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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         19th February 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Making packages for Debian require quite a lot of attention to
  32 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
  33 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
  34 the code in the package in question, preferably in
  35 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
  36 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
  37
  38 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
  39 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
  40 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
  41 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
  42 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
  43 out what was wrong with
  44 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
  45 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
  46 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
  47 semi-automatically.</p>
  48
  49 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
  50 file based on the code in the source package,
  51 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
  52 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
  53 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
  54 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
  55 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
  56 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
  57 option in
  58 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
  59 blog posts from 2014</a>.
  60
  61 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
  62
  63 <p><pre>
  64 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
  65 </pre></p>
  66
  67 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
  68 this might not be the best option.</p>
  69
  70 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
  71 this approach in
  72 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
  73 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
  74 dpkg-copyright' option:
  75
  76 <p><pre>
  77 cme update dpkg-copyright -quiet
  78 </pre></p>
  79
  80 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
  81 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
  82
  83 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
  84 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
  85 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
  86 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
  87 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
  88 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
  89 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
  90 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
  91 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
  92 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
  93
  94 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
  95 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
  96 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
  97 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
  98
  99 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
 100 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
 101 planet.debian.org.</p>
 102
 103 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 104 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 105 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 106
 107       </div>
 108       <div class="tags">
 109
 110
 111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 112
 113
 114       </div>
 115     </div>
 116     <div class="padding"></div>
 117
 118     <div class="entry">
 119       <div class="title">
 120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
 121       </div>
 122       <div class="date">
 123          4th February 2016
 124       </div>
 125       <div class="body">
 126         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
 127 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
 128 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
 129 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
 130 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
 131 about. :)</p>
 132
 133 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
 134 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
 135 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
 136 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
 137 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
 138 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
 139
 140 <blockquote><pre>
 141 % apt install appstream
 142 [...]
 143 % apt update
 144 [...]
 145 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
 146   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 147 firmware-qlogic
 148 %
 149 </pre></blockquote>
 150
 151 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
 152 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
 153 a way appstream can use.</p>
 154
 155 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
 156 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
 157 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
 158 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
 159 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
 160 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
 161
 162 <blockquote><pre>
 163 % apt install appstream
 164 [...]
 165 % apt update
 166 [...]
 167 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
 168   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 169 bkchem
 170 phototonic
 171 inkscape
 172 shutter
 173 tetzle
 174 geeqie
 175 xia
 176 pinta
 177 gthumb
 178 karbon
 179 comix
 180 mirage
 181 viewnior
 182 postr
 183 ristretto
 184 kolourpaint4
 185 eog
 186 eom
 187 gimagereader
 188 midori
 189 %
 190 </pre></blockquote>
 191
 192 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
 193 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
 194
 195       </div>
 196       <div class="tags">
 197
 198
 199         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 200
 201
 202       </div>
 203     </div>
 204     <div class="padding"></div>
 205
 206     <div class="entry">
 207       <div class="title">
 208         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
 209       </div>
 210       <div class="date">
 211         24th January 2016
 212       </div>
 213       <div class="body">
 214         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
 215 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
 216 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
 217 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
 218 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
 219 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
 220 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
 221 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
 222 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
 223 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
 224 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
 225 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
 226 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
 227 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
 228 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
 229 entities.</p>
 230
 231 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
 232
 233 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
 234 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
 235 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
 236 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
 237 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
 238 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
 239 tool to do so is called
 240 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
 241 discovered it when I read
 242 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
 243 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
 244 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
 245 The python program was in Debian, but
 246 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
 247 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
 248 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
 249 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
 250 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
 251 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
 252 are now included
 253 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
 254
 255 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
 256 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
 257 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
 258 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
 259 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
 260 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
 261 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
 262 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
 263 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
 264 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
 265 about yourself with the services.</p>
 266
 267 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
 268 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
 269 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
 270 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
 271 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
 272 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
 273 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
 274 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
 275 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
 276 things.  A similar technique have been
 277 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
 278 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
 279 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
 280 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
 281 public.</p>
 282
 283 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
 284 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
 285 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
 286 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
 287
 288 <p>(I have uploaded
 289 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
 290 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
 291 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
 292
 293       </div>
 294       <div class="tags">
 295
 296
 297         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 298
 299
 300       </div>
 301     </div>
 302     <div class="padding"></div>
 303
 304     <div class="entry">
 305       <div class="title">
 306         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
 307       </div>
 308       <div class="date">
 309         15th January 2016
 310       </div>
 311       <div class="body">
 312         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
 313 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
 314 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
 315 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
 316 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
 317 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
 318 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
 319 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
 320 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
 321 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
 322 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
 323 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
 324 was not the first to propose this, as the
 325 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
 326 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
 327 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
 328 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
 329
 330 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
 331 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
 332 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
 333 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
 334 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
 335
 336 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
 337 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
 338 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
 339 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
 340 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
 341 done in /etc/.</p>
 342
 343 <blockquote><pre>
 344 apt install apt-transport-tor
 345 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/%tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 346 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 347 </pre></blockquote>
 348
 349 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
 350 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
 351 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
 352 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
 353
 354 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
 355 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
 356 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
 357 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
 358 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
 359 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
 360
 361 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
 362 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
 363 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
 364 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
 365 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
 366
 367 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
 368 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
 369 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
 370 system.</p>
 371
 372       </div>
 373       <div class="tags">
 374
 375
 376         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 377
 378
 379       </div>
 380     </div>
 381     <div class="padding"></div>
 382
 383     <div class="entry">
 384       <div class="title">
 385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
 386       </div>
 387       <div class="date">
 388         23rd December 2015
 389       </div>
 390       <div class="body">
 391         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
 392 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
 393 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
 394 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
 395 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
 396 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
 397
 398 <p>A few days I came across
 399 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
 400 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
 401 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
 402 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
 403 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
 404 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
 405 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
 406 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
 407 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
 408 discovered the developer
 409 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
 410 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
 411 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
 412 archive.</p>
 413
 414 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
 415 it into Debian, where it currently
 416 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
 417 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
 418
 419 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
 420 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
 421 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
 422 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
 423 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
 424 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
 425 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
 426 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
 427 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
 428 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
 429 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
 430 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
 431
 432 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
 433 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
 434 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
 435 package show up in unstable.</p>
 436
 437       </div>
 438       <div class="tags">
 439
 440
 441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 442
 443
 444       </div>
 445     </div>
 446     <div class="padding"></div>
 447
 448     <div class="entry">
 449       <div class="title">
 450         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
 451       </div>
 452       <div class="date">
 453         20th December 2015
 454       </div>
 455       <div class="body">
 456         <p>Around three years ago, I created
 457 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
 458 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
 459 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
 460 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
 461 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
 462 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
 463 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
 464 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
 465 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
 466 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
 467 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
 468 with.</p>
 469
 470 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
 471 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
 472 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
 473 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
 474 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
 475 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
 476 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 477 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
 478 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
 479 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
 480 Debian version of appstream.</p>
 481
 482 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
 483 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
 484 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
 485 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
 486 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
 487 how do add the required
 488 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
 489 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
 490 this content:</p>
 491
 492 <blockquote><pre>
 493 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
 494 &lt;component&gt;
 495   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
 496   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
 497   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
 498   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
 499   &lt;description&gt;
 500     &lt;p&gt;
 501       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
 502       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
 503       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
 504       launcher.
 505     &lt;/p&gt;
 506   &lt;/description&gt;
 507   &lt;provides&gt;
 508     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
 509   &lt;/provides&gt;
 510 &lt;/component&gt;
 511 </pre></blockquote>
 512
 513 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
 514 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
 515 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
 516 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
 517 0202.</p>
 518
 519 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
 520 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
 521 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
 522 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
 523 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
 524 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
 525 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
 526 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
 527
 528 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
 529 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
 530 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
 531 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
 532 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
 533
 534 <blockquote><pre>
 535 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
 536 </pre></blockquote>
 537
 538 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
 539 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
 540 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
 541 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
 542 question.</p>
 543
 544 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
 545 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
 546
 547 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
 548 try running this command on the command line:</p>
 549
 550 <blockquote><pre>
 551 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
 552 </pre></blockquote>
 553
 554 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 555 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 556 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 557
 558       </div>
 559       <div class="tags">
 560
 561
 562         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 563
 564
 565       </div>
 566     </div>
 567     <div class="padding"></div>
 568
 569     <div class="entry">
 570       <div class="title">
 571         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
 572       </div>
 573       <div class="date">
 574         30th November 2015
 575       </div>
 576       <div class="body">
 577         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
 578 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
 579 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
 580 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
 581 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
 582
 583 <blockquote>
 584
 585 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
 586
 587 <blockquote>
 588 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
 589
 590 The first step is to choose a
 591 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
 592 code.<br/>
 593
 594 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
 595 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
 596
 597 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
 598 work<br/>
 599
 600 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
 601 </blockquote>
 602
 603 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
 604 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
 605 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
 606 0x57</a></small></p>
 607
 608 <p>As the Debian Website
 609 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
 610 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
 611 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
 612 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
 613 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
 614 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
 615 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
 616 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
 617 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
 618 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
 619 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
 620 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
 621 Freedom">FaiF</a>
 622 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
 623 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
 624 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
 625 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
 626 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
 627 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
 628 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
 629 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
 630 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
 631 In March the SFC supported a
 632 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
 633 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
 634 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
 635 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
 636 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
 637 conferences
 638 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
 639 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
 640 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
 641 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
 642 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
 643 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
 644 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
 645 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
 646 Software.</p>
 647
 648 <p>If you support Free Software,
 649 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
 650 what the SFC do, agree with their
 651 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
 652 principles</a>, are happy about their
 653 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
 654 work on a project that is an SFC
 655 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
 656 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
 657 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
 658 Allan Webber</a>,
 659 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
 660 Smith</a>,
 661 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
 662 Bacon</a>, myself and
 663 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
 664 becoming a
 665 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
 666 next week your donation will be
 667 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
 668 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
 669 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
 670 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
 671 social media accounts.</p>
 672
 673 </blockquote>
 674
 675 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
 676 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
 677 supporter too?</p>
 678
 679       </div>
 680       <div class="tags">
 681
 682
 683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 684
 685
 686       </div>
 687     </div>
 688     <div class="padding"></div>
 689
 690     <div class="entry">
 691       <div class="title">
 692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
 693       </div>
 694       <div class="date">
 695         17th November 2015
 696       </div>
 697       <div class="body">
 698         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
 699 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
 700 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
 701 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
 702 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
 703 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
 704 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
 705 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
 706 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
 707 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
 708
 709 <pre>
 710 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
 711       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
 712 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
 713 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
 714 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 715 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 716 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 717 </pre>
 718
 719 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
 720 my old key.</p>
 721
 722 <p>If you signed my old key
 723 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
 724 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
 725 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
 726 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
 727
 728       </div>
 729       <div class="tags">
 730
 731
 732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 733
 734
 735       </div>
 736     </div>
 737     <div class="padding"></div>
 738
 739     <div class="entry">
 740       <div class="title">
 741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
 742       </div>
 743       <div class="date">
 744         24th September 2015
 745       </div>
 746       <div class="body">
 747         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
 748 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
 749 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
 750 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
 751 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
 752 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
 753 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
 754
 755 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
 756
 757 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
 758 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
 759 by someone else.  I found
 760 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
 761 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
 762 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
 763 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
 764 from him.  Via
 765 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
 766 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
 767 discovered
 768 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
 769 available in Debian.</p>
 770
 771 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
 772 battery stats ever since. Now my
 773 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
 774 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
 775 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
 776 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 777
 778 <pre>
 779 #!/bin/sh
 780 # Inspired by
 781 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 782 # See also
 783 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 784 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 785
 786 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 787     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 788
 789 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 790     (
 791         printf "timestamp,"
 792         for f in $files; do
 793             printf "%s," $f
 794         done
 795         echo
 796     ) > "$logfile"
 797 fi
 798
 799 log_battery() {
 800     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 801     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 802     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 803         for f in $files; do \
 804             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 805         done)
 806     echo "$msg"
 807 }
 808
 809 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 810
 811 for bat in BAT*; do
 812     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 813 done
 814 </pre>
 815
 816 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 817 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 818 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 819 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 820 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 821 The code for the Debian package
 822 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 823 available on github</a>.</p>
 824
 825 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 826
 827 <pre>
 828 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 829 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 830 [...]
 831 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 832 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 833 </pre>
 834
 835 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 836 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 837 battery.</p>
 838
 839 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 840 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 841 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 842 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 843 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 844 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 845 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 846 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 847 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 848 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 849 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 850 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 851 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 852 Linux too.</p>
 853
 854 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 855 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 856 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 857 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 858 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 859 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 860 load).</p>
 861
 862 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 863 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 864 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 865 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 866 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 867 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 868 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 869 those.</p>
 870
 871 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 872 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 873 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 874 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 875 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 876 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 877 specific.</p>
 878
 879       </div>
 880       <div class="tags">
 881
 882
 883         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 884
 885
 886       </div>
 887     </div>
 888     <div class="padding"></div>
 889
 890     <div class="entry">
 891       <div class="title">
 892         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 893       </div>
 894       <div class="date">
 895          5th July 2015
 896       </div>
 897       <div class="body">
 898         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 899 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 900 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 901 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 902 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 903 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 904 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 905 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 906 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 907 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 908 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 909
 910 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 911 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 912 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 913 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 914 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 915 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 916 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 917
 918 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 919 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 920 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 921 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 922 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 923 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 924 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 925 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 926 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 927 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 928 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 929 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 930 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 931 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 932 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 933
 934 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 935 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 936 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 937 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 938
 939 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 940 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 941
 942 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 943 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 944 different
 945 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 946 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 947
 948       </div>
 949       <div class="tags">
 950
 951
 952         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 953
 954
 955       </div>
 956     </div>
 957     <div class="padding"></div>
 958
 959     <div class="entry">
 960       <div class="title">
 961         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
 962       </div>
 963       <div class="date">
 964          3rd July 2015
 965       </div>
 966       <div class="body">
 967         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 968 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 969 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 970 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 971 flickering.</p>
 972
 973 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 974 still as
 975 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 976 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 977 good help from
 978 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 979 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 980 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 981 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 982 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 983 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 984 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 985 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 986 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 987
 988 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 989 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 990 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 991 have suggestions.</p>
 992
 993 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 994 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 995 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 996
 997       </div>
 998       <div class="tags">
 999
1000
1001         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1002
1003
1004       </div>
1005     </div>
1006     <div class="padding"></div>
1007
1008     <div class="entry">
1009       <div class="title">
1010         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
1011       </div>
1012       <div class="date">
1013         22nd November 2014
1014       </div>
1015       <div class="body">
1016         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1017 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
1018 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1019 courtesy of
1020 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1021 Schubert</a> and
1022 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1023 McVittie</a>.
1024
1025 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1026 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1027 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
1028 you upgrade:</p>
1029
1030 <p><blockquote><pre>
1031 Package: systemd-sysv
1032 Pin: release o=Debian
1033 Pin-Priority: -1
1034 </pre></blockquote><p>
1035
1036 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1037 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1038 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1039 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1040 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1041
1042 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1043 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1044 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1045 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1046 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1047 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1048
1049 <p><blockquote><pre>
1050 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1051 </pre></blockquote><p>
1052
1053 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1054
1055 <p><blockquote><pre>
1056 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1057 </pre></blockquote><p>
1058
1059 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1060 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1061
1062 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1063 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1064 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1065 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1066 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1067 Jessie is released.</p>
1068
1069 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1070 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1071 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1072 line.</p>
1073
1074       </div>
1075       <div class="tags">
1076
1077
1078         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1079
1080
1081       </div>
1082     </div>
1083     <div class="padding"></div>
1084
1085     <div class="entry">
1086       <div class="title">
1087         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
1088       </div>
1089       <div class="date">
1090         10th November 2014
1091       </div>
1092       <div class="body">
1093         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1094 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1095 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1096
1097 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1098 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1099 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1100 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1101 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1102 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1103 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1104 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1105 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1106 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1107 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1108 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1109 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1110 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1111 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1112
1113 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1114 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1115 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1116 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1117 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1118 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1119 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1120 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1121 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1122 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1123 were fairly easy, and
1124 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1125 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1126 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1127 useful approach.</p>
1128
1129 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1130 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1131 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1132 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1133 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
1134 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
1135 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1136 this:</p>
1137
1138 <p><blockquote><pre>
1139 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1140   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1141 </pre></blockquote></p>
1142
1143 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
1144 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
1145
1146 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1147 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
1148 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1149 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1150 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
1151 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1152 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
1153 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
1154 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1155 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1156 system.</p>
1157
1158 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1159 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1160 SMTorP. :)</p>
1161
1162       </div>
1163       <div class="tags">
1164
1165
1166         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1167
1168
1169       </div>
1170     </div>
1171     <div class="padding"></div>
1172
1173     <div class="entry">
1174       <div class="title">
1175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
1176       </div>
1177       <div class="date">
1178         22nd October 2014
1179       </div>
1180       <div class="body">
1181         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1182 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1183 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1184 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1185 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
1186 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1187 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
1188 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1189 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
1190 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
1191 lists I recently took over:</p>
1192
1193 <p><blockquote><pre>
1194 % time listadmin xiph
1195 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1196 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1197
1198 real    0m1.709s
1199 user    0m0.232s
1200 sys     0m0.012s
1201 %
1202 </pre></blockquote></p>
1203
1204 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1205 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
1206 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1207 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1208 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
1209 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1210 program.</p>
1211
1212 <p>If you install
1213 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1214 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
1215 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
1216
1217 <p><blockquote><pre>
1218 username username@example.org
1219 spamlevel 23
1220 default discard
1221 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1222
1223 password secret
1224 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1225 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1226
1227 password hidden
1228 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1229 </pre></blockquote></p>
1230
1231 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
1232 learn the details.</p>
1233
1234 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1235 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1236 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1237 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
1238
1239 <p><blockquote><pre>
1240 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
1241 </pre></blockquote></p>
1242
1243 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1244 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1245 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
1246 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
1247 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1248 email.</p>
1249
1250 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
1251 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1252 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1253 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
1254 software.</p>
1255
1256 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1257 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1258 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1259
1260 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1261 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
1262 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
1263 sure why.</p>
1264
1265       </div>
1266       <div class="tags">
1267
1268
1269         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1270
1271
1272       </div>
1273     </div>
1274     <div class="padding"></div>
1275
1276     <div class="entry">
1277       <div class="title">
1278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
1279       </div>
1280       <div class="date">
1281         17th October 2014
1282       </div>
1283       <div class="body">
1284         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1285 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1286 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1287 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1288 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1289 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1290 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1291
1292 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1293 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1294 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1295 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1296 of this story.)</p>
1297
1298 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1299 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1300 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1301 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1302 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1303 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1304 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1305 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1306 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1307 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1308
1309 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1310 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1311 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1312 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1313
1314 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1315 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1316
1317 <p><blockquote><pre>
1318 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1319 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1320 </pre></blockquote></p>
1321
1322 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1323 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1324 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1325 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1326 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1327 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1328 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1329 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1330
1331 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1332 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1333
1334 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1335 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1336 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1337 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1338 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1339
1340 <p><blockquote><pre>
1341 Task: isenkram-packages
1342 Section: hardware
1343 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1344  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1345  proposed.
