve been unable to get TLS
10229 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
10230 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
10231 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
10232 on how to get this working.&lt;/p&gt;
10233
10234 &lt;p&gt;Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
10235 caching until &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/485282&quot;&gt;bug #485282&lt;/a&gt;
10236 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
10237 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
10238 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
10239 instructions I found in the
10240 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/&quot;&gt;LDAP for Mobile Laptops&lt;/a&gt;
10241 instructions by Flyn Computing.&lt;/p&gt;
10242
10243 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10244         debug-level             0
10245         reload-count            unlimited
10246         paranoia                no
10247
10248         enable-cache            passwd          yes
10249         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
10250         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
10251         suggested-size          passwd          211
10252         check-files             passwd          yes
10253         persistent              passwd          yes
10254         shared                  passwd          yes
10255         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
10256         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
10257
10258         enable-cache            group           yes
10259         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
10260         negative-time-to-live   group           20
10261         suggested-size          group           211
10262         check-files             group           yes
10263         persistent              group           yes
10264         shared                  group           yes
10265         max-db-size             group           33554432
10266         auto-propagate          group           yes
10267
10268         enable-cache            hosts           no
10269         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
10270         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
10271         suggested-size          hosts           211
10272         check-files             hosts           yes
10273         persistent              hosts           yes
10274         shared                  hosts           yes
10275         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
10276
10277         enable-cache            services        yes
10278         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
10279         negative-time-to-live   services        20
10280         suggested-size          services        211
10281         check-files             services        yes
10282         persistent              services        yes
10283         shared                  services        yes
10284         max-db-size             services        33554432
10285 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10286
10287 &lt;p&gt;While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
10288 automatically like the one provided in
10289 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/496915&quot;&gt;bug #496915&lt;/a&gt;, the file
10290 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
10291 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
10292 look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
10293
10294 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10295 passwd:         files ldap
10296 group:          files ldap
10297 shadow:         files ldap
10298 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
10299 networks:       files
10300 protocols:      files
10301 services:       files
10302 ethers:         files
10303 rpc:            files
10304 netgroup:       files ldap
10305 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10306
10307 &lt;p&gt;The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
10308 shadow and netgroup.&lt;/p&gt;
10309
10310 &lt;p&gt;With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
10311 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
10312 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
10313 attributes cached.
10314
10315 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
10316   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir&lt;/h2&gt;
10317
10318 &lt;p&gt;Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
10319 problems doing proper caching, I&#39;ve seen suggestions and recipes to
10320 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
10321 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
10322 discovered sssd.&lt;/p&gt;
10323
10324 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser&lt;/h2&gt;
10325
10326 &lt;p&gt;A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
10327 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
10328 &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/&quot;&gt;sssd&lt;/a&gt; package from Redhat.
10329 It is part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freeipa.org/&quot;&gt;FreeIPA&lt;/A&gt; project
10330 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
10331 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
10332 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
10333 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
10334 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
10335 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
10336 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html&quot;&gt;sssd package&lt;/a&gt;
10337 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
10338 version 1.2 is now in testing.
10339
10340 &lt;p&gt;These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
10341 roaming setup I want&lt;/p&gt;
10342
10343 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10344 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
10345 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10346
10347 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
10348 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/sssd/sssd.conf&lt;/tt&gt;.
10349
10350 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10351 [sssd]
10352 config_file_version = 2
10353 reconnection_retries = 3
10354 sbus_timeout = 30
10355 services = nss, pam
10356 domains = INTERN
10357
10358 [nss]
10359 filter_groups = root
10360 filter_users = root
10361 reconnection_retries = 3
10362
10363 [pam]
10364 reconnection_retries = 3
10365
10366 [domain/INTERN]
10367 enumerate = false
10368 cache_credentials = true
10369
10370 id_provider = ldap
10371 auth_provider = ldap
10372 chpass_provider = ldap
10373
10374 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
10375 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10376 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
10377 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
10378 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10379
10380 &lt;p&gt;I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
10381 &quot;ldap_tls_reqcert = never&quot; to get it working.&lt;/p&gt;
10382
10383 &lt;p&gt;With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
10384 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
10385 modify it manually.&lt;/p&gt;
10386
10387 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10388 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10389 </description>
10390         </item>
10391
10392         <item>
10393                 <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
10394                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
10395                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
10396                 <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
10397                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
10398 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
10399 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
10400 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
10401 &lt;a href=&quot;http://luma.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;LUMA&lt;/a&gt;, which has proved to
10402 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
10403 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
10404 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
10405 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
10406 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10407
10408 &lt;p&gt;I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
10409 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
10410 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
10411 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
10412 released.&lt;/p&gt;
10413
10414 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
10415 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
10416 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
10417 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/&quot;&gt;ldapvi&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;
10418
10419 &lt;p&gt;If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
10420 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10421
10422 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
10423 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html&quot;&gt;gq&lt;/a&gt; package as a
10424 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
10425 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
10426 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
10427 </description>
10428         </item>
10429
10430         <item>
10431                 <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
10432                 <link>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</link>
10433                 <guid isPermaLink="true">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</guid>
10434                 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
10435                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back, I
10436 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;complained
10437 about the fact&lt;/a&gt; that it is not possible with the provided schemas
10438 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
10439 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.&lt;/p&gt;
10440
10441 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
10442 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
10443 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
10444 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
10445
10446 &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
10447 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
10448 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
10449 Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
10450
10451 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
10452 the
10453 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00&quot;&gt;DHCP
10454 schema&lt;/a&gt; to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
10455 available today from IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
10456
10457 &lt;pre&gt;
10458 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
10459 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
10460 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
10461  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
10462         NAME &#39;dhcpHost&#39;
10463         DESC &#39;This represents information about a particular client&#39;
10464 -       SUP top
10465 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
10466         MUST cn
10467         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
10468         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT (&#39;dhcpService&#39; &#39;dhcpSubnet&#39; &#39;dhcpGroup&#39;) )
10469 &lt;/pre&gt;
10470
10471 &lt;p&gt;I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
10472 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
10473 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.&lt;/p&gt;
10474
10475 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10476 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10477 </description>
10478         </item>
10479
10480         <item>
10481                 <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
10482                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
10483                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
10484                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
10485                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
10486 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
10487 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
10488 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
10489 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
10490 this:
10491
10492 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10493 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10494 tasksel --new-install
10495 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10496
10497 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
10498 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
10499 any output what so ever.