1346 Test-new-install: show show
1347 Relevance: 8
1348 Packages: for-current-hardware
1349
1350 Task: isenkram-firmware
1351 Section: hardware
1352 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1353  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1354  packages are proposed.
1355 Test-new-install: mark show
1356 Relevance: 8
1357 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1358 </pre></blockquote></p>
1359
1360 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1361 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1362 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1363 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1364 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1365
1366 <p><blockquote><pre>
1367 #!/bin/sh
1368 #
1369 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1370 export PATH
1371 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1372 </pre></blockquote></p>
1373
1374 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1375 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1376
1377 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1378 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1379 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1380 install.</p>
1381
1382 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1383 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1384 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1385
1386       </div>
1387       <div class="tags">
1388
1389
1390         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1391
1392
1393       </div>
1394     </div>
1395     <div class="padding"></div>
1396
1397     <div class="entry">
1398       <div class="title">
1399         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
1400       </div>
1401       <div class="date">
1402          4th October 2014
1403       </div>
1404       <div class="body">
1405         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1406 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1407 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1408 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1409
1410 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1411
1412 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1413 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1414 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1415
1416       </div>
1417       <div class="tags">
1418
1419
1420         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1421
1422
1423       </div>
1424     </div>
1425     <div class="padding"></div>
1426
1427     <div class="entry">
1428       <div class="title">
1429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
1430       </div>
1431       <div class="date">
1432          4th October 2014
1433       </div>
1434       <div class="body">
1435         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1436 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1437 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1438 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1439 Dibb.</p>
1440
1441 <p>I just wrapped up
1442 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1443 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1444 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1445 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1446 0.17.</p>
1447
1448 <ul>
1449
1450  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1451  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1452    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1453  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1454  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1455  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1456  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1457  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1458  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1459    the palette size is the same.</li>
1460  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1461  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1462  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1463  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1464    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1465
1466 </ul>
1467
1468 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1469 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1470 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1471
1472       </div>
1473       <div class="tags">
1474
1475
1476         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1477
1478
1479       </div>
1480     </div>
1481     <div class="padding"></div>
1482
1483     <div class="entry">
1484       <div class="title">
1485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
1486       </div>
1487       <div class="date">
1488         26th September 2014
1489       </div>
1490       <div class="body">
1491         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1492 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1493 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1494 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1495 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1496 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1497 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1498 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1499 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1500 future.  The
1501 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1502 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1503 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1504 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1505 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1506
1507 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1508 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1509 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1510 or rsync (use
1511 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1512 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1513 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1514 install with some tweaking.</p>
1515
1516 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1517 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1518
1519 <p><blockquote><pre>
1520 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1521 </pre></blockquote></p>
1522
1523 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1524 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1525 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1526 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1527
1528 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1529 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1530 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1531 your need.</p>
1532
1533 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1534 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1535 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1536 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1537 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1538 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1539 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1540 days.</p>
1541
1542 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1543 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1544 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1545 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1546 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1547 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1548 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1549 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1550 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1551
1552 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1553 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1554 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1555
1556       </div>
1557       <div class="tags">
1558
1559
1560         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1561
1562
1563       </div>
1564     </div>
1565     <div class="padding"></div>
1566
1567     <div class="entry">
1568       <div class="title">
1569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
1570       </div>
1571       <div class="date">
1572         25th September 2014
1573       </div>
1574       <div class="body">
1575         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1576 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1577 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1578 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1579 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1580 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1581 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1582 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1583 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1584 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1585 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1586 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1587 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1588
1589 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1590 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1591 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1592 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1593 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1594 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1595 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1596 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1597 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1598 list</a>. :)</p>
1599
1600       </div>
1601       <div class="tags">
1602
1603
1604         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1605
1606
1607       </div>
1608     </div>
1609     <div class="padding"></div>
1610
1611     <div class="entry">
1612       <div class="title">
1613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
1614       </div>
1615       <div class="date">
1616         16th September 2014
1617       </div>
1618       <div class="body">
1619         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1620 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1621 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1622 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1623 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1624 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1625 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1626 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1627 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1628 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1629 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1630 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1631 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1632 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1633
1634 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1635 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1636 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1637 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1638 depend on the small and clever package
1639 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1640 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1641 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1642 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1643 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1644 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1645 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1646 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1647 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1648 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1649 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1650
1651 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1652 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1653 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1654 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1655 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1656 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1657 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1658 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1659 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1660 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
1661 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1662 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1663 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1664 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1665 dialog.</p>
1666
1667 <p><table>
1668
1669 <tr>
1670 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1671 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1672 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1673 <th>Reduction</th>
1674 </tr>
1675
1676 <tr>
1677 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1678 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1679 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1680 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1681 </tr>
1682
1683 <tr>
1684 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1685 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1686 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1687 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1688 </tr>
1689
1690 <tr>
1691 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1692 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1693 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1694 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1695 </tr>
1696
1697 <tr>
1698 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1699 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1700 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1701 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1702 </tr>
1703
1704 <tr>
1705 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1706 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1707 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1708 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1709 </tr>
1710
1711 </table></p>
1712
1713 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1714 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1715 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1716 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1717 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1718 installed.</p>
1719
1720 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1721 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1722 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1723 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1724 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1725 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1726 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1727 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1728 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1729 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1730 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1731 for the entire installation.</p>
1732
1733 <p>I've implemented this in the
1734 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1735 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1736 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1737 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1738 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1739
1740 <p><blockquote><pre>
1741 #!/bin/sh
1742 set -e
1743 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1744 info() {
1745     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1746 }
1747 error() {
1748     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1749 }
1750 override_install() {
1751     apt-install eatmydata || true
1752     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1753         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1754             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1755             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1756             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1757                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1758                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1759                     > /target$file.edu
1760                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1761                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1762                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1763                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1764             else
1765                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1766             fi
1767         done
1768     else
1769         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1770     fi
1771 }
1772
1773 override_install
1774 </pre></blockquote></p>
1775
1776 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1777 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1778
1779 <p><blockquote><pre>
1780 #! /bin/sh -e
1781 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1782 error() {
1783     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1784 }
1785 remove_install_override() {
1786     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1787         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1788         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1789             rm /target$file
1790             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1791                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1792             rm /target$file.edu
1793         else
1794             error "Missing divert for $file."
1795         fi
1796     done
1797     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1798 }
1799
1800 remove_install_override
1801 </pre></blockquote></p>
1802
1803 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1804 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1805 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1806
1807 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1808 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1809 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1810 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1811 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1812 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1813 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1814 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1815 everyone.</p>
1816
1817 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1818 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1819 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1820 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1821
1822 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1823 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1824 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1825 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1826 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1827
1828 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1829 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1830 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1831 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1832 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1833
1834       </div>
1835       <div class="tags">
1836
1837
1838         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1839
1840
1841       </div>
1842     </div>
1843     <div class="padding"></div>
1844
1845     <div class="entry">
1846       <div class="title">
1847         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
1848       </div>
1849       <div class="date">
1850         10th September 2014
1851       </div>
1852       <div class="body">
1853         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1854 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
1855 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1856 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
1857 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1858 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1859 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1860 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1861 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1862 those problems are gone now.</p>
1863
1864 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1865 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
1866 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1867 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1868 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
1869
1870 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1871 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1872 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
1873
1874 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1875 line:</p>
1876
1877 <p><blockquote><pre>
1878 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1879 </pre></blockquote></p>
1880
1881 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1882 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1883 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1884 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
1885
1886 <p><blockquote><pre>
1887 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1888 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1889 %
1890 </pre></blockquote></p>
1891
1892 <p>Now if only
1893 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1894 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1895 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1896 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1897 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1898 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1899 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1900 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1901 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
1902
1903       </div>
1904       <div class="tags">
1905
1906
1907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1908
1909
1910       </div>
1911     </div>
1912     <div class="padding"></div>
1913
1914     <div class="entry">
1915       <div class="title">
1916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="date">
1919         17th June 2014
1920       </div>
1921       <div class="body">
1922         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1923 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1924 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1925 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1926 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
1927
1928 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1929 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1930 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1931 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1932 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1933 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1934 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1935 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1936 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1937 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1938 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1939 goals.</p>
1940
1941 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1942 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1943 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1944 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1945 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1946 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1947 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1948 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1949 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1950 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1951 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1952 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1953 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1954 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1955 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1956 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1957 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1958 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1959 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1960 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1961 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1962 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1963 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1964 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1965
1966 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1967 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1968 track the English original.  For this we use the
1969 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1970 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1971 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1972 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1973 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1974 files), which the translations update with the native language
1975 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1976 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1977 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1978 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1979 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1980 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1981 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1982 of the documentation.</p>
1983
1984 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1985 recommend using
1986 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
1987 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1988 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1989 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1990 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1991 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1992 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1993 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1994
1995 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1996 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1997 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1998 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1999 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2000 translated images by storing translated versions in
2001 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
2002 package maintainers know more.</p>
2003
2004 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2005 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2006 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
2007 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2008 PDF version</a> or the
2009 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2010 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2011 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
2012
2013 <p>To learn more, check out
2014 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2015 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
2016 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2017 manual on the wiki</a> and
2018 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2019 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
2020
2021       </div>
2022       <div class="tags">
2023
2024
2025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2026
2027
2028       </div>
2029     </div>
2030     <div class="padding"></div>
2031
2032     <div class="entry">
2033       <div class="title">
2034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
2035       </div>
2036       <div class="date">
2037         23rd April 2014
2038       </div>
2039       <div class="body">
2040         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2041 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2042 So I implemented one, using
2043 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2044 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2045 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2046 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2047 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2048 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2049
2050 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2051 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2052 packages to install.  The first part is in
2053 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2054 this:</p>
2055
2056 <p><blockquote><pre>
2057 Task: isenkram
2058 Section: hardware
2059 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2060  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2061  proposed.
2062 Test-new-install: mark show
2063 Relevance: 8
2064 Packages: for-current-hardware
2065 </pre></blockquote></p>
2066
2067 <p>The second part is in
2068 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2069 this:</p>
2070
2071 <p><blockquote><pre>
2072 #!/bin/sh
2073 #
2074 (
2075     isenkram-lookup
2076     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2077 ) | sort -u
2078 </pre></blockquote></p>
2079
2080 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2081 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2082 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2083 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2084 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2085 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2086
2087 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2088 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2089 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2090 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2091 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2092 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2093 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2094 the python-apt code (bug
2095 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2096 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2097 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2098 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2099 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2100 unstable today.</p>
2101
2102 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2103 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2104 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2105 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2106 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2107 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2108 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2109 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2110 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2111
2112 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2113 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2114 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2115 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2116 package.  See also
2117 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2118 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2119 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2120 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2121
2122       </div>
2123       <div class="tags">
2124
2125
2126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2127
2128
2129       </div>
2130     </div>
2131     <div class="padding"></div>
2132
2133     <div class="entry">
2134       <div class="title">
2135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
2136       </div>
2137       <div class="date">
2138         15th April 2014
2139       </div>
2140       <div class="body">
2141         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2142 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2143 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2144 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2145 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2146 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2147
2148 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2149 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2150 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2151 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2152 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2153 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2154 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2155
2156 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2157 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2158 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2159 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2160 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2161 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2162 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2163 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2164 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2165 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2166 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2167 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2168
2169 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2170 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2171 become root:</p>
2172
2173 <p><pre>
2174 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2175   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2176   u-boot-tools
2177 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2178   freedom-maker
2179 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2180 </pre></p>
2181
2182 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2183 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2184 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2185 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2186 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2187 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2188 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2189 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2190
2191 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2192 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2193 the preseed values:</p>
2194
2195 <p><pre>
2196 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2197 </pre></p>
2198
2199 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2200 it still work.</p>
2201
2202 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2203 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2204 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2205 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2206 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2207 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2208 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2209
2210 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2211 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2212 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2213 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2214 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2215 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2216
2217       </div>
2218       <div class="tags">
2219
2220
2221         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2222
2223
2224       </div>
2225     </div>
2226     <div class="padding"></div>
2227
2228     <div class="entry">
2229       <div class="title">
2230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
2231       </div>
2232       <div class="date">
2233          9th April 2014
2234       </div>
2235       <div class="body">
2236         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2237 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2238 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2239 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2240 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2241 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2242 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2243 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2244 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2245 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2246 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2247 have looked at a system called
2248 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2249 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2250
2251 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2252 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2253 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2254 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2255 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2256 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2257 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2258 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2259 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2260 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2261 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2262 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2263 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2264
2265 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2266 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2267 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2268 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2269 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2270 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2271 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2272 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2273 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2274 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2275 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2276 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2277 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2278 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2279 account.</p>
2280
2281 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2282 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2283 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2284 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2285 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2286 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2287 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2288
2289 <p><blockquote><pre>
2290 [s3c]
2291 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2292 backend-login: API-login
2293 backend-password: API-password
2294 fs-passphrase: local-password
2295 </pre></blockquote></p>
2296
2297 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2298 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2299 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2300 details and password to create it:</p>
2301
2302 <p><blockquote><pre>
2303 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2304 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2305   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2306 Enter backend login:
2307 Enter backend password:
2308 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2309 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2310 Enter encryption password:
2311 Confirm encryption password:
2312 Generating random encryption key...
2313 Creating metadata tables...
2314 Dumping metadata...
2315 ..objects..
2316 ..blocks..
2317 ..inodes..
2318 ..inode_blocks..
2319 ..symlink_targets..
2320 ..names..
2321 ..contents..
2322 ..ext_attributes..
2323 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2324 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2325 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2326
2327 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2328
2329 <p><blockquote><pre>
2330 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2331   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2332 Using 4 upload threads.
2333 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2334 Reading metadata...
2335 ..objects..
2336 ..blocks..
2337 ..inodes..
2338 ..inode_blocks..
2339 ..symlink_targets..
2340 ..names..
2341 ..contents..
2342 ..ext_attributes..
2343 Mounting filesystem...
2344 # df -h /s3ql
2345 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2346 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2347 #
2348 </pre></blockquote></p>
2349
2350 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2351 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2352 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2353 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2354 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2355 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2356
2357 <p><blockquote><pre>
2358 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2359 #
2360 </pre></blockquote></p>
2361
2362 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2363 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2364 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2365 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2366 file system:</p>
2367
2368 <p><blockquote><pre>
2369 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2370 Using cached metadata.
2371 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2372 Checking DB integrity...
2373 Creating temporary extra indices...
2374 Checking lost+found...
2375 Checking cached objects...
2376 Checking names (refcounts)...
2377 Checking contents (names)...
2378 Checking contents (inodes)...
2379 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2380 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2381 Checking objects (backend)...
2382 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2383 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2384 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2385 Checking objects (sizes)...
2386 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2387 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2388 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2389 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2390 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2391 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2392 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2393 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2394 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2395 Checking directory reachability...
2396 Checking unix conventions...
2397 Checking referential integrity...
2398 Dropping temporary indices...
2399 Backing up old metadata...
2400 Dumping metadata...
2401 ..objects..
2402 ..blocks..
2403 ..inodes..
2404 ..inode_blocks..
2405 ..symlink_targets..
2406 ..names..
2407 ..contents..
2408 ..ext_attributes..
2409 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2410 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2411 #
2412 </pre></blockquote></p>
2413
2414 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2415 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2416 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2417 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2418 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2419 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2420 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2421 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2422 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2423 working set.</p>
2424
2425 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2426 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2427 busy:</p>
2428
2429 <p><blockquote><pre>
2430 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2431   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2432 Using 8 upload threads.
2433 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2434 #
2435 </pre></blockquote></p>
2436
2437 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2438 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2439 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2440 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2441 s3qlctrl:
2442
2443 <p><blockquote><pre>
2444 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2445 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2446 #
2447 </pre></blockquote></p>
2448
2449 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2450 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2451 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2452 a report:</p>
2453
2454 <p><blockquote><pre>
2455 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2456 Directory entries:    9141
2457 Inodes:               9143
2458 Data blocks:          8851
2459 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2460 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2461 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2462 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2463 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2464 #
2465 </pre></blockquote></p>
2466
2467 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2468 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2469 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2470 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2471 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2472 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2473 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2474 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2475 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2476 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2477 best.</p>
2478
2479 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2480 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2481 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2482 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
2483 poster is titled
2484 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2485 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2486 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2487 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2488 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
2489
2490 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2491 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2492 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2493 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
2494 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
2495 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2496 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
2497 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2498
2499 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2500 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2501 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2502 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
2503 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2504 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2505 only read from it.</p>
2506
2507 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2508 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2509 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2510
2511       </div>
2512       <div class="tags">
2513
2514
2515         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2516
2517
2518       </div>
2519     </div>
2520     <div class="padding"></div>
2521
2522     <div class="entry">
2523       <div class="title">
2524         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
2525       </div>
2526       <div class="date">
2527         14th March 2014
2528       </div>
2529       <div class="body">
2530         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2531 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2532 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2533 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2534 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2535 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2536 release (0.2).</p>
2537
2538 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2539 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2540 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2541 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2542 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2543 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2544 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2545 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2546 and build using
2547 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2548 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2549
2550 <pre>
2551 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2552   freedom-maker
2553 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2554   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2555   u-boot-tools
2556 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2557 </pre>
2558
2559 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2560 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2561 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2562 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2563 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2564 kpartx call.</p>
2565
2566 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2567 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2568 the preseed values:</p>
2569
2570 <pre>
2571 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2572 </pre>
2573
2574 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2575 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
2576 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2577 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2578 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2579 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
2580
2581 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2582 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2583 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2584 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2585 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2586 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2587
2588       </div>
2589       <div class="tags">
2590
2591
2592         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2593
2594
2595       </div>
2596     </div>
2597     <div class="padding"></div>
2598
2599     <div class="entry">
2600       <div class="title">
2601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
2602       </div>
2603       <div class="date">
2604         22nd February 2014
2605       </div>
2606       <div class="body">
2607         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2608 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2609 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
2610 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
2611 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2612 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2613 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2614 proper home since then.</p>
2615
2616 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2617 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2618 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
2619 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
2620 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
2621
2622 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2623 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2624 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
2625 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
2626 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2627 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
2628 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
2629 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
2630 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
2631
2632       </div>
2633       <div class="tags">
2634
2635
2636         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2637
2638
2639       </div>
2640     </div>
2641     <div class="padding"></div>
2642
2643     <div class="entry">
2644       <div class="title">
2645         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
2646       </div>
2647       <div class="date">
2648          3rd February 2014
2649       </div>
2650       <div class="body">
2651         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2652 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2653 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
2654 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
2655 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
2656 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
2657 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2658 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
2659 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
2660
2661 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2662 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
2663 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
2664 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
2665 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2666 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
2667
2668 <p><blockquote><pre>
2669 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2670 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
2671 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
2672 dhclient /dev/eth0
2673 </pre></blockquote></p>
2674
2675 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2676 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2677 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
2678
2679 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2680 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2681 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2682 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2683 side.</p>
2684
2685 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2686 stuff:</p>
2687
2688 <p><blockquote><pre>
2689 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2690 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2691 EOF
2692 apt-get update
2693 apt-get dist-upgrade
2694 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2695     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2696 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2697 </pre></blockquote></p>
2698
2699 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2700 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
2701 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2702 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2703 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2704 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2705 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2706 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2707 ssh instead.