10500
10501 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
10502 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
10503 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
10504 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
10505 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
10506 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
10507 code like this:
10508
10509 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10510 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10511 cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
10512 $cmd
10513 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10514
10515 &lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
10516 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
10517 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
10518 ~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
10519 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
10520 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
10521 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
10522
10523 &lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
10524 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
10525 like this.&lt;/p&gt;
10526 </description>
10527         </item>
10528
10529         <item>
10530                 <title>Officeshots taking shape</title>
10531                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</link>
10532                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</guid>
10533                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
10534                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For those of us caring about document exchange and
10535 interoperability, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;
10536 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
10537 &lt;a href=&quot;http://browsershots.org/&quot;&gt;BrowserShots&lt;/a&gt; is for web
10538 pages.&lt;/p&gt;
10539
10540 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
10541 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
10542 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
10543 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
10544 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
10545 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
10546 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
10547 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
10548 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
10549 see how the project is doing.&lt;/p&gt;
10550
10551 &lt;p&gt;Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
10552 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
10553 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
10554 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
10555 Windows.  This is great.&lt;/p&gt;
10556 </description>
10557         </item>
10558
10559         <item>
10560                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
10561                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
10562                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
10563                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
10564                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
10565 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
10566 of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
10567 finally made the upgrade logs available from
10568 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
10569 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
10570 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
10571 I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;
10572
10573 &lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
10574 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
10575 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
10576 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
10577 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
10578 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
10579 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
10580 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;
10581
10582 &lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
10583 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
10584 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
10585 too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;
10586
10587 &lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
10588 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
10589 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
10590 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
10591 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
10592 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
10593 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
10594 continue.&lt;/p&gt;
10595
10596 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
10597 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
10598   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
10599   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
10600   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
10601   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
10602   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
10603   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10604   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10605   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10606   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10607   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10608   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10609   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10610   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10611   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10612   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10613   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10614   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10615   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10616   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10617   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10618   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10619   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10620   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10621   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10622   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10623   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10624   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
10625   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;
10626
10627 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;
10628
10629 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
10630   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
10631   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
10632   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
10633   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10634   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
10635   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
10636   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
10637   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
10638   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
10639   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10640   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
10641   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10642   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
10643   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
10644   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
10645   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
10646   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
10647   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
10648   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
10649   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
10650   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
10651   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
10652   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
10653   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10654   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
10655   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
10656   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
10657   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
10658   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10659   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10660   zip&lt;/p&gt;
10661
10662 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;
10663
10664 &lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
10665   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
10666   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
10667   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
10668   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
10669   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
10670   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10671   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10672   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10673   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10674   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10675   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10676   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10677   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10678   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10679   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10680   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10681   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10682   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10683   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10684   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10685   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10686   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10687   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10688   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10689   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10690   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10691   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
10692
10693 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
10694 &lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
10695   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10696   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
10697   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
10698   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10699   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
10700   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
10701   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10702   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
10703   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
10704   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
10705   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
10706   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
10707   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
10708   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
10709   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
10710   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10711   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10712   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10713   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
10714   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
10715   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
10716   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
10717   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
10718   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
10719   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
10720   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
10721   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
10722   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
10723   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
10724   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
10725   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
10726   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
10727   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
10728   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10729   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10730   xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
10731
10732 </description>
10733         </item>
10734
10735         <item>
10736                 <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
10737                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
10738                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
10739                 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
10740                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
10741 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
10742 have been discovered and reported in the process
10743 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
10744 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
10745 enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
10746 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
10747 am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;
10748
10749 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
10750 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
10751 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
10752 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
10753 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
10754 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;
10755
10756 &lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
10757 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
10758 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10759 is created.  The bug report
10760 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
10761 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
10762 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
10763 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
10764 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
10765 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
10766 issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
10767 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
10768 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
10769 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
10770 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
10771 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
10772 Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
10773
10774 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
10775 script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
10776 trick:&lt;/p&gt;
10777
10778 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10779 #!/bin/sh
10780 set -ex
10781
10782 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
10783     desktop=$1
10784 else
10785     desktop=gnome
10786 fi
10787
10788 from=lenny
10789 to=squeeze
10790
10791 exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
10792 unset LANG
10793 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
10794 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
10795 fuser -mv .