2708
2709 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2710 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2711 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2712 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2713 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2714 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
2715
2716 <p><blockquote><pre>
2717 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2718 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2719 EOF
2720 </pre></blockquote></p>
2721
2722 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2723 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2724 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2725 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2726
2727 <p><blockquote><pre>
2728 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2729 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2730 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2731 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2732 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2733 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2734 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2735 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2736 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2737 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2738 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2739 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2740 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2741 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2742 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2743 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2744 #
2745 </pre></blockquote></p>
2746
2747 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2748 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2749 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
2750 command line stuff.<p>
2751
2752       </div>
2753       <div class="tags">
2754
2755
2756         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2757
2758
2759       </div>
2760     </div>
2761     <div class="padding"></div>
2762
2763     <div class="entry">
2764       <div class="title">
2765         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
2766       </div>
2767       <div class="date">
2768         14th January 2014
2769       </div>
2770       <div class="body">
2771         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
2772 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2773 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2774 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2775 the source.  The company behind it provide
2776 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
2777 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2778 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2779 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2780 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
2781 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
2782 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
2783 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2784 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
2785 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
2786 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
2787 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2788 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2789 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2790 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2791 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
2792 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2793 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
2794 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
2795
2796 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
2797
2798 <ul>
2799
2800   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
2801   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
2802   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
2803
2804 </ul>
2805
2806 <p>You can
2807 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2808 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2809 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2810 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2811 include a test suite check.</p>
2812
2813       </div>
2814       <div class="tags">
2815
2816
2817         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2818
2819
2820       </div>
2821     </div>
2822     <div class="padding"></div>
2823
2824     <div class="entry">
2825       <div class="title">
2826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
2827       </div>
2828       <div class="date">
2829         24th November 2013
2830       </div>
2831       <div class="body">
2832         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2833 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2834 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2835 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2836 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
2837 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2838 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2839 is working on.  I checked the
2840 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
2841 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
2842 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
2843 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2844 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2845 These are the release notes:</p>
2846
2847 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
2848
2849 <ul>
2850
2851   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2852    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2853    up.</li>
2854
2855   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
2856
2857   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2858    Matthias Klose.</li>
2859
2860   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2861    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
2862
2863   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2864    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
2865    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
2866
2867 </ul>
2868
2869 <p>You can
2870 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2871 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2872 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2873 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2874 include a testsuite check.</p>
2875
2876       </div>
2877       <div class="tags">
2878
2879
2880         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2881
2882
2883       </div>
2884     </div>
2885     <div class="padding"></div>
2886
2887     <div class="entry">
2888       <div class="title">
2889         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
2890       </div>
2891       <div class="date">
2892          2nd November 2013
2893       </div>
2894       <div class="body">
2895         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
2896 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
2897 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
2898 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
2899 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
2900
2901 <p><pre>
2902 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
2903 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
2904 # Provides:          rsyslog
2905 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
2906 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
2907 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
2908 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
2909 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
2910 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
2911 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
2912 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
2913 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
2914 ### END INIT INFO
2915 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
2916 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
2917 </pre></p>
2918
2919 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
2920 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
2921 info/comments.</p>
2922
2923 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
2924 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
2925
2926 <p><pre>
2927 #!/bin/sh
2928
2929 # Define LSB log_* functions.
2930 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
2931 # and status_of_proc is working.
2932 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
2933
2934 #
2935 # Function that starts the daemon/service
2936
2937 #
2938 do_start()
2939 {
2940         # Return
2941         #   0 if daemon has been started
2942         #   1 if daemon was already running
2943         #   2 if daemon could not be started
2944         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
2945                 || return 1
2946         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2947                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2948                 || return 2
2949         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2950         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2951         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2952 }
2953
2954 #
2955 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2956 #
2957 do_stop()
2958 {
2959         # Return
2960         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
2961         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
2962         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
2963         #   other if a failure occurred
2964         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2965         RETVAL="$?"
2966         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
2967         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2968         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2969         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2970         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2971         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
2972         # sleep for some time.
2973         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2974         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
2975         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2976         rm -f $PIDFILE
2977         return "$RETVAL"
2978 }
2979
2980 #
2981 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2982 #
2983 do_reload() {
2984         #
2985         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
2986         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
2987         # then implement that here.
2988         #
2989         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2990         return 0
2991 }
2992
2993 SCRIPTNAME=$1
2994 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
2995 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
2996 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
2997     script="$1"
2998     shift
2999     . $script
3000 else
3001     exit 0
3002 fi
3003
3004 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3005 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3006
3007 # Exit if the package is not installed
3008 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
3009
3010 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3011 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3012
3013 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3014 . /lib/init/vars.sh
3015
3016 case "$1" in
3017   start)
3018         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3019         do_start
3020         case "$?" in
3021                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3022                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3023         esac
3024         ;;
3025   stop)
3026         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3027         do_stop
3028         case "$?" in
3029                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3030                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3031         esac
3032         ;;
3033   status)
3034         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
3035         ;;
3036   #reload|force-reload)
3037         #
3038         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3039         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3040         #
3041         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3042         #do_reload
3043         #log_end_msg $?
3044         #;;
3045   restart|force-reload)
3046         #
3047         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3048         # 'force-reload' alias
3049         #
3050         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3051         do_stop
3052         case "$?" in
3053           0|1)
3054                 do_start
3055                 case "$?" in
3056                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
3057                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
3058                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
3059                 esac
3060                 ;;
3061           *)
3062                 # Failed to stop
3063                 log_end_msg 1
3064                 ;;
3065         esac
3066         ;;
3067   *)
3068         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
3069         exit 3
3070         ;;
3071 esac
3072
3073 :
3074 </pre></p>
3075
3076 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3077 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3078 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
3079 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
3080
3081 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3082 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3083 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3084 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
3085 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
3086
3087       </div>
3088       <div class="tags">
3089
3090
3091         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3092
3093
3094       </div>
3095     </div>
3096     <div class="padding"></div>
3097
3098     <div class="entry">
3099       <div class="title">
3100         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
3101       </div>
3102       <div class="date">
3103          1st November 2013
3104       </div>
3105       <div class="body">
3106         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
3107 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3108 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3109 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3110 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3111 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
3112 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3113 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3114 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
3115 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3116 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3117 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
3118
3119 <p>The source is now available from
3120 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
3121
3122       </div>
3123       <div class="tags">
3124
3125
3126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3127
3128
3129       </div>
3130     </div>
3131     <div class="padding"></div>
3132
3133     <div class="entry">
3134       <div class="title">
3135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
3136       </div>
3137       <div class="date">
3138         27th October 2013
3139       </div>
3140       <div class="body">
3141         <p>The
3142 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
3143 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
3144 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3145 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3146 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3147 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
3148 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3149 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3150 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3151 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3152 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3153 Raspberry Pi.</p>
3154
3155 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3156 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3157 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3158 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3159 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3160 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3161 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
3162 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3163 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3164 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
3165 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
3166 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
3167 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3168 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3169 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
3170 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3171 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
3172 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3173 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3174 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
3175 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3176 available from
3177 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3178 upstream project page</a>.</p>
3179
3180 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3181 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3182 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3183 list:</p>
3184
3185 <p><pre>
3186 #!/bin/sh
3187 set -e # Exit on first error
3188 rootdir="$1"
3189 cd "$rootdir"
3190 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
3191 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3192 EOF
3193 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
3194 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3195 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3196     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3197 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3198 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3199 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3200 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3201 </pre></p>
3202
3203 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3204 to build the image:</p>
3205
3206 <pre>
3207 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3208     --variant minbase \
3209     --arch armel \
3210     --distribution jessie \
3211     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3212     --image test.img \
3213     --size 600M \
3214     --bootsize 64M \
3215     --boottype vfat \
3216     --log-level debug \
3217     --verbose \
3218     --no-kernel \
3219     --no-extlinux \
3220     --root-password raspberry \
3221     --hostname raspberrypi \
3222     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3223     --customize `pwd`/customize \
3224     --package netbase \
3225     --package git-core \
3226     --package binutils \
3227     --package ca-certificates \
3228     --package wget \
3229     --package kmod
3230 </pre></p>
3231
3232 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3233 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3234 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3235 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
3236 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3237 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3238 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
3239
3240 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3241 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
3242 build dependency list.</p>
3243
3244 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3245 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3246 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
3247 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
3248
3249       </div>
3250       <div class="tags">
3251
3252
3253         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
3254
3255
3256       </div>
3257     </div>
3258     <div class="padding"></div>
3259
3260     <div class="entry">
3261       <div class="title">
3262         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
3263       </div>
3264       <div class="date">
3265         15th October 2013
3266       </div>
3267       <div class="body">
3268         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3269 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3270 these. :)</p>
3271
3272 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
3273 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
3274 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3275 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
3276 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
3277 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
3278 hope you will to. :)</p>
3279
3280 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3281 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3282 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
3283 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
3284 donated.  Are you next?</p>
3285
3286 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3287 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3288 statement under the heading
3289 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3290 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3291 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3292 too.</p>
3293
3294       </div>
3295       <div class="tags">
3296
3297
3298         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3299
3300
3301       </div>
3302     </div>
3303     <div class="padding"></div>
3304
3305     <div class="entry">
3306       <div class="title">
3307         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
3308       </div>
3309       <div class="date">
3310         27th September 2013
3311       </div>
3312       <div class="body">
3313         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3314 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3315 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3316 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3317
3318 <ul>
3319
3320 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3321 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3322
3323 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3324 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3325
3326 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3327 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3328 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3329 (Youtube)</li>
3330
3331 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3332 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3333
3334 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3335 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3336
3337 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3338 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3339 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3340
3341 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3342 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
3343 (Youtube)</li>
3344
3345 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3346 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
3347
3348 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3349 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
3350
3351 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3352 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3353 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
3354
3355 </ul>
3356
3357 <p>A larger list is available from
3358 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3359 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
3360
3361 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3362 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3363 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3364 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3365 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3366 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3367 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
3368 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3369 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
3370 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3371 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3372
3373       </div>
3374       <div class="tags">
3375
3376
3377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3378
3379
3380       </div>
3381     </div>
3382     <div class="padding"></div>
3383
3384     <div class="entry">
3385       <div class="title">
3386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
3387       </div>
3388       <div class="date">
3389         10th September 2013
3390       </div>
3391       <div class="body">
3392         <p>I was introduced to the
3393 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
3394 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3395 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3396 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
3397 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3398 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
3399 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3400 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
3401
3402 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3403 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3404 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3405 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3406 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
3407
3408 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3409 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3410 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3411 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3412 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
3413 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
3414 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
3415 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3416 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
3417 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
3418 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3419 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3420 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3421 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3422 missing in Debian).</p>
3423
3424 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3425 scripts
3426 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
3427 and a administrative web interface
3428 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
3429 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3430 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
3431 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3432 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
3433 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3434 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
3435 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3436 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
3437 this is really working yet, see
3438 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3439 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
3440 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3441 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3442 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3443 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3444 with lots of half baked features.</p>
3445
3446 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3447 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3448 at.</p>
3449
3450 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
3451
3452 <ol>
3453
3454 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
3455 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
3456 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3457 to the Debian installer:<p>
3458 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
3459
3460 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3461 install on.</li>
3462
3463 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3464 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3465
3466 </ol>
3467
3468 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3469
3470 <ol>
3471
3472 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3473 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3474 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3475 <pre>
3476 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3477 </pre></li>
3478 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3479 <pre>
3480 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3481    apt-key add -
3482 apt-get update
3483 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3484 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3485 </pre></li>
3486 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
3487
3488 </ol>
3489
3490 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3491 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3492 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3493 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
3494 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
3495
3496 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3497 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3498 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3499 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
3500
3501 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3502 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
3503 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
3504 irc.debian.org and the
3505 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
3506 mailing list</a>.</p>
3507
3508 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3509 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3510 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3511 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3512 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
3513 default password is 'secret'.</p>
3514
3515       </div>
3516       <div class="tags">
3517
3518
3519         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3520
3521
3522       </div>
3523     </div>
3524     <div class="padding"></div>
3525
3526     <div class="entry">
3527       <div class="title">
3528         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
3529       </div>
3530       <div class="date">
3531         18th August 2013
3532       </div>
3533       <div class="body">
3534         <p>Earlier, I reported about
3535 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
3536 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
3537 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
3538 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
3539 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
3540 currently on the disk.</p>
3541
3542 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
3543 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
3544 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
3545 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
3546 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
3547 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
3548 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
3549 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
3550 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
3551 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
3552 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
3553 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
3554 the broken disks.</p>
3555
3556       </div>
3557       <div class="tags">
3558
3559
3560         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3561
3562
3563       </div>
3564     </div>
3565     <div class="padding"></div>
3566
3567     <div class="entry">
3568       <div class="title">
3569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
3570       </div>
3571       <div class="date">
3572         17th July 2013
3573       </div>
3574       <div class="body">
3575         <p>Today I switched to
3576 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
3577 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
3578 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3579 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
3580 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3581 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3582 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3583 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3584 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
3585 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3586 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3587 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3588 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3589 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3590 station from now on.</p>
3591
3592 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3593 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3594 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
3595 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3596 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3597 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
3598 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
3599 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3600 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3601 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3602 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3603 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3604
3605 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3606 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
3607 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3608 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3609 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
3610 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
3611 parameters are tuned:</p>
3612
3613 <ul>
3614
3615 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3616     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3617
3618 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3619     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3620     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3621
3622 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3623     systems.</li>
3624
3625 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
3626     /etc/fstab.</li>
3627
3628 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
3629
3630 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
3631     cron.daily).</li>
3632
3633 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
3634     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
3635
3636 </ul>
3637
3638 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
3639 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
3640 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
3641 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
3642 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
3643 from getting the data on the disk (see
3644 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
3645 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
3646 right thing to do.</p>
3647
3648 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
3649 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
3650 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
3651
3652 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
3653 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
3654 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
3655 instead of during my work.</p>
3656
3657 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
3658 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
3659
3660 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
3661 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
3662 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
3663
3664 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
3665 there.</p>
3666
3667 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3668 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3669 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3670 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3671 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3672 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3673 back.</p>
3674
3675       </div>
3676       <div class="tags">
3677
3678
3679         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3680
3681
3682       </div>
3683     </div>
3684     <div class="padding"></div>
3685
3686     <div class="entry">
3687       <div class="title">
3688         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
3689       </div>
3690       <div class="date">
3691         10th July 2013
3692       </div>
3693       <div class="body">
3694         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3695 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3696 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3697 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3698 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3699 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3700 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3701 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3702
3703 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3704 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3705 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3706 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3707 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3708 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3709 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3710 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3711 lock up when I download a new
3712 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3713 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3714 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3715
3716 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3717 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3718 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3719 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3720 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3721 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3722
3723 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3724 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3725 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3726 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3727 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3728 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3729
3730 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3731 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
3732 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3733 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3734 exist).</p>
3735
3736       </div>
3737       <div class="tags">
3738
3739
3740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3741
3742
3743       </div>
3744     </div>
3745     <div class="padding"></div>
3746
3747     <div class="entry">
3748       <div class="title">
3749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
3750       </div>
3751       <div class="date">
3752          9th July 2013
3753       </div>
3754       <div class="body">
3755         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
3756 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3757 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
3758 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
3759 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3760 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
3761 Bitraf</a>.</p>
3762
3763 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
3764 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
3765 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
3766 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
3767 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
3768
3769       </div>
3770       <div class="tags">
3771
3772
3773         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3774
3775
3776       </div>
3777     </div>
3778     <div class="padding"></div>
3779
3780     <div class="entry">
3781       <div class="title">
3782         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
3783       </div>
3784       <div class="date">
3785          5th July 2013
3786       </div>
3787       <div class="body">
3788         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3789 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3790 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
3791 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3792 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
3793 ended up picking a
3794 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
3795 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3796 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
3797 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
3798 on that below.</p>
3799
3800 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3801 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3802 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3803 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3804 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3805 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3806 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3807 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
3808 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
3809
3810 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3811 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3812 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3813 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
3814 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3815 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3816 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
3817
3818 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
3819 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
3820
3821 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
3822 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3823 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3824 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3825 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3826 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
3827 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3828 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3829 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
3830 kernel developers as
3831 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3832 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3833 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3834 Lenovo forums, both for
3835 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3836 2012-11-10</a> and for
3837 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
3838 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3839 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3840 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3841 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3842 There is even a
3843 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3844 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3845 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3846
3847 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3848 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3849 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3850 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3851 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3852 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3853 fixed. :)</p>
3854
3855       </div>
3856       <div class="tags">
3857
3858
3859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3860
3861
3862       </div>
3863     </div>
3864     <div class="padding"></div>
3865
3866     <div class="entry">
3867       <div class="title">
3868         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
3869       </div>
3870       <div class="date">
3871          4th July 2013
3872       </div>
3873       <div class="body">
3874         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3875 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3876 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3877 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3878 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3879 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3880 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3881 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3882 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3883
3884 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3885 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3886 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3887 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3888 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3889 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3890 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3891
3892 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3893 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3894 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3895 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3896 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3897 new laptop now. :)</p>
3898
3899 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3900
3901       </div>
3902       <div class="tags">
3903
3904
3905         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3906
3907
3908       </div>
3909     </div>
3910     <div class="padding"></div>
3911
3912     <div class="entry">
3913       <div class="title">
3914         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
3915       </div>
3916       <div class="date">
3917         25th June 2013
3918       </div>
3919       <div class="body">
3920         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3921 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3922 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3923 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3924 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3925 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3926 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3927 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3928 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3929 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3930 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3931
3932 <p><pre>
3933 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3934 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3935 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3936 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3937 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3938 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3939 firmware-ipw2x00
3940 firmware-ipw2x00
3941 Preconfiguring packages ...
3942 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3943 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3944 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3945 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3946 #
3947 </pre></p>
3948
3949 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3950 printed instead:</p>
3951
3952 <p><pre>
3953 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3954 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3955 #
3956 </pre></p>
3957
3958 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3959 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3960
3961 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3962 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3963 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3964 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3965 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3966 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3967 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3968 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3969 machine.</p>
3970
3971 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3972 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3973 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3974 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3975 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3976 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3977
3978       </div>
3979       <div class="tags">
3980
3981
3982         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3983
3984
3985       </div>
3986     </div>
3987     <div class="padding"></div>
3988
3989     <div class="entry">
3990       <div class="title">
3991         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
3992       </div>
3993       <div class="date">
3994         11th June 2013
3995       </div>
3996       <div class="body">
3997         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3998 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3999 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
4000 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
4001 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
4002 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
4003 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
4004 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
4005 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
4006 i915 driver used by the
4007 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4008 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
4009
4010 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
4011 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
4012 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
4013 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
4014 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
4015
4016 <pre>
4017 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
4018 update-initramfs -u -k all
4019 </pre>
4020
4021 <p>Since March 2012 there is
4022 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
4023 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
4024 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
4025 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
4026 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
4027 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
4028 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
4029 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
4030 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
4031 number.</p>
4032
4033 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4034 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4035
4036 <p><pre>
4037 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4038     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4039     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4040  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4041  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4042     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4043  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4044     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4045  Latency: 0
4046  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4047  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4048  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4049  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4050  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4051  Capabilities: <access denied>
4052  Kernel driver in use: i915
4053 </pre></p>
4054
4055 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4056
4057 <p><pre>
4058 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4059        ...