10796 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
10797 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10798 cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
10799 #!/bin/sh
10800 exit 101
10801 EOF
10802 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
10803 exit_cleanup() {
10804     umount $tmpdir/proc
10805 }
10806 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
10807 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
10808 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
10809
10810 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
10811
10812 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
10813 # to return the correct answers.
10814 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
10815     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
10816
10817 # Include the desktop and laptop task
10818 for test in desktop laptop ; do
10819     echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
10820 #!/bin/sh
10821 exit 2
10822 EOF
10823     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
10824 done
10825
10826 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10827 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
10828 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
10829 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
10830
10831 echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
10832 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10833 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10834 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
10835 fuser -mv
10836 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10837
10838 &lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
10839 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
10840 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
10841 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
10842 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
10843 kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;
10844
10845 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
10846 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
10847 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
10848 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
10849 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
10850 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
10851 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;
10852
10853 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
10854 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
10855 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
10856 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
10857 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
10858 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
10859 </description>
10860         </item>
10861
10862         <item>
10863                 <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
10864                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
10865                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
10866                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
10867                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
10868 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
10869 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
10870 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
10871 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
10872 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
10873 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;
10874
10875 &lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
10876 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
10877 COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;
10878
10879 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10880 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
10881 previous=N
10882 PREVLEVEL=
10883 RUNLEVEL=
10884 runlevel=S
10885 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
10886 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
10887 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
10888 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10889
10890 &lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
10891 script.&lt;/p&gt;
10892
10893 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10894 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
10895 previous=N
10896 PREVLEVEL=N
10897 RUNLEVEL=S
10898 runlevel=S
10899 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10900
10901 &lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
10902 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
10903 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;
10904
10905 &lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
10906 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
10907 choice.&lt;/p&gt;
10908 </description>
10909         </item>
10910
10911         <item>
10912                 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
10913                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
10914                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
10915                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
10916                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
10917 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
10918 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
10919 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
10920 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
10921 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
10922 </description>
10923         </item>
10924
10925         <item>
10926                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
10927                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
10928                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
10929                 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
10930                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
10931 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
10932 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
10933 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
10934 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
10935
10936 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10937 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
10938   vendor                    count
10939   Dell Computer Corporation     1
10940     PowerEdge 1750              1
10941   IBM                           1
10942     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
10943   Intel                         2
10944   [no-dmi-info]                 3
10945 maintainer:~#
10946 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10947
10948 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
10949 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
10950 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
10951 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
10952 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
10953
10954 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
10955 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
10956 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
10957 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
10958 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
10959 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
10960 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
10961 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
10962 </description>
10963         </item>
10964
10965         <item>
10966                 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
10967                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
10968                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
10969                 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
10970                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
10971 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
10972 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
10973 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
10974 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
10975
10976 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
10977 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
10978 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
10979 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
10980 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
10981 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
10982
10983 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
10984 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
10985 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
10986 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
10987 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
10988 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
10989 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
10990 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
10991
10992 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
10993 </description>
10994         </item>
10995
10996         <item>
10997                 <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
10998                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
10999                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
11000                 <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
11001                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
11002 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
11003 issues are known and should be solved:
11004
11005 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
11006
11007 &lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
11008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
11009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
11010 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
11011 seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
11012
11013 &lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
11014 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
11015 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
11016 maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
11017
11018 &lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
11019 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
11020 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
11021 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
11022 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
11023 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
11024 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
11025 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;
11026
11027 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11028
11029 &lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
11030 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
11031 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
11032 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;
11033
11034 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11035 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11036 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
11037 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11038
11039 &lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
11040 </description>
11041         </item>
11042
11043         <item>
11044                 <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
11045                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
11046                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
11047                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
11048                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
11049 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
11050 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
11051 definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;
11052
11053 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
11054 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
11055 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
11056 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
11057 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
11058 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
11059 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
11060 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
11061 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
11062 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
11063 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
11064 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
11065 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
11066 going to work.&lt;/p&gt;
11067
11068 &lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
11069 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
11070 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
11071 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
11072 &quot;external&quot; media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
11073 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
11074 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
11075 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
11076 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
11077 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
11078 Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
11079
11080 &lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
11081 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
11082 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
11083 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
11084 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
11085 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;
11086
11087 &lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
11088 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11089 </description>
11090         </item>
11091
11092         <item>
11093                 <title>Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</title>
11094                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</link>
11095                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</guid>
11096                 <pubDate>Wed, 19 May 2010 19:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11097                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
11098 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
11099 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html&quot;&gt;libpam-mklocaluser&lt;/a&gt;
11100 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
11101 into unstable.  The
11102 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html&quot;&gt;pam-python&lt;/a&gt;
11103 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
11104 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html&quot;&gt;sssd&lt;/a&gt; package
11105 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
11106 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html&quot;&gt;libpam-ccreds&lt;/a&gt;
11107 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
11108 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.&lt;/p&gt;
11109
11110 &lt;p&gt;This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
11111 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
11112 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
11113 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
11114 for nscd in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/485282&quot;&gt;BTS report
11115 #485282&lt;/a&gt; is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
11116 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
11117 care of the caching of passwords and group information.&lt;/p&gt;
11118
11119 &lt;p&gt;I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
11120 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
11121 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
11122 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
11123 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
11124 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
11125 and I am sure we will find a good solution.&lt;/p&gt;
11126
11127 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
11128 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
11129 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
11130 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
11131 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
11132 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
11133 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
11134 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
11135 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
11136 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
11137 on the home directory servers.&lt;/p&gt;
11138
11139 &lt;p&gt;One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
11140 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
11141 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
11142 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
11143 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
11144 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.&lt;/p&gt;
11145
11146 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11147 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11148 </description>
11149         </item>
11150
11151         <item>
11152                 <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
11153                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
11154                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
11155                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
11156                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
11157 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
11158 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
11159 expected, if I am to believe the
11160 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
11161 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
11162 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
11163 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
11164 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
11165 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
11166 version.&lt;/p&gt;
11167
11168 More information about
11169 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
11170 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
11171 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
11172 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
11173
11174 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11175 CONCURRENCY=none
11176 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11177
11178 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11179 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11180 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
11181 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11182 </description>
11183         </item>
11184
11185         <item>
11186                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
11187                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
11188                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
11189                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
11190                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
11191 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
11192 system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
11193 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
11194 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
11195 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
11196 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
11197 to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
11198
11199 &lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
11200 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
11201 this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;
11202
11203 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11204 perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
11205 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11206
11207 &lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
11208 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;
11209
11210 &lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
11211 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
11212 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
11213 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
11214 written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
11215 </description>
11216         </item>
11217
11218         <item>
11219                 <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
11220                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
11221                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
11222                 <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
11223                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
11224 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
11225 has been
11226 &lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;
11227
11228 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
11229 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
11230 &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
11231 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
11232 based boot system.  Tollef is
11233 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
11234 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
11235 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
11236 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
11237 at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;
11238
11239 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
11240 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
11241 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
11242 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
11243 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
11244 way forward.&lt;/p&gt;
11245
11246 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
11247 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
11248 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
11249 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
11250 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
11251 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
11252 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
11253 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
11254 with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
11255 </description>
11256         </item>
11257
11258         <item>
11259                 <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
11260                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
11261                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
11262                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
11263                 <description>&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
11264 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
11265 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
11266 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
11267 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
11268 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
11269 /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
11270
11271 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11272 CONCURRENCY=makefile
11273 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11274
11275 &lt;p&gt;That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
11276 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
11277 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
11278 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
11279 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
11280 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
11281 make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;
11282
11283 &lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
11284 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
11285 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
11286 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
11287 the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11288
11289 &lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
11290 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
11291 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
11292 fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;
11293
11294 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11295 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11296 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
11297 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11298 </description>
11299         </item>
11300
11301         <item>
11302                 <title>Forcing new users to change their password on first login</title>
11303                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html</link>
11304                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html</guid>
11305                 <pubDate>Sun, 2 May 2010 13:47:00 +0200</pubDate>
11306                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
11307 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
11308 change the password on the first login attempt.&lt;/p&gt;
11309
11310 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
11311 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
11312 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
11313 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
11314 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.&lt;/p&gt;
11315
11316 &lt;p&gt;A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
11317 settings in /etc/shadow:&lt;/p&gt;
11318
11319 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11320 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
11321 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
11322 Password expires                                        : never
11323 Password inactive                                       : never
11324 Account expires                                         : never
11325 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
11326 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
11327 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
11328 root@tjener:~#
11329 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11330
11331 &lt;p&gt;The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
11332 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
11333 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
11334 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
11335 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
11336 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).&lt;/p&gt;
11337
11338 &lt;p&gt;After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
11339 intended:&lt;/p&gt;
11340
11341 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11342 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
11343 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
11344 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
11345 Password expires                                        : never
11346 Password inactive                                       : never
11347 Account expires                                         : never
11348 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
11349 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
11350 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
11351 root@tjener:~#
11352 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11353
11354 &lt;p&gt;So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
11355 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
11356 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).&lt;/p&gt;
11357
11358 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
11359 sure only the user itself have the account password?&lt;/p&gt;
11360
11361 &lt;p&gt;If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
11362 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11363
11364 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
11365 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
11366 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
11367 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
11368 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
11369 Squeeze, and &#39;&lt;tt&gt;chage -d 0 username&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; do work there.  I have not
11370 tested it on Lenny yet.&lt;/p&gt;
11371
11372 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