4060         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4061         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4062        ...
4063 }
4064 </pre></p>
4065
4066 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4067 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4068 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4069 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
4070 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4071 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4072 yet shown up in
4073 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
4074 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4075 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4076 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4077 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4078 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4079
4080 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4081 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
4082 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
4083 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4084 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
4085 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4086 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4087 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4088 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4089 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4090 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4091 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4092
4093 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4094 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4095 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4096 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4097 backlight.</p>
4098
4099       </div>
4100       <div class="tags">
4101
4102
4103         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4104
4105
4106       </div>
4107     </div>
4108     <div class="padding"></div>
4109
4110     <div class="entry">
4111       <div class="title">
4112         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
4113       </div>
4114       <div class="date">
4115         27th May 2013
4116       </div>
4117       <div class="body">
4118         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4119 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
4120 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4121 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4122 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4123 and Windows 8.</p>
4124
4125 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4126 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4127 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4128 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4129 enough to tell.</p>
4130
4131 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4132 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4133 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4134 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4135 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4136 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4137 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4138 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4139 to follow.</p>
4140
4141 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4142 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4143 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4144 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4145 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4146 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4147 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4148 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4149
4150 <p>I've updated the
4151 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4152 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4153 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4154 machine.</p>
4155
4156 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4157 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4158
4159       </div>
4160       <div class="tags">
4161
4162
4163         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4164
4165
4166       </div>
4167     </div>
4168     <div class="padding"></div>
4169
4170     <div class="entry">
4171       <div class="title">
4172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
4173       </div>
4174       <div class="date">
4175         25th May 2013
4176       </div>
4177       <div class="body">
4178         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4179 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4180 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4181 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4182 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4183 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4184
4185 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4186 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4187 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4188 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4189 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4190 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4191 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4192 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4193 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4194 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4195
4196 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4197 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4198 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4199 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4200 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4201 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4202
4203 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4204 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4205 on new Laptops?</p>
4206
4207       </div>
4208       <div class="tags">
4209
4210
4211         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4212
4213
4214       </div>
4215     </div>
4216     <div class="padding"></div>
4217
4218     <div class="entry">
4219       <div class="title">
4220         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
4221       </div>
4222       <div class="date">
4223         17th May 2013
4224       </div>
4225       <div class="body">
4226         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4227 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4228 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4229 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4230 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4231 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4232 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4233 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4234 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4235 donate some money</a>.
4236
4237 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4238 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4239 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4240 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4241 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4242
4243 <p>The script,
4244 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
4245 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4246 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4247 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4248
4249 <ol>
4250
4251 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4252 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4253 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4254     our configuration.</li>
4255 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4256     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4257     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4258     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4259 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4260     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4261 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4262
4263 </ol>
4264
4265 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4266 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4267 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4268 the needed packages.</p>
4269
4270 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4271 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4272 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4273 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4274 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4275 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4276
4277 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4278 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4279 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4280
4281 <p><pre>
4282 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4283 DESKTOP="lxde"
4284 </pre></p>
4285
4286 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4287 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4288 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4289 boot.</p>
4290
4291       </div>
4292       <div class="tags">
4293
4294
4295         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4296
4297
4298       </div>
4299     </div>
4300     <div class="padding"></div>
4301
4302     <div class="entry">
4303       <div class="title">
4304         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
4305       </div>
4306       <div class="date">
4307         11th May 2013
4308       </div>
4309       <div class="body">
4310         <P>In January,
4311 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4312 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4313 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4314 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4315 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4316 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4317 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4318 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4319 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4320 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4321 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4322 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4323
4324 <p><table>
4325 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
4326 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4327 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
4328 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4329 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4330 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4331 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
4332 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
4333 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
4334 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4335 </table></p>
4336
4337 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4338 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4339 available in experimental.</p>
4340
4341 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4342 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4343 for LEGO designers.</p>
4344
4345       </div>
4346       <div class="tags">
4347
4348
4349         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
4350
4351
4352       </div>
4353     </div>
4354     <div class="padding"></div>
4355
4356     <div class="entry">
4357       <div class="title">
4358         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
4359       </div>
4360       <div class="date">
4361          5th May 2013
4362       </div>
4363       <div class="body">
4364         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4365 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4366 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4367 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4368 soon.</p>
4369
4370 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4371 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4372 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4373 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4374 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4375 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4376 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4377 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4378 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4379 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4380 Edu.</a>
4381
4382 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4383 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4384 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4385 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4386 follow.<p>
4387
4388       </div>
4389       <div class="tags">
4390
4391
4392         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4393
4394
4395       </div>
4396     </div>
4397     <div class="padding"></div>
4398
4399     <div class="entry">
4400       <div class="title">
4401         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
4402       </div>
4403       <div class="date">
4404          3rd April 2013
4405       </div>
4406       <div class="body">
4407         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4408 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4409 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4410 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4411
4412 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4413 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4414 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4415 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4416 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4417 BTS. :)</p>
4418
4419       </div>
4420       <div class="tags">
4421
4422
4423         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4424
4425
4426       </div>
4427     </div>
4428     <div class="padding"></div>
4429
4430     <div class="entry">
4431       <div class="title">
4432         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
4433       </div>
4434       <div class="date">
4435          2nd February 2013
4436       </div>
4437       <div class="body">
4438         <p>My
4439 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4440 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4441 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4442 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4443 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4444 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4445 version too.</p>
4446
4447 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4448 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4449 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4450 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4451 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4452 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4453 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4454 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4455
4456 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4457 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4458 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4459 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4460 it. :)</p>
4461
4462 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4463 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4464 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4465
4466       </div>
4467       <div class="tags">
4468
4469
4470         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4471
4472
4473       </div>
4474     </div>
4475     <div class="padding"></div>
4476
4477     <div class="entry">
4478       <div class="title">
4479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4480       </div>
4481       <div class="date">
4482         22nd January 2013
4483       </div>
4484       <div class="body">
4485         <p>Yesterday, I
4486 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4487 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4488 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4489 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4490 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
4491 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4492 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4493 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4494 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
4495 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4496 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
4497 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
4498 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
4499
4500 <pre>
4501 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4502 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4503 </pre>
4504
4505 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
4506 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4507 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4508 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
4509
4510 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4511 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
4512 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4513 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4514 word.</p>
4515
4516 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4517 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4518 process.</p>
4519
4520 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4521 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
4522
4523       </div>
4524       <div class="tags">
4525
4526
4527         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4528
4529
4530       </div>
4531     </div>
4532     <div class="padding"></div>
4533
4534     <div class="entry">
4535       <div class="title">
4536         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
4537       </div>
4538       <div class="date">
4539         21st January 2013
4540       </div>
4541       <div class="body">
4542         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4543 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4544 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
4545 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
4546 it, fetch the
4547 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4548 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
4549 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
4550 autostart script.</p>
4551
4552 <p>The design is simple:</p>
4553
4554 <ul>
4555
4556 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4557 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
4558
4559 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4560 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4561 initially did.</li>
4562
4563 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4564 the APT database, a database
4565 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4566 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
4567
4568 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4569 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4570 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4571 package or packages.</li>
4572
4573 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4574 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
4575
4576 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4577 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
4578
4579 </ul>
4580
4581 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
4582 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
4583 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4584 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
4585
4586 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4587 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4588 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4589 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4590 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
4591
4592 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4593 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
4594 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4595 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4596 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4597 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4598 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4599 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
4600
4601 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4602 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4603 '<tt>svn checkout
4604 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4605 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
4606 devscripts package.</p>
4607
4608 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
4609 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4610 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
4611 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4612 instructions</a> for details.</p>
4613
4614       </div>
4615       <div class="tags">
4616
4617
4618         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4619
4620
4621       </div>
4622     </div>
4623     <div class="padding"></div>
4624
4625     <div class="entry">
4626       <div class="title">
4627         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
4628       </div>
4629       <div class="date">
4630         19th January 2013
4631       </div>
4632       <div class="body">
4633         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
4634 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4635 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
4636 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
4637 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
4638 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
4639 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4640 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4641 not a durable solution.
4642
4643 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
4644 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
4645
4646 <ul>
4647
4648 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4649   than A4).</li>
4650 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
4651 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
4652 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
4653 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
4654 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
4655 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
4656 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
4657 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
4658 size).</li>
4659 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4660   X.org packages.</li>
4661 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4662   the time).
4663
4664 </ul>
4665
4666 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4667 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4668 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4669 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4670 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4671 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4672 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4673 still be useful.</p>
4674
4675 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4676 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4677 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4678 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4679 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4680 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4681
4682       </div>
4683       <div class="tags">
4684
4685
4686         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4687
4688
4689       </div>
4690     </div>
4691     <div class="padding"></div>
4692
4693     <div class="entry">
4694       <div class="title">
4695         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
4696       </div>
4697       <div class="date">
4698         18th January 2013
4699       </div>
4700       <div class="body">
4701         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4702 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4703 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4704 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4705 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4706 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4707 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4708
4709 <pre>
4710 #!/usr/bin/python
4711 import sys
4712 import apt
4713 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4714     cache = apt.Cache()
4715     cache.open(None)
4716     thepkgs = []
4717     for pkg in cache:
4718         version = pkg.candidate
4719         if version is None:
4720             version = pkg.installed
4721         if version is None:
4722             continue
4723         record = version.record
4724         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4725             continue
4726         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4727         for t in mime_types:
4728             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4729             if t == mimetype:
4730                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4731     return thepkgs
4732 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4733 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4734     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4735 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4736 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4737     print "  %s" %pkg
4738 </pre>
4739
4740 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4741
4742 <pre>
4743 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4744 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4745   gecko-mediaplayer
4746 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4747 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4748   browser-plugin-gnash
4749 %
4750 </pre>
4751
4752 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4753 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4754 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
4755 anyone working on adding it?</p>
4756
4757 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4758 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4759 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
4760 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
4761 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4762 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
4763
4764       </div>
4765       <div class="tags">
4766
4767
4768         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4769
4770
4771       </div>
4772     </div>
4773     <div class="padding"></div>
4774
4775     <div class="entry">
4776       <div class="title">
4777         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
4778       </div>
4779       <div class="date">
4780         16th January 2013
4781       </div>
4782       <div class="body">
4783         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
4784 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
4785 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4786 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4787 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
4788 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4789 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4790 downloaded by the browser.</p>
4791
4792 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4793 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4794 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
4795 can be found on the
4796 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4797 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
4798 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
4799 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4800 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
4801
4802 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
4803
4804 <pre>
4805   count MIME type
4806   ----- -----------------------
4807      32 text/plain
4808      30 audio/mpeg
4809      29 image/png
4810      28 image/jpeg
4811      27 application/ogg
4812      26 audio/x-mp3
4813      25 image/tiff
4814      25 image/gif
4815      22 image/bmp
4816      22 audio/x-wav
4817      20 audio/x-flac
4818      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4819      18 video/x-ms-asf
4820      18 audio/x-musepack
4821      18 audio/x-mpeg
4822      18 application/x-ogg
4823      17 video/mpeg
4824      17 audio/x-scpls
4825      17 audio/ogg
4826      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4827 </pre>
4828
4829 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
4830
4831 <pre>
4832   count MIME type
4833   ----- -----------------------
4834      33 text/plain
4835      32 image/png
4836      32 image/jpeg
4837      29 audio/mpeg
4838      27 image/gif
4839      26 image/tiff
4840      26 application/ogg
4841      25 audio/x-mp3
4842      22 image/bmp
4843      21 audio/x-wav
4844      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4845      19 audio/x-mpeg
4846      18 video/mpeg
4847      18 audio/x-scpls
4848      18 audio/x-flac
4849      18 application/x-ogg
4850      17 video/x-ms-asf
4851      17 text/html
4852      17 audio/x-musepack
4853      16 image/x-xbitmap
4854 </pre>
4855
4856 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
4857
4858 <pre>
4859   count MIME type
4860   ----- -----------------------
4861      31 text/plain
4862      31 image/png
4863      31 image/jpeg
4864      29 audio/mpeg
4865      28 application/ogg
4866      27 image/gif
4867      26 image/tiff
4868      26 audio/x-mp3
4869      23 audio/x-wav
4870      22 image/bmp
4871      21 audio/x-flac
4872      20 audio/x-mpegurl
4873      19 audio/x-mpeg
4874      18 video/x-ms-asf
4875      18 video/mpeg
4876      18 audio/x-scpls
4877      18 application/x-ogg
4878      17 audio/x-musepack
4879      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4880      16 video/x-msvideo
4881 </pre>
4882
4883 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
4884 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
4885 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
4886 issues.</p>
4887
4888 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
4889 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
4890
4891       </div>
4892       <div class="tags">
4893
4894
4895         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4896
4897
4898       </div>
4899     </div>
4900     <div class="padding"></div>
4901
4902     <div class="entry">
4903       <div class="title">
4904         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
4905       </div>
4906       <div class="date">
4907         15th January 2013
4908       </div>
4909       <div class="body">
4910         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
4911 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
4912 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
4913 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
4914 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
4915 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
4916 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
4917 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
4918 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
4919 packages.</p>
4920
4921 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
4922 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
4923 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
4924 modalias.</p>
4925
4926 <p><blockquote>
4927 Package: package-name
4928 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
4929 </blockquote></p>
4930
4931 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
4932 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
4933
4934 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
4935 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
4936
4937 <p><blockquote>
4938 Package: cheese
4939 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
4940 </blockquote></p>
4941
4942 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
4943 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
4944
4945 <p><blockquote>
4946 Package: pcmciautils
4947 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
4948 </blockquote></p>
4949
4950 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
4951 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
4952
4953 <p><blockquote>
4954 Package: colorhug-client
4955 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
4956 </blockquote></p>
4957
4958 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
4959 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
4960 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
4961
4962 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
4963 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
4964 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
4965 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
4966 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
4967 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
4968 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
4969 Raring.</p>
4970
4971 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
4972 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
4973 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
4974 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
4975 try the
4976 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
4977 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
4978 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
4979 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
4980
4981 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
4982 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
4983
4984 <p><blockquote>
4985 % ./hw-support-lookup
4986 <br>yubikey-personalization
4987 <br>%
4988 </blockquote></p>
4989
4990 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
4991 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
4992
4993 <p><blockquote>
4994 % ./hw-support-lookup
4995 <br>pcmciautils
4996 <br>%
4997 </blockquote></p>
4998
4999 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5000 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5001 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
5002
5003 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5004 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
5005 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5006 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
5007 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5008 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5009 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
5010 see if it work.</p>
5011
5012 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5013 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5014 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5015 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5016
5017       </div>
5018       <div class="tags">
5019
5020
5021         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5022
5023
5024       </div>
5025     </div>
5026     <div class="padding"></div>
5027
5028     <div class="entry">
5029       <div class="title">
5030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
5031       </div>
5032       <div class="date">
5033         14th January 2013
5034       </div>
5035       <div class="body">
5036         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5037 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5038 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5039 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
5040 in
5041 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5042 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
5043
5044 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
5045
5046 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5047 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
5048 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
5049 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
5050 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
5051 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
5052
5053 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5054 this shell script:</p>
5055
5056 <pre>
5057 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
5058 </pre>
5059
5060 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5061 using modinfo:</p>
5062
5063 <pre>
5064 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5065 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5066 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5067 %
5068 </pre>
5069
5070 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
5071
5072 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
5073 Bridge memory controller:</p>
5074
5075 <p><blockquote>
5076 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5077 </blockquote></p>
5078
5079 <p>This represent these values:</p>
5080
5081 <pre>
5082  v   00008086  (vendor)
5083  d   00002770  (device)
5084  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
5085  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
5086  bc  06        (bus class)
5087  sc  00        (bus subclass)
5088  i   00        (interface)
5089 </pre>
5090
5091 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5092 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5093 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
5094 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
5095
5096 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5097 means.</p>
5098
5099 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
5100
5101 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
5102 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
5103
5104 <p><blockquote>
5105 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5106 </blockquote></p>
5107
5108 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
5109
5110 <pre>
5111  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
5112  p    0001  (device product)
5113  d    0206  (bcddevice)
5114  dc     09  (device class)
5115  dsc    00  (device subclass)
5116  dp     00  (device protocol)
5117  ic     09  (interface class)
5118  isc    00  (interface subclass)
5119  ip     00  (interface protocol)
5120 </pre>
5121
5122 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
5123 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
5124 these alias entries show up:</p>
5125
5126 <p><blockquote>
5127 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5128 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5129 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5130 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5131 </blockquote></p>
5132
5133 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
5134 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
5135 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
5136
5137 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
5138
5139 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
5140 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
5141
5142 <p><blockquote>
5143 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5144 </blockquote></p>
5145
5146 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
5147
5148 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
5149
5150 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5151 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5152 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
5153
5154 <p><blockquote>
5155 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5156 </blockquote></p>
5157
5158 <p>The values present are</p>
5159
5160 <pre>
5161  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
5162  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
5163  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
5164  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
5165  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
5166  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
5167  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
5168  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
5169  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
5170  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
5171  ct   10             (chassis type)
5172  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
5173 </pre>
5174
5175 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
5176 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
5177
5178 <pre>
5179   3 Desktop
5180   4 Low Profile Desktop
5181   5 Pizza Box
5182   6 Mini Tower
5183   7 Tower
5184   8 Portable
5185   9 Laptop
5186  10 Notebook
5187  11 Hand Held
5188  12 Docking Station
5189  13 All In One
5190  14 Sub Notebook
5191  15 Space-saving
5192  16 Lunch Box
5193  17 Main Server Chassis
5194  18 Expansion Chassis
5195  19 Sub Chassis
5196  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5197  21 Peripheral Chassis
5198  22 RAID Chassis
5199  23 Rack Mount Chassis
5200  24 Sealed-case PC
5201  25 Multi-system
5202  26 CompactPCI
5203  27 AdvancedTCA
5204  28 Blade
5205  29 Blade Enclosing
5206 </pre>
5207
5208 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5209 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5210 claim it is a desktop.</p>
5211
5212 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
5213
5214 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
5215 test machine:</p>
5216
5217 <p><blockquote>
5218 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5219 </blockquote></p>
5220
5221 <p>The values present are</p>
5222
5223 <pre>
5224   ty  01  (type)
5225   pr  00  (prototype)
5226   id  00  (id)
5227   ex  00  (extra)
5228 </pre>
5229
5230 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
5231 the valid values are.</p>
5232
5233 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
5234
5235 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5236 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5237 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5238 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5239 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
5240 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5241 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
5242
5243 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
5244
5245 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5246 one can use the following shell script:</p>
5247
5248 <pre>
5249   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
5250     echo "$id" ; \
5251     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
5252   done
5253 </pre>
5254
5255 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5256 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
5257
5258 <pre>
5259   acpi:ACPI0003:
5260     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5261   acpi:device:
5262   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5263   acpi:IBM0068:
5264     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5265     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5266     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5267     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5268   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5269     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5270     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5271     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5272   [...]
5273 </pre>
5274
5275 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5276 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5277 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5278 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5279
5280 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5281 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5282 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
5283
5284       </div>
5285       <div class="tags">
5286
5287
5288         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5289
5290
5291       </div>
5292     </div>
5293     <div class="padding"></div>
5294
5295     <div class="entry">
5296       <div class="title">
5297         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
5298       </div>
5299       <div class="date">
5300         10th January 2013
5301       </div>
5302       <div class="body">
5303         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5304 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5305 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5306 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
5307 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
5308 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5309 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5310 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
5311 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5312 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
5313 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5314 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
5315 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5316 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
5317 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5318 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5319 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
5320 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
5321
5322       </div>
5323       <div class="tags">
5324
5325
5326         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
5327
5328
5329       </div>
5330     </div>
5331     <div class="padding"></div>
5332
5333     <div class="entry">
5334       <div class="title">
5335         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
5336       </div>
5337       <div class="date">
5338          9th January 2013
5339       </div>
5340       <div class="body">
5341         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5342 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5343 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5344 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5345 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5346 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5347 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5348 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5349 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5350 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5351 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5352
5353 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5354 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5355 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5356 simple:
5357
5358 <ul>
5359
5360 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5361   starting when a user log in.</li>
5362
5363 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5364   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5365
5366 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5367   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5368   packages.</li>
5369
5370 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5371   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5372
5373 </ul>
5374
5375 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5376 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5377 discover database to find packages and
5378 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5379 packages.</p>
5380
5381 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5382 draft package is now checked into
5383 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5384 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5385 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5386 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5387 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5388 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5389 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5390 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5391 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5392 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5393 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5394 because of the freeze).</p>
5395
5396 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5397 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5398 inserted):</p>
5399
5400 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5401
5402 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5403 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5404 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5405
5406 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5407 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5408 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5409 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5410 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5411 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5412 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5413
5414 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5415 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5416 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5417 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5418 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5419 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5420 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5421 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5422 not be installed?</p>
5423
5424 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5425 please send me an email. :)</p>
5426
5427       </div>
5428       <div class="tags">
5429
5430
5431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5432
5433
5434       </div>
5435     </div>
5436     <div class="padding"></div>
5437
5438     <div class="entry">
5439       <div class="title">
5440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
5441       </div>
5442       <div class="date">
5443          2nd January 2013
5444       </div>
5445       <div class="body">
5446         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5447 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5448 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5449 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5450 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5451 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5452 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5453 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5454 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5455 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5456
5457 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5458 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5459 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5460
5461       </div>
5462       <div class="tags">
5463
5464
5465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
5466
5467
5468       </div>
5469     </div>
5470     <div class="padding"></div>
5471
5472     <div class="entry">
5473       <div class="title">
5474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
5475       </div>
5476       <div class="date">
5477         25th December 2012
5478       </div>
5479       <div class="body">
5480         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5481 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5482
5483 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
5484 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5485 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5486 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5487 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
5488 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5489 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5490 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
5491 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5492 name.</p>
5493
5494 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5495 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5496 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
5497
5498 <blockquote><pre>
5499 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5500 cd bitcoin
5501 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5502 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5503 </pre></blockquote>
5504
5505 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
5506 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5507 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
5508 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5509 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
5510 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5511 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5512 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5513 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
5514
5515 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5516 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5517 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5518
5519       </div>
5520       <div class="tags">
5521
5522
5523         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5524
5525
5526       </div>
5527     </div>
5528     <div class="padding"></div>
5529
5530     <div class="entry">
5531       <div class="title">
5532         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
5533       </div>
5534       <div class="date">
5535         21st December 2012
5536       </div>
5537       <div class="body">
5538         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5539 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
5540 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5541 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
5542 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5543 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
5544 is now maintained by a
5545 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5546 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
5547 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5548 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5549 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5550 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5551 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
5552 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5553 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5554 Corallo in a
5555 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5556 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5557 Debian package.</p>
5558
5559 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5560 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5561 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5562 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5563 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5564 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5565 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5566 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
5567 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5568 new version to unstable.
5569
5570 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5571 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
5572 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5573 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5574 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5575 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5576 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5577 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
5578 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5579 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5580 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
5581 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5582 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5583 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
5584 have not tested them.</p>
5585
5586 <p>My
5587 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5588 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5589 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5590 years ago, as can be
5591 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5592 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
5593 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5594 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5595 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
5596 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5597 the same address as last time,
5598 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5599
5600       </div>
5601       <div class="tags">
5602
5603
5604         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5605
5606
5607       </div>
5608     </div>
5609     <div class="padding"></div>
5610
5611     <div class="entry">
5612       <div class="title">
5613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
5614       </div>
5615       <div class="date">
5616          7th September 2012
5617       </div>
5618       <div class="body">
5619         <p>As I
5620 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
5621 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
5622 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
5623 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
5624 repository for the project</a>.</p>
5625
5626 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
5627 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
5628 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
5629 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
5630
5631 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
5632 PostScript formats at
5633 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
5634 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
5635
5636       </div>
5637       <div class="tags">
5638
5639
5640         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
5641
5642
5643       </div>
5644     </div>
5645     <div class="padding"></div>
5646
5647     <div class="entry">
5648       <div class="title">
5649         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
5650       </div>
5651       <div class="date">
5652         16th August 2012
5653       </div>
5654       <div class="body">
5655         <p>I dag fyller
5656 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
5657 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
5658 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
5659
5660       </div>
5661       <div class="tags">
5662
5663
5664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
5665
5666
5667       </div>
5668     </div>
5669     <div class="padding"></div>
5670
5671     <div class="entry">
5672       <div class="title">
5673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
5674       </div>
5675       <div class="date">
5676         24th June 2012
5677       </div>
5678       <div class="body">
5679         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
5680 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
5681 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
5682 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
5683 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
5684 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
5685 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
5686 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
5687 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
5688 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
5689 missing in my book.</p>
5690
5691 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
5692 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
5693 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
5694 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
5695 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
5696 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
5697 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
5698
5699       </div>
5700       <div class="tags">
5701
5702
5703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
5704
5705
5706       </div>
5707     </div>
5708     <div class="padding"></div>
5709
5710     <div class="entry">
5711       <div class="title">
5712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
5713       </div>
5714       <div class="date">
5715         21st November 2011
5716       </div>
5717       <div class="body">
5718         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5719 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5720 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5721 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5722 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5723 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5724 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5725 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5726 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5727 the tools to do so.</p>
5728
5729 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5730 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5731 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5732 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
5733
5734 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5735 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
5736 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5737 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5738 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5739 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5740 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5741 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
5742
5743 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5744 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5745 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
5746
5747 <p><pre>
5748 #!/usr/bin/perl
5749 use strict;
5750 use warnings;
5751 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5752 BEGIN {
5753     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5754     my %rhelmodules = (
5755         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
5756         );
5757     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5758         eval "use $module;";
5759         if ($@) {
5760             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5761             system("yum install -y $pkg");
5762             eval "use $module;";
5763         }
5764     }
5765 }
5766 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5767
5768 upgrade_dell();
5769
5770 exit 0;
5771
5772 sub run_firmware_script {
5773     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5774     unless ($script) {
5775         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5776         exit 1
5777     }
5778     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5779
5780     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5781         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5782     } else {
5783         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5784     }
5785 }
5786
5787 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5788     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5789     # Run firmware packages
5790     for my $dir (@dirs) {
5791         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5792         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5793         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5794             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5795             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5796         }
5797         closedir $dh;
5798     }
5799 }
5800
5801 sub download {
5802     my $url = shift;
5803     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5804     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5805 }
5806
5807 sub upgrade_dell {
5808     my @dirs;
5809     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5810     chomp $product;
5811
5812     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5813
5814         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5815         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5816
5817         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5818             CLEANUP => 1
5819             );
5820         chdir($tmpdir);
5821         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5822         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5823         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5824         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5825         my $fwopts = "-q";
5826         if (@paths) {
5827             for my $url (@paths) {
5828                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5829             }
5830             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5831         } else {
5832             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5833             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5834         }
5835         chdir('/');
5836     } else {
5837         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5838         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5839     }
5840 }
5841
5842 sub fetch_dell_fw {
5843     my $path = shift;
5844     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5845     download($url);
5846 }
5847
5848 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5849 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
5850 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
5851 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5852     my $filename = shift;
5853
5854     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5855     chomp $product;
5856     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5857
5858     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5859
5860     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5861     my @paths;
5862     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5863         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
5864         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
5865         my $oscode;
5866         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
5867             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
5868         } else {
5869             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
5870         }
5871         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5872         {
5873             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
5874         }
5875     }
5876     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5877         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
5878
5879         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5880         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5881
5882         my $cpath = $component->{path};
5883         for my $path (@paths) {
5884             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5885                 push(@paths, $cpath);
5886             }
5887         }
5888     }
5889     return @paths;
5890 }
5891 </pre>
5892
5893 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5894 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
5895 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
5896 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5897 outdated.</p>
5898
5899       </div>
5900       <div class="tags">
5901
5902
5903         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5904
5905
5906       </div>
5907     </div>
5908     <div class="padding"></div>
5909
5910     <div class="entry">
5911       <div class="title">
5912         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
5913       </div>
5914       <div class="date">
5915          4th August 2011
5916       </div>
5917       <div class="body">
5918         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
5919 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
5920 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
5921 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
5922 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
5923 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
5924 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
5925 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
5926 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
5927
5928 <p><blockquote>
5929 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
5930 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
5931 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
5932 </blockquote></p>
5933
5934 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
5935 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
5936 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
5937 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
5938 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
5939 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
5940 hard to explain.</p>
5941
5942 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
5943 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
5944 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
5945 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
5946 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
5947 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
5948 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
5949 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
5950 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
5951 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
5952 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
5953 mode).</p>
5954
5955 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
5956 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
5957 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
5958 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
5959 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
5960 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
5961 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
5962 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
5963 after visiting single user mode.</p>
5964
5965 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
5966 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
5967 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
5968 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
5969 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
5970 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
5971 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
5972 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
5973
5974 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
5975 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
5976 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
5977
5978       </div>
5979       <div class="tags">
5980
5981
5982         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5983
5984
5985       </div>
5986     </div>
5987     <div class="padding"></div>
5988
5989     <div class="entry">
5990       <div class="title">
5991         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
5992       </div>
5993       <div class="date">
5994         30th July 2011
5995       </div>
5996       <div class="body">
5997         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
5998 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
5999 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6000 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6001 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6002 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6003 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6004 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6005 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6006 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6007 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6008 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6009 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6010
6011 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6012 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6013 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6014 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6015 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6016 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6017 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6018 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6019 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6020
6021 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6022 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6023 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6024 is presented.</p>
6025
6026 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6027 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6028 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6029 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6030 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6031 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6032 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6033 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6034 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6035 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6036 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6037 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6038 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6039 find time to push this forward.</p>
6040
6041       </div>
6042       <div class="tags">
6043
6044
6045         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6046
6047
6048       </div>
6049     </div>
6050     <div class="padding"></div>
6051
6052     <div class="entry">
6053       <div class="title">
6054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
6055       </div>
6056       <div class="date">
6057         29th July 2011
6058       </div>
6059       <div class="body">
6060         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6061 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6062 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6063 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6064 issues.</p>
6065
6066 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6067 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6068 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6069
6070 <ol>
6071
6072 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6073 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6074 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6075 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6076 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6077 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6078 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6079 Debian.</li>
6080
6081 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6082 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6083 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6084 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6085 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6086 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6087 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6088 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6089 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6090 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6091 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6092 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6093 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6094
6095 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6096 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6097 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6098 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6099 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6100 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6101 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6102 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6103 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6104 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6105
6106 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6107 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6108 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6109 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6110 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6111 latter behaviour.</li>
6112
6113 </ol>
6114
6115 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6116 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6117 it do not matter much.</p>
6118
6119 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6120 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6121 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6122
6123       </div>
6124       <div class="tags">
6125
6126
6127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6128
6129
6130       </div>
6131     </div>
6132     <div class="padding"></div>
6133
6134     <div class="entry">
6135       <div class="title">
6136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
6137       </div>
6138       <div class="date">
6139         26th July 2011
6140       </div>
6141       <div class="body">
6142         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
6143 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6144 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6145 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6146 security support for a few years.</p>
6147
6148 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6149 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6150 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6151 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6152 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6153 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6154 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6155 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6156 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6157 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6158 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6159 easier in the future.</p>
6160
6161 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6162 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6163 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6164 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6165 do not have time for.</p>
6166
6167       </div>
6168       <div class="tags">
6169
6170
6171         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
6172
6173
6174       </div>
6175     </div>
6176     <div class="padding"></div>
6177
6178     <div class="entry">
6179       <div class="title">
6180         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
6181       </div>
6182       <div class="date">
6183          3rd April 2011
6184       </div>
6185       <div class="body">
6186         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6187 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6188 update in English.</p>
6189
6190 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6191 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6192 of the British service
6193 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6194 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6195 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6196 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6197 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6198 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6199 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6200 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6201 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6202 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6203 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6204 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6205 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6206
6207 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6208 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6209 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6210 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6211 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6212 public infrastructure.</p>
6213
6214 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6215 such service?</p>
6216
6217       </div>
6218       <div class="tags">
6219
6220
6221         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
6222
6223
6224       </div>
6225     </div>
6226     <div class="padding"></div>
6227
6228     <div class="entry">
6229       <div class="title">
6230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
6231       </div>
6232       <div class="date">
6233         28th January 2011
6234       </div>
6235       <div class="body">
6236         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6237 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6238 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6239 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6240 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6241 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6242 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6243 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6244 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6245 out which security holes were present in our free software
6246 collection.</p>
6247
6248 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6249 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6250 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6251 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6252 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6253 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6254 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6255 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
6256 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6257 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6258 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
6259 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6260 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6261 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6262 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6263 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6264
6265 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6266 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6267 check out, one could look up
6268 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
6269 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6270 The most recent one is
6271 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6272 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6273 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6274
6275 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6276 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
6277 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6278 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6279 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6280 security issues out.</p>
6281
6282 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6283 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6284 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6285 RHEL is providing
6286 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
6287 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6288 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6289
6290 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6291 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6292 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6293 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6294 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6295 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6296 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6297 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6298 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6299 established soon.</p>
6300
6301 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6302 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6303 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6304 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6305 for their packages.</p>
6306
6307       </div>
6308       <div class="tags">
6309
6310
6311         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6312
6313
6314       </div>
6315     </div>
6316     <div class="padding"></div>
6317
6318     <div class="entry">
6319       <div class="title">
6320         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
6321       </div>
6322       <div class="date">
6323         23rd January 2011
6324       </div>
6325       <div class="body">
6326         <p>In the
6327 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6328 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6329 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6330 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6331 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6332 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6333 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6334 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6335 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6336 one of my machines like this:</p>
6337
6338 <pre>
6339 loaded modules:
6340 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6341 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6342 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6343 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6344 10de:03ec pata_amd
6345 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6346 1022:1103 k8temp
6347 109e:036e bttv
6348 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6349 11ab:4364 sky2
6350 </pre>
6351
6352 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6353 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6354
6355 <pre>
6356 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6357     echo loaded pci modules:
6358     (
6359         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6360         for address in * ; do
6361             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6362                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6363                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6364                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6365                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6366                     echo "$id $module"
6367                 fi
6368             fi
6369         done
6370     )
6371     echo
6372 fi
6373 </pre>
6374
6375 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6376 mappings:</p>
6377
6378 <pre>
6379 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6380     echo loaded usb modules:
6381     (
6382         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6383         for address in * ; do
6384             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6385                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6386                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6387                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6388                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6389                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6390                         echo "$id $module"
6391                     fi
6392                 fi
6393             fi
6394         done
6395     )
6396     echo
6397 fi
6398 </pre>
6399
6400 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6401 well.</p>
6402
6403       </div>
6404       <div class="tags">
6405
6406
6407         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6408
6409
6410       </div>
6411     </div>
6412     <div class="padding"></div>
6413
6414     <div class="entry">
6415       <div class="title">
6416         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
6417       </div>
6418       <div class="date">
6419         22nd December 2010
6420       </div>
6421       <div class="body">
6422         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
6423 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
6424 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
6425 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
6426 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
6427 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
6428 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
6429 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
6430 university.</p>
6431
6432 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
6433 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
6434 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
6435 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
6436 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
6437 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
6438 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
6439 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
6440
6441 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
6442 I perform on a new model.</p>
6443
6444 <ul>
6445
6446 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
6447 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
6448 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
6449
6450 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
6451 installation, X.org is working.</li>
6452
6453 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
6454 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
6455 reported by the program.</li>
6456
6457 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
6458 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
6459 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
6460 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
6461 normally test this by playing
6462 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
6463 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
6464
6465 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
6466 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6467
6468 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
6469 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6470
6471 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
6472 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
6473
6474 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
6475 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
6476 few.</li>
6477
6478 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
6479 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
6480 notice this.</li>
6481
6482 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
6483 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
6484 resume.</li>
6485