11373 equivalent command to expire a password is &#39;&lt;tt&gt;passwd -e
11374 username&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;, which insert zero into the date of the last password
11375 change.&lt;/p&gt;
11376 </description>
11377         </item>
11378
11379         <item>
11380                 <title>Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</title>
11381                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html</link>
11382                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
11383                 <pubDate>Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
11384                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
11385 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
11386 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
11387 and go.&lt;/p&gt;
11388
11389 &lt;p&gt;Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
11390 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
11391 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
11392 The setup would consist of the following:&lt;/p&gt;
11393
11394 &lt;ul&gt;
11395
11396  &lt;li&gt;During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
11397    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
11398    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
11399    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
11400    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
11401    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
11402    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
11403    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
11404    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
11405    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
11406    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
11407    the fish protocol in KDE?&lt;/li&gt;
11408
11409  &lt;li&gt;Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
11410    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
11411    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
11412    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
11413    &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html&quot;&gt;libpam-ccreds&lt;/a&gt;
11414    or the Fedora developed
11415    &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD&quot;&gt;System
11416    Security Services Daemon&lt;/a&gt; packages.&lt;/li&gt;
11417
11418  &lt;li&gt;File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
11419    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
11420    directory, using unison.&lt;/li&gt;
11421
11422  &lt;li&gt;Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
11423    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
11424    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
11425    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
11426    implemented.&lt;/li&gt;
11427
11428  &lt;li&gt;For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
11429    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.&lt;/li&gt;
11430
11431  &lt;li&gt;It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
11432    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
11433    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.&lt;/li&gt;
11434
11435 &lt;/ul&gt;
11436
11437 &lt;p&gt;I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
11438 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
11439 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
11440 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
11441 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566718&quot;&gt;#566718&lt;/a&gt;) and nslcd (or
11442 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
11443 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
11444 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
11445 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.&lt;/p&gt;
11446
11447 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11448 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11449 </description>
11450         </item>
11451
11452         <item>
11453                 <title>Great book: &quot;Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future&quot;</title>
11454                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html</link>
11455                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html</guid>
11456                 <pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
11457                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
11458 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
11459 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
11460 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
11461 book titled &quot;Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
11462 Copyright, and the Future of the Future&quot; is available with few
11463 restrictions on the web, for example from
11464 &lt;a href=&quot;http://craphound.com/content/&quot;&gt;his own site&lt;/a&gt;. I read the
11465 epub-version from
11466 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883&quot;&gt;feedbooks&lt;/a&gt; using
11467 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbreader.org/&quot;&gt;fbreader&lt;/a&gt; and my N810. I
11468 strongly recommend this book.&lt;/p&gt;
11469 </description>
11470         </item>
11471
11472         <item>
11473                 <title>Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</title>
11474                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html</link>
11475                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html</guid>
11476                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
11477                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/&quot;&gt;Yesterdays
11478 NUUG presentation&lt;/a&gt; about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
11479 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
11480 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
11481 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
11482 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
11483 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
11484 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
11485 users and cryptographic keys instead.&lt;/p&gt;
11486
11487 &lt;p&gt;A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
11488 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
11489 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
11490 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
11491 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.&lt;/p&gt;
11492
11493 &lt;p&gt;A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
11494 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?&lt;/p&gt;
11495
11496 &lt;p&gt;Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
11497 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
11498 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
11499 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
11500 to work properly.&lt;/p&gt;
11501
11502 &lt;p&gt;I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
11503 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
11504 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
11505 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
11506 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
11507 time.&lt;/p&gt;
11508
11509 &lt;p&gt;If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
11510 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
11511 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
11512 up in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
11513 </description>
11514         </item>
11515
11516         <item>
11517                 <title>After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</title>
11518                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html</link>
11519                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html</guid>
11520                 <pubDate>Sat, 6 Mar 2010 18:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
11521                 <description>&lt;p&gt;6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
11522 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
11523 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
11524 package in 2004 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/230422&quot;&gt;#230422&lt;/a&gt;),
11525 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
11526 Today, this finally paid off.&lt;/p&gt;
11527
11528 &lt;p&gt;The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
11529 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
11530 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
11531 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.&lt;/p&gt;
11532
11533 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
11534 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
11535 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
11536 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
11537 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
11538 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.&lt;p&gt;
11539 </description>
11540         </item>
11541
11542         <item>
11543                 <title>Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</title>
11544                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html</link>
11545                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html</guid>
11546                 <pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
11547                 <description>&lt;p&gt;On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
11548 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was finally
11549 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
11550 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
11551 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
11552 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
11553 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.&lt;/p&gt;
11554
11555 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps it even is time for some partying?&lt;/p&gt;
11556
11557 &lt;p&gt;After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
11558 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
11559 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
11560 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;
11561 </description>
11562         </item>
11563
11564         <item>
11565                 <title>Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</title>
11566                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html</link>
11567                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html</guid>
11568                 <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
11569                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
11570 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
11571 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
11572 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
11573 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
11574 further.&lt;/p&gt;
11575
11576 &lt;p&gt;When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
11577 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
11578 configured to be a server for the
11579 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;SiteSummary
11580 system&lt;/a&gt; I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
11581 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
11582 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
11583 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
11584 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
11585 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
11586 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
11587 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
11588 and Nagios configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
11589
11590 &lt;p&gt;All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
11591 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
11592 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
11593 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.&lt;/p&gt;
11594
11595 &lt;p&gt;All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
11596 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
11597 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
11598 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
11599 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
11600 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
11601 the machine.&lt;/p&gt;
11602
11603 &lt;p&gt;The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
11604 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
11605 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
11606 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.&lt;/p&gt;
11607
11608 &lt;p&gt;The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
11609 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
11610 administrator need to run &quot;&lt;tt&gt;htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
11611 nagiosadmin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
11612 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
11613 everything is taken care of.&lt;/p&gt;
11614 </description>
11615         </item>
11616
11617         <item>
11618                 <title>Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</title>
11619                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</link>
11620                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</guid>
11621                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
11622                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
11623 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
11624 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
11625 &#39;filetype:odt&#39; and equvalent terms, and got these results:&lt;/P&gt;
11626
11627 &lt;table&gt;
11628 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11629 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:282000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11630 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:75600&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:183000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11631 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500     &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:145000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11632 &lt;/table&gt;