6486 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
6487 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
6488 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
6489 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
6490 not.</li>
6491
6492 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
6493 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
6494 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
6495 existence.</li>
6496
6497 </ul>
6498
6499 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
6500 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
6501 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
6502 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
6503 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
6504 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
6505 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
6506 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
6507
6508       </div>
6509       <div class="tags">
6510
6511
6512         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6513
6514
6515       </div>
6516     </div>
6517     <div class="padding"></div>
6518
6519     <div class="entry">
6520       <div class="title">
6521         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
6522       </div>
6523       <div class="date">
6524         11th December 2010
6525       </div>
6526       <div class="body">
6527         <p>As I continue to explore
6528 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
6529 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
6530 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
6531
6532 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
6533 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
6534 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
6535 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
6536 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
6537 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
6538 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
6539 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
6540 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
6541 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
6542 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
6543 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
6544 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
6545 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
6546 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
6547 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
6548 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
6549 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
6550 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
6551 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
6552
6553 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
6554 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
6555 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
6556 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
6557 If the Skolelinux foundation
6558 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
6559 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
6560 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
6561 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
6562 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
6563 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
6564 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
6565 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
6566
6567 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
6568 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
6569 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
6570 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
6571 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
6572 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
6573 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
6574 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
6575 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
6576 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
6577 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
6578 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
6579 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
6580 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
6581 currencies.</p>
6582
6583 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
6584 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
6585 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
6586 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
6587 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
6588 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
6589 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
6590 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
6591 BitCoins.  Check out
6592 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
6593 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
6594 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
6595 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
6596 yet.</p>
6597
6598 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
6599 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
6600 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
6601 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
6602 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
6603
6604       </div>
6605       <div class="tags">
6606
6607
6608         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6609
6610
6611       </div>
6612     </div>
6613     <div class="padding"></div>
6614
6615     <div class="entry">
6616       <div class="title">
6617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
6618       </div>
6619       <div class="date">
6620         10th December 2010
6621       </div>
6622       <div class="body">
6623         <p>With this weeks lawless
6624 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
6625 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
6626 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
6627 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
6628 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
6629 A blog post from
6630 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
6631 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
6632 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
6633 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
6634 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
6635 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
6636 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
6637
6638 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
6639 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
6640 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
6641 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
6642 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
6643 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
6644 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
6645 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
6646 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
6647 Debian</a> soon.</p>
6648
6649 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
6650 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
6651 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
6652 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
6653 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
6654 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
6655 you can even get
6656 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
6657 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
6658 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
6659 on the current exchange rates.</p>
6660
6661 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
6662 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
6663 donations to the address
6664 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
6665
6666       </div>
6667       <div class="tags">
6668
6669
6670         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6671
6672
6673       </div>
6674     </div>
6675     <div class="padding"></div>
6676
6677     <div class="entry">
6678       <div class="title">
6679         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6680       </div>
6681       <div class="date">
6682         27th November 2010
6683       </div>
6684       <div class="body">
6685         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6686 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6687 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6688 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6689 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6690 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6691 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6692 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6693
6694 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6695 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6696 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6697 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6698 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6699 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6700 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6701 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6702 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6703 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6704 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6705
6706 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6707 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6708 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6709 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6710 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6711 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6712 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6713 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6714 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6715 what is going on.</p>
6716
6717       </div>
6718       <div class="tags">
6719
6720
6721         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6722
6723
6724       </div>
6725     </div>
6726     <div class="padding"></div>
6727
6728     <div class="entry">
6729       <div class="title">
6730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
6731       </div>
6732       <div class="date">
6733         22nd November 2010
6734       </div>
6735       <div class="body">
6736         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6737 upgrade testing of the
6738 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6739 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6740 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6741 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6742
6743 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6744
6745 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6746
6747 <blockquote><p>
6748   apache2.2-bin
6749   aptdaemon
6750   baobab
6751   binfmt-support
6752   browser-plugin-gnash
6753   cheese-common
6754   cli-common
6755   cups-pk-helper
6756   dmz-cursor-theme
6757   empathy
6758   empathy-common
6759   freedesktop-sound-theme
6760   freeglut3
6761   gconf-defaults-service
6762   gdm-themes
6763   gedit-plugins
6764   geoclue
6765   geoclue-hostip
6766   geoclue-localnet
6767   geoclue-manual
6768   geoclue-yahoo
6769   gnash
6770   gnash-common
6771   gnome
6772   gnome-backgrounds
6773   gnome-cards-data
6774   gnome-codec-install
6775   gnome-core
6776   gnome-desktop-environment
6777   gnome-disk-utility
6778   gnome-screenshot
6779   gnome-search-tool
6780   gnome-session-canberra
6781   gnome-system-log
6782   gnome-themes-extras
6783   gnome-themes-more
6784   gnome-user-share
6785   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6786   gstreamer0.10-tools
6787   gtk2-engines
6788   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6789   gtk2-engines-smooth
6790   hamster-applet
6791   libapache2-mod-dnssd
6792   libapr1
6793   libaprutil1
6794   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6795   libaprutil1-ldap
6796   libart2.0-cil
6797   libboost-date-time1.42.0
6798   libboost-python1.42.0
6799   libboost-thread1.42.0
6800   libchamplain-0.4-0
6801   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
6802   libcheese-gtk18
6803   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6804   libcryptui0
6805   libdiscid0
6806   libelf1
6807   libepc-1.0-2
6808   libepc-common
6809   libepc-ui-1.0-2
6810   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6811   libfreerdp0
6812   libgconf2.0-cil
6813   libgdata-common
6814   libgdata7
6815   libgdu-gtk0
6816   libgee2
6817   libgeoclue0
6818   libgexiv2-0
6819   libgif4
6820   libglade2.0-cil
6821   libglib2.0-cil
6822   libgmime2.4-cil
6823   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6824   libgnome2.24-cil
6825   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6826   libgpod-common
6827   libgpod4
6828   libgtk2.0-cil
6829   libgtkglext1
6830   libgtksourceview2.0-common
6831   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6832   libmono-addins0.2-cil
6833   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6834   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6835   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6836   libmono-posix2.0-cil
6837   libmono-security2.0-cil
6838   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6839   libmono-system2.0-cil
6840   libmtp8
6841   libmusicbrainz3-6
6842   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6843   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6844   libopal3.6.8
6845   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
6846   libpt2.6.7
6847   libpython2.6
6848   librpm1
6849   librpmio1
6850   libsdl1.2debian
6851   libsrtp0
6852   libssh-4
6853   libtelepathy-farsight0
6854   libtelepathy-glib0
6855   libtidy-0.99-0
6856   media-player-info
6857   mesa-utils
6858   mono-2.0-gac
6859   mono-gac
6860   mono-runtime
6861   nautilus-sendto
6862   nautilus-sendto-empathy
6863   p7zip-full
6864   pkg-config
6865   python-aptdaemon
6866   python-aptdaemon-gtk
6867   python-axiom
6868   python-beautifulsoup
6869   python-bugbuddy
6870   python-clientform
6871   python-coherence
6872   python-configobj
6873   python-crypto
6874   python-cupshelpers
6875   python-elementtree
6876   python-epsilon
6877   python-evolution
6878   python-feedparser
6879   python-gdata
6880   python-gdbm
6881   python-gst0.10
6882   python-gtkglext1
6883   python-gtksourceview2
6884   python-httplib2
6885   python-louie
6886   python-mako
6887   python-markupsafe
6888   python-mechanize
6889   python-nevow
6890   python-notify
6891   python-opengl
6892   python-openssl
6893   python-pam
6894   python-pkg-resources
6895   python-pyasn1
6896   python-pysqlite2
6897   python-rdflib
6898   python-serial
6899   python-tagpy
6900   python-twisted-bin
6901   python-twisted-conch
6902   python-twisted-core
6903   python-twisted-web
6904   python-utidylib
6905   python-webkit
6906   python-xdg
6907   python-zope.interface
6908   remmina
6909   remmina-plugin-data
6910   remmina-plugin-rdp
6911   remmina-plugin-vnc
6912   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6913   rhythmbox-plugins
6914   rpm-common
6915   rpm2cpio
6916   seahorse-plugins
6917   shotwell
6918   software-center
6919   system-config-printer-udev
6920   telepathy-gabble
6921   telepathy-mission-control-5
6922   telepathy-salut
6923   tomboy
6924   totem
6925   totem-coherence
6926   totem-mozilla
6927   totem-plugins
6928   transmission-common
6929   xdg-user-dirs
6930   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
6931   xserver-xephyr
6932 </p></blockquote>
6933
6934 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6935
6936 <blockquote><p>
6937   cheese
6938   ekiga
6939   eog
6940   epiphany-extensions
6941   evolution-exchange
6942   fast-user-switch-applet
6943   file-roller
6944   gcalctool
6945   gconf-editor
6946   gdm
6947   gedit
6948   gedit-common
6949   gnome-games
6950   gnome-games-data
6951   gnome-nettool
6952   gnome-system-tools
6953   gnome-themes
6954   gnuchess
6955   gucharmap
6956   guile-1.8-libs
6957   libavahi-ui0
6958   libdmx1
6959   libgalago3
6960   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6961   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6962   liblircclient0
6963   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6964   libspeexdsp1
6965   libsvga1
6966   rhythmbox
6967   seahorse
6968   sound-juicer
6969   system-config-printer
6970   totem-common
6971   transmission-gtk
6972   vinagre
6973   vino
6974 </p></blockquote>
6975
6976 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6977
6978 <blockquote><p>
6979   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6980 </p></blockquote>
6981
6982 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6983
6984 <blockquote><p>
6985 [nothing]
6986 </p></blockquote>
6987
6988 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6989
6990 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6991
6992 <blockquote><p>
6993   ksmserver
6994 </p></blockquote>
6995
6996 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6997
6998 <blockquote><p>
6999   kwin
7000   network-manager-kde
7001 </p></blockquote>
7002
7003 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7004
7005 <blockquote><p>
7006   arts
7007   dolphin
7008   freespacenotifier
7009   google-gadgets-gst
7010   google-gadgets-xul
7011   kappfinder
7012   kcalc
7013   kcharselect
7014   kde-core
7015   kde-plasma-desktop
7016   kde-standard
7017   kde-window-manager
7018   kdeartwork
7019   kdeartwork-emoticons
7020   kdeartwork-style
7021   kdeartwork-theme-icon
7022   kdebase
7023   kdebase-apps
7024   kdebase-workspace
7025   kdebase-workspace-bin
7026   kdebase-workspace-data
7027   kdeeject
7028   kdelibs
7029   kdeplasma-addons
7030   kdeutils
7031   kdewallpapers
7032   kdf
7033   kfloppy
7034   kgpg
7035   khelpcenter4
7036   kinfocenter
7037   konq-plugins-l10n
7038   konqueror-nsplugins
7039   kscreensaver
7040   kscreensaver-xsavers
7041   ktimer
7042   kwrite
7043   libgle3
7044   libkde4-ruby1.8
7045   libkonq5
7046   libkonq5-templates
7047   libnetpbm10
7048   libplasma-ruby
7049   libplasma-ruby1.8
7050   libqt4-ruby1.8
7051   marble-data
7052   marble-plugins
7053   netpbm
7054   nuvola-icon-theme
7055   plasma-dataengines-workspace
7056   plasma-desktop
7057   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7058   plasma-runners-addons
7059   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7060   plasma-scriptengine-python
7061   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7062   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7063   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7064   plasma-scriptengines
7065   plasma-wallpapers-addons
7066   plasma-widget-folderview
7067   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7068   ruby
7069   sweeper
7070   update-notifier-kde
7071   xscreensaver-data-extra
7072   xscreensaver-gl
7073   xscreensaver-gl-extra
7074   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7075 </p></blockquote>
7076
7077 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7078
7079 <blockquote><p>
7080   ark
7081   google-gadgets-common
7082   google-gadgets-qt
7083   htdig
7084   kate
7085   kdebase-bin
7086   kdebase-data
7087   kdepasswd
7088   kfind
7089   klipper
7090   konq-plugins
7091   konqueror
7092   ksysguard
7093   ksysguardd
7094   libarchive1
7095   libcln6
7096   libeet1
7097   libeina-svn-06
7098   libggadget-1.0-0b
7099   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
7100   libgps19
7101   libkdecorations4
7102   libkephal4
7103   libkonq4
7104   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
7105   libkscreensaver5
7106   libksgrd4
7107   libksignalplotter4
7108   libkunitconversion4
7109   libkwineffects1a
7110   libmarblewidget4
7111   libntrack-qt4-1
7112   libntrack0
7113   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
7114   libplasmaclock4a
7115   libplasmagenericshell4
7116   libprocesscore4a
7117   libprocessui4a
7118   libqalculate5
7119   libqedje0a
7120   libqtruby4shared2
7121   libqzion0a
7122   libruby1.8
7123   libscim8c2a
7124   libsmokekdecore4-3
7125   libsmokekdeui4-3
7126   libsmokekfile3
7127   libsmokekhtml3
7128   libsmokekio3
7129   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
7130   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
7131   libsmokekparts3
7132   libsmokektexteditor3
7133   libsmokekutils3
7134   libsmokenepomuk3
7135   libsmokephonon3
7136   libsmokeplasma3
7137   libsmokeqtcore4-3
7138   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
7139   libsmokeqtgui4-3
7140   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
7141   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
7142   libsmokeqtscript4-3
7143   libsmokeqtsql4-3
7144   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
7145   libsmokeqttest4-3
7146   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
7147   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
7148   libsmokeqtxml4-3
7149   libsmokesolid3
7150   libsmokesoprano3
7151   libtaskmanager4a
7152   libtidy-0.99-0
7153   libweather-ion4a
7154   libxklavier16
7155   libxxf86misc1
7156   okteta
7157   oxygencursors
7158   plasma-dataengines-addons
7159   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
7160   plasma-widget-lancelot
7161   plasma-widgets-addons
7162   plasma-widgets-workspace
7163   polkit-kde-1
7164   ruby1.8
7165   systemsettings
7166   update-notifier-common
7167 </p></blockquote>
7168
7169 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
7170 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
7171 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
7172 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
7173
7174       </div>
7175       <div class="tags">
7176
7177
7178         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7179
7180
7181       </div>
7182     </div>
7183     <div class="padding"></div>
7184
7185     <div class="entry">
7186       <div class="title">
7187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
7188       </div>
7189       <div class="date">
7190         22nd November 2010
7191       </div>
7192       <div class="body">
7193         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
7194 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
7195 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
7196 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
7197 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
7198 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
7199 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
7200 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
7201 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
7202
7203 <p>I found
7204 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
7205 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
7206 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
7207 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
7208 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
7209 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
7210
7211 <pre>
7212 #!/bin/sh
7213
7214 # Based on
7215 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
7216
7217 set -e
7218 set -x
7219
7220 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
7221     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
7222     exit 1
7223 else
7224     host="$1"
7225 fi
7226
7227 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
7228     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
7229     exit 1
7230 fi
7231
7232 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
7233 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7234 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7235 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
7236
7237 img=$host.img
7238 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
7239 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
7240
7241 parted $img mklabel msdos
7242 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
7243 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
7244 parted $img set 1 boot on
7245
7246 modprobe dm-mod
7247 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
7248 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
7249
7250 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
7251 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
7252 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
7253
7254 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
7255 losetup -d /dev/loop0
7256 </pre>
7257
7258 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
7259 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
7260
7261 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
7262 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
7263 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
7264 seem to work just fine.</p>
7265
7266       </div>
7267       <div class="tags">
7268
7269
7270         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7271
7272
7273       </div>
7274     </div>
7275     <div class="padding"></div>
7276
7277     <div class="entry">
7278       <div class="title">
7279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
7280       </div>
7281       <div class="date">
7282         20th November 2010
7283       </div>
7284       <div class="body">
7285         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
7286 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7287 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
7288 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
7289
7290 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
7291 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
7292 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
7293
7294 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7295
7296 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7297
7298 <blockquote><p>
7299   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
7300   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
7301   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
7302   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
7303   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
7304   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
7305   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
7306   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
7307   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
7308   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
7309   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7310   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7311   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
7312   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
7313   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
7314   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
7315   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7316   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
7317   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7318   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
7319   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
7320   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7321   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
7322   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
7323   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
7324   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7325   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7326   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
7327   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7328   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
7329   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
7330   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7331   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
7332   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
7333   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
7334   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
7335   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
7336   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
7337   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
7338   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
7339   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
7340   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
7341   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
7342   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
7343   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
7344   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
7345   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
7346   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
7347   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
7348   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
7349   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
7350   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
7351   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7352   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
7353   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
7354   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
7355   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
7356   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
7357   zip
7358 </p></blockquote>
7359
7360 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
7361
7362 <blockquote><p>
7363   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
7364   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
7365   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
7366   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
7367   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
7368   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
7369   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
7370   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
7371   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
7372   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
7373   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
7374   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7375   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7376   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7377   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7378   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
7379   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7380   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
7381   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
7382   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
7383   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
7384   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
7385   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7386   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
7387   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
7388   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
7389   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
7390   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
7391   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
7392 </p></blockquote>
7393
7394 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7395
7396 <blockquote><p>
7397   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7398 </p></blockquote>
7399
7400 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7401
7402 <blockquote><p>
7403 [nothing]
7404 </p></blockquote>
7405
7406 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7407
7408 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7409
7410 <blockquote><p>
7411   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
7412   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7413   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
7414   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
7415   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
7416   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
7417   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7418   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
7419   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
7420   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7421   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
7422   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
7423   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
7424   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
7425   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
7426   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
7427   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
7428   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
7429   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
7430   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
7431   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
7432   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
7433   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
7434   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
7435   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
7436   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
7437   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
7438   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
7439   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
7440   ttf-sazanami-gothic
7441 </p></blockquote>
7442
7443 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7444
7445 <blockquote><p>
7446   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
7447   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
7448   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
7449   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
7450   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
7451   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
7452   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
7453   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
7454   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
7455   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
7456   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
7457   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
7458   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
7459   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
7460   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7461   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7462   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
7463   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
7464   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7465   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
7466   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7467   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
7468   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7469   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7470   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
7471   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
7472   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
7473   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
7474   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
7475   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
7476   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7477   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7478   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7479 </p></blockquote>
7480
7481 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7482
7483 <blockquote><p>
7484   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
7485   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
7486   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
7487   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
7488   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7489   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
7490   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7491 </p></blockquote>
7492
7493 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7494
7495 <blockquote><p>
7496   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
7497 </p></blockquote>
7498
7499       </div>
7500       <div class="tags">
7501
7502
7503         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7504
7505
7506       </div>
7507     </div>
7508     <div class="padding"></div>
7509
7510     <div class="entry">
7511       <div class="title">
7512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
7513       </div>
7514       <div class="date">
7515         20th November 2010
7516       </div>
7517       <div class="body">
7518         <p>Answering
7519 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
7520 call from the Gnash project</a> for
7521 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
7522 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
7523 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
7524 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
7525 releases out more often.</p>
7526
7527 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
7528 I have considered setting up a <a
7529 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
7530 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
7531 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
7532 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
7533 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
7534 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
7535 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
7536 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
7537 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
7538 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
7539 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
7540 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
7541
7542       </div>
7543       <div class="tags">
7544
7545
7546         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7547
7548
7549       </div>
7550     </div>
7551     <div class="padding"></div>
7552
7553     <div class="entry">
7554       <div class="title">
7555         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
7556       </div>
7557       <div class="date">
7558          9th November 2010
7559       </div>
7560       <div class="body">
7561         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
7562
7563 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
7564 3D linked in from
7565 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
7566 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
7567
7568       </div>
7569       <div class="tags">
7570
7571
7572         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7573
7574
7575       </div>
7576     </div>
7577     <div class="padding"></div>
7578
7579     <div class="entry">
7580       <div class="title">
7581         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
7582       </div>
7583       <div class="date">
7584         24th October 2010
7585       </div>
7586       <div class="body">
7587         <p>Some updates.</p>
7588
7589 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
7590 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
7591 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
7592 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7593 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
7594 :)</p>
7595
7596 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7597 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7598 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7599 It is called
7600 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
7601 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
7602 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7603 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7604 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7605 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
7606
7607 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
7608 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7609 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
7610 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7611 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
7612 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7613 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7614 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
7615 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7616 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
7617
7618       </div>
7619       <div class="tags">
7620
7621
7622         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
7623
7624
7625       </div>
7626     </div>
7627     <div class="padding"></div>
7628
7629     <div class="entry">
7630       <div class="title">
7631         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
7632       </div>
7633       <div class="date">
7634          4th September 2010
7635       </div>
7636       <div class="body">
7637         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
7638 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7639 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
7640 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
7641 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
7642 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7643 installed.</p>
7644
7645 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7646 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7647 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7648 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7649 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7650 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
7651 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7652 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7653 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7654
7655 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7656 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7657 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
7658 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7659 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7660 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7661 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7662 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7663 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7664 pages they want to visit.</p>
7665
7666 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7667 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7668 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7669 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7670 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7671 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7672 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7673 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7674 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7675 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7676 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7677
7678       </div>
7679       <div class="tags">
7680
7681
7682         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7683
7684
7685       </div>
7686     </div>
7687     <div class="padding"></div>
7688
7689     <div class="entry">
7690       <div class="title">
7691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
7692       </div>
7693       <div class="date">
7694         27th July 2010
7695       </div>
7696       <div class="body">
7697         <p>I discovered this while doing
7698 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
7699 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
7700 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
7701 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
7702 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
7703
7704 <p>An example is from todays
7705 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
7706 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
7707 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
7708 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
7709 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
7710 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
7711 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
7712
7713 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
7714
7715 <blockquote><pre>
7716 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
7717  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
7718   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
7719 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
7720  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
7721 </pre></blockquote>
7722
7723 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
7724 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
7725 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
7726 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
7727 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
7728 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
7729 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
7730 of dependency loops.</p>
7731
7732 <p>Thanks to
7733 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
7734 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
7735 dependencies
7736 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
7737 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
7738
7739 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
7740 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
7741 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
7742 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
7743 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
7744 it.</p>
7745
7746       </div>
7747       <div class="tags">
7748
7749
7750         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7751
7752
7753       </div>
7754     </div>
7755     <div class="padding"></div>
7756
7757     <div class="entry">
7758       <div class="title">
7759         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
7760       </div>
7761       <div class="date">
7762         17th July 2010
7763       </div>
7764       <div class="body">
7765         <p>This is a
7766 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
7767 on my
7768 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
7769 work</a> on
7770 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
7771 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
7772
7773 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
7774 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
7775 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
7776 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
7777
7778 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
7779 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
7780 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
7781
7782 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
7783
7784 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
7785 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
7786 the web.