11633
11634 &lt;p&gt;Next, I added a &#39;site:no&#39; limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
11635 got these numbers:&lt;/p&gt;
11636
11637 &lt;table&gt;
11638 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11639 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:4460&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11640 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:299   &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:741&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11641 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:187       &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:372&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11642 &lt;/table&gt;
11643
11644 &lt;p&gt;I wonder how these numbers change over time.&lt;/p&gt;
11645
11646 &lt;p&gt;I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
11647 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
11648 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
11649 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
11650 search done from a machine here in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
11651
11652
11653 &lt;table&gt;
11654 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11655 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:129000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11656 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:44200&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:93900&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11657 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500     &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:82400&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11658 &lt;/table&gt;
11659
11660 &lt;p&gt;And with &#39;site:no&#39;:
11661
11662 &lt;table&gt;
11663 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11664 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:3410&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11665 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:175&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:604&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11666 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:186       &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:296&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
11667 &lt;/table&gt;
11668
11669 &lt;p&gt;Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
11670 numbers.&lt;/p&gt;
11671 </description>
11672         </item>
11673
11674         <item>
11675                 <title>ISO still hope to fix OOXML</title>
11676                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</link>
11677                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</guid>
11678                 <pubDate>Sat, 8 Aug 2009 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11679                 <description>&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a
11680 href=&quot;http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html&quot;&gt;a
11681 blog post from Torsten Werner&lt;/a&gt;, the current defect report for ISO
11682 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
11683 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
11684 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
11685 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
11686 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
11687 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
11688 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
11689 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.&lt;/p&gt;
11690
11691 &lt;p&gt;These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
11692 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
11693 seminar this autumn.&lt;/p&gt;
11694 </description>
11695         </item>
11696
11697         <item>
11698                 <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
11699                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>
11700                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
11701                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
11702                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
11703 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
11704 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
11705 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
11706 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
11707 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
11708 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
11709
11710 &lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
11711 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
11712 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
11713 </description>
11714         </item>
11715
11716         <item>
11717                 <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
11718                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>
11719                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
11720                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11721                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
11722 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
11723 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
11724 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
11725 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
11726 the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
11727
11728 &lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
11729 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
11730 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
11731 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
11732 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
11733 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
11734 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
11735 upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
11736 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
11737 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
11738 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
11739 working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;
11740
11741 &lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
11742 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
11743 </description>
11744         </item>
11745
11746         <item>
11747                 <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
11748                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>
11749                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
11750                 <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
11751                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
11752 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
11753 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
11754 funded
11755 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
11756 gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
11757 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
11758 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
11759 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
11760 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;
11761
11762 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
11763 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
11764 boot:&lt;/p&gt;
11765
11766 &lt;ul&gt;
11767
11768 &lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;
11769
11770 &lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
11771    clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;
11772
11773 &lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
11774    &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
11775    based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;
11776
11777 &lt;/ul&gt;
11778
11779 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
11780 &lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
11781 Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.
11782
11783 &lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
11784 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
11785 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
11786 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
11787 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
11788 using this.&lt;/p&gt;
11789
11790 &lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
11791 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
11792 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
11793 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
11794 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
11795 this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
11796 insserv&#39;.  Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11797 </description>
11798         </item>
11799
11800         <item>
11801                 <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
11802                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>
11803                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
11804                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11805                 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
11806 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
11807 do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;
11808
11809 &lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
11810 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
11811 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
11812 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
11813 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
11814 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
11815 occurs.  It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
11816 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
11817 &#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;.  This tool has made it
11818 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
11819 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
11820
11821 &lt;p&gt;The second one is
11822 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
11823 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
11824 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
11825 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
11826 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
11827 and the company behind it is running
11828 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
11829 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
11830 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
11831 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
11832 X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
11833 Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;.  The projects included in the
11834 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
11835 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;
11836
11837 &lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
11838 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
11839 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
11840 surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
11841 </description>
11842         </item>
11843
11844         <item>
11845                 <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
11846                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>
11847                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
11848                 <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
11849                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
11850 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
11851 patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;.  I completely disagree, as a
11852 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
11853 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
11854 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
11855 properties.&lt;/p&gt;
11856 </description>
11857         </item>
11858
11859         <item>
11860                 <title>Recording video from cron using VLC</title>
11861                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html</link>
11862                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html</guid>
11863                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Apr 2009 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11864                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
11865 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
11866 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
11867 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
11868 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
11869 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
11870 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
11871 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:&lt;/p&gt;
11872
11873 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
11874 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
11875 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
11876   --sout=&quot;#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url=&#39;$SAVEFILE&#39;},dst=nodisplay}&quot; \
11877   --intf=dummy&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11878
11879 &lt;p&gt;The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
11880 duplicating the output stream to &quot;nodisplay&quot; and the file, using the
11881 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
11882 sure no X interface is needed.&lt;/p&gt;
11883
11884 &lt;p&gt;The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
11885 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
11886 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
11887 &lt;tt&gt;vlc-record&lt;/tt&gt; to use from &lt;tt&gt;at&lt;/tt&gt; or &lt;tt&gt;cron&lt;/tt&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
11888
11889 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;#!/bin/sh
11890 set -e
11891 URL=&quot;$1&quot;
11892 SAVEFILE=&quot;$2&quot;
11893 DURATION=&quot;$3&quot;
11894 DISPLAY= vlc -q &quot;$URL&quot; \
11895   --sout=&quot;#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url=&#39;$SAVEFILE&#39;},dst=nodisplay}&quot; \
11896   --intf=dummy &lt; /dev/null &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1 &amp;
11897 pid=$!
11898 sleep $DURATION
11899 kill $pid
11900 wait $pid&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11901 </description>
11902         </item>
11903
11904         <item>
11905                 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
11906                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
11907                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
11908                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
11909                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
11910 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
11911 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
11912 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
11913 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
11914 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
11915 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
11916 application.&lt;/p&gt;
11917
11918 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
11919 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
11920 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
11921 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
11922 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
11923 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
11924 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
11925
11926 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
11927 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
11928 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
11929 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
11930
11931 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
11932 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
11933 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
11934 </description>
11935         </item>
11936
11937         <item>
11938                 <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
11939                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>
11940                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
11941                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11942                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
11943 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
11944 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
11945 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
11946 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
11947 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
11948 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
11949 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
11950 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
11951 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
11952 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
11953 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
11954 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
11955 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
11956 now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11957 </description>
11958         </item>
11959
11960         <item>
11961                 <title>Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
11962                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>
11963                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
11964                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
11965                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
11966 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
11967 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
11968 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
11969 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
11970 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
11971
11972 &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
11973 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
11974 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
11975 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
11976 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
11977 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
11978 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
11979 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
11980 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
11981 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
11982 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
11983 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
11984 specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;
11985
11986 &lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
11987 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
11988 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
11989 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;
11990
11991 &lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
11992 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;
11993
11994 &lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
11995 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
11996 new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
11997 </description>
11998         </item>
11999
12000         <item>
12001                 <title>Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</title>
12002                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</link>
12003                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</guid>
12004                 <pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
12005                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
12006 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
12007 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
12008 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
12009 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
12010 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
12011 status, I&#39;ve recently spent time on extending the machine register to
12012 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
12013 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
12014 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
12015 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
12016 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
12017 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
12018 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
12019 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
12020 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
12021 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
12022 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
12023 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
12024 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
12025 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
12026 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
12027 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
12028 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
12029 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
12030 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
12031
12032 &lt;p&gt;I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
12033 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
12034 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
12035 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
12036 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
12037 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
12038 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:&lt;/p&gt;
12039
12040 &lt;pre&gt;
12041 use LWP::Simple;
12042 use POSIX;
12043 use WWW::Mechanize;
12044 use Date::Parse;
12045 [...]
12046 sub get_support_info {
12047     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
12048     my $str;
12049
12050     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
12051         # fetch website from Dell support
12052         my $url = &quot;http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;amp;l=no&amp;amp;s=dhs&amp;amp;ServiceTag=$serial&quot;;
12053         my $webpage = get($url);
12054         return undef unless ($webpage);
12055
12056         my $daysleft = -1;
12057         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
12058         foreach my $line (@lines) {
12059             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
12060             $line =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
12061             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
12062
12063             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
12064             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
12065             my $lastend = &quot;&quot;;
12066             while ($f[3] eq &quot;DELL&quot;) {
12067                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
12068
12069                 my $start = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
12070                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
12071                 my $end = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
12072                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
12073                 $str .= &quot;$type $start -&gt; $end &quot;;
12074                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
12075                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
12076             }
12077             my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
12078             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
12079                 if ($lastend lt $today);
12080         }
12081     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
12082         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-&gt;new();
12083         my $url =
12084             &#39;http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do&#39;;
12085         $mech-&gt;get($url);
12086         my $fields = {
12087             &#39;BODServiceID&#39; =&gt; &#39;NA&#39;,
12088             &#39;RegisteredPurchaseDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
12089             &#39;country&#39; =&gt; &#39;NO&#39;,
12090             &#39;productNumber&#39; =&gt; $productnumber,
12091             &#39;serialNumber1&#39; =&gt; $serial,
12092         };
12093         $mech-&gt;submit_form( form_number =&gt; 2,
12094                             fields      =&gt; $fields );
12095         # Next step is screen scraping
12096         my $content = $mech-&gt;content();
12097
12098         $content =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
12099         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
12100         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
12101         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
12102
12103         my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
12104
12105         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
12106             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
12107                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
12108             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
12109             my $start = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
12110                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
12111             my $end = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
12112                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
12113
12114             $str .= &quot;$type ($status) $start -&gt; $end &quot;;
12115
12116             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
12117                 if ($end lt $today);
12118         }
12119     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
12120         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
12121         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
12122         if ($producttype &amp;amp;&amp;amp; $serial) {
12123             my $content =
12124                 get(&quot;http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;amp;brandind=5000008&amp;amp;Submit=Submit&amp;amp;type=$producttype&amp;amp;serial=$serial&quot;);
12125             if ($content) {
12126                 $content =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