7787
7788 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
7789 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
7790 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
7791 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
7792 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
7793 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
7794
7795 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
7796 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
7797 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
7798 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
7799 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
7800 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
7801 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
7802 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
7803 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
7804 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
7805 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
7806 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
7807 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
7808 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
7809 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
7810 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
7811
7812 <blockquote><pre>
7813 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7814   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7815   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7816   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7817   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7818   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7819   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7820
7821 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7822   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7823   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
7824   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
7825   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
7826   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
7827 </pre></blockquote>
7828
7829 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
7830 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
7831 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
7832 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7833 also exist.</p>
7834
7835 <blockquote><pre>
7836 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7837 objectclass: top
7838 objectclass: dnsdomain
7839 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7840 dc: tjener
7841 arecord: 10.0.2.2
7842 associateddomain: tjener.intern
7843
7844 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7845 objectclass: top
7846 objectclass: dnsdomain2
7847 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7848 dc: 2
7849 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
7850 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
7851 </pre></blockquote>
7852
7853 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
7854 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
7855 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
7856 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
7857 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
7858 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
7859 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
7860 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
7861 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
7862 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
7863 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
7864 instead.</p>
7865
7866 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
7867 like this:</p>
7868
7869 <blockquote><pre>
7870 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7871   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7872   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7873   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7874   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7875   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7876
7877 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7878   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
7879 </pre></blockquote>
7880
7881 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
7882 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
7883 reverse lookups.</p>
7884
7885 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
7886 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
7887 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
7888 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
7889
7890 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
7891 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
7892 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
7893
7894 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
7895 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
7896 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
7897 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
7898 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
7899
7900 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
7901 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
7902 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
7903 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
7904 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
7905
7906 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
7907 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
7908 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
7909 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
7910 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
7911 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
7912
7913 <blockquote><pre>
7914 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
7915     SUP top
7916     AUXILIARY
7917     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
7918           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
7919           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
7920           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
7921           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
7922     ))
7923 </pre></blockquote>
7924
7925 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
7926 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
7927 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
7928 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
7929 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
7930 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
7931
7932 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
7933
7934 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
7935 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
7936 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
7937 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
7938 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
7939
7940 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
7941 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
7942 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
7943 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
7944
7945 <blockquote><pre>
7946 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
7947 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
7948 </pre></blockquote>
7949
7950 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
7951 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
7952 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
7953 search result is this entry:</p>
7954
7955 <blockquote><pre>
7956 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7957 cn: dhcp
7958 objectClass: top
7959 objectClass: dhcpServer
7960 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7961 </pre></blockquote>
7962
7963 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
7964 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
7965 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
7966 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
7967 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
7968 The search result is this entry:</p>
7969
7970 <blockquote><pre>
7971 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7972 cn: DHCP Config
7973 objectClass: top
7974 objectClass: dhcpService
7975 objectClass: dhcpOptions
7976 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7977 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
7978 dhcpStatements: authoritative
7979 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
7980 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
7981 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
7982 </pre></blockquote>
7983
7984 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
7985 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
7986 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
7987 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
7988 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
7989 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
7990 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
7991 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
7992 related computer objects.</p>
7993
7994 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
7995 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
7996 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
7997 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
7998 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
7999 like:</p>
8000
8001 <blockquote><pre>
8002 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8003 cn: hostname
8004 objectClass: top
8005 objectClass: dhcpHost
8006 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8007 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8008 </pre></blockquote>
8009
8010 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8011 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8012 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
8013 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8014 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
8015 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8016 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8017 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8018 structural object class.
8019
8020 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8021
8022 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8023 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8024 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8025 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8026 in the configuration.</p>
8027
8028 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8029 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8030 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8031 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8032 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8033 structure.</p>
8034
8035 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8036 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
8037
8038 <blockquote><pre>
8039 ou=services
8040   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8041     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8042     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8043       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8044         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8045     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8046       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8047         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8048     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8049       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8050 </pre></blockquote>
8051
8052 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8053 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8054 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8055 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
8056
8057 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8058 like this:</p>
8059
8060 <blockquote><pre>
8061 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8062 dc: hostname
8063 objectClass: top
8064 objectClass: dhcpHost
8065 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8066 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8067 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8068 arecord: 10.11.12.13
8069 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8070 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8071 </pre></blockquote>
8072
8073 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8074 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8075 auxiliary object class.</p>
8076
8077       </div>
8078       <div class="tags">
8079
8080
8081         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8082
8083
8084       </div>
8085     </div>
8086     <div class="padding"></div>
8087
8088     <div class="entry">
8089       <div class="title">
8090         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
8091       </div>
8092       <div class="date">
8093         14th July 2010
8094       </div>
8095       <div class="body">
8096         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8097 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8098 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8099 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8100 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
8101
8102 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8103 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
8104
8105 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8106 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
8107 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8108 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8109 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8110 to a slave DNS server.</p>
8111
8112 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8113 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8114 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8115 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8116 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
8117 seem to work.</p>
8118
8119 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8120 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8121 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
8122 this:</p>
8123
8124 <blockquote><pre>
8125   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8126   cn: hostname
8127   objectClass: dhcphost
8128   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8129   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8130   associateddomain: hostname.intern
8131   arecord: 10.11.12.13
8132   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8133   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8134   ldapconfigsound: Y
8135 </pre></blockquote>
8136
8137 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8138 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8139 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
8140 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
8141
8142 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8143 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8144 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8145 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8146 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8147 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8148 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8149 might be a good place to put it.</p>
8150
8151 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8152 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8153
8154       </div>
8155       <div class="tags">
8156
8157
8158         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8159
8160
8161       </div>
8162     </div>
8163     <div class="padding"></div>
8164
8165     <div class="entry">
8166       <div class="title">
8167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
8168       </div>
8169       <div class="date">
8170         11th July 2010
8171       </div>
8172       <div class="body">
8173         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8174 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8175 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8176 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
8177
8178 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8179 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
8180 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8181 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8182 LTSP clients.</p>
8183
8184 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8185 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8186 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
8187
8188 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8189 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8190 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
8191
8192 <blockquote><pre>
8193 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8194 #
8195 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8196 #
8197 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8198 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8199 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8200 #
8201 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8202 # existence of attribute names.
8203 #
8204 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8205 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8206 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8207 #
8208 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8209 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
8210 #
8211 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8212 #     SUP top
8213 #     AUXILIARY
8214 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8215
8216 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8217 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8218     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8219     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
8220         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8221         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8222             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8223             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8224             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8225             # bass value on to clients
8226             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8227         done
8228     done
8229 fi
8230 </pre></blockquote>
8231
8232 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8233 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8234 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8235 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8236 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
8237
8238 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8239 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8240
8241 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8242 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
8243 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8244 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
8245 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
8246 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
8247
8248       </div>
8249       <div class="tags">
8250
8251
8252         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8253
8254
8255       </div>
8256     </div>
8257     <div class="padding"></div>
8258
8259     <div class="entry">
8260       <div class="title">
8261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8262       </div>
8263       <div class="date">
8264          9th July 2010
8265       </div>
8266       <div class="body">
8267         <p>Since
8268 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8269 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8270 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
8271 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
8272 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8273 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
8274 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8275 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
8276 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8277 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
8278 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
8279 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8280 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
8281
8282       </div>
8283       <div class="tags">
8284
8285
8286         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8287
8288
8289       </div>
8290     </div>
8291     <div class="padding"></div>
8292
8293     <div class="entry">
8294       <div class="title">
8295         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
8296       </div>
8297       <div class="date">
8298          3rd July 2010
8299       </div>
8300       <div class="body">
8301         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
8302 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8303 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
8304 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
8305 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8306 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8307 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
8308 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
8309
8310 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8311 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
8312 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
8313 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8314 publish the difference.</p>
8315
8316 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8317
8318 <blockquote><p>
8319   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8320   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
8321   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8322   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8323   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8324   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8325   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8326   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8327 </p></blockquote>
8328
8329 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8330
8331 <blockquote><p>
8332   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8333   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8334   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
8335   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8336   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
8337   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
8338   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8339   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8340   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8341   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8342   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8343   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
8344   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8345   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
8346   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8347   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8348   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
8349   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8350   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8351   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8352 </p></blockquote>
8353
8354 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8355
8356 <blockquote><p>
8357   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8358   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8359   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8360   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8361   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8362   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8363   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8364   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8365   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8366   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8367   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8368   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8369   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8370   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8371   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8372   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8373   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8374   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8375   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8376   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8377   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8378 </p></blockquote>
8379
8380 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8381
8382 <blockquote><p>
8383   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8384   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8385   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8386 </p></blockquote>
8387
8388 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8389 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8390 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8391 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8392 the difference somewhat.
8393
8394       </div>
8395       <div class="tags">
8396
8397
8398         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8399
8400
8401       </div>
8402     </div>
8403     <div class="padding"></div>
8404
8405     <div class="entry">
8406       <div class="title">
8407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8408       </div>
8409       <div class="date">
8410         28th June 2010
8411       </div>
8412       <div class="body">
8413         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
8414 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
8415 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
8416 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
8417 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
8418 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
8419 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
8420 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
8421 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
8422 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
8423
8424 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
8425 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
8426 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
8427 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
8428 released.</p>
8429
8430 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
8431 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
8432 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
8433 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
8434
8435 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
8436 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8437
8438 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
8439 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
8440 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
8441 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
8442 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
8443
8444       </div>
8445       <div class="tags">
8446
8447
8448         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8449
8450
8451       </div>
8452     </div>
8453     <div class="padding"></div>
8454
8455     <div class="entry">
8456       <div class="title">
8457         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
8458       </div>
8459       <div class="date">
8460         24th June 2010
8461       </div>
8462       <div class="body">
8463         <p>A while back, I
8464 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
8465 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
8466 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
8467 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
8468
8469 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
8470 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
8471 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
8472 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
8473
8474 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
8475 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
8476 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
8477 Debian Edu.</p>
8478
8479 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
8480 the
8481 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
8482 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
8483 available today from IETF.</p>
8484
8485 <pre>
8486 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
8487 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
8488 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
8489  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
8490         NAME 'dhcpHost'
8491         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
8492 -       SUP top
8493 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
8494         MUST cn
8495         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
8496         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
8497 </pre>
8498
8499 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
8500 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
8501 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
8502
8503 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8504 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8505
8506       </div>
8507       <div class="tags">
8508
8509
8510         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8511
8512
8513       </div>
8514     </div>
8515     <div class="padding"></div>
8516
8517     <div class="entry">
8518       <div class="title">
8519         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
8520       </div>
8521       <div class="date">
8522         16th June 2010
8523       </div>
8524       <div class="body">
8525         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
8526 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
8527 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
8528 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
8529 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
8530 this:
8531
8532 <blockquote><pre>
8533 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8534 tasksel --new-install
8535 </pre></blockquote>
8536
8537 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
8538 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
8539 any output what so ever.
8540
8541 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
8542 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
8543 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
8544 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
8545 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
8546 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
8547 code like this:
8548
8549 <blockquote><pre>
8550 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8551 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
8552 $cmd
8553 </pre></blockquote>
8554
8555 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
8556 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
8557 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
8558 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
8559 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
8560 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
8561 installation.</p>
8562
8563 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
8564 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
8565 like this.</p>
8566
8567       </div>
8568       <div class="tags">
8569
8570
8571         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8572
8573
8574       </div>
8575     </div>
8576     <div class="padding"></div>
8577
8578     <div class="entry">
8579       <div class="title">
8580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
8581       </div>
8582       <div class="date">
8583         13th June 2010
8584       </div>
8585       <div class="body">
8586         <p>My
8587 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
8588 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
8589 finally made the upgrade logs available from
8590 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
8591 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
8592 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
8593 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
8594
8595 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
8596 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
8597 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
8598 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
8599 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
8600 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
8601 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
8602 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
8603
8604 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
8605 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
8606 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
8607 too surprising.</p>
8608
8609 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
8610 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
8611 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
8612 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
8613 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
8614 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
8615 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
8616 continue.</p>
8617
8618 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
8619 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
8620   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
8621   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
8622   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
8623   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
8624   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
8625   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8626   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8627   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8628   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8629   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8630   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8631   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8632   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8633   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8634   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8635   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8636   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8637   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8638   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8639   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8640   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8641   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8642   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8643   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8644   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8645   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8646   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
8647   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
8648
8649 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
8650
8651 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
8652   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
8653   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
8654   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
8655   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8656   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
8657   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
8658   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
8659   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
8660   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
8661   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8662   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
8663   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8664   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
8665   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
8666   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
8667   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
8668   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
8669   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
8670   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
8671   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
8672   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
8673   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
8674   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
8675   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8676   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
8677   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
8678   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
8679   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
8680   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8681   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8682   zip</p>
8683
8684 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
8685
8686 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
8687   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
8688   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
8689   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
8690   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
8691   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
8692   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8693   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8694   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8695   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8696   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8697   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8698   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8699   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8700   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8701   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8702   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8703   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8704   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8705   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8706   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8707   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8708   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8709   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8710   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8711   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8712   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8713   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
8714
8715 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
8716 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
8717   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8718   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
8719   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
8720   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8721   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
8722   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
8723   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8724   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
8725   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
8726   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
8727   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
8728   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
8729   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
8730   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
8731   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
8732   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8733   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8734   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8735   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
8736   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8737   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
8738   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
8739   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8740   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8741   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
8742   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
8743   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
8744   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
8745   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
8746   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
8747   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
8748   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
8749   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
8750   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8751   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8752   xulrunner-1.9</p>
8753
8754
8755       </div>
8756       <div class="tags">
8757
8758
8759         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8760
8761
8762       </div>
8763     </div>
8764     <div class="padding"></div>
8765
8766     <div class="entry">
8767       <div class="title">
8768         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
8769       </div>
8770       <div class="date">
8771         11th June 2010
8772       </div>
8773       <div class="body">
8774         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
8775 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
8776 have been discovered and reported in the process
8777 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
8778 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
8779 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
8780 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
8781 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
8782
8783 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
8784 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
8785 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
8786 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
8787 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
8788 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
8789
8790 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
8791 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
8792 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8793 is created.  The bug report
8794 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
8795 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
8796 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
8797 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
8798 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
8799 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
8800 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
8801 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
8802 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
8803 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
8804 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
8805 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
8806 Debian Squeeze.</p>
8807
8808 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
8809 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
8810 trick:</p>
8811
8812 <blockquote><pre>
8813 #!/bin/sh
8814 set -ex
8815
8816 if [ "$1" ] ; then
8817     desktop=$1
8818 else
8819     desktop=gnome
8820 fi
8821
8822 from=lenny
8823 to=squeeze
8824
8825 exec &lt; /dev/null
8826 unset LANG
8827 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
8828 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
8829 fuser -mv .
8830 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
8831 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8832 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
8833 #!/bin/sh
8834 exit 101
8835 EOF
8836 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
8837 exit_cleanup() {
8838     umount $tmpdir/proc
8839 }
8840 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
8841 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
8842 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
8843
8844 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
8845
8846 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
8847 # to return the correct answers.