12127                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
12128                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
12129                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
12130
12131                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
12132                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
12133
12134                 $str .= &quot;($status) -&gt; $end &quot;;
12135
12136                 my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
12137                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
12138                     if ($end lt $today);
12139             }
12140         }
12141     }
12142     return $str;
12143 }
12144 &lt;/pre&gt;
12145
12146 &lt;p&gt;Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
12147 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
12148 from dmidecode.&lt;/p&gt;
12149
12150 &lt;pre&gt;
12151 print get_support_info(&quot;hp.host&quot;, &quot;HP ProLiant BL460c G1&quot;, &quot;1234567890&quot;
12152                        &quot;447707-B21&quot;);
12153 print get_support_info(&quot;dell.host&quot;, &quot;Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950&quot;, &quot;1234567&quot;);
12154 print get_support_info(&quot;ibm.host&quot;, &quot;IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-&quot;,
12155                        &quot;1234567&quot;);
12156 &lt;/pre&gt;
12157
12158 &lt;p&gt;I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
12159 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12160
12161 &lt;p&gt;Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
12162 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
12163 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
12164 do so.&lt;/p&gt;
12165 </description>
12166         </item>
12167
12168         <item>
12169                 <title>Using bar codes at a computing center</title>
12170                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</link>
12171                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</guid>
12172                 <pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
12173                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
12174 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
12175 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
12176 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
12177 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
12178 the &quot;missing&quot; computer.&lt;/p&gt;
12179
12180 &lt;p&gt;In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
12181 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libdmtx.org/&quot;&gt;libdmtx&lt;/a&gt; to write and read bar
12182 code blocks as defined in the
12183 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix&quot;&gt;The Data Matrix
12184 Standard&lt;/a&gt;.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
12185 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
12186 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
12187 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
12188 with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/&quot;&gt;a bar code
12189 writer written in postscript&lt;/a&gt; capable of creating such bar codes,
12190 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
12191 codes.&lt;/p&gt;
12192
12193 &lt;p&gt;It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
12194 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
12195 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
12196 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
12197 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
12198 locations, and can detect movements and removals.&lt;/p&gt;
12199
12200 &lt;p&gt;I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
12201 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
12202 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
12203 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
12204 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
12205 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
12206 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
12207 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
12208 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
12209 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.&lt;/p&gt;
12210
12211 &lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
12212 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
12213 easier automatic tracking of computers.&lt;/p&gt;
12214 </description>
12215         </item>
12216
12217         <item>
12218                 <title>When web browser developers make a video player...</title>
12219                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html</link>
12220                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html</guid>
12221                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
12222                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of the work we do in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;
12223 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
12224 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
12225 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
12226 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
12227 will become easier when the &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag is implemented in all
12228 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
12229 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
12230 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
12231 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
12232 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
12233 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag, the &amp;lt;object&amp;gt; tag, the &amp;lt;embed&amp;gt; tag and
12234 the &amp;lt;applet&amp;gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
12235 finding the best options is a major challenge.&lt;/p&gt;
12236
12237 &lt;p&gt;I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from &lt;a
12238 href=&quot;http://labs.opera.com&quot;&gt;labs.opera.com&lt;/a&gt;, to see how it handled
12239 a &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
12240 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
12241 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
12242 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
12243 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
12244 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
12245 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
12246 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
12247 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
12248 discover that I have to add the controls=&quot;true&quot; attribute to be able
12249 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
12250 autoplay=&quot;true&quot; did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
12251 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
12252 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
12253 playing when the download is done.&lt;/p&gt;
12254
12255 &lt;p&gt;The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
12256 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/&quot;&gt;available
12257 from the nuug site&lt;/a&gt;.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
12258 too.&lt;/p&gt;
12259
12260 &lt;p&gt;In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
12261 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
12262 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
12263 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12264 </description>
12265         </item>
12266
12267         <item>
12268                 <title>Software video mixer on a USB stick</title>
12269                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html</link>
12270                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html</guid>
12271                 <pubDate>Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
12272                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User Group&lt;/a&gt; is
12273 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
12274 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
12275 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
12276 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;dvswitch&lt;/a&gt; package from
12277 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
12278 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
12279 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
12280 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
12281 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
12282 source, sink and mixer applications and
12283 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinodv.org/&quot;&gt;dvgrab&lt;/a&gt;.  To allow this setup to
12284 work without any configuration, I&#39;ve patched dvswitch to use
12285 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avahi.org/&quot;&gt;avahi&lt;/a&gt; to connect the various parts
12286 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
12287 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
12288 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
12289 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
12290 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
12291 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goopen.no/&quot;&gt;Go Open 2009&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
12292
12293 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz&quot;&gt;The
12294 USB image&lt;/a&gt; is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
12295 larger stick as well.&lt;/p&gt;
12296 </description>
12297         </item>
12298
12299         <item>
12300                 <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
12301                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>
12302                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
12303                 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
12304                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
12305 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
12306 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
12307 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
12308 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
12309 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
12310 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
12311 finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;
12312
12313 &lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
12314 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
12315 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
12316 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
12317 of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
12318 </description>
12319         </item>
12320
12321         <item>
12322                 <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
12323                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>
12324                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
12325                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
12326                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
12327 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
12328 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
12329 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
12330 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
12331 notes are available on
12332 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
12333 Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
12334 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
12335 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
12336 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
12337 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
12338 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
12339 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
12340 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;
12341
12342 &lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
12343 be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
12344 </description>
12345         </item>
12346
12347         </channel>
12348 </rss>