8848 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
8849     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
8850
8851 # Include the desktop and laptop task
8852 for test in desktop laptop ; do
8853     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
8854 #!/bin/sh
8855 exit 2
8856 EOF
8857     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
8858 done
8859
8860 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8861 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
8862 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
8863 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
8864
8865 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
8866 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8867 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8868 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
8869 fuser -mv
8870 </pre></blockquote>
8871
8872 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
8873 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
8874 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
8875 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
8876 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
8877 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
8878
8879 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
8880 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
8881 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
8882 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
8883 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
8884 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
8885 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
8886
8887 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
8888 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
8889 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
8890 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
8891 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
8892 packages.</p>
8893
8894       </div>
8895       <div class="tags">
8896
8897
8898         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8899
8900
8901       </div>
8902     </div>
8903     <div class="padding"></div>
8904
8905     <div class="entry">
8906       <div class="title">
8907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
8908       </div>
8909       <div class="date">
8910          6th June 2010
8911       </div>
8912       <div class="body">
8913         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
8914 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
8915 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
8916 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
8917 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
8918 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
8919 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
8920
8921 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
8922 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
8923 COLUMNS):</p>
8924
8925 <blockquote><pre>
8926 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
8927 previous=N
8928 PREVLEVEL=
8929 RUNLEVEL=
8930 runlevel=S
8931 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
8932 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
8933 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
8934 </pre></blockquote>
8935
8936 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
8937 script.</p>
8938
8939 <blockquote><pre>
8940 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
8941 previous=N
8942 PREVLEVEL=N
8943 RUNLEVEL=S
8944 runlevel=S
8945 </pre></blockquote>
8946
8947 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
8948 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
8949 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
8950
8951 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
8952 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
8953 choice.</p>
8954
8955       </div>
8956       <div class="tags">
8957
8958
8959         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8960
8961
8962       </div>
8963     </div>
8964     <div class="padding"></div>
8965
8966     <div class="entry">
8967       <div class="title">
8968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
8969       </div>
8970       <div class="date">
8971          6th June 2010
8972       </div>
8973       <div class="body">
8974         <p>Via the
8975 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
8976 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
8977 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
8978 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
8979 following the standards wars of today.</p>
8980
8981       </div>
8982       <div class="tags">
8983
8984
8985         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8986
8987
8988       </div>
8989     </div>
8990     <div class="padding"></div>
8991
8992     <div class="entry">
8993       <div class="title">
8994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
8995       </div>
8996       <div class="date">
8997          3rd June 2010
8998       </div>
8999       <div class="body">
9000         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9001 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9002 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
9003 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9004 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
9005
9006 <blockquote><pre>
9007 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9008   vendor                    count
9009   Dell Computer Corporation     1
9010     PowerEdge 1750              1
9011   IBM                           1
9012     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
9013   Intel                         2
9014   [no-dmi-info]                 3
9015 maintainer:~#
9016 </pre></blockquote>
9017
9018 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9019 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
9020 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9021 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
9022 option to list the individual machines.</p>
9023
9024 <p>A larger list is
9025 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9026 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9027 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
9028 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9029 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9030 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9031 collector.</p>
9032
9033       </div>
9034       <div class="tags">
9035
9036
9037         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
9038
9039
9040       </div>
9041     </div>
9042     <div class="padding"></div>
9043
9044     <div class="entry">
9045       <div class="title">
9046         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
9047       </div>
9048       <div class="date">
9049          1st June 2010
9050       </div>
9051       <div class="body">
9052         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9053 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
9054 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9055 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9056 wait.</p>
9057
9058 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9059 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
9060 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9061 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9062 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
9063 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
9064
9065 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9066 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9067 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
9068 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9069 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9070 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9071 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
9072 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
9073
9074 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
9075
9076       </div>
9077       <div class="tags">
9078
9079
9080         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9081
9082
9083       </div>
9084     </div>
9085     <div class="padding"></div>
9086
9087     <div class="entry">
9088       <div class="title">
9089         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
9090       </div>
9091       <div class="date">
9092         27th May 2010
9093       </div>
9094       <div class="body">
9095         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
9096 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
9097 issues are known and should be solved:
9098
9099 <p><ul>
9100
9101 <li>The wicd package seen to
9102 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
9103 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
9104 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
9105 seem to be on the case.</li>
9106
9107 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
9108 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
9109 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
9110 maintainer is on the case.</li>
9111
9112 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
9113 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
9114 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
9115 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
9116 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
9117 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
9118 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
9119 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
9120
9121 </ul></p>
9122
9123 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
9124 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
9125 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
9126 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
9127
9128 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9129 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9130 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9131 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9132
9133 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
9134
9135       </div>
9136       <div class="tags">
9137
9138
9139         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9140
9141
9142       </div>
9143     </div>
9144     <div class="padding"></div>
9145
9146     <div class="entry">
9147       <div class="title">
9148         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
9149       </div>
9150       <div class="date">
9151         22nd May 2010
9152       </div>
9153       <div class="body">
9154         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
9155 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
9156 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
9157 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
9158
9159 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
9160 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
9161 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
9162 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
9163 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
9164 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
9165 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
9166 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
9167 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
9168 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
9169 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
9170 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
9171 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
9172 going to work.</p>
9173
9174 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
9175 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
9176 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
9177 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
9178 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
9179 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
9180 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
9181 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
9182 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
9183 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
9184 Edu.</p>
9185
9186 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
9187 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
9188 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
9189 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
9190 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
9191 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
9192
9193 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
9194 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
9195
9196       </div>
9197       <div class="tags">
9198
9199
9200         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9201
9202
9203       </div>
9204     </div>
9205     <div class="padding"></div>
9206
9207     <div class="entry">
9208       <div class="title">
9209         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
9210       </div>
9211       <div class="date">
9212         14th May 2010
9213       </div>
9214       <div class="body">
9215         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
9216 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
9217 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
9218 expected, if I am to believe the
9219 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9220 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
9221 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
9222 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
9223 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
9224 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
9225 version.</p>
9226
9227 More information about
9228 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9229 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
9230 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
9231 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9232
9233 <blockquote><pre>
9234 CONCURRENCY=none
9235 </pre></blockquote>
9236
9237 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9238 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9239 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9240 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9241
9242       </div>
9243       <div class="tags">
9244
9245
9246         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9247
9248
9249       </div>
9250     </div>
9251     <div class="padding"></div>
9252
9253     <div class="entry">
9254       <div class="title">
9255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
9256       </div>
9257       <div class="date">
9258         14th May 2010
9259       </div>
9260       <div class="body">
9261         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
9262 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
9263 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
9264 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
9265 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
9266 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
9267 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
9268 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
9269
9270 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
9271 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
9272 this on the collector host:</p>
9273
9274 <blockquote><pre>
9275 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
9276 </pre></blockquote>
9277
9278 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
9279 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
9280
9281 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
9282 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
9283 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
9284 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
9285 written yet.</p>
9286
9287       </div>
9288       <div class="tags">
9289
9290
9291         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
9292
9293
9294       </div>
9295     </div>
9296     <div class="padding"></div>
9297
9298     <div class="entry">
9299       <div class="title">
9300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
9301       </div>
9302       <div class="date">
9303         13th May 2010
9304       </div>
9305       <div class="body">
9306         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
9307 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
9308 has been
9309 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
9310
9311 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
9312 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
9313 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
9314 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
9315 based boot system.  Tollef is
9316 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
9317 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
9318 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
9319 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
9320 at the moment do not.</p>
9321
9322 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
9323 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
9324 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
9325 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
9326 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
9327 way forward.</p>
9328
9329 <p>In the mean time, based on the
9330 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9331 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
9332 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
9333 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
9334 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
9335 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
9336 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
9337 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
9338
9339       </div>
9340       <div class="tags">
9341
9342
9343         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9344
9345
9346       </div>
9347     </div>
9348     <div class="padding"></div>
9349
9350     <div class="entry">
9351       <div class="title">
9352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
9353       </div>
9354       <div class="date">
9355          6th May 2010
9356       </div>
9357       <div class="body">
9358         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
9359 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
9360 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
9361 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
9362 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9363 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
9364 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9365
9366 <blockquote><pre>
9367 CONCURRENCY=makefile
9368 </pre></blockquote>
9369
9370 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
9371 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
9372 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
9373 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
9374 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
9375 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
9376 make this happen.</p>
9377
9378 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
9379 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
9380 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
9381 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
9382 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
9383
9384 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
9385 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
9386 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
9387 fix the remaining issues.</p>
9388
9389 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9390 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9391 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9392 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9393
9394       </div>
9395       <div class="tags">
9396
9397
9398         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9399
9400
9401       </div>
9402     </div>
9403     <div class="padding"></div>
9404
9405     <div class="entry">
9406       <div class="title">
9407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
9408       </div>
9409       <div class="date">
9410         27th July 2009
9411       </div>
9412       <div class="body">
9413         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
9414 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
9415 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
9416 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
9417 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
9418 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
9419 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
9420
9421 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
9422 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
9423 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
9424
9425       </div>
9426       <div class="tags">
9427
9428
9429         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9430
9431
9432       </div>
9433     </div>
9434     <div class="padding"></div>
9435
9436     <div class="entry">
9437       <div class="title">
9438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
9439       </div>
9440       <div class="date">
9441         22nd July 2009
9442       </div>
9443       <div class="body">
9444         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
9445 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
9446 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
9447 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
9448 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
9449 the package up to date.</p>
9450
9451 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
9452 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
9453 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
9454 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
9455 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
9456 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
9457 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
9458 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
9459 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
9460 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
9461 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
9462 working on the future release.</p>
9463
9464 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
9465 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
9466
9467       </div>
9468       <div class="tags">
9469
9470
9471         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9472
9473
9474       </div>
9475     </div>
9476     <div class="padding"></div>
9477
9478     <div class="entry">
9479       <div class="title">
9480         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
9481       </div>
9482       <div class="date">
9483         24th June 2009
9484       </div>
9485       <div class="body">
9486         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
9487 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
9488 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
9489 funded
9490 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
9491 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
9492 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
9493 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
9494 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
9495 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
9496
9497 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
9498 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
9499 boot:</p>
9500
9501 <ul>
9502
9503 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
9504
9505 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
9506    clock is in UTC.</li>
9507
9508 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
9509    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9510    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
9511
9512 </ul>
9513
9514 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
9515 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
9516 Villegas</a>.
9517
9518 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
9519 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
9520 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
9521 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
9522 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
9523 using this.</p>
9524
9525 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
9526 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
9527 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
9528 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
9529 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
9530 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
9531 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
9532
9533       </div>
9534       <div class="tags">
9535
9536
9537         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9538
9539
9540       </div>
9541     </div>
9542     <div class="padding"></div>
9543
9544     <div class="entry">
9545       <div class="title">
9546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
9547       </div>
9548       <div class="date">
9549         17th May 2009
9550       </div>
9551       <div class="body">
9552         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
9553 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
9554 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
9555 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
9556 dager siden kom
9557 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
9558 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
9559 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
9560 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
9561 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
9562
9563 <blockquote>
9564 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
9565 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
9566 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
9567 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
9568 </blockquote>
9569
9570 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
9571 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
9572 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
9573 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
9574 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
9575
9576 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
9577 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
9578 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
9579
9580       </div>
9581       <div class="tags">
9582
9583
9584         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
9585
9586
9587       </div>
9588     </div>
9589     <div class="padding"></div>
9590
9591     <div class="entry">
9592       <div class="title">
9593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
9594       </div>
9595       <div class="date">
9596          7th May 2009
9597       </div>
9598       <div class="body">
9599         <p>Kom over
9600 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
9601 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
9602 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
9603 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
9604 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
9605 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
9606 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
9607
9608       </div>
9609       <div class="tags">
9610
9611
9612         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9613
9614
9615       </div>
9616     </div>
9617     <div class="padding"></div>
9618
9619     <div class="entry">
9620       <div class="title">
9621         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
9622       </div>
9623       <div class="date">
9624          2nd May 2009
9625       </div>
9626       <div class="body">
9627         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
9628 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
9629 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
9630 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
9631 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
9632 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
9633 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
9634 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
9635 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
9636 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
9637 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
9638 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
9639 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
9640 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
9641 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
9642 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
9643 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
9644 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
9645 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
9646 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
9647
9648 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
9649 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
9650 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
9651 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
9652 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
9653 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
9654 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
9655 betydelige.</p>
9656
9657       </div>
9658       <div class="tags">
9659
9660
9661         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9662
9663
9664       </div>
9665     </div>
9666     <div class="padding"></div>
9667
9668     <div class="entry">
9669       <div class="title">
9670         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
9671       </div>
9672       <div class="date">
9673          2nd May 2009
9674       </div>
9675       <div class="body">
9676         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
9677 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
9678 do not yet know them.</p>
9679
9680 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
9681 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
9682 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
9683 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
9684 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
9685 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
9686 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
9687 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
9688 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
9689 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
9690 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
9691
9692 <p>The second one is
9693 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
9694 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
9695 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
9696 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
9697 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
9698 and the company behind it is running
9699 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
9700 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
9701 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
9702 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
9703 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
9704 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
9705 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
9706 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
9707
9708 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
9709 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
9710 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
9711 surrounded by today.</p>
9712
9713       </div>
9714       <div class="tags">
9715
9716
9717         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9718
9719
9720       </div>
9721     </div>
9722     <div class="padding"></div>
9723
9724     <div class="entry">
9725       <div class="title">
9726         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
9727       </div>
9728       <div class="date">
9729         28th April 2009
9730       </div>
9731       <div class="body">
9732         <p>Julien Blache
9733 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
9734 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
9735 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
9736 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
9737 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
9738 properties.</p>
9739
9740       </div>
9741       <div class="tags">
9742
9743
9744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9745
9746
9747       </div>
9748     </div>
9749     <div class="padding"></div>
9750
9751     <div class="entry">
9752       <div class="title">
9753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
9754       </div>
9755       <div class="date">
9756         30th March 2009
9757       </div>
9758       <div class="body">
9759         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
9760 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
9761 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
9762 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
9763 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
9764 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
9765 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
9766 application.</p>
9767
9768 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
9769 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
9770 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
9771 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
9772 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
9773 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
9774 blocked from doing so.</p>
9775
9776 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
9777 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
9778 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
9779 requirements change.</p>
9780
9781 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
9782 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
9783 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
9784
9785       </div>
9786       <div class="tags">
9787
9788
9789         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9790
9791
9792       </div>
9793     </div>
9794     <div class="padding"></div>
9795
9796     <div class="entry">
9797       <div class="title">
9798         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
9799       </div>
9800       <div class="date">
9801         29th March 2009
9802       </div>
9803       <div class="body">
9804         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
9805 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
9806 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
9807 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
9808 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
9809 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
9810 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
9811 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
9812 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
9813 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
9814 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
9815 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
9816 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
9817 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
9818 now. :)</p>
9819
9820       </div>
9821       <div class="tags">
9822
9823
9824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9825
9826
9827       </div>
9828     </div>
9829     <div class="padding"></div>
9830
9831     <div class="entry">
9832       <div class="title">
9833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
9834       </div>
9835       <div class="date">
9836         29th March 2009
9837       </div>
9838       <div class="body">
9839         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
9840 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
9841 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
9842 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
9843 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
9844 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
9845
9846 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
9847 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
9848 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
9849 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
9850 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
9851 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
9852 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
9853 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
9854 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
9855 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
9856 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
9857 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
9858 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
9859
9860 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
9861 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
9862 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
9863 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
9864
9865 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
9866 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
9867
9868 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
9869 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
9870 new IETF work group?</p>
9871
9872       </div>
9873       <div class="tags">
9874
9875
9876         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9877
9878
9879       </div>
9880     </div>
9881     <div class="padding"></div>
9882
9883     <div class="entry">
9884       <div class="title">
9885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
9886       </div>
9887       <div class="date">
9888         15th February 2009
9889       </div>
9890       <div class="body">
9891         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
9892 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
9893 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
9894 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
9895 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
9896 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
9897 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
9898 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
9899 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
9900 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
9901 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
9902 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
9903
9904       </div>
9905       <div class="tags">
9906
9907
9908         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9909
9910
9911       </div>
9912     </div>
9913     <div class="padding"></div>
9914
9915     <div class="entry">
9916       <div class="title">
9917         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
9918       </div>
9919       <div class="date">
9920          7th December 2008
9921       </div>
9922       <div class="body">
9923         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
9924 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
9925 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
9926 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
9927 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
9928 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
9929 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
9930 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
9931
9932 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
9933 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
9934 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
9935 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
9936 of these cards.</p>
9937
9938       </div>
9939       <div class="tags">
9940
9941
9942         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
9943
9944
9945       </div>
9946     </div>
9947     <div class="padding"></div>
9948
9949     <div class="entry">
9950       <div class="title">
9951         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
9952       </div>
9953       <div class="date">
9954         25th November 2008
9955       </div>
9956       <div class="body">
9957         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
9958 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
9959 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
9960 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
9961 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
9962 notes are available on
9963 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
9964 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
9965 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
9966 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
9967 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
9968 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
9969 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
9970 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
9971 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
9972
9973 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
9974 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
9975
9976       </div>
9977       <div class="tags">
9978
9979
9980         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9981
9982
9983       </div>
9984     </div>
9985     <div class="padding"></div>
9986
9987     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
9988     <div id="sidebar">
9989
9990
9991
9992 <h2>Archive</h2>
9993 <ul>
9994
9995 <li>2016
9996 <ul>
9997
9998 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
9999
10000 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
10001
10002 </ul></li>
10003
10004 <li>2015
10005 <ul>
10006
10007 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10008
10009 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10010
10011 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
10012
10013 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
10014
10015 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10016
10017 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
10018
10019 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
10020
10021 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10022
10023 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
10024
10025 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10026
10027 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
10028
10029 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10030
10031 </ul></li>
10032
10033 <li>2014
10034 <ul>
10035
10036 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10037
10038 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
10039
10040 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
10041
10042 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10043
10044 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
10045
10046 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10047
10048 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
10049
10050 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10051
10052 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10053
10054 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
10055
10056 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10057
10058 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
10059
10060 </ul></li>
10061
10062 <li>2013
10063 <ul>
10064
10065 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
10066
10067 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
10068
10069 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
10070
10071 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
10072
10073 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10074
10075 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
10076
10077 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10078
10079 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10080
10081 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10082
10083 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
10084
10085 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
10086
10087 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10088
10089 </ul></li>
10090
10091 <li>2012
10092 <ul>
10093
10094 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10095
10096 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
10097
10098 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
10099
10100 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
10101
10102 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
10103
10104 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
10105
10106 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
10107
10108 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10109
10110 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
10111
10112 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
10113
10114 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
10115
10116 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10117
10118 </ul></li>
10119
10120 <li>2011
10121 <ul>
10122
10123 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
10124
10125 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10126
10127 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
10128
10129 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10130
10131 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10132
10133 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10134
10135 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10136
10137 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10138
10139 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
10140
10141 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10142
10143 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10144
10145 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
10146
10147 </ul></li>
10148
10149 <li>2010
10150 <ul>
10151
10152 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10153
10154 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
10155
10156 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
10157
10158 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
10159
10160 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10161
10162 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
10163
10164 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
10165
10166 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
10167
10168 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
10169
10170 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10171
10172 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
10173
10174 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
10175
10176 </ul></li>
10177
10178 <li>2009
10179 <ul>
10180
10181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
10182
10183 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
10184
10185 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
10186
10187 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
10188
10189 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10190
10191 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
10192
10193 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
10194
10195 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10196
10197 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
10198
10199 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10200
10201 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10202
10203 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10204
10205 </ul></li>
10206
10207 <li>2008
10208 <ul>
10209
10210 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
10211
10212 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10213
10214 </ul></li>
10215
10216 </ul>
10217
10218
10219
10220 <h2>Tags</h2>
10221 <ul>
10222
10223  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
10224
10225  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
10226
10227  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
10228
10229  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
10230
10231  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
10232
10233  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
10234
10235  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
10236
10237  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
10238
10239  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (120)</a></li>
10240
10241  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (154)</a></li>
10242
10243  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
10244
10245  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
10246
10247  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
10248
10249  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
10250
10251  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (302)</a></li>
10252
10253  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
10254
10255  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
10256
10257  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (25)</a></li>
10258
10259  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
10260
10261  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
10262
10263  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
10264
10265  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
10266
10267  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (11)</a></li>
10268
10269  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
10270
10271  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
10272
10273  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
10274
10275  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
10276
10277  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
10278
10279  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
10280
10281  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (37)</a></li>
10282
10283  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (7)</a></li>
10284
10285  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (273)</a></li>
10286
10287  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
10288
10289  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (22)</a></li>
10290
10291  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
10292
10293  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (58)</a></li>
10294
10295  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
10296
10297  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
10298
10299  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
10300
10301  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
10302
10303  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
10304
10305  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
10306
10307  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
10308
10309  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
10310
10311  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
10312
10313  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (45)</a></li>
10314
10315  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
10316
10317  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
10318
10319  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
10320
10321  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
10322
10323  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
10324
10325  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
10326
10327  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
10328
10329  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
10330
10331  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
10332
10333  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (55)</a></li>
10334
10335  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
10336
10337  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
10338
10339 </ul>
10340
10341
10342     </div>
10343     <p style="text-align: right">
10344  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
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10348 </html>